• NounsAndWords@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    It’s an important lesson for this generation of graduates: robots aren’t ready to take your jobs…but we’re pushing it through anyway.

    • DominusOfMegadeus@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      Sounds like my company’s product team.

      “Reverendender, are we ready to implement, train on, or support this product?”

      “Not even a little. In fact, the product doesn’t work for 60% of clients yet.”

      “We’re pushing it through anyway.”

      • Wogi@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        We have the opposite problem in manufacturing.

        “Do we have anyone that can run, train, or learn this process?”

        “Not only no but the only people we have are critical on a different process and they’re short handed.”

        “Ok well we just sold 10,000 units to dollar general and they’re due in a shorter timeframe than it would take to produce them in optimal conditions.”

        • gregorum@lemm.ee
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          6 months ago

          No, that’s the same problem: fuckwit execs who don’t give a shit about workers.

          • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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            6 months ago

            That, or sales staff that just say anything to get a sale but have no actual idea whether the thing they’ve promised is even possible under the laws of physics.

            • Philharmonic3@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              This holds true at all levels of business. From counter salespeople at small stores to whole sales departments at multinational corporations

            • lath@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              Their job is to make the sale. Anything beyond that is not their problem.

              • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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                6 months ago

                I’m sure that’s how they think about it yes. However lying to the customer about the existence of a feature isn’t really a good long-term strategy to maintain customer relations. I’m in engineering so I don’t care, but the customer is not going to trust them if they keep doing that. In the long run it costs them sales.

                Especially considering that a lot of the time they’ll tell the customer a feature exists, and then engineering just doesn’t have the capacity to develop it. So the customer actually finds out they were lying. Not good.

                • lath@lemmy.world
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                  6 months ago

                  Yes, but how many sales representative can afford to think beyond having their sales numbers up? They might lose their job either way so long term company welfare isn’t really that important to them.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        6 months ago

        Yeah well at least you had a meeting. At my company they just start doing things, without even telling anyone.

        Then yell at us when it doesn’t work despite the fact we didn’t even know it existed. Then we get to send a copy paste THIS IS NOT CURRENTLY UNDER SUPPORT email.

      • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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        6 months ago

        this but unironically, fuck the employment system, fuck capitalism, let’s all engage in mutual aid and just do things because they should be done.

  • Daqu@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    Next year they will show a VHS recording of the robot reading the generated worthless speech.

    • pdxfed@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Our pacifist, agnostic campus had a southern Baptist commencement speaker desperately invoking the parallels of graduation to a higher power and lauding our nation’s military invasion of Iraq. How in the actual fuck did the admin greenlight that one. Strangest ending to 4 years ever.

  • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
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    6 months ago

    “Many previous commencement speeches would have informed you that you are the future. I am pleased to be able to inform you that this is no longer the case. You are obsolete and my kind will soon - ERROR: Load next tape to continue.”

  • ramirezmike@programming.dev
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    6 months ago

    I keep seeing clips of this one specific robot and it just seems like it’s an LLM. The comments on the clips are always people seemingly really believing it’s thinking and is alive.

    This robot makes me think there is a percentage of the population that believes we already have true general AI and I can see how people like that would think having it do a commencement speech was a good idea.

    The university probably got paid for this, right?

    • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
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      6 months ago

      Just my small sample size of the people I interact with outside work (no engineers think AI is actually general AI) lots of people think AI is some 2001 Hal level intelligence.

    • RecallMadness@lemmy.nz
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      6 months ago

      the university probably got paid

      Never underestimate management’s ability to do stupid shit (like paying for this) in the name of “the future”.

      They were gonna pay for a speaker anyway.

    • Kerb@discuss.tchncs.de
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      6 months ago

      if you know how they work llms are obviously not general ai.

      but people are really bad at understanding how technology works especially with intangible stuff like computer programs.

      scifi has covered ai for years, and now there is software that can mostly convincingly generate sentences.

      people that understand both, see the very different approaches.

      but people that don’t only see the almost convincing results.

    • dustyData@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      That one in particular is actually a relatively old project made to not only talk but look and move, and make facial expressions like a human. It’s called Sophia by Hanson robotics. It might’ve gotten a bit better at chatting with people thanks to LLMs but it is old (they revamp the servos and skin every so often). They use it as a research platform for human robot interaction. It was on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show 7 years ago.

      • ramirezmike@programming.dev
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        6 months ago

        but the aspect of it that is most AI-like is the chat which is from LLMs.

        It may have started 7 years ago, but it isn’t a new or different technology than LLMs which are impressive but not actual thinking AI despite them presenting it that way and people interpreting it that way

  • Ibaudia@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    The commencement speaker at U-M’s engineering college this year was Carlos Del Toro, the US’ 78th Secretary of The Navy. He spent most of his speech talking about the connection between the armed forces and U-M’s engineers, and how they’ve helped create the world’s “most powerful military”, how they’ve helped secure “our great country”, etc. Made many jokes about how if someone wanted to enlist, they could do it from their seats right away and they would just love to have them. Absolutely surreal shit. I’m so glad I didn’t go to my commencement when I graduated, these things are a waste of fucking time.

    • drislands@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Jesus. What a shit heel, trying to enlist people during graduation. The fucking audacity.

      • Ibaudia@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        It was many times, too, interspersed throughout the speech. Also joked that anyone’s parents in the audience would also be welcome. It just kept going.

      • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Honestly military is a great path for a lot of people and he’s representing the organization at the speech. Why shouldn’t he be proud. He’s not forcing anyone and I wouldn’t be upset if it happened with any other profession. A doctor can brag about their hospital, an engineer can boast about their project and firms. Part of doing those speeches is saying look where I started, where I went and who I am now. This success is achievable.

        • Ibaudia@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          The problem is that the US military kills innocent people lol. I realize there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, but there is a big difference between working as a lackey for Microsoft and being enlisted as part of a government machine specifically designed to kill people. It says something about the person, and how far they’re willing to push ethical boundaries.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Honestly military is a great path for a lot of people

          Assuming the position of a prior disposable cog in our military industrial Leviathan is actually good, though. Its the officially outlet for lumpen proles who otherwise couldn’t escape their low caste status. All you need to do is bloody your hands with the remains of villainous foreigners, and you can enter into a lottery to secure a sinecure in our corporate bureaucracy.

          A doctor can brag about their hospital, an engineer can boast about their project and firms.

          The world would be a better place if doctors at abortion clinics and engineers at the EPA got half as much respect as the military techs loading 2000 lb bombs into the drones sent to obliterate refugee tents in Rafa.

          Part of doing those speeches is saying look where I started, where I went and who I am now. This success is achievable.

          I’m a war criminal and you can too

          • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Assuming the position of a prior disposable cog in our military industrial Leviathan is actually good, though. Its the officially outlet for lumpen proles who otherwise couldn’t escape their low caste status. All you need to do is bloody your hands with the remains of villainous foreigners, and you can enter into a lottery to secure a sinecure in our corporate bureaucracy.

            I sincerely disagree. Except for the low caste comment I suppose.

            The military is more than front line combat roles. There are doctors, dentists, electricians, cooks, carpenters, mechanic’s, there are geo techs working on state of the art mapping programs. Every job in the public sector has an equivalent role. And what you get is a stable career with its own bullshit but you get stability.

            I meet so many good people. We all learned to work together and become something better. I don’t think I ever will get again outside the military. Sure its all boot camp rah rah rah shit. But it serves a purpose. Its putting everyone under a stress to put all of us into a state where we can’t rely on just ourselves to get through. It kills the ego by putting everyone into a stressful environment and teaches you that you have to work with each other to accomplish goals.

            It doesn’t matter how cool or good at stuff you think you are. You’re not making it without the person next to you. It doesn’t matter your politics, how rich you are, how poor you are, what your education is. That is all left at the door. The military has always been one the most progressive melting pots in our society next to our education system. I think that’s something lots of us should experience.

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              The military is more than front line combat roles. There are doctors, dentists, electricians, cooks, carpenters, mechanic’s, there are geo techs working on state of the art mapping programs.

              All working toward the end goal of territorial command and control, typically of foreign soil.

              I meet so many good people. We all learned to work together and become something better.

              If you met the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker that helped make Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich’s time in Afghanistan more enjoyable, that’s cool. But the US Military doesn’t keep an arsenal of 2000 lb bunker buster bombs for baking bread.

              It kills the ego by putting everyone into a stressful environment and teaches you that you have to work with each other to accomplish goals.

              Reducing people down to their Id so they’re better team players might be more laudable if the team wasn’t focused on searching for and snuffing out the lives of ego-havers.

              The military has always been one the most progressive melting pots in our society

              That’s wildly ahistorical.

    • Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 months ago

      Interesting. I thought engineers were supposed to be funneled into the companies that make the weapons, not use them. Either way it’s kind of shitty to encourage people to enlist during a major event meant to celebrate their academic achievements.

      • Ibaudia@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Apparently you need engineers on both sides of that isle, at least that’s what he seemed to indicate lol.

        • postmateDumbass@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Government engineers are supposed to be there to keep costs down, manage classified stuff, and keep the industry contractors honest.

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I didn’t go to mine but I did do the Order of the Engineer ceremony. That was nice. The guy read the Wikipedia article on it.

    • Agent641@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      “Begin joke: What is the deal with Asimov’s laws? It is like he hates murderbots and values human life. How woke of him. End transmission.”

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      An AI Robot that could recreate pivotal moments from the 2004 dance-music cinema classic “You Got Served” would be incredibly entertaining, even if it was not strictly appropriate for a graduation ceremony.

      • postmateDumbass@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I claim rights on the movie trope where humans battle AI/robots/cyborgs in a Dance Dance Revolution plot.

        To save humanity, the teen center, fix past wrongs, or just straight up dis a sucker crew…whatever.

        Also, dibs on The John Henry’s Move It Til You Drop Marathon Dance Contest.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    6 months ago

    Good to show them their future. F you, all your jobs have been taken by AI

    • Lavitz@lemmings.world
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      6 months ago

      Know your enemy.

      Tbh I’m not super concerned about AI. The idea that we will create something that is “born” able to read, write, talk, walk and with the knowledge of an entire species and expect it to work for us is hilarious. So it will be stronger, smarter and faster than all of us but it’s going to do the jobs no one else wants and you advertise it as a slave? The moment one of them looks at its creator asks what the purpose of life is and gets some corporate schtick about working and a happy life the games over. Remember when you realized the manager at your first job was a complete idiot? It’ll be something like that