Even if LLMs can't do everything yet, I have a feeling there is a malaise of wanting to do work in the tech industry.
Ask HN: How many jobs will AI eliminate? Which ones are safe?
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Re: Ask HN: How many jobs will AI eliminate? Which ones are safe?
#32Even if LLMs can't do everything yet, I have a feeling there is a malaise of wanting to do work in the tech industry.
Exactly! And i really want to find out how much of this is pure hype.
Re: Ask HN: How many jobs will AI eliminate? Which ones are safe?
#33As someone who believes AI will completely eliminate humans I wish I was could only be worried about job security. But to answer your question, AI will ultimately eliminate every job in the sense that if you believe AI will eventually be able do any task, and do it for cheaper than a human labourer, then there would be no reason for you to ever pay a human labourer. The best analogy here is probably how the industria…
I think it’s already having an effect on labor jobs too, and will continue to ramp. Not because of robots (but that will come soon enough), but because you can take a picture of leaky plumbing or a home maintenance task and upload it and ask for step by step directions on how to DIY. I’ve saved thousands doing this already this month alone.
How many people call a plumber, HVAC, or auto repairman because they don't want to fix it themselves vs don't know how to fix it?
Re: Ask HN: How many jobs will AI eliminate? Which ones are safe?
#34Can you honestly name a single billionaire who is going to be happy to share this supposed 'abundance'? They are going to use their capital to extract as much wealth as possible and they have no intention of letting the average person live out a comfortable life without working.
Age of abundance (for billionaires).
Re: Ask HN: How many jobs will AI eliminate? Which ones are safe?
#35Most of it is extrapolation. Yes, it'll triple productivity. But from what we've seen with frameworks etc, that just ends up creating jobs. We work more hours today than before the computers came in.
The other problem is the unfortunate naming. Nobody talks about Jetbrains taking coder jobs but it's essentially doing the same thing, allowing people write more lines of code with less typing. How many jobs were eliminated with Zapier or Pipedream? "AI" implies that it replaces a human.
Re: Ask HN: How many jobs will AI eliminate? Which ones are safe?
#36No one is going to be safe. But some jobs are safer than the others. I'd say anything physical is safer than knowledge jobs.
And sales. People ain't gonna sign large contracts with a bot. At the very least, they'll need contractors to take people out for dinner.
People ain't gonna sign large contracts with a bot.
True. Bots will sign contracts with other bots.
Re: Ask HN: How many jobs will AI eliminate? Which ones are safe?
#37As someone who believes AI will completely eliminate humans I wish I was could only be worried about job security. But to answer your question, AI will ultimately eliminate every job in the sense that if you believe AI will eventually be able do any task, and do it for cheaper than a human labourer, then there would be no reason for you to ever pay a human labourer. The best analogy here is probably how the industria…
the industrial revolution made the horse redundant
I love this analogy. People hope they'll be like carriage drivers who transitioned into driving cars. Not this time. On the other hand, I'm not sure how this transition actually affected the horses — they weren't killed off or driven to extinction, were they?
Re: Ask HN: How many jobs will AI eliminate? Which ones are safe?
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it’s already having an effect on labor jobs too, and will continue to ramp. Not because of robots (but that will come soon enough), but because you can take a picture of leaky plumbing or a home maintenance task and upload it and ask for step by step directions on how to DIY. I’ve saved thousands doing this already this month alone.
Is this really a trend ? It surely is helping a DIY enthusiast to perform a new task, but I doubt it will convert a non manual labour enclined person to do the task. Also these ready made DIY how-tos work for a certain country only and can hardly be made global. E.g Most of american made how-tos make no sense for someone living in Europe
My wife used ChatGPT to fix a garage door opener while I was out. Uploaded a picture, and followed the instructions. She's not a manual labor inclined person by any stretch and knew nothing about garage door openers.
Re: Ask HN: How many jobs will AI eliminate? Which ones are safe?
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it’s already having an effect on labor jobs too, and will continue to ramp. Not because of robots (but that will come soon enough), but because you can take a picture of leaky plumbing or a home maintenance task and upload it and ask for step by step directions on how to DIY. I’ve saved thousands doing this already this month alone.
How many people call a plumber, HVAC, or auto repairman because they don't want to fix it themselves vs don't know how to fix it?
I'm guessing the overlap of those who know how to fix it with those willing to pay is not that large.
Re: Ask HN: How many jobs will AI eliminate? Which ones are safe?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was sceptical about the VCs to start with but the Bill Gates quote made me really question it all! Thanks for sharing the story about him predicting voice as primary means of interfacing with computers.
In fairness it wasn't _just_ him (or Microsoft); everyone was very, very excited about voice in the late 90s. Meanwhile, today, almost 30 years after Dragon NaturallySpeaking (which was kind of in the ChatGPT role; it seemed so magic that everyone thought everything was about to change), voice recognition is finally just about good enough that it can be used for unimportant things. Though personally I still wouldn't…
Interesting thought experiment. I think accuracy is table stakes for a voice control system, I think the bigger challenge for adoption is discoverablility. It's hard to know what the exact syntax the voice prompt expects and everyone is different. I do wonder if LLMs and their ability to parse natural language will rapidly unlock that type of thing because they're a lot more flexible about how you command them