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- cross-posted to:
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Why do we need to get rid of the job of human radio presenter?
Techbros keep telling me AI frees people up to stop working shitty jobs and pursue their dreams, but the truth is none of these tech evangelists give a shit about anyone’s dreams if they aren’t some lame vision of factorio where the factories pollute the planet churning out ripoffs of human culture.
Why do we need to get rid of the job of human radio presenter?
Profit motive. When maximizing profit margins are the primary object of the economy, then workers are seen as an unfortunate expense. And so capitalists seek to employee as few workers as possible while also paying them as little as possible.
I’d rather see us replacing train conductors. Why do we even need them? Why aren’t trains self driving? Trains regularly don’t drive due to personell shortages and they don’t drive in the middle of the night. Also trains are getting ridiculously expensive (in the Netherlands, due to privatisation) where self driving trains could be a solution to make trains affordable again.
I’m sorry I am not trying to dispute the spirit of your respose but I have to disagree, freight trains are thousands of feet long and haul unbelievably large quantities of material, the idea that it is inefficient to have a human (really a pair of humans) oversee and be responsible for a machine that large is laughable honestly.
…so is the idea that there is a genuine shortage of people willing to work as conductors, it is a convenient lie companies tell to rationalize why nobody wants to work for them because they pay shit and respect their employees so little that they won’t even give them unpaid time for necessary doctors appointments (see recent action of US train workers).
This point is even more true for passenger trains.
It is a massive responsibility we can afford to pay two humans to do it, a certain micro amount of inefficiency is ok.
US’s PSR system is a fuckin joke
Plenty of self-driving trains around, generally metros where frequency and 24/7 operation is a great boon to overall service quality – you don’t want people to look at schedules, you want them to go to the station knowing there’s going to be a train in a couple of minutes, tops.
It’s way different for long-haul service, freight, passenger, doesn’t matter. Longer and less frequent trains with way more passengers in them, and you probably need other staff too, like someone needs to run the bistro. The tracks they’re running on are also way less predictable, with a metro you can have station screen doors everywhere (which btw necessitate automatic driving, humans aren’t accurate enough) try that with an international train: Regions much less countries can’t even agree on uniform platform heights. Much less door locations: Automated long-haul would require dedicated platforms at every station and while those could be served by trains with drivers, trains nowadays are all smart enough that including a button “stop at exactly that location, to the half-centimetre” isn’t an issue, those trains would have to have doors at the right location. Now go ahead and convince Germany and France that they need to replace all TGVs and ICEs to have doors in the same location as your regional trains.
Oh and none of that automation tech used with trains uses machine learning, btw. At least not at the basic level, when it comes to actually driving the train. I do remember watching a documentary about Singapore’s metro, where they have an ML algorithm scheduling track maintenance, minimising not service interruptions as such but impact on people’s commute. First the workers complained that none of the orders made any sense, then the developers made the computer spit out context and motivation alongside with the orders, workers changed their tune to “that’s fucking brilliant”.
…which, actually, brings me to the conclusion: Also with automated systems we’re going to need maintenance which isn’t going to be automated any time soon. If you automate a metro that currently doesn’t run 24/7 you don’t have that many drivers in the first place, and probably have other jobs for them to do. Automating really is about making “a train max. every five minutes, 24/7” possible without breaking the bank.
In the long run there is no way around it. To be honest if on device voices would be good enough then just sending the text version and let it read on the device in a somewhat natural voice would be kind of cool. I’m already using a special app which just reads any article I share with it in a fairly ok voice and I love this functionality, I don’t need to sit down and read a long article on my phone, I can do something else and just make it read the article to me.
What I am worried about though are the people who do the research and who write the texts. Those sadly will also be replaced over time with machines and there is something we will really lose.
What app are you using? Ive been looking for something like that for ages
Those sadly will also be replaced over time with machines and there is something we will really lose.
Not all of the things we lose will be sad, though. An AI researcher has the potential to be more thorough and less biased when it comes to digging up and interpreting resources.
Technically, if we had true AI, then yes, but the LLMs we have right now are build on an unbelievable amount of poverty wage labor. We’re talking sweat shops of Kenyans working for $2 an hour. As long as ChatGPT needs an army of wage slaves to function then I refuse to consider it a real AI
Those jobs are also being replaced by AI. Modern AIs are trained on synthetic data, which is data that was generated from source material specifically for training purposes by other AIs. AIs reformat, rewrite, and vet the source material more reliably and efficiently than humans.
Just think of all the juicy benefits of replacing journalists with machines. They’ll never stumble or cough while presenting the news, they’ll never call in sick, never age, never get mad as hell and decide to not take it any more, never resign from the editorial board in protest no matter what garbage you tell them is the news. Machines are just better suited to the job, it’s inevitable.
looks like those clowns in congress did it again. what a bunch of clowns.
How does he keep up with the news like that?
don’t praise the machine
So we’ll finally see something from Deus Ex Human Revolution before 2027.
Let’s replace Marcin Pulit with AI
is it iheart or are they still gonna wait on this one?
edit: KRAKOW, POLAND WHAT?!?!!
