‘It just creates more work’: Singaporean employee says AI is ‘nowhere near as good as bosses think it is’ - Singapore News

SINGAPORE: There has been no shortage of headlines, LinkedIn posts, and workplace presentations warning that artificial intelligence is coming for everyone’s jobs. From tech workers and administrators to customer service staff, employees are constantly being told that AI will soon be capable of doing what humans do, only faster and cheaper.

However, one Singaporean employee is not buying into the hype.

Posting on the r/asksg forum on Wednesday (Jun 3), the worker said they are becoming increasingly frustrated with the endless claims that AI is on the verge of replacing large numbers of employees. In their view, the reality inside many workplaces looks very different from the glossy promises being made by executives and consultants.

“Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I’m getting tired of hearing ‘AI will replace jobs’ every other week,” they wrote. “AI is nowhere near as good as bosses think it is.”

They then shared, “My company has been pushing AI quite heavily. Every meeting somehow comes back to AI. All departments are expected to use AI. We’re all expected to ‘embrace AI.’”

The problem, however, is that the technology itself does not appear nearly as revolutionary as management makes it out to be.

The employee said the AI tools being rolled out across the company still make far too many mistakes to be trusted on their own.

“Half the time we’re still manually checking its work,” they said, adding that there are occasions when the system produces completely wrong answers.

“It misses obvious details and creates more work because we have to fix its mistakes. And whenever we point this out, management’s response is basically: ‘It’s still improving.’Okay, but then why are employees being told they can be replaced by something that’s still being developed?”

“Maybe AI will eventually get there, I don’t know, but right now, it feels like companies are treating AI as both the future that will replace workers and a work-in-progress that still needs workers to constantly babysit it. Am I the only one seeing this contradiction?”

“Your way of thinking is totally wrong.”

In the discussion thread that followed, quite a few users said they could relate to the original poster’s frustrations.

One user argued that many managers are simply following the trend without fully understanding the technology themselves.

“That’s the problem.  A lot of bosses only ‘think’ AI is great because their fellow bosses tell them it is. I, for one, work in a company where the bosses have no idea how AI works. They are all cluelessly telling staff to use/implement AI without knowing what it really is.”

“It’s a recipe for disaster that has already happened twice before in two previous dot.com booms, but now even worse due to the haemorrhage of real human talent thanks to AI so competently taking over our jobs.”

Another user said, “Those who are retrenching workers already know that; they’re merely using it as a legitimate excuse to get rid of the people they’ve always wanted to get rid of. Ground staff think management are fools, but they’re just shrewd.”

However, others in the thread pushed back on that view.

One told him, “Your way of thinking is totally wrong. AI doesn’t replace ‘a person.’ It can replace maybe 10-50% of the work a person does, depending on what job you’re talking about. So this means one employee can now do things faster or increase output/productivity by 30%, maybe.”

Another remarked, “AI definitely improves efficiency and output of skilled workers. Companies might be able to cut a few jobs due to the increased output of a few workers.”

A third added, “No contradiction. AI will replace fresh graduates because it’s still better than having to deal with some hormonal 20-year-old. It will still need experienced hires to shepherd it along until it improves enough to do better than the experienced. Over time, it will do better than the 5-year employee than the 10-year one.”

In other news, a man has shared online that his sister and brother-in-law have been keeping their distance from his parents after they allegedly demanded an “extravagant Guo Da Li package”, complete with large angbaos, during the couple’s wedding preparations.

In a post published on the r/askSingapore subreddit on Monday (May 11), the man explained that his family used to get along very well with his sister’s husband before wedding planning began.

Read more: Man says his parents demanded ‘extravagant Guo Da Li’ from brother-in-law, now he refuses to let them see his sister: ‘You sold your daughter off’

- Advertisement -