Mastodon user William posted the link to the CNBC article about the AI gold rush and the “pressure to roll out AI tools at breakneck speed” that is now defining the engineers jobs.
Hayden Field reporting for CNBC:
They say that much of their work is assigned to appease investors rather than to solve problems for end users, and that they are often chasing OpenAI.
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Burnout is an increasingly common theme as AI workers say their employers are pursuing projects without regard for the technology’s effect on climate change, surveillance and other potential real-world harms.
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Late last year, an artificial intelligence engineer at Amazon was wrapping up the work week and getting ready to spend time with some friends visiting from out of town. Then, a Slack message popped up. He suddenly had a deadline to deliver a project by 6 a.m. on Monday.
There went the weekend. The AI engineer bailed on his friends, who had traveled from the East Coast to the Seattle area. Instead, he worked day and night to finish the job.But it was all for nothing. The project was ultimately “deprioritized,” the engineer told CNBC. He said it was a familiar result. AI specialists, he said, commonly sprint to build new features that are often suddenly shelved in favor of a hectic pivot to another AI project.
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They spoke of accelerated timelines, chasing rivals’ AI announcements and an overall lack of concern from their superiors about real-world effects, themes that appear common across a broad spectrum of the biggest tech companies — from Apple to Amazon to Google.
AI engineers at big tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are definitely feeling the heat. These folks are often pushed to their limits, giving up weekends and personal time to meet crazy deadlines. The pressure is intense, driven by an industry race to outpace the competition and keep investors happy.
One engineer dished on how he bailed on personal plans to grind through the weekend, only to see his project get sidelined. Welcome to the AI world, where shiny new features get ditched for the next big thing.
Engineers are cranking out thousands of lines of code in error-prone environments, leading to midnight SOS calls to fix broken software.
The industry trend? It’s all about keeping investors smiling and staying ahead of rivals, often at the expense of solving real-world problems and user needs.
Tech workers report a shift towards rapid rollouts and updates, usually without enough training or understanding of the AI systems they’re building.
This relentless pace is leading to burnout, as employees juggle long hours and constantly shifting goals.
And let’s not forget the darker side of this gold rush. Concerns about surveillance, AI’s environmental impact, and other ethical issues often get swept under the rug in the mad dash for dominance.
