Re: Facebook Account

Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> writes:

On Tue, 20 Aug 2024 14:01:43 -0400, Radey Shouman
<shouman@comcast.net> wrote:
>

A great deal of programming is done today by AIs (Actual Indians). 

>
In about 1999, management was experimenting with outsourcing a product
design to someone they found on monster.com in India.  I was not
directly involved in this product.  The manager would call India about
once per week to obtain status updates.  One day, he mentioned that he
had called and received a "no progress" report because of a holiday.
As the project continued, such "no progress" reports continued to be
quite frequent.  As you might suspect, the project was late and poorly
designed.  Hint:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_holidays_in_India>
>
I could also expound on some more past outsourcing horror stories but
it's less work to just post a link so I don't need to violate an NDA
in order to tell the story:
<https://www.google.com/search?q=outsourcing+horror+stories>

The world, or at least the USA, has moved on since then.  I know a guy
who is a logic designer for AMD, meaning the silicon bits that make your
computah go.  90% of his job seems to attending meetings at odd hours to
manage the work force, most of which is in India.  I don't know exactly
what it is, but Indians do a significant fraction of all the programming
grunt work being done, from web site front ends to ASICs.

I won't hold my breath waiting for artificial intelligence to become
reliable or cost effective.

>
I believe that AI will eventually become an improvement over
outsourcing.

Eventually we'll all have pie in the sky.  AI today is almost entirely
hype, and has been massively oversold.  We'll have at least another "AI
winter" before it can be relied upon as much as even a very low grade
employee.

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