https://fedscoop.com/nnsa-ai-job-cuts-labor-impact/
Nuclear agency’s top IT official says AI gains will lead to workforce cuts
During an event Thursday, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s CIO said he wants to spend money as efficiently as possible.
Huh? How will that work, so far the NNSA labs are just getting bigger and bigger with more overheard non-technical staff, less productivity, and less efficiency,...way less efficiency. The bureaucracy is fighting back and appears to be winning. Has AI done anything?
5 comments:
I'm all for it because LANL is absolutely getting murdered by the bloat and inefficiency of the 80% of the lab that exists only to collect a paycheck and slow all progress to a virtual standstill. However, I'll believe it when I see it because it's currently unfathomable that Mason will ever cut lab bloat. The whole place is organized around the principle of maximum inefficiency and maximum employment of worthless paper pushers, accountants, procurement, compliance, facilities, management and endless other roles that can be easily automated today. If you take that away, all you have left is science, engineering and production, and we all know that that mission is way down on the bottom of the list of lab priorities. Sure, they could theoretically fire 30 to 50% of lab parasites and replace them with people conducting actual science, engineering and operations, but that would cause a political revolt amongst the NM establishment and lab GOCO management is nothing if not a political operator. Plus, the cultural shift would be enormous. The lab literally exists today to get nothing done. Asking the existing management to flip that around 180 degrees is like asking a koala to become a vicious predator, hunting big game for meat. Wrong animal for the job.
It seems like at least at LANL the inefficiency has increased substantially over the last 4-5 years with a big burst in the last 2 years. Everyone is complaining about it now. It seems like lot of this is that it is getting very hard to get hold of people. If you order something it takes forever to get a response. If some form needs clarification you can never get hold of the person do help you. There seems to be more meetings now where nothing is said, just some managers saying, "yes we know something is wrong but do the best you can". I think there was a big push to get more people to work offsite to make room for the new PIT workers. The issue is once they are offsite they also vanish can you cannot get stuff done. I have been at LANL for 32 years with all its ups and downs. We are not in up or down phase but in sort of frozen state. Lots of talk of AI but no results on AI so far nothing improvements. There has been a bit of science at the labs on AI but it pales in comparison to the results now bing seen in broader scientific community.
Yeah, LANL can't do AI, that's a fiction. The private sector, universities and other labs are way too far ahead. Our system is too slow to ever catch up and it's not conducive to fast paced innovation. It can take 2 or 3 years to get an idea funded, by which time somebody else did it or something better. Also, we don't have large data sets like private companies do. We should use AI to do our core work like everybody else, but the idea of LANL being an AI leader is a pipe dream.
I would like to see if AI can improve anything. It is interesting that services at LANL are just so poor. A huge amount of the buildings have major issues and there seems to be no way to fix them. Badge readers do not work, some places have major mold, leaky roofs and wild animals yet nothing ever gets fixed. I know AI cannot fix a room but it could speed up the paper work to get it done, yet it seems like things are just getting slower in the last couple of years for everything.
I doubt AI can replace other work at LANL that is so important to keeping lots of people employed. At the very least we could keep paying the same people to do nothing but AI to help out elsewhere. I amazed how hard it get hold of people offsite people and many of the service people are offsite.
More are not working offsite, if you ask for some form and some paper work done, you can never get hold of the people and they do not respond to emails. Many of these are very simple things. My favorite is sometimes you can get hold of them on the phone and you have to do the work for them. They are clearly at home as you can hear the ice crushing and blender on liquid flowing. Maybe they are making a smoothie while working or maybe a Margarita.
As for the indirect people that do work on site you, many come in at 10am and leave at 3.0pm and never show up on a Friday. The managers cannot really do anything because in reality you have no one to replace them. The place has just become increasingly weird over time.
We have the same phenomenon at LLNL.
Half the people do meaningless "busy" work.
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