Yeah, anyone in Canada has seen AI image ads and AI video ads on youtube purporting to feature or include prominent Canadian politicians (current PM and party leaders). Youtube seems to have just wholesale given up on moderating their ad content.
> You gotta ask yourself whether we really want a society where people have to already know the job before they get their first job. Where everyone is like a doctor: already decided at age 16 that this was the path they wanted to follow, choosing classes towards that goal, and sticking with it until well into adulthood. And they have to essentially pay to get this job, because it comes at at cost of exploring other things (as well as actual money to live).
With the way higher-ed works in the US, and the way certain schools opportunity hoard to an insane degree, that is effectively already the case for whole industries and has been so for decades at this point. It's practically an open secret that getting into some schools is the golden ticket rather than the grades you earn while there. Many top schools are just networking and finishing schools for whole "elite" industries.
If software engineers want to be referred to as "engineers" then they should actually learn about engineering failures. The industry and educational pipeline (formal and informal) as a whole is far more invested in butterfly chasing. It's immature in the sense that many people with decades of experience are unwilling to adopt many proven practices in large scale engineering projects because they "get in the way" and because they hold them accountable.
Surely you mean managers, right? Most developers I interact with would love to do things the right way, but there's just no time, we have to chase this week's priority!
The amount of money in US politics and elections in particular is staggering when you think about it. In 15 weeks Kamala Harris' campaign spent $1.5 billion. That's just insane. Especially when you find out that a lot of that spend goes through "media consultancies" and PR firms...run by former DNC staffers. And the same is true for the RNC. The two parties are basically a giant revolving door and network of jobs with access to this enormous slush fund.
Here in France the presidential candidates who make it to the second round are limited to spending €22.5 million over the course of the entire campaign (first and second rounds). About half gets reimbursed from public funds, so you 'only' need to raise about €10-12 million. Hard limits on campaign donations (about €4K) mean big money impacts the race less, and limits on advertising means you don't have to spend it on TV ads or direct mail.
Spending $1.5 billion on a campaign (and still losing) is near unfathomable.
It does seem like a lot of money, but distributed across all Americans it's not that insane. Americans spend approximately the same on election ads as on chewing gum.
The first thing an American politician does after winning an election is start fundraising for their next election. Governing would be an afterthought were it not so helpful in raising money.
Your post sounds conspiratorial but there are basic economic reasons why those revolving doors seem to exist.
Every campaign is going to need largely the same set of skill sets in their campaign staff. Spinning up these groups and also going through the startup time of any new team learning to work together costs a lot of time and money.
So several of these standard skill sets, like data science, marketing, etc have been spun out into companies or consulting firms that are treated like a pool of available resources by campaigns based on their party.
It’s not treated as a slush fund and there’s usually a handful of competitors in your parties pool but you do end up working with a lot of the same faces at different clients/campaigns if you work at one of the servicing companies.
I worked at one of them once and I recall realizing that fact when I asked why a coworkers email had numeral in his name when he had a relatively uncommon first and last name
Well, you hear a lot about how AI will "empower" employees and generate new "insights" based off of data for analysts and execs. In reality, most executives aren't really interested in that. They'd like it for sure, but really what they want is automation. They want "efficiencies"; they want cost cutting.
Anyone that's been involved in data science roles in corporate environments knows that "the data" is usually forced into an execs pre-existing understanding of a phenomenon. With AI, execs are really excited at "cutting out the middlemen" when the middlemen in the equation are very often their own paid employees. That's all fine and dandy in an abstract economic view, but it's sure something they won't say publicly (at least most won't).
In terms of potential cost cutting, it probably is the most recent "new magic". You used to have to pay a consultant, now you can "ask AI".
Every AI company is probably desperately trying to become the next "ad industry." AI is just another conduit for mass data vacuuming for "targeted" advertisements. Or they're trying to become a defense contractor.
This is true. Also, over time, well-usable but not exactly the best looking can become the "standard" for good-looking after a while because the design becomes so ubiquitous. You could easily make a beautiful or good looking suite of airplane controls (call it a "rebrand"), but most pilots would probably call it disgusting because it violates the common standards and aesthetics that they rely on.
If anything, "yellow journalism" has been the norm. Being a journalist used to be a step above parasite and ambulance chaser in popular opinion. You didn't need a college degree, let alone an Ivy league degree like today, to do it. Most papers were blatant mouthpieces of owners or certain political parties. Everyone knew that. "Objectivity" was laughed at by reporters.
That shifted with Watergate, which, afterwards, journalism began to have a certain prestige as "crusading truth seekers." Journalists doubled down on that view, cultivated it, and began to believe in it. Nowadays, journalism (at least in major markets) is more about prestige and access to power. Some journalists have a complex and believe that they have the access to the truth, leading to much handwringing about its "professionalism".
In reality, journalism is closer to writing in a journal after a party: they just offer accounts of events. That we expect better from them is, in part, a creation of their own making that is now starting to bite them in the ass.
I'm sympathetic to your reasoning, and I actually think your conclusion about how people wfh is probably true (a minority finding it wildly more productive) but the problem I see is that most execs don't understand what a lot of their employees do on a day to day basis, nor do I think they could properly understand the data even if they had it as a result. And, if they did have it, why don't they show it if the conclusions are so self evident?
In reality I think it's much simpler: the work that executives (and some upper level managers) do relies on a certain amount of theater. They need to be seen (in person) and they to be seen doing work (in person). That's part of the "deal" with being an exec --- you need to be able to act the part. Then, they just assume that's how it should or needs to be for everyone else.
The interesting thing is that "Darwinism" will sort it out for us in the long run. If the execs are right: more work gets done in the office, those companies will do better; if people are happier and more productive at home, those companies will tend to do better.
reply