Comment by jimnotgym | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jimnotgym | Hacker News Reader

In a discussion yesterday about a large and complex physical system that is hard to optimise further without more work for it to do (lots of excess capacity), the VP suggested we should 'consider how emergent technologies could be leveraged to decrease overhead'. It is a clever way to say, I have no ideas either, but if a better machine that hasn't been invented yet becomes available we should use that'. I say 'clever', because the other execs nodded in approval, and agreed. From other conversations I have had with him I was just glad he didn't say 'AI' as per usual, although I am in two minds as to whether he did actually mean AI, but thought he had said it too many times in the last week. I'm not popular because I ask difficult things like, what kind of AI?

Bullshit is so dangerous because it could mean something. That VP could mean, it's time to look beyond the set of mature technologies we've been considering and look at newer technologies that we would normally ignore because they come with risks and rough edges and higher cost of ownership.

So it might be a substantive decision that affects how everybody in the room will do their jobs going forward. Or it could be a random stream of words chosen because they sound impressive, which everyone will nod respectfully at and then ignore. And like an LLM, he might have made it into his current position without needing to know the difference.

Correct, and in my opinion we seem to have a cutting edge machine, the best available. So it was BS. What was really troubling them is that for years the operational delivery part of the business has saved everyone else by finding more and more effiencies. I had stated that it was no longer cost effective to spend the money on the diminishing returns of squeezing tiny %s more out of it. The room took on a complete silence, because their strategy (of leaving it to someone else) has gone. Much harder tasks, what goes through the machine, how it is sold, need to come to the fore... and that is terrifying for people who PowerPoint for a living... so instead, they break the silence with BS, nod, pretend it's not happening.

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