- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
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Wow, terrible news that companies that use ai are completely fcking themselves over. Whatever will we do to save the selfish prcks?
Really? Been a minute since I have done a presentation, but:
Pandoc PDF to Markdown.
Markdown to paste into your favorite HTML presentation tool.
Nobody is stupid enough to still use Powerpoint right? Right?
Or the ‘modern workflow’ version of tell the AI you want to convert the PDF, so it burns a bunch of tokens installing pandoc and converting it for you!
Unless mandated by the corporation (which are the same people forced to use AI for absolutely everything now)
Mandated to use PowerPoint? That would suck. Html markdown presentations are easily shared, require no additional software and make so much sense.
Oh right, “make sense”. Nevermind, I get it. The corporate world has no time for that!
Yup, can attest. It sucks. Unless the application is listed on our approved app list I can’t even request it. Let alone the months it can take IT to get around to installing it for me.
try a hedgedoc hosted by a random someone. maybe cryptpad.
Any markdown render will do. VSCode, pandoc, heck many web pages, etc.
You just write in markdown.
Edit: unless you meant pandoc, but I don’t think it requires an install either.
Ooh, I think I’ll start using CoPilot to do basic math and unit conversions in addition to doing them the correct way. Then I can note in my goals & reviews how I have been utilizing the AI resource and keeping tabs on its advancement.
If my boss would mandate the use of LLMs I would definitely abuse it to rack up the bill.
I already am.
I just debugged a report, found the issue almost right away. A missing number in a GROUP BY clause.
Well if you’re measuring what I do through LLM use, the Claude is fixing it instead. Hope that dollar was worth it!
I like to race the ai on most tasks and find myself winning on anything of substance. Sure SOME mundane tasks can be done but does it out weight the energy and infrastructure costs as well as reputation and morale.
Even after all that you STILL need a human double checking and inputting the information.
Switching from human labor to AI is like going straight to a unionized workforce, except it’s not a collection of reasonable human beings with human needs, it’s a well funded machine with only exponential profit in mind
Seriously. A human workforce could never dream of being capable of the same insatiable greed as the gigacorps trying to sell AI.
The funny thing is that even with this massive overspending, AI companies aren’t profitable. They need these companies to spend 10x the amount per token, and 10x the number of tokens. Probably 10x the number of customers too.
Burning energy, draining water, spending massive cash so they can lose money on a product that doesn’t even do its job. How the hell has the bubble not popped yet…
The Stock market is literally just vibes. As long as everyone believes, it will somehow be profitable in the future, the line will keep ging up
and building more and more datacenters, replacing AI chips faster and faster, the more people use it, which of course is wasting a ton of money.
Just a little thought for my professors who overuse AI. Thanks guys for eating the tokens.
This is the most profitable consultant in the world, can’t they just afford to run a local llm?
I heard about a company that was looking at purchasing machines to run local llms for their developers to use.
If more companies do this, rather than using the massive ai data centers being built…. the RAMpocolypse will get way worse.
That is the part that pains me to admit - running local LLMs is not a solution to the RAMpocalypse. In that case we’d just have more GPUs and RAM idling for ~90% of the time in someones basement, without being shared. As bad as it sounds, having data centers for AI stuff is actually the more ecological solution. I can’t believe I said that. Excuse me, I have to take a shower now *shudder*
So you say I have to destroy the AI thing?
This is 100% the thesis I’ve been shopping personally… Many Boomers and Xers in executive positions had a “magical millennial” that they quietly kept as a secret “AI” to split/edit PDFs, set up an Airtable base, add columns to a google doc, etc. There was a tacit, silent agreement in this symbiotic relationship for the bulk of the last 20 years - you’ll make sure I don’t look completely incompetent in tech matters and I’ll backchannel on your behalf to senior leaders and people who “matter” to help you advance.
Gen AI essentially allows the laziest input, gives a half competent output that “feels” fine and has the bonus of telling the boomer/Xer that they are actually amazingly capable, and could have done this themselves all along even, but they rightly delegated the task to their magical millennial, and now to the AI of choice.
So they fired all the magical millennials, because they knew too much about the before times. Now that they are fucked without a life raft, costs soar and they will cling for dear life because they will be exposed otherwise.
Edit: through a twist of fate, the iPad kids grew up technically incapable and relied on the magical millenials as well. They could only offer praise and loyalty really, or a boomer, Xer recruited them in and talked the MM up as a “wiz” to seek out. Anyway, now that the MM are gone, the Zoomers and gen Alpha kids only have one strength remaining, the old people have no idea what they are doing or how to quantify their success, outside of “use more AI”. So the fragile balance remains for now, with a vulnerable, hollow center where the magical millennials used to live.
I’m a Millennial and work in IT. We aren’t magical. There’s competent and incompetent people in all age groups. I wouldn’t even say we had better starting conditions overall because being good with tech was seen as cringe nerd stuff when I grew up.
I think your theory is mostly right though, just along the lines of competent/incompetent. So many people constantly choose what they believe the path of least resistance with tech, even if it actually isn’t. Don’t spend one or two minutes to learn how to save to PDF in Word, instead google “word to pdf” and upload whatever sensitive data you have in that DOCX to some shady website.
I’m surrounded by this shit, and it seems to come from all generations. My boss, who is my age, called me because her computer was frozen and she wanted me to fix it. “I was like, turn it off and on again, this is the first, most basic rule of troubleshooting.” Meanwhile the boomer next to me is having me do shit like attach files to a fucking email.
Eat shit you greedy corporate assholes, i hope all of your companies are damaged beyond recovery, you useless fucking tools.
Waiting for hackers to break into companies and not do a ransomware attack. Just run some scripts which innocently do shit like turn PDFs into PowerPoints and chew through those tokens.
This made me laugh so hard.
Not affiliated with Chipotle. They will probably sue us. Worth it.
Wonderful. Just wonderful. 😁
“Turn this PDF into a powerpoint, and then summarize it with a haiku”
AI is about to join the list of “stupid technologies that people should really wait and see before investing on”, which includes
- 3D TVs - complete dud
- Blockchain - useless for real world problems already solved by typical computing
- Metaverse - still one of the best jokes around
- Folding screen phones - overpriced junk
- Fully autonomous self driving cars - “Just around the corner” for the past 10 years
Don’t forget NFTs… though I guess that can fall under blockchain.
yeah but NFTs were so stupid that they deserve their own dishonorable mention here.
NFTs are so fucking stupid the satirical yearly award for this shit should probably be the NonFungible Trophy cus it’s a literal fucking physical trophy.
It’s just the same as crypto
Literally, even. NFTs exist on crypto blockchains themselves.
I know. I’m a BCH developer.
Cool, welcome to lemmy, where it’s assumed that you aren’t the only person reading your replies and that every answer may be tailored to a broader audience. I hope you someday find as much experience with it as you have BCH.
I’m also the developer of Mbin (Lemmy alternative) btw.
Thanks for the warning.
Folding Phones Sales Continue To Increase since 2019, showing people seem to like them
Two time buyer, can confirm. They’re legitimately useful and durable enough for me.
I don’t think they are for me but I honestly would not include them in that list above. First of all, there is no investment bubble around them and secondly some people seem to like them and are ready to pay for them. They also do have legitimate benefits (but also downsides)
Yeah I didn’t dislike the 3d monitors/tvs they just had too many caveats at the time and VR kind of ate its lunch.
3D stuff has the fundamental issue that VR and 3D views are just incredibly straining on the human user. Folding phones have no such issue and their durability is also good enough to be competitive (yet clearly worse than regular smart phones). They are really not comparable to 3D monitors and VR.
I think the strain is really dependent on the person as it never really bothered me, it definitely is a problem for some people though. Either way I don’t think it belongs in the same category as blockchain bullshit
It is straining for everyone but yes, some can handle the strain better than others. It just takes so much more mental energy to handle. Most can’t handle it well though, which is why those technologies never manage to break out of their niche.
I do agree however that it is quite different from NFT and other scams. It is a really fascinating technology with real use cases but just some foundational issues that prevent it from leaving their niche.
Two time buyer as in you liked it so much and bought another, or two time buyer as in the first is already inoperative and got another?
My fold4 lasted 3 years, and still works. I’ll concede it was only able to unfold to about 85% open at the end when I decided to upgrade. I was happy to upgrade to the fold 7 which has a redesigned hinge and better dust protection. I acknowledged the risk of mechanical failure as a possibility compared to a slab phone and after using it for years I decided I was still very impressed with the flexibility of having a tablet in my pocket. The fact that my 7th generation is significantly thinner and has a 200MP camera compared to the 4th is what sealed the deal.
It’s not perfect for everyone, but I wouldn’t go back to using a slab, there’s too much functionality I’d be pissed giving up.
Granted, I tend to upgrade my phone every 2 years or so anyway.
I find only 3 years of durability to be absurd 0_0
I find keeping a phone longer than three years absurd, guess we like different things!
Not the same guy. But I’ve been using foldables since 2019 as my primary phone. Samsung fold 1 -> 3 -> 5. No case, no protectors, keys with phone in same pocket. Never had an issue.
I like the one that folds like a GBA SP.
Not that I’m gonna buy one based on that.
But if I’m choosing between two identical models but one folds (and I guess it isn’t that much more expensive), I’d go for the folding one.
Except, of course, for the fact that the next phone I buy will be Commodore’s Callback.I had the Fold 2 and Fold 4, both broke so I just went back to a Pixel 🤷
If it lasts 5 years, maybe its durable enough.
…7
This could also be explained by the entire rest of the market being different flavors of the exact same thing. A little over a decade ago, we actually had choices in what type of phone we wanted. Now, if you want anything other than an identical slab, foldables are your only choice.
Disco Stu says disco record sales have trended upwards for the entire decade of 1970’s. If this trend continues… eyyyyyyyyy!
All of these have one thing in common. They are viable technologies for certain use cases but not widespread technologies for everyone and everything.
3D TVs - complete dud
The real issue with 3D TVs had nothing to do with the tech, but 100% to do with lazy implementation on the media side. Everyone was always trying to make things pop out of the screen, which was the complete wrong approach. Nevermind the fact that companies got so lazy to the point of just filming in 2D and then “adding” 3D in post.
No one wanted to put in the effort to do it right (aside from James Cameron). So no wonder no one liked it.
Fully autonomous self driving cars - “Just around the corner” for the past 10 years
It exists, but they realized that why should they do that, when they can make money by creating taxis without drivers.
There is no benefit for us, ordinary people.
They aren’t making any profit with self driving taxis, though.
Are you sure? I see Waymo driving around picking and dropping people off. I would imagine that charging more for the novelty and not having to pay the driver would actually generate a lot of profit.
They run for Uber and don’t charge extra. Regardless, they aren’t profitable, and last year they lost $5 billion, see https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2026/02/waymo-losses-about-5-billion.html
Cold fusion. Green hydrogen. Hyper loop. Just off the top of my head.
Hyper Loop was an insane idea (in a bad way).
Motherfucker wanted to invent subway, but for cars, making cities even more dependent of cars.
Actually not entirely true.
He was proposing transportation method similar to how the communication tubes are. Where vacuum would be used to transport capsules with people.
He knew it was bunk, so initially just published that idea and let anyone do it. His actual goal was to kill California’s high speed rail, which he did.
Eventually he purchased Boring company and started building tunnel in Las Vegas and called that (as you called it, subway for cars) a hyper loop and pretend that it was the original idea.
hyperloop was very low air pressure subway tubes for high speed trains. Works for research tesring tracks impractical to infeasible for real world applications. But it apparently what killed high speed rail in california (because wait this will be better)
The cars in tubes thing was a seperate stupid idea.
I don’t know that he really wanted to fully execute on Hyperloop so much as build hype (and Tesla stock price) around the idea while sabotaging funding for California’s high speed rail project. But yes, end goal to keep people buying his cars.
Average massively shitty car CEO idea
Cold fusion is a scam, not a bad idea. There is no scientific basis for that. Is as bad as “infinite energy engine”.
All of the things I mentioned are scams lol
Green hydrogen is water electrolysis with solar power, not scam, it works, it is just a question of making it economically viable. Hyperloop is just stupid, but within the realm of possible. Cold fusion is the only scam here.
The scam isn’t always “fake tech” so much as “distracting from better alternatives for monetary reasons”. Even if hyperloop worked perfectly, they’re not going to build it, because not building high speed rail was always the point.
Your definition of “scam” is not what other human being use. Causes unnecessary back and forth.
Oh, put a sock on it.
I watch a lot of YouTube about everything nerdy and celebratory to every detail and facet about the global apocalypse. Yesterday for the first time in months, a novel idea got through to me… dude was talking about the overblown reactionary movement to which I initially ate my own vomit… yes, I consume this drug, but yes, I am cognisant it’s really bad, so don’t tell me it’s all okay… Something along lines of “everyone thinks it’s like the industrial revolution. It’s not. It’s like the Internet or mobile devices. We just forget how big a change those were now that they’re normative, so it sounds psychotic to compare AI to such “small” shifts in society like the Internet or mobile”… and I felt a fuck ton better. Copium or not, it’s nice to hear a grounded take (he backed it up), and neither a sycophant or chicken little diatribe that feel respectively like sociopaths with heads in the ground or click bait unsubstantiated drama.
Not undermining what AI is doing to people, society, and the ecology. But now that I type that, thinking what to follow, anyone remember Mary Poppins? How normal it was for little kids covered in soot missing fingers at the dawn of the industrial revolution. We just need regulation which is the actual fundamental shift problem, as demand for political action is no longer democratized now that the Citizens have United.
Am I a douche? Lying to myself?
Some of these turned out to be useless, some just haven’t been adequately delivered yet.
In 2040 folding phones and autonomous cars might be great, but blockchain will still be a solution in search of a problem.
Metaverse - still one of the best jokes around
This one I slightly disagree with. I got my headset on a black friday and it was super cheap, but VR documentaries are friggin’ amazing and I hope museums will invest heavily in it in the coming years.
Fully autonomous self driving cars - “Just around the corner” for the past 10 years
Definitely. Makes me feel good for people who make their living driving trucks.
The metaverse isn’t VR in general, it was meant to be a virtual space in VR where users could be advertised to and buy/rent things and space like in a physical city.
It failed because those were the intended starting points, and it didn’t solve any problem other than a shitty attempt at a “I want to live in a ready player one world” and didn’t have any compelling reasons to actually use it, let alone use it and pay ridiculous amounts to do interesting things there. They always just wanted to be the middlemen, offering space for others to pay for and do something interesting in. The most interesting thing they came up with is having a meeting with avatars instead of faces on a screen (and most people don’t even want to turn on their video and just do a voice conversation instead).
Plus Second Life already tried the same idea and failed, and did so without requiring several hundred dollars of specialized equipment per user like the Metaverse did.
Though they did have the advantage of their name not being poison. When fb bought oculus, I stopped considering them an option for VR setups.
Until someone come up with things like sword art online, they gonna flop lmao
Yeah, what we call VR is just a pale imitation of the VR that made things like SAO and The Matrix so cool.
When you tell the people to mash the easy button and then they do exactly what you wanted. They created the monster.
that came after Uber told employees to use AI as much as possible and Uber’s CTO said the company had blown its entire AI budget in four months
Further evidence that most CEO’s and SLT’s are just confident, lucky, and born wealthy; not competent, smarter, or much better than average.
Also they are addicted to sycophancy. Now that they have a convincing yes man in their pockets they are uniquely vulnerable to AI psychosis.
Using an LLM to parse stuff is like using a rocket launcher to kill an ant.
You can accomplish the same thing using a million times fewer resources with a purpose-built program.
“ChatGPT, what time is it?”
Will, that’s what happens when employers tell employees that they should “use ai first”, track their token use on a dashboard, and tell them they’ll get fired if they are too low on the monthly ranking.
Well, if your KPI is how much you use an LLM like in some reports - this is an easy way to get those good indicators. Also, LLMs are super easy to use to parse things, whereas many special programs like IDK grep isn’t exactly user friendly. Not to mention not finding patterns really. Though here I’m thinking things like looking at various logs on computers.
Maybe we could at least nudge the LLMs in the direction of suggesting appropriate tools and giving hints how to actually do that when applicable instead of blindly brute forcing every task. Of course that does not solve the issue of stupid corporate incentives, but I feel like by now most companies have realized that burning as much money as possible is not a good goal.
Yes but you’re in an open office and all you have available in your open office hell are: rocket launcher, your sanity, Debra’s snappy attitude.
Debra’s probably a better performer than you are.
Sounds like somebody’s got a case of the Mondays
Is Debra here a new version of clippy?
