A long CNBC report launches thealarm on working conditions and the treatment of professionals working in the field ofartificial intelligence in the main technology companies, but not only.
The race to develop new artificial intelligence services would be touching a faster pace than ever and, in several cases, it seems to have taken a turn recklessin what could be defined as “to all intents and purposes”the chasing syndrome at OpenAI“.
According to the testimonials from many industry insidersa good chunk of the work would be dedicated to feed something to investors, rather than creating useful services capable of solving end users’ problems. Furthermore, the companies would be carrying out projects without worrying about the effects about climate change, people’s privacy and other potential risks.
All this would be leading many AI service developers to experience the so-called “burnout”, i.e. a very strong condition of stress. To illustrate the current trend among Big Tech, CNBC tells the story of an (anonymous) Amazon engineer who, towards the end of last year, after a week of work, was preparing to spend time with some friends out of town.
A message on Slack at the end of Friday ruined all his plans: a project had to be delivered by 6 am on Monday. Having canceled the trip out of town – and working day and night – the engineer managed to put together what was requested, but in the end that project was shelved, without too many explanations.
This would not be an isolated case: those in charge of shaping new AI services would be asked to push the accelerator to create new features that are often then suddenly put asidein favor of a frenetic move to another project.
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At the top of companies it would reign the fear of losing ground on the competitionfor this reason there would be a frenzy that grinds everything, first and foremost people. Increasingly tighter deadlines, chasing announcements from rivals and a general lack of hesitation about the impact of some solutions on the real world would beputting a strain on industry professionalsso much so that some of them would have started looking around and chosen to abandon the divisions dealing with AIdue to a pace deemed “unsustainable”.
According to the aforementioned Amazon engineer, those at the top seem to do things just to “tick a box” and speed, rather than quality, would be the priority while trying to recreate Microsoft or OpenAI products.
Amazon, contacted by CNBCsaid it is “focused on building and implementing useful, reliable and safe generative AI innovations that reinvent and improve the customer experience” and that it is supporting its employees to “realize those innovations. It is inaccurate and misleading to use the anecdote of a single employee to describe the experience of all Amazon employees working in AI,” the spokesperson said.
Eric Gu, a former Apple employee who has worked for about four years on AI initiatives, including the Vision Pro headset, said that towards the end of his time at the company he felt trapped.
“Apple is a very product-focused company, so there There’s a lot of pressure to be productive immediately, start shipping products, and contribute features” said Gu, regretting that although he was surrounded by “brilliant people”, he did not have the time to learn from them. “It all came down to the pace at which he felt he needed to deliver and execute” said Gu, who left Apple a year ago.
An AI engineer at Microsoftalso anonymous, believes thatthe company has chosen to focus everything on speedwhich would have led her to make hasty launches without sufficiently caring about the consequences.
A member of Google’s AI team said that burnout is the result of competitive pressure, tight schedules and lack of resources, in particular budget and personnel. Many Big Techs have publicly stated that they will direct a large part of their resources towards AI, but this rarely translates into an increase in staff.
The CNBC report is touching also different realities from the big giants. A researcher at a government agency, for example, said he felt difficult to keep up.
“Many times you are asked to provide a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist with a tool you don’t want to use” Kolman, an independent software engineer, told CNBC.
The word of the moment is “artificial intelligence” and therefore everything must be traced back to that term, capable of magically making investors open their wallets. In this regard, the Microsoft engineer recalled an episode in which one of his colleagues proposed an algorithm, which did not involve generative AI, to solve a particular problem. The solution, while better, would be cast aside in favor of a less efficient, more expensive, and slower one that he used for a large language model.
The testimonies collected by CNBC paint a picture a less than idyllic picture of the sector. While it would be nice for the AI revolution to take place in an orderly and satisfactory way for everyone, we shouldn’t “fall out of the woods” either: epochal changes often cause upheavals and cause deaths and injuries.
Furthermore, it should not be forgotten that we are talking about the United States, the home of capitalism and competition: tight work paces are the order of the day, especially in Silicon Valley, so it’s not too surprising if the situation has become even tougher.
You just have to decide whether or not to play the game. A game that certainly could be managed better, but it will take time for the sector to adjust its game. And for those who don’t adapt, perhaps there is a solution, even if they don’t like it: it’s called artificial intelligence and, Devin, just one example.
