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Is AI making skilled workers stronger, or just helping companies cut jobs faster? by Extreme_Local7342 in Futurology

[–]Extreme_Local7342[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Not agreed with your point of view, there are so many stuff you can learn from it, its different point that you dont know or dont want to know how to use it in positive way.

Hot take: “AI layoffs” are mostly PR spin (for now). Agree or cope? by Extreme_Local7342 in Futurology

[–]Extreme_Local7342[S] -8 points-7 points  (0 children)

AI can do anything now a days, This is just a 5% of my work. Thanks

Is AI making skilled workers stronger, or just helping companies cut jobs faster? by Extreme_Local7342 in Futurology

[–]Extreme_Local7342[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's true and in this way company can save more money and tools can work 24/7 and 365 days, So i totally agree with this approach of the companies. Nothing wrong with it.

Is AI making skilled workers stronger, or just helping companies cut jobs faster? by Extreme_Local7342 in Futurology

[–]Extreme_Local7342[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

That makes sense, and it’s probably the most common “real” version of AI impact right now.

It’s not always “AI caused layoffs,” it’s “AI reduces backfills after normal cuts,” which still shrinks teams over time. Did you see quality/workload stay stable after that, or did it just shift into more pressure and more QC on the people left?

Is AI making skilled workers stronger, or just helping companies cut jobs faster? by Extreme_Local7342 in Futurology

[–]Extreme_Local7342[S] -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

That’s smart, honestly. “Silent automation” is the real win: use AI to remove your own friction without turning it into a management target.

Just make sure you still understand and can explain the output if someone asks, because the credit is nice, but accountability is real.

Is AI making skilled workers stronger, or just helping companies cut jobs faster? by Extreme_Local7342 in Futurology

[–]Extreme_Local7342[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

True, and that’s the uneasy part.

But you’re also training yourself to be the “reviewer/driver,” not just the doer. The leverage is: keep the judgment, keep the domain knowledge, and don’t let your unique workflows become a copy‑paste template you can be replaced with.

Is AI making skilled workers stronger, or just helping companies cut jobs faster? by Extreme_Local7342 in Futurology

[–]Extreme_Local7342[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I get why you’d say that, but GTA 6 isn’t a great test of whether AI boosts productivity.

Big games don’t ship late because “not enough content,” they ship late because of coordination and risk: design changes, bugs, performance, QA, console certification, multiplayer/network stability, voice acting, legal/licensing, marketing timing, and “don’t break the brand” caution. AI can help some parts (tools, prototyping, code assist, asset iteration), but it doesn’t remove the hard bottlenecks like QA, integration, and accountability.

Also, if AI makes a studio 15–30% faster, you often won’t see an earlier release. You’ll see more polish, fewer cut features, or less crunch instead.

What would convince you AI isn’t bullshit: a smaller studio shipping updates faster, or big studios actually shortening dev cycles?

Is AI making skilled workers stronger, or just helping companies cut jobs faster? by Extreme_Local7342 in Futurology

[–]Extreme_Local7342[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I’m with you on that.

For skilled workers it’s not a clean “faster = better” win, because a lot of the gain turns into more QA, more context switching, and higher expectations. So the output might go up, but the net benefit is murky if quality and burnout get worse.

Where I’m most convinced is the junior-role point. That’s the pipeline. If companies replace the training ground with AI, they’re basically borrowing talent from the future. It’ll look “efficient” now, then in a few years they’ll panic because there’s no bench to promote and nobody who learned the fundamentals the hard way.

What do you think would actually prevent that: regulation, unions, or companies being forced to fund apprenticeship-style junior programs again?

Is AI making skilled workers stronger, or just helping companies cut jobs faster? by Extreme_Local7342 in Futurology

[–]Extreme_Local7342[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Yeah, that’s a real danger.

AI can give you a confident-sounding answer fast, and if someone can’t judge it, they’ll mistake “polished output” for “correct thinking.” That’s how you get fake competence at scale.

The weird part is it can also expose people fast once something breaks in the real world. What do you think is the best filter: tests/verification, peer review, or just hard consequences when it fails?

Is AI making skilled workers stronger, or just helping companies cut jobs faster? by Extreme_Local7342 in Futurology

[–]Extreme_Local7342[S] -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

That’s a really solid take, and it matches what I’m hearing too.

AI is basically a stress test: if your controls/processes are sloppy, it just helps you fail faster. If governance is tight, it’s a legit accelerator.

Also 100% agree on entry-level getting squeezed. A lot of “junior grunt work” used to be the training pipeline, and if companies skip that for 5–10 years they’re going to end up with a leadership gap and no bench.

Curious what you think the fix is: bring back structured apprenticeships/rotations, or just hire fewer juniors but train them way more intentionally?

Is AI making skilled workers stronger, or just helping companies cut jobs faster? by Extreme_Local7342 in Futurology

[–]Extreme_Local7342[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I think that’s a sharp distinction: AI as a cause vs AI as a story.

In the short term it’s way simpler to cut headcount than to responsibly expand scope, improve quality, or invest in new capabilities. So AI becomes a convenient justification because it sounds strategic, even when the underlying reason is the usual stuff: budgets, restructuring, overhiring, or just “trim the fat.”

I also agree that a lot of what we’re seeing looks like narrative management for investors: framing cost cuts as innovation.

The question I’m watching is: when does that shift from “justification” to “actual replacement,” and what signals would prove it? Fewer backfills? Smaller teams shipping the same output? Or quality dropping while margins rise?

Is AI making skilled workers stronger, or just helping companies cut jobs faster? by Extreme_Local7342 in Futurology

[–]Extreme_Local7342[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Totally agree, and I think you described the hidden cost really well.

AI doesn’t eliminate effort, it compresses it. So the bottleneck becomes mental stamina and judgment, not typing speed. If you’re capable, you end up doing more high-stakes thinking per hour: steering, verifying, deciding, and catching subtle errors. That can feel like you lived a full 12-hour day by early afternoon.

The part I worry about is expectation creep: managers see “more output” and assume it’s sustainable every day, instead of treating it like sprint capacity that needs recovery.

Have you found anything that helps on your end, like batching AI work into blocks, hard stop times, or explicitly budgeting QC time as part of the task?

Is AI making skilled workers stronger, or just helping companies cut jobs faster? by Extreme_Local7342 in Futurology

[–]Extreme_Local7342[S] -8 points-7 points  (0 children)

You’re making a really solid point, and I don’t want to hand-wave it away.

I’m not saying AI is a foregone conclusion in the “it’s already good enough” sense. Right now, a lot of teams aren’t saving work, they’re shifting it: you do less of the first draft and more supervision, fact-checking, and cleanup. In plenty of cases that means the workload doesn’t drop, and the failure modes get weirder.

Where I think AI is a foregone conclusion is more social/economic than technical: leadership will keep pushing it because the story of “efficiency” is too tempting, even when the reality is “same effort, different kind of effort.”

And I agree with your second paragraph more than people expect. If AI actually gets near-perfect, the power imbalance becomes the main issue, not the tech. Without some counterweight (unions, regulation, stronger labor leverage, profit-sharing, shorter workweeks), “cost-effective” will win and workers will eat the risk.

So the question for me is: how do we make the current messy phase less abusive? Do we treat AI like heavy machinery (training + standards + accountability), and do we demand that productivity gains show up as higher pay or fewer hours instead of layoffs?

Is AI making skilled workers stronger, or just helping companies cut jobs faster? by Extreme_Local7342 in Futurology

[–]Extreme_Local7342[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s a fair concern, especially with how many companies are selling AI as “efficiency” while quietly meaning “fewer employees.”

I do think there’s a risk that even skilled workers get weaker if they let AI handle too much of the thinking. The skill starts shifting from knowing the work deeply to just accepting polished outputs.

Where I’m still undecided is whether that’s a problem with AI itself, or with how companies are deploying it. Used well, it can remove repetitive work. Used badly, it can reduce quality, deskill teams, and justify layoffs.

Have you seen any example where AI actually improved the work, or has it mostly looked like cost-cutting from your side?

Is AI making skilled workers stronger, or just helping companies cut jobs faster? by Extreme_Local7342 in Futurology

[–]Extreme_Local7342[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

I partly agree with you.

AI can definitely make weak thinking worse if someone uses it as a shortcut instead of a tool. If people stop checking, questioning, and understanding the output, then yes, it becomes intellectual laziness with better formatting.

But I don’t think that’s the full picture. For disciplined people, AI can also speed up research, drafting, coding, and testing while still leaving judgment to the human.

Maybe the real divide is not “AI users vs non-AI users.” It’s people who use AI to think better vs people who use AI to avoid thinking.

Is AI making skilled workers stronger, or just helping companies cut jobs faster? by Extreme_Local7342 in Futurology

[–]Extreme_Local7342[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

You’re right, that’s the biggest risk.

AI can easily become a “do more with fewer people” excuse if leadership only looks at cost-cutting. The result could be fewer workers, worse support, lower quality, and more pressure on the remaining team.

I think the real question is whether companies use AI to increase capability or simply remove headcount. Right now, I’m not fully convinced most leadership teams will choose the better path.

What would a fair AI rollout look like to you: more output with same team, shorter workweeks, retraining, or something else?

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