El fin del trabajo

[Benzino Napaloni]

De la serie "Cancamusa & la IA se lo va a comer todo":

Los 'prompt engineers', el nuevo oficio que trae la IA: "Se cobra bien, pero es un trabajo que también acabará siendo barrido"


Pues no será tan buena la IA, ¿no? ¿Qué hacen exactamente estos perfiles?

Dicho de otra forma: la personas que dan las órdenes precisas a la IA para obtener el resultado buscado. Los perfiles válidos para este nuevo trabajo son más variados de lo que se podría pensar. Desde informáticos a lingüistas, pasando por matemáticos.

Aaahmigo, personas dedicadas a guiar a la IA . ¿Pero con qué propósito?

Parecen ajenos a la realidad que, si se cumplen las predicciones más agoreras, se avecina. Muchos de sus puestos simplemente desaparecerán y sus funciones serán asumidas por la IA del mismo modo que, décadas atrás, millones de trabajadores manuales vieron cómo su trabajo era sustituido por una máquina. Surgirán nuevos empleos, como el de prompt engineer, pero, ¿hasta qué punto estos no serán también engullidos por la automatización absoluta que se nos viene encima?

El mismo cuento de siempre. Llevamos desde la Revolución Industrial con el cuento agorero del fin del trabajo. O más bien el sueño húmedo de más de un empresaurio que anhela tener al trabajador perfecto en forma de máquina y librarse de la persona. Cuando estamos hartos de ver que la tecnificación no quita trabajo más allá de ciertos perfiles, el balance neto es de generar trabajo.


Sueldos de hasta 400.000 euros al año por "prompt engineer". El sueño del empleador: deshacerse del "engineer" cuando haya entrenado la IA. Más probable y también mi apuesta personal, el "engineer" se irá igualmente a la calle pero por otra razón: cuando la filfa se quede al descubierto y se compruebe que no se han conseguido los resultados esperados.


El mismo perro de siempre con otro collar, señores.

[Cadavre Exquis]

Waymo Will Start Testing Robotaxis On Phoenix Highways

Posted by BeauHD on Monday January 08, 2024 @06:50PM from the brace-yourselves dept.

In just a few weeks, Waymo will begin testing its driverless passenger vehicles on the highways in Phoenix, Arizona. The company will start by shuttling employees, and if all goes well, it will expand its operations to include regular customers. TechCrunch reports:

Bringing its autonomous cars to the highway is just the latest in a series of big steps for Waymo, especially in the Phoenix area. In December, the company started offering curbside drop-off and pickup at the Phoenix airport. Just a few months before that, Waymo made its autonomous vehicles available in the Uber app.

Saludos.

[Saturio]

Waymo Will Start Testing Robotaxis On Phoenix Highways

Posted by BeauHD on Monday January 08, 2024 @06:50PM from the brace-yourselves dept.

In just a few weeks, Waymo will begin testing its driverless passenger vehicles on the highways in Phoenix, Arizona. The company will start by shuttling employees, and if all goes well, it will expand its operations to include regular customers. TechCrunch reports:

Bringing its autonomous cars to the highway is just the latest in a series of big steps for Waymo, especially in the Phoenix area. In December, the company started offering curbside drop-off and pickup at the Phoenix airport. Just a few months before that, Waymo made its autonomous vehicles available in the Uber app.

Saludos.

Venga, vamos a pasar una nota de prensa positiva que hay que darle un empujoncito a la acción.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.pressreader.com/spain/el-economista/20240206/page/15/textview

La DGT modificará dos reglamentos para regular la conducción autónoma

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

Waymo To Launch Commercial Robotaxi Service in Austin By End of the Year
Posted by msmash on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @02:40PM from the up-next dept.

Waymo will begin offering a robotaxi service to the public in Los Angeles this week and in Austin by the end of the year, the company's co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said Wednesday at SXSW. From a report:

The Alphabet company has been testing and validating its driverless vehicles across about 43 square miles around downtown, Barton Hills, Riverside, East Austin and Hyde Park neighborhoods. The announcement comes about a week after Waymo started letting its autonomous vehicles traverse Austin without a safety operator behind the wheel, a critical step before the company opens the program up to the public.

Opening up a robotaxi service means the public will be able to hail a ride in a driverless car via the Waymo One app. Importantly, Waymo will be able to charge for those rides. Austin will become the fourth city where Waymo operates a commercial driverless service. Waymo also operates a robotaxi service in Phoenix, San Francisco and soon Los Angeles.

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

Dot CSV | Mi PRIMER VIAJE en un VEHÍCULO AUTÓNOMO - ¡Impresionante! (Waymo)

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

Parece que detrás de las cámaras de las tiendas Just Walk Out de Amazon no había una IA sino un millar de indios

Amazon Ditches 'Just Walk Out' Checkouts at Its Grocery Stores
Posted by msmash on Tuesday April 02, 2024 @12:49PM from the tough-luck dept.

Amazon is phasing out its checkout-less grocery stores with "Just Walk Out" technology. The company's senior vice president of grocery stores says they're moving away from Just Walk Out, which relied on cameras and sensors to track what people were leaving the store with. From a report:

Just over half of Amazon Fresh stores are equipped with Just Walk Out. The technology allows customers to skip checkout altogether by scanning a QR code when they enter the store. Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped.

Instead, Amazon is moving towards Dash Carts, a scanner and screen are embedded in your shopping cart, allowing you to checkout as you shop. These offer a more reliable solution than Just Walk Out, whose impressive technology was truly ahead of its time. Amazon Fresh stores will also feature self check out counters from now on, for people who aren't Amazon members.

Saludos.

[Saturio]

Parece que detrás de las cámaras de las tiendas Just Walk Out de Amazon no había una IA sino un millar de indios

Amazon Ditches 'Just Walk Out' Checkouts at Its Grocery Stores
Posted by msmash on Tuesday April 02, 2024 @12:49PM from the tough-luck dept.

Amazon is phasing out its checkout-less grocery stores with "Just Walk Out" technology. The company's senior vice president of grocery stores says they're moving away from Just Walk Out, which relied on cameras and sensors to track what people were leaving the store with. From a report:

Just over half of Amazon Fresh stores are equipped with Just Walk Out. The technology allows customers to skip checkout altogether by scanning a QR code when they enter the store. Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped.

Instead, Amazon is moving towards Dash Carts, a scanner and screen are embedded in your shopping cart, allowing you to checkout as you shop. These offer a more reliable solution than Just Walk Out, whose impressive technology was truly ahead of its time. Amazon Fresh stores will also feature self check out counters from now on, for people who aren't Amazon members.

Saludos.

Con respecto a todas estas cosas. La experiencia nos dice que cuando se descubre una tecnología claramente superior por su eficacia o eficiencia esta se implanta con bastante rapidez.
Ya no sé ni los años que han pasado desde que se dijo por primera vez que los/as cajeros/as de los supermercados desaparecerían. Y hemos visto cómo algunos retailers han puesto algunas cajas de autoservicio que básicamente funcionan como las atendidas por trabajadores solo que haciéndolo todo tú
Yo ya no sé ni las cosas que se suponía que venían para cambiar el mundo.

-La fabricación aditiva. Que sí que ha encontrado su hueco y sus nichos pero que no ha transformado, como nos decían, el mundo de la producción.
-La realidad aumentada.
-Todo el rollo de las terapias génicas revolucionarias desde el día de la secuenciación del ADN (esto ya es viejuno).
-El blockchain (ya ni nos acordamos de las pilas de artículos sobre el asunto)
-El grafeno.
-Acabo de mirar que el primer vídeo de Boston Dynamics y sus robots en youtube es de hace 15 años.
-Internet de las cosas. Como la fabricación aditiva, tiene sus aplicaciones pero digamos que no vivimos en un mundo en el que nuestra lavadora, nuestro frigo, las luces de la casa y nuestro coche se comunican entre ellos para ayudarnos a gestionar nuestra vida ya ni hablar de que nuestros coches se comuniquen con la red semafórica para apañar el tráfico y cosas así.

Me dejaré bastantes cosas.

Si las tiendas automatizadas funcionasen, en menos de cinco años tendríamos cientos o miles de puntos de venta automatizados en nuestra ciudad. Esas tiendas de Amazon eran demostradores en el mismo sentido que lo son los coches conceptuales que se presentan en el salón del automovil. Algo que teóricamente se puede hacer pero que como producto o servicio no funciona.

De la flipada de la mensajería por dron ni hablamos.

Yo creo que la gente se sorprendería si fuese a ver los centros logísticos de Amazon. Me refiero a uno cualquiera, no al que enseñan en el vídeo. No están más automatizados que el almacén de cualquier logista clásico (y en muchos casos menos). Pero el marketing funciona. Amazón reside en colas de furgonetas más o menos destartaladas haciendo fila para cargar (entre otras cosas).

Por eso soy muy escéptico con cosas como los coches autónomos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

Waymo Launches Paid Robotaxi Service In Los Angeles
Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday April 10, 2024 @09:40AM from the heads-up dept.

Beginning today, Waymo said it would start offering paid robotaxi rides in Los Angeles. It's been offering free "on tour" rides since it announced plans for the service in January, and last month it received regulatory approval for the expansion to a paid service. NBC News reports:

Waymo said Tuesday that more than 50,000 people were on its waitlist to use the service. The company did not say how many users it would allow to fully use the app starting Wednesday. Last month, the company said it was starting with a Los Angeles fleet of fewer than 50 cars covering a 63-square-mile area from Santa Monica to downtown L.A. Los Angeles County has a population of 9.7 million people. The service works similarly to other ride-hailing smartphone apps such as Flywheel, Lyft and Uber, except that Waymo's vehicles have no human drivers present. Riders follow instructions on the app and through the vehicle's sound system, though Waymo workers can assist remotely.

[F]or now, Waymo's only competition is traditional, human-driven car services. Waymo's expansion to Los Angeles will bring autonomous for-profit taxis to the nation's second-largest city -- and to a city long synonymous with car travel. Waymo already operates commercial robotaxi services in San Francisco and Phoenix. The Los Angeles Department of Transportation said the Waymo expansion was happening too soon, without enough local oversight of autonomous vehicle operations, but in an order last month state officials said that those concerns were unfounded.

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

Microsoft Launches Free AI Assistant For All Educators in US in Deal With Khan Academy
Posted by msmash on Tuesday May 21, 2024 @12:02PM from the how-about-that dept.

Microsoft is partnering with tutoring organization Khan Academy to provide a generative AI assistant to all teachers in the U.S. for free. From a report:

Khanmigo for Teachers, which helps teachers prepare lessons for class, is free to all educators in the U.S. as of Tuesday. The program can help create lessons, analyze student performance, plan assignments, and provide teachers with opportunities to enhance their own learning.

"Unlike most things in technology and education in the past where this is a 'nice-to-have,' this is a 'must-have' for a lot of teachers," Sal Khan, founder and CEO of Khan Academy, said in a CNBC "Squawk Box" interview last Friday ahead of the deal. Khan Academy has roughly 170 million registered users in over 50 languages around the world, and while its videos are best known, its interactive exercise platform was one which Microsoft-funded artificial intelligence company OpenAI's top executives, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, zeroed in on early when they were looking for a partner to pilot GPT with that offered socially positive use cases.

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

Microsoft Edge Will Dub Streamed Video With AI-Translated Audio
Posted by msmash on Tuesday May 21, 2024 @12:41PM from the pushing-the-limits dept.

Microsoft is planning to either add subtitles or even dub video produced by major video sites, using AI to translate the audio into foreign languages within Microsoft Edge in real time. From a report:

At its Microsoft Build developer conference, Microsoft named several sites that would benefit from the new real-time translation capabilities within Edge, including Reuters, CNBC News, Bloomberg, and Coursera, plus Microsoft's own LinkedIn. Interestingly, Microsoft also named Google's YouTube as a beneficiary of the translation capabilities. Microsoft plans to translate the video from Spanish to English and from English to German, Hindi, Italian, Russian, and Spanish. There are plans to add additional languages and video platforms in the future, Microsoft said.

Saludos.

[pollo]

Waymo Will Start Testing Robotaxis On Phoenix Highways

Posted by BeauHD on Monday January 08, 2024 @06:50PM from the brace-yourselves dept.

In just a few weeks, Waymo will begin testing its driverless passenger vehicles on the highways in Phoenix, Arizona. The company will start by shuttling employees, and if all goes well, it will expand its operations to include regular customers. TechCrunch reports:

Bringing its autonomous cars to the highway is just the latest in a series of big steps for Waymo, especially in the Phoenix area. In December, the company started offering curbside drop-off and pickup at the Phoenix airport. Just a few months before that, Waymo made its autonomous vehicles available in the Uber app.

Saludos.

Venga, vamos a pasar una nota de prensa positiva que hay que darle un empujoncito a la acción.

Para ponerlo en contexto, les echaron hace poco de una ciudad (les quitaron la licencia) porque crearon varios problemas de tráfico graves en los meses que estuvieron de pruebas. Creo que fue en alguna ciudad de California.

Y sacarlos a la autopista es una no-noticia porque es precisamente lo que ya se sabe hacer, ya que la autopista es el entorno más sencillo y controlado. El reto es que entren en una ciudad normal (donde el tráfico se vuelve muy complejo y ambiguo y los eventos impredecibles se multiplican) sin armarla.

Y también hay que tener en cuenta que en EE.UU. los vecindarios de los suburbios son una estructura mucho más regular y predecible que una ciudad "de verdad" con su caos cotidiano.

[pollo]

Parece que detrás de las cámaras de las tiendas Just Walk Out de Amazon no había una IA sino un millar de indios

Amazon Ditches 'Just Walk Out' Checkouts at Its Grocery Stores
Posted by msmash on Tuesday April 02, 2024 @12:49PM from the tough-luck dept.

Amazon is phasing out its checkout-less grocery stores with "Just Walk Out" technology. The company's senior vice president of grocery stores says they're moving away from Just Walk Out, which relied on cameras and sensors to track what people were leaving the store with. From a report:

Just over half of Amazon Fresh stores are equipped with Just Walk Out. The technology allows customers to skip checkout altogether by scanning a QR code when they enter the store. Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped.

Instead, Amazon is moving towards Dash Carts, a scanner and screen are embedded in your shopping cart, allowing you to checkout as you shop. These offer a more reliable solution than Just Walk Out, whose impressive technology was truly ahead of its time. Amazon Fresh stores will also feature self check out counters from now on, for people who aren't Amazon members.

Saludos.

Esto debería dar una idea de lo fiables que son estas empresas con sus grandilocuentes mierdas diarias.

Son como ya hemos dicho muchos por aquí, unos vendeburras.

A mí me está preocupando más que hemos perdido por completo la capacidad de darnos cuenta de que nos están vendiendo una moto. A la inmensa mayoría se les ha podido engañar mediante marketing de mierda y se les han vendido cosas que eran directamente falsas.
La gente ha encontrado en estos millonetis con ínfulas una especie de mesías del salvación del futuro. A ver si va a ser verdad que al final el ser humano necesita religiones y creer en algo, por tonto que sea.

[Cadavre Exquis]

What do Uber drivers make of Waymo? 'We are cooked'
Robotaxis, low pay may be end of the road for app cabbies in San Francisco

Thomas Claburn · 2024.09.07

The Uber driver who picked me up the other day doesn't think the ride-sharing app has much of a future in San Francisco.

Tim – a pseudonym as he asked not to be identified – expects Waymo, the leading maker of self-driving taxis, to broadly under-cut Uber's human-operated ride-hailing service in the US city at some point in 2025, and feels that will be the beginning of the end.

He's not alone in that belief.

"To put it bluntly, we are cooked," said one person posting to a forum for San Francisco Uber drivers, in response to my solicitation for thoughts about Waymo. "We're done for. In the age of artificial intelligence and automation, we're the first to be impacted in a major way."

Perhaps not the first if you count the transcriptionists, marketing copy writers, customer support agents, translators, illustrators, musicians, and writers facing the chop lately, nor the auto workers made redundant by assembly line machinery. But those driving for Uber and Lyft can expect to be among the first to lose their jobs to free-roaming robots.

Ride-hailing drivers had come up earlier in the day when I was out walking my dog. A man who walked by on Sanchez Street was speaking loudly into his phone about the difficulty of balancing supply and demand in the ride-share business – having enough drivers active to respond to passenger ride requests.

That supply, according to Tim, has been declining. He estimated that in 2023, around noon at midweek, there were roughly 2,000 Uber drivers active in San Francisco. This year, he said, there appear to be fewer, about 1,800. By 2025, he said, he expects that number to be more like 700.

Those numbers, he acknowledges, are estimates based on what he sees as a driver. They're probably not accurate. Uber didn't respond to a request to provide that information.

What has been going down with more certainty is the amount Uber pays its drivers – because Uber is keeping a larger portion of fares. And that's as much of a threat to drivers as Waymo's driverless computer-controlled cars.

Tim argues that Waymo, which began offering rides to the general public in San Francisco in June, will use the same business playbook that Uber used to beat its competitors – spend venture capital to price rivals out of the market.

"The reason that Uber won the market for ride sharing is because they raised more capital than any of the other companies," he explained. "So what they did with the capital was subsidized rides."

"The second Waymo trips are less than Uber, which is going to happen in 2025, everyone including myself, will just start taking Waymo," he said.

Lyft, Uber, and Waymo, he argues, are undifferentiated products, except that Waymo has the best cars, generally speaking. If you hail a Waymo in San Francisco, it's invariably going to be an all-electric Jaguar fitted with Google's autonomous technology.

"If you're riding around in an Uber X, you're in an old Prius, or maybe a Tesla," he said. "And if you're in a Waymo you're in a $78,000 [or more] Jaguar. It's super nice leather, cushy seats, great suspension, big tires. Uber is not going to be able to do anything once Waymo starts under-pricing them."

Waymo cars, in the limited area that they operate, are driving about on their own and competing with human drivers for fares in San Francisco, not to mention Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Austin. The robocars' rates appear to be higher generally than Uber and Lyft, though in our experience Waymo can sometimes be about the same.

And there are other downsides: Waymo rides often require a longer wait and can take longer to complete, according to The San Francisco Chronicle. But there's no tipping and no risk of driver assault – the subject of a great many lawsuits against Uber. And so far Waymo cars have a good safety record.

Just this week, Waymo argued it is improving road safety as, according to its figures, its autonomous cars have, on a like-for-like basis, fewer crashes than humans after 22 million rider-only miles on the road. The biz was not available for immediate comment on pricing fears by Uber drivers.

If Waymo does eliminate human-driven rides in San Francisco, the in-car conversations will suffer. And that would be a shame because I've met some interesting people driving for Uber and Lyft.

Take Tim, for example. He says he ran an on-demand rental business that he shut down during the pandemic and plans to re-open in November. "My main skill in the business, other than like strategy, is finance," he said. "So I do finance and accounting for small businesses as a consultant."

"The Uber story has been really interesting to me," he said, "like watching Uber and Lyft play out not just because I'm an Uber driver. I drive Uber because it allows me to be the delivery guy for my own company."

Driving for Uber, though, is not a great gig, he said, because he makes less than minimum wage – and that, other Uber drivers argue, is more of a story than what Waymo will do to the ride sharing industry.

"A more interesting article might be on Uber and Lyft completely destroying the livelihoods of thousands of rideshare drivers in California with their appalling greed," as one forum participant put it.

But it's the same story, really, of moving fast and breaking things – which in this case means people's jobs. Uber spent years burning venture capital by subsidizing the price of rides and then in 2022 started taking a larger share of fares. It's now vulnerable to that same strategy because it's a public company that wants to show a profit. Waymo, meanwhile, operates at a loss, with the promise of another $5 billion in funding from Alphabet.

Len Sherman, a Columbia business school professor, last month explained in an online essay that Uber in the past guaranteed drivers a minimum fare, following the business model used by taxis.

"But two years ago, Uber switched to a new pay model — Upfront Fares + Destination (UFD), giving Uber complete discretionary control over how its opaque algorithms determine driver pay," he said.

"At about the same time, Uber also introduced 'Trip Radar,' an online auction scheme, in which multiple drivers vie in a race to the bottom to accept low pay offers. Uber’s former practice of guaranteeing minimum driver pay for every trip was thus replaced by a policy where Uber now only has to pay the minimum any driver will accept for each trip."

The result, he said, pointing to data from gig worker analytics biz Gridwise, has been a 17 percent year-on-year decline in 2023 for Uber driver's average monthly earnings.

As one of those responding to my Uber forum query described the situation, "Uber is a lottery now, the requests go out to hundreds of drivers, if you’re lucky and you hit that accept button fast enough, ya might get the $4.32 ride. Which takes 17 minutes."

Sherman told The Register, "Ever since this new upfront driver pay policy came into effect in late 2022, and certainly for the full year 2023 and beyond, drivers across the country in every city I've talked to have experienced significant, material double-digit earnings cuts all to what they had enjoyed – to the extent they ever enjoyed it."

Precarious circumstances

The question then, said Sherman, is how Uber can claim that it has a robust supply of drivers when wages are declining. "The only thing I can come up with is that speaks to just how precarious the financial circumstances are for a large and maybe even growing population of citizens of the US," he said, adding that also in many major cities, drivers may be recent immigrants with no better employment options.

Sherman said the Uber driver who expressed concern about the viability of driving in San Francisco is right to be worried. But he added that the timeline for automated cars operating more broadly remains difficult to predict. It could be five to ten years before we see a meaningful impact from autonomous vehicles, he said.

Yet that impact, when it comes, may not make much of a dent in Uber's viability if the app maker can find a way to change horses midstream. The company last year partnered with Waymo and is clearly looking for ways to adapt to a business without drivers. That could be expensive if Uber has to pay for its own fleet of autonomous vehicles.

In July, a research note from Melius Research analyst Conor Cunningham said that Uber and Lyft see autonomous vehicles (AVs) as inevitable and something that will enhance their services over time.

"It’s not hard to envision – the current state of mobility centers around human drivers with basically no AVs in the market," the research note says. "When AVs start to scale and integrate, it will be a slow ramp where a hybrid network will be needed at first as drivers complete more complex tasks like driving in bad weather, and then the eventual tipping point in AV technology drives broader adoption."

In San Francisco, the tipping point may be closer than it appears.

Saludos.

[Saturio]

Impresionante una empresa que no ha hecho más que perder millonadas va a ser sustituida por otra que todavía pierde más millonadas.
Este nuevo capitalismo es la bomba.