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Comment Re:China is acting like the US now? (Score -1) 37

I'm sorry but this article is ridiculous. If I didn't live in the US I'd feel like maybe there would be something to call out, but this is how our companies roll all the time and our current administration is even worse. Nothing to see here.

Correct, the problem is that China is acting more like the US now. Which is more of a problem for the US than for other nations, because we have been taking advantage of our unique status to increase our standard of living at other nations' expense, and that will now be harder. You have it backwards about who should be worried about it. My guess is out of some misplaced feeling of hypocrisy.

Comment Re:So pay the government their cut and it is (Score 4, Informative) 80

Nope they are getting fined because there are regulations.

Lack of enforcement - Nope they got audited thousands of times and fined!

Now you could argue they were not fined enough, I guess but clearly there is a regulation and clearly the regulators are checking up!

Their fines amount to a quarterly rounding error. https://www.businesswire.com/n...

Comment Re:Replace CEOs with AI! (Score 2) 31

We need to push for CEOs to be replaced with AI. They'd do a better job and would cost a LOT less.

Start repeating this everywhere and get the meme-makers on it. It will be wonderful to watch them squirm as they suddenly find reasons why AI shouldn't replace a company's most valuable assets: its most highly-paid executives.

A CEO doesn't get paid for any of the work AI does. CEOs collect information from other executives, peers, consultants, and the media and make decisions. LLMs can disrupt the work of consultants, the media, and the employees feeding information to executives, but it's horrible at making good decisions that can be trusted.

Comment Re:And the stupid doubles down (Score 1) 31

I find it totally fascinating how determinedly these "decision makers" try to ignore that LLMs cannot deliver anything but a tiny fraction of the claims made about them.

In fairness, since some of the claims are that AI will replace all jobs, even massive disruption such as replacing 10% of the workforce is still a very big deal. I'll be surprised if we don't reduce our call center staff by at least 50% in the next 3 years, and AI chat/voice bots is a small portion of that projection. That is mostly from AI agents assisting call center agents and assisting product managers to find ways to improve human agent UX.

LLMs were capable of doing all of this in early 2024, and have only gotten better since then. We weren't having success with nano/flash models in 2024 but we have been moving to those models for most use cases in late 2025 (reducing LLM costs by 80%).

Comment Re:Remember, the problem AI solves is wages (Score 1) 31

That is usually true, but we don't always use AI to replace employees (although it usually does).

I am working on something now that reads all of our transcripts and identifies what part of each call takes the most time to help product management prioritize call center improvements. Traditional NLP couldn't do as good of a job at this as early testing is showing LLMs can do. We would have to more than triple our call center staff to have a human listen to every single call and identify opportunities to improve call center agent UX, but a nano/flash LLM can do this for around 1 cent per call. For $250k we can do this for our 25M annual annual calls. That isn't replacing a human. It is doing something we would have never paid humans to do and giving us information we never would have had.

This information will still be used to either decrease call center staff or increase the caller experience, but that is true of every product enhancement we do for this business function. Not just AI.

Comment Re:Seriously? (Score 1) 142

According to the NZ EFTPOS site there is a rental fee for the machine, if not purchased. Then there is a monthly usage fee based on the size of the company.
If the customer then uses a credit card or similar there are additional fee charged by both EFTPOS and the credit card company.
Debit cards do have a fee but it is lower than credit cards so stores merchants have that fixed into the cost.
In the USA some store will still take checks, cheques, and it is no additional cost.

Comment Re:ADHD does not exist (Score 3, Interesting) 235

What is your solution to this however, a person who needs extra time or to bring mommy along because they have anxiety - how are they going to be accommodated when they graduate and look for a job?

There is a simple (and difficult) solution, but it destroys the illusion that having a college degree is a simple way to determine if someone will be a good employee.

If the degree is meant to show that someone has the knowledge to do the job, it isn't great because they don't teach enough on the job related skills in college.
If the degree is meant to show that someone has the critical thinking skills to do the job, it isn't great because those skills aren't focused on much in most colleges.
If the degree is meant to show they can work and think quickly under pressure, it isn't great because schools will often accommodate for students who struggle in those areas.
If the degree is meant to show they can work hard and follow through with a fairly challenging four year task, it is pretty good at that.
If the degree is meant to show they have enough foundational knowledge to learn to do the job, it is pretty good at that.
If the degree is meant to show they came from an upper middle class socioeconomic background (so they fit in with the corporate culture), or at least had middle class families that worked hard to give their children the benefits of an upper middle class upbringing, it is pretty good at that too.

If you want someone to do a job that is high stress and requires quick thinking, you better assess for that competency yourself instead of assuming a college degree is enough of a hiring filter. But most jobs don't (or shouldn't) require those skills.

I am in corporate strategy, and while I can think on my feet well enough to handle meetings with executives, I do my best thinking after a few hours (or weeks) of contemplation and research. No one should want someone to help advise on critical business decisions just because they are better at coming up with a decent answer in 5 minutes. Different jobs require different skills.

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