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by nlpnerd·6d ago·view on hn ↗
From a recent article in The Economist. It turns out that once again many of the jobs that people predicted would be eliminated by AI have instead received a boost, at least for now. This closely follows another recent report on how Indian BPO firms are surprisingly thriving due to AI.

"Moreover, AI is helping offshore workers in the Philippines do new, more complex jobs. They are picking up work training AI models or supervising AI agents. Hospitals in America are increasingly outsourcing the checking of insurance eligibility and filing of medical records to Filipinos packing AI tools. Mr Gallimore says more “high-value” work, such as accountancy or engineering, is going offshore in part because “AI is a leveller. You can now teach someone complex stuff quickly” and still get it done more cheaply than in America or Europe. Some of this is done at so-called global capability centres, captive back offices that are booming in India and also now growing in the Philippines."

It seems like AI has incidentally commoditized the complement (procedural knowledge), and in turn created greater demand for inputs like human judgement and "empathy".

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> It seems like AI has incidentally commoditized the complement (procedural knowledge), and in turn created greater demand for inputs like human judgement and "empathy".

I think as well there is currently the following: AI still needs an operator, in the same way than a bulldozer needs a bulldozer operator. And like with bulldozer, there are always something that business stakeholder wanna dig, now that digging is faster.

“Hospitals in America are increasingly outsourcing the checking of insurance eligibility and filing of medical records to Filipinos packing AI tools. Mr Gallimore says”

How is this HIPPA compliant? Please tell me there’s an aspect of HIPPA that requires sensitive data to be only accessed and processed by Americans on shore. You’d think the multiples we pay on health care for worse outcomes would at least be supporting our own domestic middle class with this sort of basic back office white collar work

This is already common for both HIPAA and financial data, it usually comes down to the offshoring site meeting compliance guidelines and functioning like a "clean room" with data leak prevention in place

Also though, I don't think there is anything inherently less secure about a Filipino handling my data than an America

I visited India recently and when I saw just how many companies have a GCC there I was mindblown. Lots of cool offices, engineering and technical roles, great work life balance and generally a different vibe. Literally every company that I could recognise had a back office there.
Do these GCC's have great work life balance? They may be better that the service companies, and may pay better, but WLB is shitty everywhere in India as far as I can tell. As an example, the death of Ernest & Young employee Anna Sebastian sparked a lot of discussion in Indian media since it was attributed to work pressure.[1] Another example I recently heard was a USA Texas based company called CorroHealth suddenly closing shop and laying off 800+ employees in India, the employees allege it was retaliation for asking for overtime payment since they were being made to work till 10 pm.[2]

If you are an American or European with colleagues in India, and if they are working or attending meetings after regular work hours, they don't have good WLB. Given a choice, I doubt they would want to attend the late night meetings. Life in India is already like playing a video game in hard mode, and yet we have to work lot more hours for lot less pay, and be regularly told how shitty offshoring work is.

[1]https://www.news18.com/viral/26-year-old-ey-pune-employee-su...

[2]https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/it-employe...

> but WLB is shitty everywhere in India as far as I can tell

This was what I believed, then I saw how pretty much ALL of my friends at Fortune 100s or 500s and they were amazing. I am sure awful companies exist and the bar for what is good WLB can be lowered by these, but the whole "it is bad everywhere" was simply not true and I felt I had a distorted vision of my Indian friends until I actually visited a lot of them.

My so works at a reinsurance company in one of these GCCs, and her WLB is unmatched. Hours are really flexible. Has a really great manager and team. She even gets to take a day off every month as menstrual leave.

> work lot more hours for lot less pay,

This depends, while the vast majority of roles pay "market rate" there is a strange sweet spot where roles pay a significant amount considering purchasing power and cost of living.

WLB is truly awful in India. People are stretched and stressed out at work, in addition to awful civic conditions which makes travelling to and from work a nightmare. I am not sure how long this can continue.
It does depend on the company and your role. Working a senior role at a FAANG in India is much nicer than junior roles in the local WITCHes (Wipro Infosys etc), which are notorious for their crap salaries and shitty labour practices.
Please don't take me wrong, but FAANG is like not even 0.00001% of Indian labour. Outside of may be the FAANG (have doubts about Amazon), pretty much all companies are bad, even the American or European GCCs don't seem to be good. Note that I am not thinking just about IT - banks, police all seem to have terrible work cultures.
Yes, fair point.
Will we have good civic sense, streets and road culture before we get old? I can only hope.

From https://theprint.in/opinion/indias-poor-little-rich-people/2...

"The purpose of life of an Indian is to escape India, it can either be done by leaving India physically or figuratively by shifting to a gated community. Once the Indian escapes India, India becomes the best country in the world & requires no improvement".

"By walling themselves away, India’s rich secede from society. If the elites don’t use public services, there is less pressure on the state to improve them."

I presume they organized some cringe dances and cultural programme when GP visited, which might have led the GP to conclude that these people live great WLB.
What's a GCC?
Global capability centers where they basically do the business processes and work for US/EU companies for fraction the cost.
So basically like ghost kitchens for white-collar work, with an extra timezone difference?
Yes exactly like that.
TIL
What happened to 'BPO'? cool kids?
BPO means the US company is outsourcing to an Indian company. A Global Capability Center (GCC) means it's a US company subsidiary in India.
Thanks. Sounds like a good deal.
> so-called global capability centres, captive back offices that are booming in India ...
Thanks a lot!
> great work life balance

Oh dear

Yeah, paradoxically Indian software outsourcing is growing. I guess the way the companies are thinking about this is we need some sort of human oversight for all the work the LLMs are doing, might as well pay someone the least amount possible to do that.
Don't understand why this should not have been obvious. If you have technology that allows expensive workers to do things cheaper why wouldn't same technology allow cheaper workers to do stuff even cheaper... And cheap is good...
Can you explain why freelance writing and translation is being destroyed:

> https://researchprofiles.ku.dk/en/publications/winners-and-l...

Surely, AI helps them do stuff even cheaper, and cheap is good, so their business should be booming?

Cheaper price doesn't always lead to as large increase in demand. There is only so much writing and translation that is needed. So lowering price does not mean that same amount or more money is spend.

On other hand companies getting these services cheaper can mean that they have less pressure to increase prices.

I think whole Jevon's paradox is misapplied. More efficient use of coal leads to more use cases as they become profitable. Which there was lot of. With many other things like writing or translation there might not be more use cases.

I know a freelance translator and they have more business than ever, AI being "mostly" right is not good enough in many businesses. You need oversight and most importantly - accountability in the form of a human that can put their stamp of approval.
The stakes are low for freelance writing and the majority of functional translation. You don’t really need a human to be responsible or blame when something goes wrong, unless it’s official translation in which case people still use human translators.
Indian tech sector has seen rapid decline; the Indian outsourcing model is obsolete.

I can now translate tasks that can be easily split to low cost regions, and not have to deal with the cultural issues of India. I can also rapidly generate work of similar (and improving) quality... I have no use for a meat-proxy to a llm.

I expect a severe crash in the Indian tech sector, before a minute proportion of the workers can start to build it up again.

Sounds like wishful thinking rather than an on the ground reality.
I’m not sure if this is true. I really want the hiring story to be true, but the responses I am getting from people on the ground vs industry generated reports isn’t meeting up.

The only report that I know of that is available is the ICRIER report.

I haven’t read the report itself, but it’s supposed to show modest hiring growth.

Conversely I know that most of the outsourcing vendors are seeing reductions in headcount when it comes to outsourced tech operations.

> Hospitals in America are increasingly outsourcing the checking of insurance eligibility and filing of medical records to Filipinos packing AI tools

So, insurance claims are handled by people who operate in different legal system and by unaccountable undererministic system. And people are pressured to perform fast.

This is not about "automating complex task". This is about "create accountability sink for fraud we want them to do and create system that will perform said fraud".

The insurance company is still liable in US courts for products or services sold in the US, just like any other business is liable regardless of where or who does the work.

Also, pretty sure denial of coverage letters have to be endorsed by US licensed doctors and pharmacists, at least in any half decent state.

We have moved some "low cost" work from India to other reigons, now that translation is improved...

At the same time, we are reducing the proportion of outsourced work, because a local team with LLMs are dramatically more capable... There so many benefits to how you can organize a smaller high-skill team. I would put a 10-man team with the current tooling on par with a 10 high skill + 80 low cost heads even 5 years ago.

Ooph, now the AI will be wrong and the human won't know it. And that's running our... let me see... life saving care. Cool. cool. cool.
"Computer says no" has been a trope of terrible customer service long before AI.
"Computer says no" is about unhelpful bureaucracy. Being knowingly locked to a specific procedure and unwilling to divert from it is a different thing from mistakes being made that you are blissfully unaware of. The problem is now invisible and the patient is dying for no reason anyone can discern.
The "unhelpful bureaucracy" arises precisely because the process is structured so there's no point in the chain that can actually consider and solve your problem directly. The process is the point, outsourcing work to the opposite end of the globe has long been a perfect way to guarantee no it's robust against errors like "compassion" and "helpfulness", and that's as true of LLMs performing those functions tomorrow as it was of people doing it yesterday.
The people who say "computer says no" are also unaware that's a problem. It's invisible to them. To them the process is the point.

I think that two arent as different as you believe.

Well, possibly. To paraphrase the great American philosopher Donald Rumsfeld - there are known knowns, known unknowns, unknown knowns and unknown unknowns. And making the actual process a black box for the people managing it will create a lot more Unknown Unknowns.
Has anything really changed for transparency?
Your average devs are wrong more than the AI is at this point.
At a former job for a regional bank in South East Asia my boss used to joke that outsourcing is really great for the company, because now they can fail to deliver their software projects for cheaper.
This is not about development. This is about rubber stamping insurance denial by an unaccountable system.
If you sell something in the US, and a customer sues you, going to court and saying you are not accountable because the work was performed by someone in another jurisdiction is not going to go well for you.

The only time that works if you have no assets or presence in the US, or I guess you have an in with the US president.

It is about a.) avoiding criminal liabilities for frauds by the insurance company b.) facilitating desirable fraud by employees while keeping plausible deniality.

It is super hard to build class cast action and suing companies for denied insurance claims is also quite hard - and super expensive. Besides, the current management dont need it to go on forever, they just need it to go on for now. If company gets to pay fine 20 years later and you already pocketed the bonuses and salary, why would you care?