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A comment on IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI News. Parent comment

Re:IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI... by realusername on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @06:07AM (#35785373)
The irony of that is they are probably going to use AI services of competitors to do that despite pioneering the marketing on it for years, thus closing the loop.
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Re:IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI... by anonylizard on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @06:09AM (#35785388)
There's nothing ironic about it. They invested only in the marketing of AI, but not in the serious R&D of it, pretty sure internally they never believed in their own AIs. Plus they got the publicity benefit from Watson, which is important for a consulting company.
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Re:IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI... by OscarTheGrinch on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @06:45AM (#35785627)
IBM had / has an army of sales types running around trying to insert Watson into health care, always reminded me of the Dick Jones character from Robocop trying to pedal the fundamentally flawed ED-209: "I had a guaranteed military sale with ED209! Renovation program! Spare parts for 25 years! Who cares if it worked or not!"

Such an ethically questionable decision, trying to push unproven / non-functional tech into life or death decision making.

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Re:IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI... by dagw on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @06:52AM (#35785678)
trying to insert Watson into health care

They were trying to insert Watson into everything. I used to work at a company that worked with building management systems and we had Watson sales people all over our senior managers trying to get 'collaboration' projects going.

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Re:IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI... by ThenAsNow on Wednesday May 03, 2023 @08:46PM (#35809868)
Not usually in this habit, but really needed to commend you bringing in not only Robocop, not just stopping with Dick Jones, but including his quote as well. This really made my day.

Signed, A fan of Robocop as dystopic corporatocracy preview

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Re:IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI... by OscarTheGrinch on Thursday May 04, 2023 @02:08AM (#35811760)
Thanks!

"Always seize the opportunity to take a divebomb shit on corporate malfeasance through the medium of film quotes." - Wesley Snipes, Passenger 57

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Re:IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI... by jillesvangurp on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @07:07AM (#35785772)
Their in house stuff is mostly based on OSS anyway. There isn't a whole lot of IBM proprietary tech that they have to bring to the table anyway. I wouldn't be surprised to see them do some acquisitions to buy some street credibility though.
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