Was being let go better than renegotiation of your salary?
Oh, I tried. They didn't see it working out, and after a couple months to reflect, I agreed with their position on that, too.
Readit Newswccrawford commented on Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry bloodinthemachine.com/p/i... · Posted by u/thm
wccrawford commented on Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry bloodinthemachine.com/p/i... · Posted by u/thm
>They couldn't afford me
The problem is that in most cases businesses can afford you, but they choose to be "unable to". It's called budgeting, and the ceiling only represents existential limits for small or dying businesses. The rest of the time, it is defined only to maximize profit, which means using their power to shift the negative part of economic changes onto individuals as much as mathematically possible, rather than the business suffering proportionately.
I knew enough about their financials that I'm convinced they really couldn't afford somebody, and I was the most expensive.
No amount of "budgeting" was going to cover those unexpected circumstances, which they had already tried to work through in other ways.
I want to be mad, but I can't.
wccrawford commented on Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges news.bloomberglaw.com/ban... · Posted by u/nreece
> didn't innovate. They just made it work really, really well.
I thought that was the difference between "invention" and "innovation"?
"make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products." according to Oxford.
It's a stretch to me to think that "make it work reliably" is a new idea, and their products and methods were all already done by others, but less reliably.
wccrawford commented on Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges news.bloomberglaw.com/ban... · Posted by u/nreece
What do you mean they didn't innovative? The H2D and the AMS are new techniques and their latest release is certainly innovative with the 6 extra hotends
They didn't, though?
The H2D's printer/laser combo was done by Snapmaker before that, and the "2 heads" thing was done numerous times in many different ways before the H2D.
The AMS may not have looked exactly like that, but the same idea was already in place by Prusa at least.
Tool changers are not new, and the way that the extra hotends are held and dispensed was already in use in industrial machines. The "6 extra hotends" thing ... I'm willing to admit that might have been an innovation not yet seen in the 3d printing space, but BondTech announced their INDX before Bambu announced their solution. Both were in R&D for years before that, of course.
But Bambu was big and popular long before their current generation of printers. Only the AMS could be seen to contribute to their popularity, and again, it was because it works so well, not because it was a new idea.
wccrawford commented on If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes? english.elpais.com/techno... · Posted by u/PaulHoule
We did in a way. Tractors help produce more goods. Those goods incur VAT at the point of sale to consumers.
They don't "help produce more goods". They "reduce the need for human labor", enabling fewer people to produce as much as before.
That's exactly what AI is doing.
wccrawford commented on I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me marcusolang.substack.com/... · Posted by u/florian_s
It's the curse of writing well. ChatGPT is designed to write well, and so everyone who does that is accused of being AI.
I just saw someone today that multiple people accused of using ChatGPT, but their post was one solid block of text and had multiple grammar errors. But they used something similar to the way ChatGPT speaks, so they got accused of it and the accusers got massive upvotes.
wccrawford commented on Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges news.bloomberglaw.com/ban... · Posted by u/nreece
That seems to be a problem with many companies. Chinese companies are innovating aggressively while others don’t. You see that with 3d printers where Bambu is kicking ass. I remember when GoPro did a drone and it simply wasn’t good. Or American carmakers are trying to turn back the clock on electric instead of embracing it.
The funny thing is that Bambu didn't innovate. They just made it work really, really well.
I've owned a few 3d printers, including a kit printer, and the Bambu doesn't have any tech that other printers don't. They just always work well, and are easy to maintain.
Others are finally catching up, though. Snapmaker really scared them with the U1 (which is getting insane reviews), and Prusa has finally stepped up and started innovating again, too. The Centauri Carbon is another really good entry-level printer as well and it's eating into Bambu's market.
wccrawford commented on Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry bloodinthemachine.com/p/i... · Posted by u/thm
Brutal. I think AI led to my being laid off as a software developer, too. It's not quite so clear as the examples here for copywriters, but the company was very interested in using AI to ease the workload, and I can't even say I disagreed with it. I was using it myself.
I can't even paint them in a sinister light. They couldn't afford me, and now they had a way to get all the work done with their other developers that were less senior. They were clearly sad to let me go, but they didn't see that they had any choice financially. They weren't a big FAANG company with jillions of dollars. They only had a couple dozen employees.
I do wonder how people are going to get to be senior anything in the future, though. It's only going to be people who are really into it that are willing to work that hard to make it happen. The alternative, AI, is just so much easier than it's hard to justify putting that much effort into learning it, unless it's your thing.
wccrawford commented on Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options arstechnica.com/gadgets/2... · Posted by u/fleahunter
I'm confused. Every TV is a dumb TV if you don't give it your Wifi password.
My 2 year old LG complained every time I turned it on that I hadn't hooked it to the internet. No way to disable it.
Now that it's connected, it shows an ad at that time, in the same way. Can't win.
Yes, it matters to me because art is something deeply human, and I don't want to consume art made by a machine.
It doesn't matter if it's fun and beautiful, it's just that I don't want to. It's like other things in life I try to avoid, like buying sneakers made by children, or sign-up to anything Meta-owned.
Asking a machine to draw a picture and then making no changes? It's still art. There was a human designing the original input. There was human intention.
And that's before they continue to use the AI tools to modify the art to better match their intention and vision.