I am so tired of every tech bro telling us how AI will change the world without giving us any concrete examples

[Anonymous]

Please tell us in the most concrete and specific terms possible, exactly what tasks AI has done in your organization that were previously done by a human. I don't want to hear that your organization has replaced 30 employees when that's what it has done every year for the past two decades because it just likes to hire and fire people. I also don't want to hear about how you vibe coded an app that no one will ever use. I want to hear about the specific, recent things (i.e., past six months or so) that AI has suddenly done within your company that has already replaced work previously done by humans. No speculation about what will happen in the future; I want examples that have already happened.

[Anonymous]

There is a lot written on this and it's not good. The changes won't be positives for society, if it works it will replace more jobs and result in unemployment and greater concentration of wealth for the richest. There is a reason the tech ppl are not themselves giving examples. Why would you believe that anyway?

[Anonymous]

It’s been good at taking raw notes from meetings and events and turning them into readouts that can be sent around. This has made people more efficient because it’s a menial task; it certainly isn’t replacing most people’s core work at my company. I have to read a lot of documents and reports so it can make that quicker too. And it can produce decent first drafts of reports I have to write but I find they require a lot of editing.

I will say it’s been useful for some other things, like summarizing internal Teams meetings for those that missed them. But that’s an added value rather than work replacement.

[Anonymous]

I'm a teacher and we are being forced to use AI to provide feedback on student work. It is bad, the kids know and don't like it, and the writing is on the wall: it is only a matter of time before our roles degenerate into crowd control aides only. This will do so much damage to kids; quality of education has already been degraded by screens/tech. I expect there will be a generation sacrificed to the AI teaching experiment before it is generally understood that this will hurt and not help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is a lot written on this and it's not good. The changes won't be positives for society, if it works it will replace more jobs and result in unemployment and greater concentration of wealth for the richest. There is a reason the tech ppl are not themselves giving examples. Why would you believe that anyway?

Well, of course there's been a lot of marketing hype because the tech bros need to justify spending billions of dollars and need to keep attracting more money. But people are giving ways that AI is a job aid, and nothing more. Email was a job aid that made us all more efficient, so was the internet. But that doesn't mean that they've totally replaced humans; if anything, they actually added complexity to the world and required more layers of human involvement.

[Anonymous]

Right? I just listened to a long podcast on this and the main examples was that management consultancies wouldn’t be able to charge as much for making PowerPoints and doctors can take notes more easily 😂 well I am happy for the doctors.

[Anonymous]

Radiology is one area. Image search and detecting cancer earlier and earlier is going to be a good thing but those positions are highly paid so insurance companies and hospitals will transition to AI tools and fewer radiologists faster.
Legal document review as well.

[Anonymous]

Its usefulness is being oversold. Its utility relies on vast amounts of good quality data, which has mostly already been sucked up.

I’ve used it to plan party menus, summarize documents, use as a resource for synthesizing multiple data sources (think organizational policies). But for each of these items I double check the outputs with my own analysis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Please tell us in the most concrete and specific terms possible, exactly what tasks AI has done in your organization that were previously done by a human. I don't want to hear that your organization has replaced 30 employees when that's what it has done every year for the past two decades because it just likes to hire and fire people. I also don't want to hear about how you vibe coded an app that no one will ever use. I want to hear about the specific, recent things (i.e., past six months or so) that AI has suddenly done within your company that has already replaced work previously done by humans. No speculation about what will happen in the future; I want examples that have already happened.

Such a great point!

[Anonymous]

Legal document review and direct redlining that is on par with junior lawyers. We haven’t had to hire because AI gets us most of the way there. Also built an AI agent to do routine legal tasks so our team stays small and focuses on more senior level judgment calls and litigation strategy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Legal document review and direct redlining that is on par with junior lawyers. We haven’t had to hire because AI gets us most of the way there. Also built an AI agent to do routine legal tasks so our team stays small and focuses on more senior level judgment calls and litigation strategy

So without junior lawyers how do we get senior lawyers who can make judgment calls?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher and we are being forced to use AI to provide feedback on student work. It is bad, the kids know and don't like it, and the writing is on the wall: it is only a matter of time before our roles degenerate into crowd control aides only. This will do so much damage to kids; quality of education has already been degraded by screens/tech. I expect there will be a generation sacrificed to the AI teaching experiment before it is generally understood that this will hurt and not help.

If its K to 8 I'm all for it. 9 years of FCPS and my kid got about 10 comments total on their writing before high school.

[Anonymous]

It makes me 10x faster making spreadsheets, and it codes scripts for me to process and analyze data way faster and better looking than I could before.

I also use it to make custom forms within spreadsheets and as html, so data entry is better an faster.

[Anonymous]

Our PTA was able to create advertisement for school shows without engaging a designer.

I can analyze large economic data without a junior analyst. We still hire juniors, they are just expected to learn "how to think" right away instead of being on the execution front for a couple of years.

[Anonymous]

On a very micro level, our neighbor used to have his own graphic design business creating logos and other graphics for local restaurants and small businesses.

He said AI has eradicated all his business. It’s just too easy for a small business to use AI to create graphics over the course of an hour or two that he would have spent weeks perfecting with a client. He is “lucky” in that he is late 50s and saved a ton, so he can pretty much retire…but his freelance days are over.