I thought this was an onion article until I checked the comments
AI consumes way too much electricity and requires too much human attention (ironically) to be a viable replacement for most jobs. It can do simple stuff, but it’s not ready to operate like a human in most cases.
Ah yes, Klarna. The proof that not everything is all right with Sweden. Proof that Nordic countries, too, are capable of incredibly dark things. …Do I need to continue?
Capitalistic assholes are everywhere. As long as you keep them in check, you can build a good system.
I assume you’re not from Scandinavia if you need Klarna as proof
I’m from Finland so technically not from Scandinavia. But yes, we do have multiple proofs of the strange and disturbing things happening in Sweden. Here, hardly a week goes by without someone asking “why is PostNord?”
You’re one of us then! ;)
But no, I just mean, between things like Northvolt, Think Pink, mines on Sami land etc it doesn’t take Klarna to show us that many things are amiss up here. And there are many crappy companies like Klarna; Lundin Energy and Embracer Group just to name a couple. IKEA destroying ancient forests.
Not to mention that Sweden is essentially a wealth haven ruled by old aristocrats and a few oligarchs.
I’m impressed we were able to maintain such a good reputation internationally. I guess the whole world just sucks!
Sweden is one of the main exporters of Neoliberalism outside of its own borders.
Tried explaining to a friend that works at Facebook. That the company is a failure. And I s basically just Ai accounts manipulating the dumbest of the population.
Didn’t work out for ya, did it? The weird thing is when people think incompetent business decisions are one more reason to hate AI.
workers should demand that the AI become the CEO, the President, and the Board of Directors’ supervisor.
For any change, AI or no, why would you take out part of your existing company before confirming that the new thing works for the new role?
Bc, “We were the first to do it” mentality!
“Move fast and break things!”
In that respect, I’m rather glad my employer is on the slow and steady side. Yeah, sure, they’re very much behind on some topics and just recently started catching up on others, but their cautious scepticism towards new tech has spared us some headaches. I’d rather take the frustration of not getting all the tools I’d like to have than the stress of “ooh, look, this new shiny thing is gonna replace that other system you just got used to!”
because for a short time this allows for wild speculation in your favour and you can collect your bonus and secure a higher paying job elsewhere before reality hits and someone else gets to clean the mess
Often even functional companies are in effect run by rank and file people paid almost nothing who know their particular aspects of the job very well. They are managed by people who as your rank rises know less and less about the actual work that makes the company run. This works fine when nothing major changes but when you ask people incapable of doing the job to make major strategic to the enterprise that they don’t understand shockingly it goes poorly.
Because they’re stupid and/or cheap. Remember the guys at the top usually got to their position through ass kissing or otherwise are bound to ass-kissers.
Now, the company says it imagines an “Uber-type of setup” to fill their ranks, with gig workers logging in remotely to argue with customers from the comfort of their own homes.
So they’re using their spectacular failure as a chance to exploit their new ‘employees’ via the gig economy.
Fuck them. They have learned nothing about respect or decency, and I hope they continue to crash and burn.
Loans for consumer products should be outlawed. Nothing good ever comes out of them.
So they’re using their spectacular failure as a chance to exploit their new ‘employees’ via the gig economy.
To the ruling class this was always the true lucrative appeal of A.I. and is precisely why they were willing to make such massive bets on a fundamentally broken technology.
The cherry on top is tech work used to be a threat to big businesses, especially big tech companies, because society considered tech work to be a respectable job. Big businesses/oligarchs saw this as an obstacle to destroying tech work as a decent paying career and A.I. was the perfect tool of propaganda to remove the obstacle because even most tech workers bought the lies hook line and sinker.
I stopped reading at Financial Tech startup. From that alone I know what kind of people we’re dealing with here.
Klarna? The usury company? The “preys on kids who failed the Algebra 2 test on interest” company?
Something about FinTech…it just attracts the worst possible people.
Because they’re people that produce nothing but still think they should be rich.
Klarna sucks balls. “We’re your friend! We help you buy things!*”
*APR 69%; yearly fee: Left limb. Firstborn children no longer accepted.
Oh my. I never experienced that high of an APR.
And how many of these Uberserfs will be located in developed countries making good salaries? None, you say?
Probably depends on the language in the target market, a lot of European languages are not that common in countries with cheap labor.
a classic parasite behavior
I hope whoever’s running that company gets cancer and dies.
Reverse onion. I thought this was satire at first.
That place banned me for calling out Israel and Jewish for supporting genocides. It’s not a serious place. It’s garbage.
Now, the company says it imagines an “Uber-type of setup” to fill their ranks, with gig workers logging in remotely to argue with customers from the comfort of their own homes.
Alternate headline: “Identity thieves salivating at prospects of gain unvetted positions at consumer financial company”
This seems to be a lie, there are no customer service positions available on Klarna’s career page.
They also have zero US based roles available. Canada and europe only.
Now, the company says it imagines an “Uber-type of setup” to fill their ranks, with gig workers logging in remotely to argue with customers from the comfort of their own homes.
They are likely hiring through an agency to avoid paying benefits
Collectively, we as people should stop utilizing a parasitic organization. Imagine corporations not giving jobs out yet expecting people to use their service/product.
Realistically they will hire someone in the dominican republic or some other nation with fairly neutral english accents on a call center farm who end up getting paid way under US minimum wage.
Tons of companies do this. Choice hotels, boost mobile… many many more.
Alternatively those gig workers will get paid even less than DR wages and be from far worse countries. Those DR call center farms literally do not allow you to bring any personal belongings onto the floor, or take anything from the floor. Way too easy to steal financial information if you can write it down somewhere. Now imagine gig workers who work remotely and how they could handle financial data… doesn’t seem feasible but maybe they have the liability angle figured out.
The buy-now-pay-later company had previously shredded its marketing contracts in 2023, followed by its customer service team in 2024, which it proudly began replacing with AI agents.
A few months after freezing new hires, Klarna bragged that it saved $10 million on marketing costs by outsourcing tasks like translation, art production, and data analysis to generative AI. It likewise claimed that its automated customer service agents could do the work of “700 full-time agents.”
As Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg, “cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor when organizing this, what you end up having is lower quality.”
Also, just want to recognize this gem:
Though executives in every industry, from news media to fast food, seem to think AI is ready for the hot seat — an attitude that’s more grounded in investor relations than an honest assessment of the tech — there are growing signs that robot chickens are coming home to roost.
Klarna: Fire Now, Pay Later.
Is it because they realized that you can’t pick on an LLM?
I’m sure the conclusion of this will be “AI bad” like usual when in reality a complete idiot with no understanding of AI was leading the project.
AI will replace part of our jobs whether people like it or not. But the CEO of the business is a moron so he did his special move and replaced people instead of tasks.
Every CEO thinks like this. CEOs are so incredibly bullish on AI BECAUSE they want to replace people and not tasks.
its no wonder the only clientele of AI are CEOs and csuites, and corporations, thats why they dont generate profit, because regular customers dont need it or want it, its not as useful as it seems.
AI of some kind will replace parts of our jobs, but LLM chatbots won’t except in some specific cases. This is just a hype bubble.
AI in the hands of moron CEOs is bad. (And they’re all morons)
LLMs can be useful in extremely limited circumstances. The problem is that idiots like this are going to use them to replace employees and consumers will receive worse products and services because of it.
