Post by @raganwald@social.bau-ha.us

Imagine warring tribes.

There are two types of arms dealers. One says, "Buy these weapons, up-skill your soldiers to use them, and wipe out your enemies." The other says, "Buy these weapons, train your commanders to use them, and get rid of those pesky grunts who demand to be fed."

The only way the second dealer's customers can survive is if there are no arms dealers of the first type, and everyone ends up in a forever stalemate spending the food money on weapons.

Yes this is comical.

Pozorvlak

@[email protected] · 6 hours ago

@raganwald I don't think that's necessarily true? Warfare is a constant (literal!) arms race between "weak but numerous" and "powerful but rare", and each has dominated at some times but not others. We seem to be going through a transition now, with cheap drones taking over from expensive tanks and aircraft.

Wheels for the Mind

@[email protected] · 6 hours ago

@pozorvlak It's an allegory referring to companies that think the thing to do with AI is to reduce headcount rather than bury competitors who cut headcount. Yes, if they succeed others will copy them and it's back to a stalemate. But right now, there is an opportunity for contrarians who up-skill their teams.

That they don't suggests that perhaps they know these tools aren't capable of 10x-ing the company's competitiveness, and the real goal is to convince investors they are cutting costs.

Michael Newton

@mavnn · 6 hours ago

@[email protected] @[email protected] Yeah, this is the single biggest thing that to me makes it completely clear that there is no connection between current job schenanigans and actual AI capability. Tech companies have been claiming that they're limited by how hard it is to hire skilled staff for years, and then we're told that their response to those staff becoming more productive is to... fire them?

At that point it feels like there's only really three conclusions to choose from: the person saying these things has catestropically bad business sense, they're lying, or both.

Pozorvlak

@[email protected] · 6 hours ago

@mavnn @raganwald I absolutely buy the theory that tech companies over-hired in the pandemic and are now cutting costs, I was just quibbling with the analogy on its own terms 😅

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