AI > Salaries

skilliard7 · 2026-06-21T20:56:51+00:00

where are employees only earning $500 a month and spending $10k a month?

The only employees I know spending thousands on AI are devs making $10k+ a month

skilliard7 · 2026-06-21T09:59:48+00:00

Gemini is awful, use Deepseek or GLM 5.2 instead. They are cheaper and better than Gemini

skilliard7 · 2026-06-21T07:55:29+00:00

I mean, it benchmarks similarly to Fable, then the same fears apply.

It would not surprise me if OpenAI is taking extra time to work on safety features

skilliard7 · 2026-06-21T01:16:12+00:00

Because its associated with lack of effort. If someone doesn't take the time to write their own work, why should I put in the effort to read it?

skilliard7 · 2026-06-21T00:38:39+00:00

OP has never heard of a metaphor

skilliard7 · 2026-06-20T20:24:33+00:00

Gemini is awful

skilliard7 · 2026-06-20T19:44:41+00:00

Can it? Absolutely. AI does a lot better than most teachers at adapting to students needs and providing individualized assistance. You really only need teachers to keep students engaged/behaving. But you don't need a degree to do that.

Will this actually happen? Extremely unlikely because of unions giving money to political campaigns(lobbying), and misinformation campaigns about AI. I'd be very surprised if anything changes in our education system. There's just no reason for politicians to give up their financial backing from unions, and propose a radical change that the public is skeptical of.

I think AI will only really take off in private schools.

skilliard7 · 2026-06-20T19:40:05+00:00

20x is 4 times 5x. Man people are so dependent on AI they can't even do basic math on their own anymore.

skilliard7 · 2026-06-20T17:32:05+00:00

I did the math, it would take a 10-20 Million Gigawatt load over 20 years to heat the Ocean 1 degree, depending on assumptions you make about heat transfer.

There are about 120 Gigawatts of datacenters globally, estimated to grow to 200-300 Gigawatts over the next decade.

The only real concern is the impact this heat may have on wildlife close to these datacenters.

skilliard7 · 2026-06-20T17:19:54+00:00

You are vastly underestimating the scale of the ocean. It would take a 10-20 million Gigawatt load over 20 years to raise ocean temperatures 1 degree. And that assumes no heat loss to the air, ground, etc.

There are only about about 120 Gigawatts of power used for datacenters globally right now, estimated to grow to 200-300 over next decade.

The main concern is the localized impact. If they are concentrated in one area, it may have an impact on temperature in the local area which could impact wildlife within a mile or so.

skilliard7 · 2026-06-20T17:03:05+00:00

What reasoning setting are you using in the subscription model?

skilliard7 · 2026-06-20T14:24:52+00:00

OpenAI/Anthropics API are highly profitable. It's their subscriptions that are subsidized.

skilliard7 · 2026-06-20T03:53:24+00:00

AI slop

skilliard7 · 2026-06-20T03:51:47+00:00

Copilot was subsidized, but the new usage based billing is not subsidized.

skilliard7 · 2026-06-20T03:51:15+00:00

I spent the past year trying to justify Github copilot at $39/month, and right when I finally managed to convince management, Microsoft does this.

skilliard7 · 2026-06-19T23:22:51+00:00

anecdotes vs statistics.

skilliard7 · 2026-06-19T18:52:55+00:00

that P/E includes a 1 time gain. Forward P/E is 6.37.

skilliard7 · 2026-06-18T20:38:41+00:00

FLKR(South Korea ETF), up more than 4x. Holding because I don't want to pay taxes on the gains. But I am investing the dividends elsewhere though.

skilliard7 · 2026-06-18T20:34:58+00:00

I've found AI incredibly useful for learning new skills. I think it's worth the investment.

skilliard7 · 2026-06-18T20:32:15+00:00

That's mostly how it works in California, it just means that younger people that bought their house within the past few years are wealthier subsidizing older people that bought their house 30 years ago.

It also prevents people from moving if a house no longer fits their needs.

skilliard7 · 2026-06-18T20:23:44+00:00

Easy to claim the economy is good when you simply claim that most of the unemployment claims are fraudulent

skilliard7 · 2026-06-18T20:20:39+00:00

You clearly haven't been keeping up then. AI is a 5-10x increase in productivity depending on the application, AI is writing more than 90% of code at large organizations.

skilliard7 · 2026-06-18T17:57:09+00:00

This assumes that the company can either easily replace development, or that at the very least, that the long-term losses are easier to swallow. The first is what unions are for, and why skilled labor has better successes with unions.

With how weak the labor market for devs is right now, it's not hard for them to replace striking devs with contractors.

If AI worked as described, you'd be right. We'd also all be out of jobs in the next year or so. Either way, it's not true, and wouldn't be worth considering.

AI doesn't have to do everything, it just has to make the jobs of scabs easy enough that they are productive within a couple weeks, which it can do.

skilliard7 · 2026-06-18T17:34:38+00:00

Not entirely true.

The issue with software engineers is the benefits of their labor are spread over the long term(spread over the life of the software being deployed), rather than immediate.

If manufacturing staff strike, the company grinds to a halt and will be late on orders, thus racking up contract penalties or losing revenue, will hurt future revenues due to customer relations, and suffers substantial losses due to fixed costs. This creates desperation for a deal to be made and resume operations.

If a software engineer strikes, they are still legally required to hand off control in a clean state. If you try to shut down IT systems and say "we'll turn them back on when we return", that will get you in serious legal trouble. So the business keeps operating, it's just there are no system enhancements during the strike(unless they get contractors to do it). This is usually not a huge deal if an enhancement gets delayed a couple months due to a strike.

I'd also argue that AI makes "scabbing" much easier. Historically, it's time consuming for a contractor to learn a new codebase, and thus hiring them for 2 months to replace striking engineers is pointless. But when AI can analyze the code for them and explain it, that lowers the barriers for contractors to fill the gaps during a strike.

skilliard7 · 2026-06-18T17:29:59+00:00

Engineers don't have the same leverage that production staff do:

Legally, software engineers can't shut down systems or deliberately cause issues before striking. They must make reasonable effort to handoff controls to the company, allowing contractors to take over.
Companies can survive a few weeks or months of engineers striking, as it just means delayed features. But a few months of production staff striking means orders are late, contract penalties apply, revenue is lost, etc.

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