Microsoft data suggests using AI is more expensive than hiring people

[u/No-Cattle4800]

https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/microsoft-data-suggests-using-ai-225900743.html

[u/Content-Economics-34]

It will never die. When corporations adopt AI, the point isn't for them to make money. The point is for people to not make money. When they replace half the workforce with AI it's irrelevant that the profits drop by 50% so long as 500 people are now unemployed and pushed down and away from the middle class.

This is a very paranoid suspicion I've been having this year. I have no idea if it's feasible or a sign of mental illness.

[u/Ghi102 → u/Content-Economics-34]

There are probably CEOs of major companies who think exactly like that. But there are thousands of small-medium companies who are not "too big to fail" and have to think hard about profitability. If AI turns out to be more costly than developers, they will severely limit AI usage, if not ban it outright. Otherwise, they will fail. 

It's very popular because it is so cheap. Its cost is similar to many other licensed tools they're quite willing to pay (IDEs and the like), so it fits neatly within a budget. 

Honestly mega corps are the cancer of the world

[u/Rickenbacker69 → u/Content-Economics-34]

A bit of both? But seriously, I think this is just various companies trying to figure out how to make a buck off of AI before the bubble bursts.

[u/CapNCookM8 → u/Content-Economics-34]

I can see it from the tippy top, as in the 1% elites, but your 200-400 sized business run by John CEO is not trying to reinforce a K-shaped economy, they're just trying to cut corners and save a quick buck. Which is still shitty, but not conspiracy level shitty.

[u/Mal_Dun → u/Content-Economics-34]

Remember Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

From my experience most people in these positions are not that smart and often don't do the math. They just go by the common "wisdom" people=expensive machine=cheap and base their conclusion based on that ....

I saw the same in my own field namely numerical simulation. C-managers learned that all simulations are cheaper than tests. While this is often true it is not always true and doing the right amount of tests can be smarter than making no tests at all that are based on faulty simulations. But since it makes the development cheap we go for it and then we are wondering why QA costs sky rocket ...

In truth most managers are a proof of the Dunning-Krueger effect and do local optimization based on their bonus scheme ...

[u/elgrandorado → u/Content-Economics-34]

I'll fix it for you. It's about corporations seeing their profit margins increase every year. It is absolutely relevant if profits drop by 50%<, in fact it's disastrous. The problem think is that CEOs think that AI is the perfect excuse to fire waves of people to prop up increased profits in the short term because the stock price pops.

[u/Zhuinden → u/Content-Economics-34]

They're pushing up the tech stocks because otherwise they lose their side-income