David Graeber's essay, "On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs," published in STRIKE! Magazine, provides a critical examination of the modern workforce and the proliferation of what he terms "bullshit jobs." These are roles that the individuals occupying them perceive as meaningless and unnecessary, contributing little to nothing to the betterment of society. Graeber explores the...
Tag: Automation
Is AI not so bad for the job market after all?
A recent study by MIT researchers meticulously examined the economic viability of automating tasks with computer vision AI, revealing a nuanced landscape. (Note that in the context of LLMs people often speak of multimodality, i.e., models that are able to handle other modalities such as images, audio, or video in a unified framework.) According to...
A Deep Dive into OpenAI’s ChatGPT and its Plugins
ChatGPT, the chatbot developed by OpenAI, is known for its ability to produce complex and eloquent texts. However, despite this performance, the generated texts can sometimes be incorrect or misleading in content. The chatbot’s processing is based on the probability distribution of words, without any real knowledge or understanding of the content. Its main function...
Ecommerce grows 32% in Q4 2020 in the U.S.
In 2020, ecommerce accounted for 75% of the gains in total retail sales in the U.S. This is mainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic that accelerated shifts in consumer shopping behavior. Merchants experienced tremendous growth rates in online commerce. For many merchants, the holiday season is where the make most of their money. During the...
It’s not Artificial Intelligence, it’s a new level of automation
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is probably the topic right now in computer science. There is a ongoing public discourse whether we’ll see machine overlords in the near future or not. People like Elon Musk spoke of regulating AI to make sure that the human race survives. If you look at the current state of AI and...
