IBM Embraces a Younger Hot Number. Tough Luck, Watson, You Old Dog, You
May 12, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
That outstanding newspaper, The New York Post, published “IBM Pauses Hiring for 7,800 Jobs Because They Could Be Performed by AI.” The story picks up where the dinobaby tale ends. As you may recall, IBM decided that old timers could train contractors and then head to the old age home. The evictees were dubbed “dinobabies.” As a former supplier to IBM, I eagerly adopted the moniker and use an anigif to illustrate how spritely a dinobaby can be.
The new approach to work at IBM, according to the estimable newspaper, is smart software, not smart software elder uncle. The article states:
Krishna said that the company will either slow down or altogether suspend hiring for so-called “back office” functions such as human resources.
Back office functions is not defined. Perhaps it will include [a] junior and mid level programmers, [b] customer facing engineers who do Zoom type calls demonstrating sympathy and technical skills in looking up information in Big Blue’s proprietary technical databases, [c] some annoying MBAs who churn out slide decks and viewpoints about how to make IBM young again, and [d] non essential personnel like expensive old lawyers, assorted strategic planners working on the old money machines like the mainframes, and annoying design professionals who want to add L.E.D.s to IBM’s once speed champion super computers.
But whose AI will Big Blue embrace? My hunch is that it will be a combination of the forward forward technology employed by a few renegade researchers who embraced Google methods and open source software which could be dressed up with a RedHat business model. You may have a different idea. I am sticking with mine, thank you, until IBM reveals its new, rejuvenated self after a weekend in the Bahamas with its new bestie or is it best-ai?
Who says you can teach an old dog how to do an old trick with a new bone? Not me. And Watson? Who?
Stephen E Arnold, May 12, 2013
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