Post by @nuintari@bsd.cafe
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 Almost my entire income is unfucking bad AI nonsense, much of it starts like this story.
And it almost always comes with a phase in the negotiations where they beg me to reduce my rates because they have already spent so much money on AI.
But that isn't my fault, nor my problem.
Never been told off like this though.
@onepict@chaos.social
This AI crap is almost enough to make me consider going back into consulting.
The power in any negotiation goes to the person most willing to walk away. Companies trashed by AI cannot walk away.
@oxy @mwl @nuintari @stefano Cipolla is spinning in his grave. Trust Nicolas Taleb to commend the work, and it was @ludicity who pointed me at it.
Unfortunately, anyone genuinely on the psychological narcissistic spectrum cannot be so easily categorized as being more towards one of Cipolla's 4 points on the compass-like model. In that respect, more like Eric Berne (Games People Play) & Claude Steiner's (Scripts People Live) notions of the egogram. https://bonpote.com/en/the-5-basic-laws-of-human-stupidity/
@theorangetheme @mwl @stefano I honestly hate doing it, but it is the only work I've been finding lately. I've had to sign an NDA for every single gig I have had doing it, they always wanna haggle over the price, and they always complain that the fix takes too long.
The last part is what really drives me bonkers. They spent a month wasting money on an AI solution that made their issue worse, but they expect me to wave my magic wand and fix it in an hour.
And so, so many of them will try it again. I've gotten three callbacks this year that were basically, "We aimed AI at your fix and now it's broke, we need you to come back in (and do a better job this time)."
I have taken to stating in my contract terms that if you use AI on my work, it completely voids anything resembling a warranty or culpability on my part. I will not be held responsible because people are idiots. Doesn't stop them from trying though.
If AI is the future of IT, I don't want to work in IT anymore.