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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • Customer support tier .5

    It can be hella great for finding what you need on a big website that is poorly organized, laid out, or just enormous in content. I could see it being incredible for things like irs.gov, your healthcare providers website, etc. in getting the requested content in user hands without them having to familiarize themselves with constantly changing layouts, pages, branding, etc.

    To go back to the IRS example, there are websites in the last 5 years that started to have better content library search functionality, but I guess for me having AI able to contextualize the request and then get you what you want specifically would be incredible. “Tax rule for x kind of business in y situation for 2024”—that shit takes hours if you’re pretty competent sometimes, and current websites might just say “here is the 2024 tax code PLOP” or “here is an answer that doesn’t apply to your situation” etc. “tomato growing tips for zone 3a during drought” on a gardening site, etc.

    I’m in HR so benefits are a big one…the absolute mountain of content, even if you understand it, even experts can’t have perfect recall and quick, easy answers through a mountain of text seems like an area AI could deliver real value.

    That said, companies using AI as an excuse to them eliminate support jobs because customers “have AI” are greedy dipshits as AI and LLMs are a risk at best and outside of a narrow library and intense testing are going to always be more work for the company as you not only have to fix the wrong answer situations but also get the right answer the old fashioned way. You still need humans and hopefully AI can make their work more interesting, nuanced and fulfilling.


    • My use of “biological” is as it relates to the fact women in our species are the sex that bear children, and that there is a time limit for their fertility, not a position on the biological female being better suited or predispositioned for work, or certain types of work. The significant negative career/pay effects of having or (until recently) even being perceived as potentially having a child is well covered. Labor law has focused more on reducing the latter (e.g. it’s illegal to not hire marsha because she’s pregnant, or not promote Jenny because she has 3 kids) while the former has been nearly ignored until recently, but COVID lockdown showed companies can fix this if they wish. The host, Dubner has covered that significant early & mid-career movements often come at terrible time for women who have a child(ren, which completely alters their career & pay trajectories downward.
    • The rapid change discussed in the (several year-old) source was due to optimism of change due to the massive improvement women saw in the first few years of the panedmic in pay and workforce participation in jobs and industries where they have traditionally been limited access to due to social norms or pressures of child rearing, workplace physical presence, and working hours. Essentially lockdown and the rapid change to remote work leveled the playing field for many mothers who otherwise might have had to take days off to care for their sick kids, attend events, miss worksite meetings or conferences, and not be able to work on their own schedule. Despite the data being fairly quickly and easily avaialble at the time of this incredible improvement in the “pay gap”, many companies completely ignored it and launched “Return to Office” programs of different sorts–which had the predictable effect of immediately reversing this trend in companies that removed remote work. There is still much more remote work, and hybrid work available than pre-pandemic and in some cases that will remain a permanent improvement in pay data between sexes. It’s challenging to level the euphoria of productivity around remote work by 2021 that was being reported and all it’s positive effects on pay equity and poverty yet the surprising launch of return to office initiatives will mute improvements discussed. The gap will be decreasing but probably not as much as they may have suspected when they had this conversation, though I’m still hopeful companies dig into the data and continue to understand how much talent they’re leaving on the sidelines by operating like it’s 1947.
    • Another reason not mentioned that gives me optimism for future improvements in general perceptions of pay equity is that with reduced birthrates (it’s own discussion!), there will be the positive effect of improving even macro, almost useless-without-nuance statistics like $0.80/$1.00. If women are having far fewer children, they may be able to be less or even unaffected by the employment and social decisions, pressures and norms that have seen their careers not develop as they would have without a child(ren).










  • 3rd type- sees Real wages falling each year, has college debt or car debt or credit card debt or had to buy a new furnace on an installment plan or God forbid wants to take a vacation or or or

    Anyway, this person has to try keep climbing or they will lose their car/ be kicked out of their apartment, nothing in society will support them as they “failed at their job and/or must be lazy”, etc.

    There truly are some doofuses at every level of organization, the closer to the top people more often are playing the cruel game to win, but middle management are hardly the game theory types–they wouldn’t have accepted their job if they were that strategic as there is no winning.

    So depressing to see working class folks going after other working class folks(someone with supervisor or manager or director in their title) because they “have it better”…the latter almost exclusively are trapped in a different fucked up system.




  • Just read “the Hearing” with my kid tonight, a chapter early in HP 5, when one of the better villains in popular literature is introduced, Delores Umbridge. First time I read HP5 was 20 years ago, reading it again today only for the second time with current context is instructive.

    The Hearing is an important chapter as it, for the first time, lays out that the institution running the wizard world might not be on Harry’s side, that there may be political motives behind processes, treatment and proceedings, and overall pulls the adolescent curtain down on the assumption right and good are running everything in the world of wizarding. Umbridge becomes the embodiment of propaganda, misuse of position, and how much damage motivated actors can do when handed power.