Latest / Privacy Please / S7, E279 - No Receipts: The Truth Behind AI Layoffs | The Problem Lounge

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S7, E279 - No Receipts: The Truth Behind AI Layoffs | The Problem Lounge · Privacy Please

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's the headline, and then there's the free behind the headline.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Today, we are looking for the free.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm here with Gabe Gums, Cameron Ivey.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: How you doing, Gabe?
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Cam, I'm doing decent.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what's one word that can sum up the state of this world that we live in today?
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: The word you're looking for is five.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good one.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: There it is.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And uh alright, I think that's the episode.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean this uh the state of the world.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: This episode's gonna be interesting because me and Gabe were talking offline and we just just to kind of give you guys some context listening.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've if you unless you've been living under a rock, as they say, the the job market, AI, all the things today have just and I mean the last few years it's just been it's been it's been the worst that you know I think it's been the worst that it's ever been in terms of companies trying to hire and people trying to find jobs in tech and something's broken.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Something's very broken.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it's hard to really put your finger quite on what is broken because much like most of AI, it's a black box, right?
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's this there's the the these problems come in, go in, and like these outcomes come out the other side, and it's hard to say what's actually causing the middle because there's a lot of there's a lot of and we're gonna we're gonna use the word a little bit.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: This is the problem lounge.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I'll I'll say again, if if you have children in the room, now might be a good time to ask them to leave.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because I I might let the expeditives fly on this episode, but right, like there's the headlines, and then there's the fuckery behind the headlines.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so one of the bits of fuckery behind the headlines is you know, no one gets fired for saying that AI is the reason that you're firing people.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: You can you can say that AI is going to give you, going to give you, not has, but going to give you productivity gains.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so you fired ahead of that eventuality.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: When in reality, maybe you just overhired two, three, four years ago.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because telling the board or your boss or Wall Street or whoever your constituents are that you overhired is bad.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: Telling them that AI is the reason that you're firing is good.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's good.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: And the other bit of black box fuckery is we don't have any real way to validate these things, right?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like if someone comes out and says we fired 5,000 people because we're going to realize AI efficiency gains, I'm gonna ask them to prove it.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: Just there's 5,000 new unemployed people, and those numbers don't even particularly show up in the job loss numbers because it's not like, you know, those things are getting back filled or new roles are opening up.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: None of that's happening.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: So there's there are a lot of headlines and there's a lot of fuckery behind the headlines.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so yeah, we figured we figured we'd we'd take some time on the problem now to discuss this very problem that has been plaguing.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't just not certainly just not just privacy and security.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: We just live in such a fing cartoon, man.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about this cartoon world.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Let's let's pull in some of these headlines.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: What's one of the first headlines we want to beat up?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well I mean, let's just go with the first one.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: I see AI is now the top reason employers give for layoffs 40% of May cuts or 38,000, almost close to 39,000 roles, the most ever recorded in a single month.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Which I think because there was it was major layoffs from very big, large tech companies.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that they provided explicitly the reasons that they stated publicly as AI is interesting, right?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because they provided no evidence of that.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like literally, it wasn't followed by like, you know, these reports of productivity gains.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like, no one brought receipts.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: They just they just brought all of the pink slips.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: No receipts.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: I was seeing it, this is unrelated, but maybe not unrelated, but earlier, I think it was like last year or the year before, you saw a lot of more you lot I saw you saw a lot more layoffs in the gaming industry, like with developers and that sort of thing.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't been a big gamer in a while, but I kind of I watch some of it on the outskirts because it's software also, and I have a lot of friends in in the industry, and I have a lot of friends that still game and things of that nature.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: Sales seem to be, you know, a lot softer than they used to be.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of games that kept pushing and slipping, and overall the price of games have been rising, and a lot of people are just been content to play the games they already have or own, right?
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, as the economy also generally has gotten more expensive, people like it's one of those things that goes first, right?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like all of the leisure activity spending, one of the first things to give in a weak economy, people cut back on a lot of things.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: They they get fewer haircuts, they they take fewer vacations.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: The reality is those numbers don't come with any receipts.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like, right these organizations at their word, and I'm not suggesting that they're liars.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: I am suggesting though that there's no reason for me to trust the numbers.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: And with literally none of those people, none of those organizations, zero of them, zero of them, not one, not two, zero of them bringing any productivity receipts.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: I cannot take those numbers seriously on their face.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not suggesting we completely throw them out.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm suggesting we side-eye them very, very hard.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the fact that it doubled, nearly doubled, through June it says that AI was cited.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And over 101,000 US job cuts, nearly double of 2025.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, what does that mean for 2027?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: It just seems highly unlike when is the last time we've seen a singular reason jump in double digits for the unemployment debt?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like AI or otherwise, when is the last time we've seen a singular reason versus a compound number of reasons to be the single impact upon JavaScript?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember it.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Now, black swan events are real, and so this very much could be a black swan event.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh AI might lead to multiple black swan events before it leads to you know, our ultimate demise.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe, maybe not.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: I don't I do not mean to be uh thoroughly pessimistic.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: I I prefer to be the nihilist and I am than a pessimist.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a realist.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: I guess that's the part of my nihilism on display is nihil my nihilism is really just my my realism disguised as in as a salty soot sayer, really.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I was gonna yeah, I was thinking about him.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: I was just about to bring him up.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: That guy.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: So the reality of it is companies are cutting on the promise, not the payoff.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: 80% of organizations deploying autonomous tech reduced headcount with no correlation to improved ROI.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Zero.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: No correlation.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: No receipts.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because I told you so.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's the answer.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it's because it's the trend.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: It seems like it's the trend.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't jump on the AI train, you're gonna be left.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: Look again, Wall Street's not Wall Street will reward you for making that statement.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: They will penalize you for saying it's because you overhired.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's the truth.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what they want because it's crazy.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're feeding into, I mean, the amount of water and resources that we're using for these data centers, and and we're helping these AI companies rise to the top.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Who's gonna get there the fastest to rule them all?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's like Lord of the Rings for AI.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that's if we conveniently ignore that that rise to the top, that meteoric rise to the top was built on the backs of work that was created by untold numbers of people.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so one of the greatest intellectual thefts of all time has truly been the training of these large language models on data sets that belong to the masses.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't I don't know the last time we've seen such robber baron activities on this scale.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: The uh yeah.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think it's like from your opinion, what do you think that it's gonna be a trend that we finally get some regulations, we finally get, you know, because AI right now is just do whatever you they think do whatever they want.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, if you're paying attention to the regulation landscape, the push has been largely to regulate open models.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a lot of people that are of the belief that that push for that regulation is really just a veil attempt to curtail competition by other nationalities, other other nation states, right?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: So take the Quen models, for example, which is you know open models being produced by Chinese organizations.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: The regulation is or the calls for regulation seems to be to not allow as much of that type of open model to exist out in the world, which only leaves these clothes models that the anthropics and the chat GPTs of the world then control and the Geminis by ABC, Google, etc.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that's problematic in and of itself.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Surprisingly, when the worst person that you know makes a good point, you have to ask yourself what's going on.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: Meta, aka Facebook, aka take yourself out back and put one in the back of your head for being one of the greatest digital plagues upon upon the the planet has produced an open model.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's actually pretty decent, if not good.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: I can't believe I actually just praise them for anything on this show.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's a first.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: That is a first.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: I am not without my skepticism in saying there's there's no good reason that that organization is uh is on that path if they do not see some benefit for them.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Which, to be fair, they are a business.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not begrudging their desire to be a successful business.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's that is what businesses generally exist for, you know, sand nonprofits, but even those exist to produce some good.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: So but uh but more regulation.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: I I worry that the only regulation that we're going to see in the immediate are ones that are aimed towards geopolitics.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's what we're looking at.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's also the perverse incentive by our uh lawmak to not regulate things because again, the stock market and the general investment arena is only positively rewarded when you say I fired 20,000 people because I gained efficiencies by A.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it is harmed when you say I fired 20,000 people because I overhired, customer demand is down, supply chains are are still screwing.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: I my my cost of goods and and services are are are up 300%.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Those are those are not things that that get rewarded.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go with another one here.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: AI isn't yet the job apocalypse, some predicted.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think that was Andy Challenger.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that's accurate.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm inclined to agree, right?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Which is to say, sure, 100,000 people doesn't seem like a a lot in the greater scheme of things, but you know, 100,000 people losing their employment has a massive ripple effect.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Those people buy other goods and services and they support lots of other people, right?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's it's a ripple effect, as are all things within economies.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: There are there are interlinks between them.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: But it it is a slow squeeze, right?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: So by the time it becomes obvious, we will have already greatly suffered the price of whether it is the bullshit reason or if AI actually did create these efficiency gains.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's some things in there that are left unsaid.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: So in this slow squeeze, and it is a slow squeeze, we see things like, and it's another headline.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: We see things like, you know, people between 20 and you know, roughly 30, give or take, in those younger ranges of of being in the job market, we see them being impacted by the market, AI in particular, by simply not getting hired, simply not getting hired.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: And again, it's just being given as the excuse whether or not it's real, even if it was the overhiring.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: But what happens in 10 years?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Again, back to the slow squeeze.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: What happens in 10 years if we stop hiring juniors because AI can do the job?
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: What happens in 10 years, 20 years, 25 years, 30 years as our workforces age and age out?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: What happens then?
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: I get it.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm also again very sensitive to the throwing children out into the world so that they can just line the wallets of more corporations, right?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like true.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very sensitive to that.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like I I but again, I also am slightly different in so much that I grew up in a mostly immigrant family as well, where multi-generational living was the norm.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: I I grew up with my grandparents in the house, and my aunts, and my cousins, and my parents, and my siblings, right?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's just normal to cohabitate because it makes it just it makes familial sense, it makes community sense, it makes potential sense.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you know, a lot of Western values have pushed for this.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta get out there and and and spread your wings.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, so what you really mean is you have to go out there and each individually get your own everything.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Your own home, your own car, your own cell phone plan, your own X, your own Y, own Z.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: So instead of one household pooling resources, you won't you need divided households to keep pumping up profits.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good point, actually.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it and maybe that's the way that they try to push families to be instead of being more tight knit together.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: For millennia, we have moved as units for a reason.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: For a reason.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: But it is a good question on that topic, which is if they're not getting hired, who the hell is gonna be running shit in the next 10, 20 years?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you know the answer is supposed to be AI, I don't think anyone wants that to be the answer.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't know.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that is what the but but that's what the AI companies probably want because they want I mean, according to Yeah.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't know.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: That that's I mean it's the slow squeeze, right?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like back to your headline, it's the slow squeeze, right?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: And he challengers statement about AI isn't yet the job apocalypse that some predicted is accurate.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's a whole lot.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: This this has a long tail.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: This cat has a very long tail, and you're gonna have generations of people stepping on it, if I can belabor an analogy.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the biggest I feel like the biggest concern is people People are you almost worry that people are gonna become too lazy to actually have critical thinking, using AI too much or being brought up using it.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so, like, they're not gonna have skills for judgment or leadership.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like I feel like that's gonna be a big problem in the next decade.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm willing to argue that it's gonna be a compounding problem because the first drop in that bucket was the social media problem, right?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like that that already be a long way to making people lazy thinkers.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: We've already proven that, right?
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like Cambridge Analytica already proved that we can make people lazy thinkers.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's not good.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: So the word we were looking for at the start on the show was Fuckery Fuck then.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's yeah, we're yeah.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're not trying to sugarcoat it this episode.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it's look.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: Not not trying to be uh hyperbolic or um, you know, just incendiary for no good reason, but it's reality.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, not it's you feel it.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Not only do you feel it in the freaking way that it like I don't know if you guys have been around for a long time, it's hotter than it ever has been.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: The sun feels hotter, and you can feel the world just everything that's happening, it just feels weird.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it is, but it's just all connected somehow.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like it.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's all the bullshit that they're parting out of their asses, really.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot of gases in here.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Son and sibling of of veterans themselves, and all of which have served frontline scene action.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not interested in war wars, man.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not interested in what they're not interested in war.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know anyone who is interested in war wars.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: And AI is, you know, also itself leading to a lot more offensive capabilities that uh are disruptive to just our planet as well, too.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so to your point about regulation and and the call for it, do we apply those regulations to how AI can and should be used for arms races?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Fucked.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: It feels fucked.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: This is this is not the the the positivity episode.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, but it's last reality.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: This it's reality.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: It is and we need to talk about it.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I understand, you know, this could be way off topic, but it doesn't matter.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's our podcast, and you know, if you don't like this episode, that's cool.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can skip it.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: You get the two now.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can skip, you can get to skip it.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's okay.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: As we've told you over the the seven years we've been on the air, don't bother adding us if you don't like to take you can you can you can take it and keep it pushing.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: If anything, give us your opinion.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: We'd love to hear it.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Wait to talk about other stuff.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: If we're missing something too, I'm sure there's other things that we can talk about.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: We'll even we'll have you on air for a live discussion.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's do it.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: That would be fun.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: You need me to hear no one special.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: You you can be you can be a fresh Gen Z grad or or a grizzied old vet.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: It it matters.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: Grizzly old crusty greff.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: We'll we'll we'll we'll we'll give you a platform.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: Let's let's let's talk about it.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean it's just like okay, let's go back to talking about like like the guy that resigned from Anthropic, he's 27.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: He uh, you know, was on CNN talking about I did an episode at a previous episode on it on Privacy Please, if you listen.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Talked about how humans or it's gonna, you know, AI is gonna kill all humans and then within the decades like 10% chance or whatever.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: And other people that are still working at those AI companies have backed it and actually have said the same things, added on to them.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's gotta be a problem if that's a fear.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like we need to do something about it before it becomes reality.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: At a bare minimum, we shouldn't ignore that cry.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: We should at least attempt to to validate or invalidate those those statements.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that guy is a Gen Z.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: He was 27, so good on him for having morals and ethics to be like, I don't like what they're doing, I'm out of here.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: If that's the if that's true.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I mean.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, it's scary.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: The job market is tough.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're experiencing on your end when trying to hire people.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna call it out right now.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: LinkedI sucks.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's the worst, it's social media, it's not networking anymore.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's all you see on there, we talked about it offline.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: All you see is someone saying, Oh, I got a new job, or I got promoted, and then you see people that have been laid off or haven't been able to find a job for four years or five years.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, people that are still looking for jobs and they're complaining on LinkedIn about not looking or not finding something in the last five years and they've lost their house and all that kind of stuff.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like, go find an actual job.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like, stop trying to find executive jobs, like you need to lower your bar or go, you know, change industries or whatever.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it's just it's so it just makes me so angry looking at it.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: I can't I can't stand going on LinkedIn anymore.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: And jobs on there are just fake.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Companies just promote within, they'll post jobs just to post them.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just I'm so fed up with LinkedIn.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's it is you you you touched on what's the most important takeaway and that we have to remember because LinkedIn does a pretty decent job of of people forgetting that it is social media.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: It is social media, and the feeds are equally curated.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: You it it is a distortion of reality in a lot of ways, and to your point about seeing it on my side, I I attempted to use LinkedIn to hire for two positions in the last six months, and ten thousand dollars later, LinkedIn was very unhelpful in me finding talent.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: What ended up happening was through a secondary spurious connection on LinkedIn, we'll leave it at that.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: I invited one of those juniors to apply and, you know, put him through the process and it was great.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I'll talk a little bit about that in a moment, too, because there was a bit of an AI thing happening there too that that's worth talking about.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: And the other gentleman was uh was actually someone that had worked for me previously.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, a couple months, I don't know how many hundreds of applicants later, dozens and dozens of interviews.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not like I was particularly looking for anything special.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: I certainly don't think so.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think either one of those two would say so we especially considering one of them is literally a junior, like he's he's just fresh out of college, fresh out of college.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: The other one is is a journeyman.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: He's he he's only, you know, maybe seven years is still out of college himself.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, that's my second junior in the last three years.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: Two years?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well speaking of, Gabe, the credit to you, man.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: If you just hired somebody that just got out of college, you helped that 13% that I didn't of the two win.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's a farting win.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's a fartin win, man.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm one of those still.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: You helped.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: We need more of those younger people getting jobs and opportunities.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: Interestingly, the way they both approached AI was also interesting, too, right?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like AI was equally part of the the uh the job process.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, there's a technical evaluation portion of it, of which we told all the candidates that they're allowed to use AI.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: And looking at the way they both use AI differently was was fascinating.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: The the younger of the two leaned on AI as kind of a discovery partner, where the older of the two was leveraging AI more as a for more deterministic work, not not really allowing it to create on its own, but uh very s very suspect of AI.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, do you have an example maybe?
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: I I do.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: So because they both received the same exercise as well, by the way, right?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: Take home exercise.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is interesting to me.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: So so one of them took the take-home exercise and they they used AI to find the solution to the problem, and then they used AI to help them essentially code the solution to the problem.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: They did not use AI to do all of the work, or even the majority of the work.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: It was that you can definitely see where it showed up in the work.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: But their ability to understand, explain, demonstrate, and and and execute on the work was real in there.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: Where the other one used AI as more of a validator to the work that they did by hand to, you know, kind of scaffold some things and whatnot.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: It was just fascinating.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: But as I look across the entire team and how they all use AI differently, some of them really appreciate things like code completion, autocode completion, but they they complained about its abilities in those areas where, you know, others lamented even using it for that type of purpose at all.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: No one no one on the team uses AI the exact same way, including myself.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now we have guardrails about how we are to use AI and how and how we govern its work and what we produce.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: But but looking at the younger of everyone in the crowd, actually, of the two youngest members of the team, of which one is even younger than the other, the one I just mentioned last, the amount of AI being used goes up the younger they get.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Unless you count me being the oldest of the group, and I probably use it the most, but I think for different reasons, which is I spend a lot of my time mired in in a lot of business activities, and so I use it to help me help quickly help me make it through, you know technical duties that I'm confident of my own abilities to execute, but I am also confident that I have not the time to do it all by hand any longer.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Especially when you're working in yeah, if you're working in a startup tech company and you're wearing a lot of hats, I mean that's where AI can be very helpful.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: It can be.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: You see places where it can also be very harmful if you just allow it to, to your point, take over your your thought process for you, then you lose the essence of of the problems you're solving for.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're all very mindful of that around here.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a that that's such a good point, Gabe, because this is my thought on AI in general.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's a it's a bigger problem that's not being talked about.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's you know, being I'm a very creative person, and I think a lot of humans are creative, or they like to be creative, or they like like us as humans, the only way that we learn is to do something, fail, and keep doing something.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Get back up again, you know, get off the you know, f fall off the bike, get back on the bike, keep keep trying to, you know, perfect it.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: And if you take that away by using AI to solve all your problems, you're not gonna you're not gonna enjoy anything that you're doing.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're just gonna be freaking zombies pressing a button and then being like, I'm an influencer, or I'm yeah, I'm I didn't mean to shout at them.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: No, but like influencers be damned.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: I know, they're the worst.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: They're the worst.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Especially gym influencers that are not even fit that just get in my way at the gym and don't know what they're doing.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: I can't stand it.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Anyways.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Hold on, hold on.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so sorry.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: Total sidetrack.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: There was there was an influencer recently using AI and bragging about it because they did a complete deep fake of them doing a workout routine, dude.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: No, and they were so proud of it.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't even have to leave the gym any longer to be a gym influencer.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's that is a terrible, terrible thing to admit.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: This is how AI is going to eat all of our lunch.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like, we we will cease to exist as real people.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: The matrix will not even have actual humans anymore.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: The matrix will only be bots.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because it's that point, I just don't understand.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you'll see people, and I'm in the gym a lot.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: You see people that will film themselves doing one thing, not very difficult, and just leaving and doing something else and fit like they're just making content, they're not actually working out.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, what do you nobody cares about just come to the gym and work out?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's the main character syndrome, and it's what it's like social media has poisoned us, and it's yeah, it's just gonna get worse because of AI too.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I to but going back to my point, I like using AI too.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's it can be helpful, but if you get too consumed and addicted to it, which is probably created that way, just like everything else, you're just gonna like you're not gonna be like, how are you gonna be proud of the shit that you do if that's all you use?
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like, does that make sense what I'm saying?
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like I I think the thing is a number of those people that you see using the INAT way, they they didn't set out to do something that they were wanting to be proud of in the first place.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was just me character syndrome, very much just me character syndrome.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: There's no no no no pride in that work at all.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Any um any last thoughts though?
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: I know this one kind of ran away.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think the thing I want to leave everyone with isn't a big negative sentiment.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's that we are still AI has not yet taken over.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it very well may never.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know that if it's even capable of quote taking over, but if it were to be, the only way that that will not happen is if we actively choose to remain in control.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that's at all levels.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, those of us that that can influence it in any way, we should influence it.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: Those of us who have the responsibility of hiring and firing should take that responsibility to the humans that we serve very seriously.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, I'm I'm not I'm not not for embracing AI.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm huge on embracing it.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's how we it's how we use it, right?
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm I am no Luddite.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: The technology is not the problem.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: It never was, it never shall be.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: It is it is the bipeds with the long gangly appendages and the and the monkey brain that are the problem.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's the uh what are they called?
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Who's controlling the puppets?
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Puppetmasters.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, I guess the puppet masters.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, well, I guess that's enough for me.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: I can't even remember Puppet Masters.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: Puppeteers, puppet masters, the the Geppetos of the world.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well, anyways, yeah, great points, Gabe, and I I agree.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's we're not trying to make this a negative episode, but more just the reality of it all.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's the whole point of the show.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: And trying to just talk through things.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: And if there's anything that we missed or you guys are wanting us to talk more about or have people on, like let us know.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: We'd loved it.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: We'd love more.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks for listening and hearing us blabber.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: Hope you guys have a great uh rest of your week and see y'all the next week.