Post by @Ox1de@cyberplace.social
I got a call from someone I don't know.
"Hi. We have a FreeBSD server. It's been working perfectly for years, but it hasn't been updated since then. We asked AI to update it, but now it won't boot anymore. It didn't even make a backup before starting. The AI keeps trying things, everything is down, and we've already spent over €500 in tokens. Can you help us?"
"Sure. €500, plus the time it'll take me to try to fix it. Assuming it can still be fixed and nothing important has been deleted."
"That much?"
Some silence.
"Well, I hope AI takes your job away!" And he hung up.
Believing that autopilot automatically makes you an invulnerable professional pilot will ruin far more people than job losses will.
I don't know if AI will take my job away, but it's already cost them €500 and, probably, their server.
@stefano apps and social networks have spawned a generation of people who think they shouldn’t have to pay for anything. Only they should make money not you.
1 boost
@Ox1de @stefano : well, they are perfectly fine paying a lot of money to big corporations (Microsoft or Google, Apple for the laptops, OpenAI, Anthropic…)
They just don’t want to pay an human.
Probably because they are uncomfortable with the fact that this human will know more about the subject than they are.
(I mean, 500€ is cheap ! They already wasted as much without batting an eye )
But very good call: 500€ to undo the shit done by LLMs!
@Ox1de @stefano Obscene sense of entitlement? Not new to this decade.
In the late 2000s, a certain UK ISP who I won't name -- they gave the distinct impression that they were hoping to see certain FreeBSD VM-related enhancements for free. They ghosted me after I presented them with w pretty standard consulting agreement. TANSTAAFL! TANSTAAFL!
What they wanted ended up getting done a few years later by another committer working for a corporate stakeholder, not I, though I ended up buying and reading a book by @david_chisnall during that time to prepare for the work that didn't happen on my watch.