If you don't want AI, why would you but a GoogleBook?

Based on my analysis of their needs and what AI can deliver. I agree that it's management's job to increase efficiency and output, but change for change's sake is never good. For instance, in the examples above I *knew* what AI would deliver. I told them, in no uncertain terms, what product they'd receive. They still made the decision to push ahead ( and I'm more than willing to cash that check ). I can see, objectively and by any metric, that what was delivered is a worse customer experience than what they had before.

However, because it's "AI", that makes it acceptable. The buzzword has effectively disabled the rational and critical thinking parts of this management's teams brains. Of course I have seen this before ( First rule of IT: Vendors lie, Second rule of IT: Managers believe them ), but to this extent? Especially in smaller businesses, where margins are tighter. For what they're paying for this AI solution ( ha, "solution" ), they could afford to hire another staff member; another person on the phones, and far more capable than AI in delivering the ultimate product ( caring for the patient ).

Mind you; I pointed all this out to them. They know the math, but they are so...enamored with AI that it doesn't mean anything to them. Meanwhile, patients and staff hate it.

I'm sure there's AI use cases out there which deliver a decent ROI. What I'm seeing in the field, however, is management hysteria for the latest thing at a scale I've never before experienced.

I shouldn't complain, it's paying extremely well, but I know this will all come crashing down at some point.

That's not a flimsy excuse, it's a plausible one. But considering "Blackstone owned" I'm not sure that I believe it.

Also, even if it's true it's "more than they agreed to".

Ok thanks for the SPR definition, etc.

Yes, we are more car dependent than the 70's, but thats only because we're a larger country, more populace more cities than the 70s

I grew up in the 70's....and to my eyes, it isn't much different as far as requiring a car to live....never in my lifetime has there been any meaningful public transit anywhere I've lived across the US, but it isn't like anyone I've ever known missed it, etc.

Just normal way of life here.....I started working at restaurants when I was about 16yrs....saved my money and bought my first car (with some parental help) as a senior in High School.....and got that first taste of independence ..

I just thank GOD there was no social media back then and we didn't have cameras everywhere....ugh.

But the US has always in modern times been car centric....to see when it was not you'd likely have to look back about 100 years....

When CUDA started taking off we had ATI hardware, to support their open source pledge, and looked into ROCm.

Just getting the drivers to build on EL-anything was an extreme effort, and it wasn't my first rodeo.

Without betraying confidences, I was told second-hand that there were only ten people on the GPU driver team across all platforms and that they were doing their best and not sleeping enough as it was, with Compute way behind gaming bugs on the priority list.

I couldn't independently verify of course but the theory fit the data.

I immediately empathized with the suffering of the devs and went out and bought nVidia cards, annoying binary drivers and all.

Since then I've felt like that some bean counter at AMD wrote nVidia a trillion dollar check.

If you're not a tiny company *overstaff* your engineering departments so you don't miss new opportunities as they arise. The opportunity costs exceed the opex costs.

Same here but this lack of support will matter much less than dropping i486.

There are still embedded systems sold today that only meet i486 specs. I don't use them but some industries do.

Sure a $12 ESP32 can handle those tasks but it's a revalidation thing.

Not that anybody from those vendors stepped forward to maintain a tree.

OTR might be small enough.

The Axolotl Ratchet is much better but perhaps too big for SMS.

TextSecure probably would have offered it were that feasible.

Of course if you can arrange one-time pads you're 1:1 at 140 characters.

You might ask Firefox. They've reported a few. I think most companies aren't reporting them...which is what should be expected.

I've been through more than a few technology cycles, so while I don't necessary disagree with you, the scale of the disconnect between the worker bees and management is more significant than I ever remember.

It's becoming exceedingly difficult to dissuade management from AI courses of action, even when they make no sense or will end up delivering a substandard product for significantly higher cost.

For instance, I just had a client implement an AI auto-attendant for a medical office. Were they having difficulties answer the phone in a timely manner? No. Do they anticipate a staffing shortage that would cause such an issue? No. Will the auto-attendant be able to accomplish what a regular worker can? No. In fact, it can pretty much only answer the phone and find someone for the caller to talk to.

But by god, management had to have it. So, for an extra 2000 a month they get a middle man that delays delivering service to patients. Management loves it. Folks answering the calls hate it because the patients hate it.

Different office asked about AI curated music. Another client asked about replacing our network monitoring software with AI so their IT staff can stop working after hours. They both will end up getting their wish, and at least in the case of the network monitoring solution it's going to cause so many issues I'm having them sign a waiver before I implement; I won't be held responsible when the AI agent is rebooting servers randomly because it thinks they're offline.

A few years back, I went to a local community college...paid a few dollars to "apply" to take some grad courses.....sent transcripts, etc....I think a total of maybe $50 to apply.

For that I got a student ID with picture...and NO DATEs on it.

I also got an .edu email address. I've not used that in ages, but likely could reactivate it with some phone calls.

But that ID alone has saved me a TON of money over the years getting educational rates and prices.

Check to see what your local colleges put on their IDs and you might find it worth it to do the same.

It's going to get substantially higher than $4. I think it could end up pushing 7 bucks. Historically, the US has tolerated recessions more lightly than it has gas above 5 bucks. So this is a really really big deal, not least because demand destruction through mode shifting is much less tenable than in the 70s due to greater car dependency, and the SPR is already extensively drawn down ahead of winter. A whacking great recession may well be on the way.

Maybe that high in the "weird" states that overtax and have massive regulations on formulation, etc.....but here in the New Orleans...TX area, I don't see it getting that expensive.....

I don't get from you response one thing clearly...are you saying we had greater car dependency in the 70's or we have it now?

Also, what is "SPR" please?

I just don't see an electric bike/motorcycle holding any interest whatsoever to me...I LOVE my regular motorcycle....the sounds, smells, mechanical vibrations and with all the controls, clutches, going through gears, etc....it's all part of a visceral feel that you only get from a real motorcycle.....

Just pulling a throttle on a silent EV "motorcycle"....even though it might launch you into the future....will not have the same appeal...

More than any other IT fad over the past 2 decades, I've noticed AI has really divided "decision makers" and "makers/workers". Those of us in the trenches making things work are highly skeptical of AI and treat it much as we have any other "flash in the pan" technology; weary, willing to test/play with it, but disbelieving of the hype.

The decision makers though...whoooboy, they've bought into the tech hook, line and sinker. They want AI everything, even in places it makes no sense. They can't define what they want AI to do, or how it's supposed to do it, but by god they will sign away millions of dollars in pursuit of their golden cow.

The only time I really saw anything like this was with "Teh Cloudz!", but even then it was tempered by practicality. AI? It's magic beans, all the way down.

They work for Meta. I would expect them to be miserable.

The company has been dumping 10 figures a year into trying to build a VR world no one wants, with nothing to show for it after the better part of a decade. At some point, you expect morale to decrease.

They'll use the same excuse when AI perfects the Torment Nexus, I'm sure.