Ask HN: Can we just admit we want to replace jobs with AI?

#1

Post by colesantiago » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 7:16 AM UTC

I think it is best to be just straightforward about this.

With open models like DeepSeek-R1, Llama, Qwen, etc and closed source models like o1, o3, Claude etc and even OpenAI's upcoming agentic operator.

At this point knowledge work is going to be white hot with automation in the focus this year and the next.

Can we just be real and just say we aren't advancing humanity with AI, it is just focused on automating out jobs.

OpenAI even admitted that their definition of AGI is:

"By AGI we mean highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work." (0)

I knew this for the longest time, but I still see and talk to researchers in AI companies that still believe they are furthering humanity with AI and all this optimism of the future. While I like to be optimistic about it, just tell the truth plainly that everybody hasn't actually thought about what happens when AGI comes.

The more we just admit this to ourselves the more people can be prepare for when AGI inevitably comes.

Otherwise everybody will prepare to fail.

(0) https://openai.com/index/how-should-ai-systems-behave/

Re: Ask HN: Can we just admit we want to replace jobs with AI?

#2

Post by hiAndrewQuinn » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 7:30 AM UTC

I don't think anyone serious was ever claiming they weren't trying to "replace jobs with AI", except maybe as a PR thing. Indeed this claim falls straightforwardly out of the numbers: Human labor is the most expensive component of most industries in the developed world, so naturally we'd like a subsitute. It's a much more obvious near-term target than, say, innovating over a decade or two to reduce the global price of commodity rice by a cent per kilogram.

Re: Ask HN: Can we just admit we want to replace jobs with AI?

#3

Post by gregjor » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 7:36 AM UTC

Who hasn’t admitted this already, either outright or by their actions?

Going back to the industrial revolution the people who control capital and production have openly sought to replace human labor with automation. Nothing new, just that this time it threatens “knowledge workers” and the techie HN crowd. If you hear someone claim that they want to “advance humanity” with automation they profit from you can safely assume they don’t mean that sincerely.

Re: Ask HN: Can we just admit we want to replace jobs with AI?

#4

Post by qrsjutsu » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 7:41 AM UTC

> the more people can be prepare

Nope. People will prepare as much as engineers care. But engineers don't care. Educating the people is tedious. It's easier to "manipulate"/direct them, which is the job of representatives, who are about status and money and being groomed by the industries, who are exclusively about money.

People are fine without AGI until they are not. That's another 15 years at least.

If you want to worry, worry about local solutions to climate change mitigation where you need old school manpower, big machines, shovels and logistics.

Re: Ask HN: Can we just admit we want to replace jobs with AI?

#5

Post by smgit » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 8:09 AM UTC

It's not going to happen over night. But even if something radical happens, it will probably play out like Marshall Brain describes in Manna - https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

Not all bad.

Re: Ask HN: Can we just admit we want to replace jobs with AI?

#6

Post by akmarinov » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 8:10 AM UTC

I thought everyone already knew this.

IT, doctors, lawyers will be mostly gone. Probably most office worker jobs that I’m not thinking of.

Best thing to do is become a nurse, that’ll be bulletproof until AGI makes progress on robotics.

Re: Ask HN: Can we just admit we want to replace jobs with AI?

#7

Post by laptopdev » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 8:12 AM UTC

We dont align our current actions with AGI. Rather, we align our actions with a presumption of what we think AGI is to become (assuming some inevitability).

Some people believe AGI is imminent, others believe AGI is here now. Observe their behavior, calm your anticipation, and satisfy your curiosoty rather than seeking to confirm a bias on the matter.

The tech is new in my experience and accepting claims beyond my capacity to validate such a grand assertion would require me to take on faith the word of someone I don't know or have never seen, who likely generated such a query in the first place outside the context length of Chatgpt mini.

Re: Ask HN: Can we just admit we want to replace jobs with AI?

#8

Post by RachelF » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 8:12 AM UTC

Yes, the idea of businesses is to reduce costs. Labor costs are a big expense.

It's harder to do than it looks. Offshoring to places with lower wages has kept wages for many white- and blue-collar workers in the West from growing. But it is hard to do correctly.

I suspect AI or AGI or AI with agents will take a longer time to actually work reliably than many suspect.

Re: Ask HN: Can we just admit we want to replace jobs with AI?

#9

Post by aaron695 » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 8:13 AM UTC

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: Can we just admit we want to replace jobs with AI?

#10

Post by purplethinking » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 8:14 AM UTC

Yes, of course. But it's also inevitable and overall good. If we stagnate then we are headed towards certain doom via climate change, nuclear war, an asteroid, a vulcano eruption leading to cooling and crop failure or a pandemic. If we are to survive and thrive long term we need to become true masters of our environment, and that means we need to be smarter, stronger and more productive.

I think this is my main disconnect with the pessimists, I don't see "stop AI progress" as a valid option anyway.