This kind of highlights how AI isn’t the issue. The reason there’s not a robot that does your laundry and dishes is because the margin for such a robot wouldn’t make anyone insanely rich, just well off. Especially in say the consumer market. Getting rid of say 50% of your employees and making the other 50% “Prompt Engineers” without any pay increase provides an instant two fold increase in profit.
The issue is how much money can a particular tool make someone. Before Photoshop came around, the larger magazines used to have at least three dozen airbrush and cover artist on staff, not to mention the photographers, film processors, etc… Today, with Photoshop, those six to seven dozen jobs have been consolidated into maybe a dozen folks. Some head of the magazine got to keep churning out stories with 80% less staff. It wasn’t that Photoshop is good or bad, it was that someone saw dollar signs and ran with it.
Companies pay for technology with the expectation of paying it off down the road. So if 10 licenses of Photoshop cost $X, but they save Y number of employees * $r/yr rate of pay, then the licenses pay for themselves down the road. Consumer markets aren’t like that. If a consumer has $X and something costs more than that money on-hand, there’s just not a “pay for it down the road” for consumers. At least one that doesn’t come with a lot of headache and trouble down the road as well.
The thing is, companies are going to use any excuse they can to fire people, especially senior staff people. If the technology doesn’t work, oh well, they hire younger and newer folks back at greatly reduced pay compared to the folks who got laid off. AI is just the most recent MacGuffin in that shuffle and they’re willing to put ludicrous amounts of money into that thing because “down the road, one way or another, it’ll save us cash”. That’s why there’s no dish washing or laundry robot, there’s no serious money to be made from it. But over-hyped AI that could provide the same kind of massive layoff benefit that say Photoshop or CGI provided, these C-Staff folks can not shovel enough money into that fire.
This kind of highlights how AI isn’t the issue. The reason there’s not a robot that does your laundry and dishes is because the margin for such a robot wouldn’t make anyone insanely rich, just well off. Especially in say the consumer market. Getting rid of say 50% of your employees and making the other 50% “Prompt Engineers” without any pay increase provides an instant two fold increase in profit.
The issue is how much money can a particular tool make someone. Before Photoshop came around, the larger magazines used to have at least three dozen airbrush and cover artist on staff, not to mention the photographers, film processors, etc… Today, with Photoshop, those six to seven dozen jobs have been consolidated into maybe a dozen folks. Some head of the magazine got to keep churning out stories with 80% less staff. It wasn’t that Photoshop is good or bad, it was that someone saw dollar signs and ran with it.
Companies pay for technology with the expectation of paying it off down the road. So if 10 licenses of Photoshop cost $X, but they save Y number of employees * $r/yr rate of pay, then the licenses pay for themselves down the road. Consumer markets aren’t like that. If a consumer has $X and something costs more than that money on-hand, there’s just not a “pay for it down the road” for consumers. At least one that doesn’t come with a lot of headache and trouble down the road as well.
The thing is, companies are going to use any excuse they can to fire people, especially senior staff people. If the technology doesn’t work, oh well, they hire younger and newer folks back at greatly reduced pay compared to the folks who got laid off. AI is just the most recent MacGuffin in that shuffle and they’re willing to put ludicrous amounts of money into that thing because “down the road, one way or another, it’ll save us cash”. That’s why there’s no dish washing or laundry robot, there’s no serious money to be made from it. But over-hyped AI that could provide the same kind of massive layoff benefit that say Photoshop or CGI provided, these C-Staff folks can not shovel enough money into that fire.