The beginning of the AI-pocalyse?

[Mik]

P&G to let go of 7,000 non-manufacturing staff. About 15% of that group. That's huge.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/procter-and-gamble-announces-plans-to-reduce-nearly-7-000-jobs-over-next-two-years/ar-AA1G8Lbq

[Mik]

In that article is where UPS plans to eliminate 20,000.

[jon-nyc]

UPS is imagining far fewer Chinese gadgets being delivered to US households I imagine.

[Horace]

There will be a huge growing industry in AI consultants, who will help large companies integrate AI into their operations. I'm sure the large companies will be surprised at how many of their employees can be made redundant.

[jon-nyc]

Some of my old colleagues in consulting that every few years need to be champions of The Next Big Thing are now rebranding themselves as ‘AI Revolutionists’ or some such thing.

I remember when they were ‘Client-Server Revolutionists’ 30 years ago. Then Web Disrupter, Digitization Experts, Cloud Evangelists, etc.

[Mik]

Yep. The more things change the more they stay the same. Mainframe to client-server, oops, too difficult to update all those machines, then back to Citrix, etc (see Mainframe).

[LuFins Dad]

Was there anything explicitly tying AI to the layoffs?

[Mik]

No, but it’s not too hard to imagine. It will hit my city hard.

[Axtremus]

@Mik said in The beginning of the AI-pocalyse?:

No, but it’s not too hard to imagine.

How do you imagine AI is related those layoffs?

[taiwan_girl]

@Axtremus

maybe marketing studies, graphic design, translation (though this is probably not done at HQ), copywriting of product pages, etc.

[89th]

@jon-nyc said in The beginning of the AI-pocalyse?:

I remember when they were ‘Client-Server Revolutionists’ 30 years ago. Then Web Disrupter, Digitization Experts, Cloud Evangelists, etc.

The cloud wave paid well. Not necessarily to me, but I saw a few folks catch the lightning early and ride it to good fortune. To their credit, they did a good job at helping "on prem" (no cloud) transfer into the new age. I'm seeing it now with AI, although it's much, much, much harder to define exactly what that means. The cloud, by comparison, was easy to understand.

The current AI trend does remind me a bit of the unknown when the internet really started taking off. Folks started to trust it, use it, but also not really know where it ends. It seems the end (as of now) is a reliance on it without even knowing...the internet connects us all. I'd imagine AI will be a bit similar but in terms of knowledge access... quickly answering and solving anything, sacrificing creativity, attention spans, and critical thinking along the way.

[Axtremus]

https://archive.is/zb4BM

The Reuters article cites the Trump tariffs as the reason for the P&G job cuts.