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

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

#121

Post by dang »

caeril wrote: post #101
gnfargbl wrote: post #15

But how is an individual supposed to "prepare" for AGI? The outcome of further automation will be to move even more capital under the control of an even smaller number of hands. It's that increasing inequality which is the problem, not AGI.

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

#122

Post by cadamsdotcom »

Havoc wrote: post #86
cadamsdotcom wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowledge work is too broad a definition. There’s immense potential to reduce the “creative drudgery” in work - think background art, music for malls, first drafts of company comms… Some knowledge work has more leverage than other knowledge work. We don’t have a term for this distinction right now. But the low-leverage work will get automated, leaving us with more pleasant, higher-level, more creative jobs. This is j…

AI will create new jobs. Good jobs too. But not enough to absorb the losses volume wise and also not accessible to all. Some office Karen that calls google homepage „the internet“ and struggles using shift key to capitalize (true story) is not going to automate anything whatsoever in a world where even tech people struggle to keep up Or put different yes jobs but at different level entirely. So we’re still going to b…

Plenty of computer illiterate people abound. They’re delivering your food and keeping the streets swept. There’s more than enough work in the physical world. Your hypothetical Karen will either retrain or fall behind and the world will go on.

For a relatable present-day example of the structural unemployment you’re alluding to, consider the typical HN comment by the person who sent 500+ resumes only to get no response and/or be ghosted. Whatever skills they’re plying aren’t needed by employers - even though they’re software skills. Implying there exist sub-categories of software skills that are not needed in today’s economy. It’s possible for annyone to get left behind if they don’t upskill. But yet, unemployment in the US is insanely low: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59431

How do you square that circle? I don’t think there is or will be structural unemployment, but there’ll always be anecdotes to support fearmongering about it.

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

#123

Post by oytis »

physicsguy wrote: post #105
disambiguation wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also aspire(d) to be a physics teacher, but I'm pessimistic about it. Things like khan academy already make "teaching" obsolete, imagine pairing that with an GPT93 agent. 24/7 interactive learning.

All the research I've seen around MOOCs and online only learning is that it's pretty tough for people to stick at, and only 5-10% of people ever complete a course. I just can't see that putting people in front of a computer to do this sort of thing is a good strategy for everyone.

From my experience - that's mostly because courses are useless for career. So attending them is an optional, low priority activity.

If you could actually get a respectable degree or skills on a CV that matter for anything other than junior-most positions (if at all), you would see higher completion rate.

The quality of material itself is often pretty good. That varies from course to course of course, but I must say I started understanding electronics only after an edx course despite having it in my university.

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

#124

Post by senordevnyc »

caeril wrote: post #120
senordevnyc wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious where this level of bitterness is coming from. It doesn't seem healthy.

Is there an argument here beyond armchair psychologizing? GPT-3 is over 4 years old. The writing was on the wall then. FAANG status-strivers had plenty of warning to maybe stop blowing their TC on impressing other people, and choose instead to sock something away. Most chose not to, because living the "right" lifestyle was far more important than prudence. It is for these people that just desserts are in store. The S…

Sorry, wasn’t trying to attack you, it just seems like you’re really angry and hoping for tech workers to suffer. I hope you find some peace.

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

#125

Post by Havoc »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #122
Havoc wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI will create new jobs. Good jobs too. But not enough to absorb the losses volume wise and also not accessible to all. Some office Karen that calls google homepage „the internet“ and struggles using shift key to capitalize (true story) is not going to automate anything whatsoever in a world where even tech people struggle to keep up Or put different yes jobs but at different level entirely. So we’re still going to b…

Plenty of computer illiterate people abound. They’re delivering your food and keeping the streets swept. There’s more than enough work in the physical world. Your hypothetical Karen will either retrain or fall behind and the world will go on. For a relatable present-day example of the structural unemployment you’re alluding to, consider the typical HN comment by the person who sent 500+ resumes only to get no respons…

The current unemployment situation seems largely irrelevant to a future scenario where mass AI roll out happens. Things are likely to change somehow. Probably dramatically. So more of the same is probably not what the future holds

> They’re delivering your food and keeping the streets swept

And when we automate those? If you keep automating stuff eventually you run out of places to put the displaced people. Does that not seem intuitively logical to you?

Upskilling doesn’t magically solve that problem. It just saturates a different level. Bit like going to Uni used to be a certain win now less so because everyone is going to Uni.

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

#126

Post by Lockal »

According to their clear definition, "AGI will be achieved once OpenAI has developed an AI system that can generate at least $100 billion in profits"[1]. To reach this amount they can just do nothing, as they secured $500 billion in investment[2]. So consider "AGI" already happened, but nothing happened, only slop.

[1] https://gizmodo.com/leaked-documents-show-openai-has-a-very-...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/21/oracle-sto...

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

#127

Post by starchild3001 »

I graduated from undergrad 25 yrs ago. I worked in 5 different business sectors with highly overlapping but also quite distinct skill sets (4.5 yrs of academia/writing papers, 5 yrs of telecom/signal processing engineering, 7 yrs of quantitative finance, 1 yr of mobile consumer-device intelligence, 7.5 yrs of information retrieval).

Every ~5 yrs I've had to reinvent myself.

So, what about the disruption from AI? Just suck it up, ok? You have to reinvent yourself anyway if you are in the tech sector. Start moving already. Every tech disruption is a challenge and opportunity.

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

#128

Post by weatherlite »

listenallyall wrote: post #97
weatherlite wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could be right. I don't have enough knowledge in the field and I'm not sure 'trend predictions' work that well. Why aren't there autonomous vehicles already? Why does Waymo have to deploy them city by city? When I learned to drive I learned to drive - you didn't have to teach me how to drive in L.A , then San Francsisco, Then Pheonix etc. Is it only about Waymo being careful or are these things not yet good enoug…

Your conclusions seem overly optimistic. Best healthcare? You'll get economically-optimized healthcare - in other words, at some point when you have no economic value left, or your healthcare costs exceed what you're willing and able to pay, care will be shut off. Best education? It will be full of bias inserted by the programmers, with no way to debate or consider alternate viewpoints. And who's going to spend time…

> at some point when you have no economic value left, or your healthcare costs exceed what you're willing and able to pay, care will be shut off.

This tech is not expected to be that expensive, it will most likely become widely deployed and available for the masses. Sure, you still need MRI machines and nurses to give you meds etc, but getting a diagnosis will be improved and possibly we won't need as many doctors so costs will go down. Only today I read Demis Hassabis saying in 2025 A.I developed drugs will go through clinical trials. If we have AGI we can accelerate real breakthroughs in cancer treatments, diabetes etc.

> or your healthcare costs exceed what you're willing and able to pay

I know the U.S is different but in most of the developed world you get a decent basic health care regardless of your employment status / economic value. We've decided collectively some things should be available for everyone.

> And who's going to spend time learning anything when the AI is deployed to do all the possible work anyway?

That's a good point. If we do reach true AGI there won't be much point in traditional learning. I think a greater emphasis will be put on emotional development. I think A.I assistants can do a great job in that actually.

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

#129

Post by munksbeer »

In my opinion, strong AI is inevitable. And I also think superhuman AI is inevitable, though where that point lies in future is guesswork.

Between those two points is a period of instability. Judging from history, many people will be impacted and those people may not transition to new jobs. Though in my case, if I were to lose my software engineering job because AI had become good enough to replace me completely then my ego thinks that we'd be much closer to superhuman AI than I thought and all bets are off. Software developers don't just write code. They think, and think, and think and second guess, and look at the larger stack impact, and scaling, and so on. AI may well get to that level but IMO there is a reason we still don't see robots fixing plumbing, and it is because the reasoning part of these jobs are much deeper than some people realise.

Once we get to the point that huge amounts of white collar reasoning workers can be replaced, then I optimistically think we'll also be closer to reducing scarcity. What I'd hope for is that we would adjust to other types of work that we find hard to predict at the moment, just like every other leap in technology has resulted in. I know the strong narrative is AI can simply do those too, but try to imagine a world where we have superhuman ability to produce, but no consumers because no-one has the means to pay for the produce. That just doesn't work. These so called "elites" will have no-one to sell to. So it seems self obvious to me that a balance will be found. If it isn't people will elect governments who force that balance. Maybe some rough period ahead, but I don't subscribe to the doom theories on the economic side.

What I do unfortunately subscribe to is doom of another type. Once near superhuman AI is possible, then it feels impossible to stop it from being widely available, eventually. And given how many humans there are on the planet, I feel there will be some who are deranged enough to use the technology for full planet wide destruction of some sort. I think this feels almost close to inevitable.

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

#130

Post by munksbeer »

slooonz wrote: post #30
jkhdigital wrote: post #12

All major technological advancements have eliminated some jobs and created others. In general, producing more with less human input is how society becomes richer. Is it a tragedy that we no longer need telephone switchboard operators, ice cutters, and lamplighters? There were surely countless mini-tragedies as the people who made their livelihoods that way struggled with stagnant wages and unemployment, but the next…

Yes, but this time the automation (AI) can immediately displace humans in the newly created, "more productive form of work" jobs too. Recursively.

Could you describe what you imagine an end state to look like? If you could, please be quite specific. How do people go about their days?
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