I wouldn't underestimate the anxiety it's causing.

Most of my social circle are non-technicial. A lot of people have had a difficult time with work recently, for various reasons.

The global economic climate feels very precarious, politics is ugly, people feel powerless and afraid. AI tends to come up in the "state of the world" conversation.

It's destroying friends' decade old businesses in translation, copywriting and editing. It's completely upturned a lot of other jobs, I know a lot of teachers and academics, for example.

Corporate enthusiasm for AI is seen for what it actually is, a chance to cut head count.

I'm into AI, I get value out of it, but decision makers need to read the room a bit better. The vibe in 2025 is angry and scared.

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surgical_fire 10 hours ago | parent [-]

> Corporate enthusiasm for AI is seen for what it actually is, a chance to cut head count

I mean, it is the reason why the usual suspects push it so aggressively. The underclasses much always be pushed down.

It's mostly bullshit, on most areas LLMs cannot reliably replace humans. But they embrace it because the chance that it might undermine labor is very seductive.

	▲	acdha 9 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Even if it doesn’t replace humans, simply having the prospect looming allows them to lower pay and deter people from asking for better working conditions.
	▲	spacemadness 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Instead of taking time to understand how it may be effective, a lot of leadership decided immediately that people could take on double the work they were doing or more right out the gate as long as they use AI. I’ve seen people driven to tears in this environment right now from stress due to overwork. Everyone in my org was either burnt out or soon to be. And that overwork is from managers demanding more and more without any data to back up exactly how much more is reasonable. Then you get these types on HN calling people luddites for having strong opinions and anxieties as if it’s only ever about the technology itself and not the effect it has on actual people in a cutthroat capitalist system. That’s exactly the sort of thing that brought the term “tech bro” into the limelight.