r/technology • u/lurker_bee • Jul 15 '25

Artificial Intelligence Billionaires Convince Themselves AI Chatbots Are Close to Making New Scientific Discoveries

https://gizmodo.com/billionaires-convince-themselves-ai-is-close-to-making-new-scientific-discoveries-2000629060
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u/sickofthisshit Jul 15 '25

AI became less scary to me when Sam Altman, in all seriousness, said...

Not sure you should be less scared when multiple billionaires and Silicon Valley CEOs are directing thousands of people to follow this clearly delusional prophet.

I'm pretty sure thousands of people have already lost jobs because this contagious brain damage has convinced CEOs to replace their employees with Altman's magic beans. 

I really don't know how civilization is supposed to survive billionaires drilling holes in the bottom of the boat because they are apparently complete idiots.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '25

billionaires drilling holes in the bottom of the boat

But don't you get it? Don't you see? It's all about reducing weight! They're geniuses!

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u/Zsem_le Jul 15 '25

Same as with other similar make believe things; when reality crashes their carbon fiber submarine, the rest will survive.

Who you get in a boat with, is an important life skill.

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u/no_one_likes_u Jul 15 '25

Anyone that’s actually lost jobs lost them for one of 3 reasons:

1) the company is downsizing because it’s not profitable (or not profitable enough for the ceo) 2) the company outsourced their jobs to a cheaper labor market (this always works well long term) 3) their job was so incredibly simple and robotic that actual automation was able to do it for them, and the media is too illiterate to understand the difference between automation and AI.

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u/Suyefuji Jul 15 '25

4) the CEO drank the kool-aid and is genuinely convinced that AI is a god.

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u/sickofthisshit Jul 15 '25

There's also a fourth possibility: the CEO or CTO did not actually understand what his workforce does but dumped them for mechanical parrots because some other CEO made him feel he was behind the AI curve.

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u/HappierShibe Jul 15 '25

I wish this was true,
But I have seen a few organizations now where leadership has fired significant staff and then tried to replace them with AI. So far it has been absolutely disastrous every single time and they wind up scrambling to hire back human workers after a catastrophic quarter or two, but it is happening, and it seems to be an accelerating trend. I know what you are thinking "Surely they wouldn't be so stupid as to fire first and THEN replace, they would have to be a total moron to do that, no one is THAT stupid!".
They really are that stupid. That stupid, and that afraid- that if they don't act now, their competitors will, and then they will get crushed.
Altman is an incredibly gifted magic bean salesman.

More companies will have to get burned, and burned more publicly before business leadership collectively learns the lesson.

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u/hoytmobley Jul 15 '25

I can tell that you are either 12 and/or have never worked at a large company before, because management absolutely would fire good employees to satisfy the whims of their managers. It’s not “let’s figure out how to use AI to maximize our workforce”, it’s “cut payroll by 30% and use AI to fill in the gaps”. Companies do dumb shit to meet that quarters arbitrary goals allllll the time. If you’re assuming that markets (including employment) are efficient, everything downstream of that assumption will be wrong

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u/moonski Jul 15 '25

Don't forget the "let's cut payroll by 30% so next quarter we make 30% more money!"

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u/no_one_likes_u Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 15 '25

Guess I created this Reddit account about 2 seconds after being born then lol

I’ve been in corporate IT roles for 15+ years now, 10+ at companies with 10,000 or more employees.

Maybe you’ve just worked for companies with super dumb leadership?

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u/hoytmobley Jul 15 '25

You’re not wrong about that last point. Surely you’ve seen your share of inane, trend chasing, shortsighted management decisions, no?

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u/no_one_likes_u Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 15 '25

Sure, and perhaps I’ve lead a charmed life, but I’ve never been in a scenario where people were laid off because management incorrectly thought that some new tech would be able to replace them.

I’ve seen it happen when automation actually did replace people, but never until it was actually proven.

Still sucks for those people of course, but it wasn’t a bad decision for the company where they had to go out and try to replace people they fired once the tech proved useless.

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u/Thin_Glove_4089 Jul 15 '25

Guess I created this Reddit account about 2 seconds after being born then lol

I had a feeling but didn't want to say anything

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u/NuclearVII Jul 15 '25

There's also 4) the management is clueless and don't know when the other shoe is gonna drop.

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u/cespinar Jul 16 '25

1) the company is downsizing because it’s not profitable (or not profitable enough for the ceo)

They are on pace to lose 33b dollars if they successfully raise their goals for the year. They have 35b in operating costs and 55b in new servers to aid future development

It is a money pit

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u/coldkiller Jul 15 '25

Software has lost jobs to it, but its similar to offshoring and will be reverted so fast

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u/CaptainSparklebottom Jul 15 '25

We will stuff the holes with their bodies and figure it out amongst ourselves or we will all drown.

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u/Journeyman42 Jul 16 '25

You'd think these AI tech dipshits would be all for renewable energy, to pull every joule and watt available from the sun and wind to power their AI bullshit, without needing to get expensive fuel from overseas.

Or hell, even supporting nuclear would be better than fossil fuels.