Technology

My work mandated we use the copilot. And the only thing I have found it really good at is converting or extracting information from a PDF to build me a spreadsheet. The native conversion programs in both Adobe and Excel suck so bad.

I have some suppliers who won't send a spreadsheet or CSV nothing that is data, only a PDF.

It's a stupid and computationally expensive way to do it but does solve a problem for me, a problem that doesn't need to exist at all but has frustrated me for years.

Two birds, one stone. I can honestly say to my boss that I am using the copilot for work, and it's a workaround for the insufficient reporting I get from our payroll provider in particular, but also some bulk invoices that are detailed and only come as PDF.

So yes I am in this group. I've only used it for file type conversion, and once to "write" a process document just so it would be formatted in Word, I went in and wrote over most of it.

Wow, terrible news that companies that use ai are completely fcking themselves over. Whatever will we do to save the selfish prcks?

If my boss would mandate the use of LLMs I would definitely abuse it to rack up the bill.

Really? Been a minute since I have done a presentation, but:

Pandoc PDF to Markdown.

Markdown to paste into your favorite HTML presentation tool.

Nobody is stupid enough to still use Powerpoint right? Right?

Reminds me of companies getting their cloud computing bills.

a big source of AI token ‘chewing’ is people just converting PDFs to presentations

I haven't been this happy in over a year.

The funny thing is that even with this massive overspending, AI companies aren't profitable. They need these companies to spend 10x the amount per token, and 10x the number of tokens. Probably 10x the number of customers too.

Burning energy, draining water, spending massive cash so they can lose money on a product that doesn't even do its job. How the hell has the bubble not popped yet...

Switching from human labor to AI is like going straight to a unionized workforce, except it's not a collection of reasonable human beings with human needs, it's a well funded machine with only exponential profit in mind

Ooh, I think I'll start using CoPilot to do basic math and unit conversions in addition to doing them the correct way. Then I can note in my goals & reviews how I have been utilizing the AI resource and keeping tabs on its advancement.

• Replace workforce with AI because it's easy to be lazy with AI.
• Remaining workforce uses AI to be lazy.
• SurprisedPikachu.webp

This is 100% the thesis I've been shopping personally... Many Boomers and Xers in executive positions had a "magical millennial" that they quietly kept as a secret "AI" to split/edit PDFs, set up an Airtable base, add columns to a google doc, etc. There was a tacit, silent agreement in this symbiotic relationship for the bulk of the last 20 years - you'll make sure I don't look completely incompetent in tech matters and I'll backchannel on your behalf to senior leaders and people who "matter" to help you advance.

Gen AI essentially allows the laziest input, gives a half competent output that "feels" fine and has the bonus of telling the boomer/Xer that they are actually amazingly capable, and could have done this themselves all along even, but they rightly delegated the task to their magical millennial, and now to the AI of choice.

So they fired all the magical millennials, because they knew too much about the before times. Now that they are fucked without a life raft, costs soar and they will cling for dear life because they will be exposed otherwise.

Edit: through a twist of fate, the iPad kids grew up technically incapable and relied on the magical millenials as well. They could only offer praise and loyalty really, or a boomer, Xer recruited them in and talked the MM up as a "wiz" to seek out. Anyway, now that the MM are gone, the Zoomers and gen Alpha kids only have one strength remaining, the old people have no idea what they are doing or how to quantify their success, outside of "use more AI". So the fragile balance remains for now, with a vulnerable, hollow center where the magical millennials used to live.

This is the most profitable consultant in the world, can't they just afford to run a local llm?

Eat shit you greedy corporate assholes, i hope all of your companies are damaged beyond recovery, you useless fucking tools.

that came after Uber told employees to use AI as much as possible and Uber’s CTO said the company had blown its entire AI budget in four months

AI is about to join the list of "stupid technologies that people should really wait and see before investing on", which includes

• 3D TVs - complete dud
• Blockchain - useless for real world problems already solved by typical computing
• Metaverse - still one of the best jokes around
• Folding screen phones - overpriced junk
• Fully autonomous self driving cars - "Just around the corner" for the past 10 years