His blunt, brash scepticism has made the podcaster and writer something of a cult figure. But as concern over large language models builds, he’s no longer the outsider he once was
Oh, c’mon - have you EVER tried managing people? They’re a pain in the ass: expensive, unpredictable, needy beyond just the money they demand. Of course dimwit managers would rather outsource their people jobs to a service company wherever and whenever they can, let the service company do all that messy people-management.
What they’re missing is: those outsourcing service providers, even the ones providing AI “workers”, are themselves made possible by, staffed with: people. Your outsourcing bills are ultimately paying for: people. Once they become dependent upon these outsourced service providers, guess what? Their billing rates will go up and up and up right up to the point that it’s almost tempting to stop paying the service provider and just: hire their own people to do the work.
Oh, c’mon - have you EVER tried managing people? They’re a pain in the ass: expensive, unpredictable, needy beyond just the money they demand. Of course dimwit managers would rather outsource their people jobs to a service company wherever and whenever they can, let the service company do all that messy people-management.
What they’re missing is: those outsourcing service providers, even the ones providing AI “workers”, are themselves made possible by, staffed with: people. Your outsourcing bills are ultimately paying for: people. Once they become dependent upon these outsourced service providers, guess what? Their billing rates will go up and up and up right up to the point that it’s almost tempting to stop paying the service provider and just: hire their own people to do the work.
Worth the time to read: https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-03-18-asbestos-in-the-walls-government-by-spicy-autocomplete-ff437603809c