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Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists

theregister.com

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Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists

#61

Post by jspdown »

patapong wrote: post #38
mg wrote: post #18

One thing nobody seems to discuss is: In the future, we will do a lot more. In other terms: There will be a lot more work. So even if robots do 80% of it, if we do 10x more - the amount of work we need humans to do will double. We will write more software, build more houses, build more cars, planes and everything down the supply chain to make these things. When you look at planet earth, it is basically empty. While r…

I agree! People will become more productive, meaning fewer people can do more work. That said, I hope this does not result in the production of evermore things at the cost of nature! I think we are at a crossroads as to what this will result in, however. In one case, the benefits will accrue at the top, with corporations earning greater profits while employing less people, leaving a large part of the population witho…

> That said, I hope this does not result in the production of evermore things at the cost of nature!

It will for sure! Just today the impact is collosal.

As an example, people used to read technical documentation, now, they ask LLMs. Which replaces a simple static file by 50k matrix multiplication.

Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists

#62

Post by BrtByte »

fhd2 wrote: post #9

> The economists found for example that "AI chatbots have created new job tasks for 8.4 percent of workers, including some who do not use the tools themselves." For me, the most interesting takeaway. It's easy to think about a task, break it down into parts, some of which can be automated, and count the savings. But it's more difficult to take into account any secondary consequences from the automation. Sometimes you…

Short-term gains for individuals can gradually hollow out systems that, ironically, worked better when they were a little messy and human

Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists

#63

Post by roenxi »

4ndrewl wrote: post #45
roenxi wrote: post #13

Based on the speed most companies operate at - no surprises here. The internet also didn't have most of its impact in the first decade. And as is fairly well understood, most of the current generation of AI models are a bit dicey in practice. There isn't much of a question that this early phase where AI is likely to create new jobs and opportunities. The real question is what happens when AI is reliably intellectuall…

Does the same follow for The Metaverse, or for Blockchain?

If they end up going somewhere? Absolutely, we haven't seen anything out of the crypto universe yet compared to what'll start to happen when the tech is a century old and well understood by the bankers.

Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists

#64

Post by ringeryless »

cornholio wrote: post #31
thatjoeoverthr wrote: post #15

My primary worry since the start has been not that it would "replace workers", but that it can destroy value of entire sectors. Think of resume-sending. Once both sides are automated, the practice is actually superfluous. The concept of "posting" and "applying" to jobs has to go. So any infrastructure supporting it has to go. At no point did it successfully "do a job", but the injury to the signal to noise ratio wipe…

Probably the first significant hit are going to be drivers, delivery men, truckers etc. a demographic of 5 million jobs in US and double that in EU, with ripple effects costing other millions of jobs in industries such as roadside diners and hotels. The general tone of this study seems to be "It's 1995, and this thing called the Internet has not made TV obsolete"; same for the Acemoglu piece linked elsewhere in the.…

LLMs are the least deterministic means you could possibly ever have for automation.

What you are truly seeking is high level specifications for automation systems, which is a flawed concept to the degree that the particulars of a system may require knowledgeable decisions made on a lower level.

However, CAD/CAM, and infrastructure as code are true amplifiers of human power.

LLMs destroy the notion of direct coupling or having any layered specifications or actual levels involved at all, you try to prompt a machine trained in trying to ascertain important datapoints for a given model itself, when the correct model is built up with human specifications and intention at every level.

Wrongful roads lead to erratic destinations, when it turns out that you actually have some intentions you wish to implement IRL

Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists

#65

Post by mg »

tgv wrote: post #48
mg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be ok if instead of 97% of earth being empty 94% is empty and your rent is cut in half? Another plus point of the future: An electric autonomous bus is at your disposal every 5 minutes, bringing you to whatever nice lonely place you wish.

I've got no idea what you're going on about, but 97% of the Earth isn't empty in any useful sense. For starters, almost 70% is ocean. There are also large parts which are otherwise uninhabitable, and large parts which have agricultural use. Buses don't go to uninhabited places, since that's costs too much. Every five minutes is a frequency which no form of public transport can afford.

The nature of technological progress is that it makes formerly uninhabitable areas inhabitable.

Costs of buses are mostly the driver. Which will go away. The rest is mostly building and maintaining them. Which will be done by robots. The rest is energy. The sun sends more energy to earth in an hour than humans use in a year.

Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists

#66

Post by lambdaba »

mattlondon wrote: post #42
WillAdams wrote: post #26

Have any of these economists ever tried to scrape by as an entry-level graphic designer/illustrator? Apparently not, since the sort of specific work which one used to find for this has all but vanished --- every AI-generated image one sees represents an instance where someone who might have contracted for an image did not (ditto for stock images, but that's a different conversation).

It looks like the writing is on the wall too for other menial and low-value creative jobs too - so basic music and videos - I fully expect that 90+% of video adverts will be entirely AI generated within the next year or two. see Google Veo - they have the tech already and they have YouTube already and they have the ad network already ... Instead of uploading your video ad you already created, you'll just enter a desc…

People will develop an eye for how AI-generated looks and that will make human creativity stand out even more. I'm expecting more creativity and less cookie-cutter content, I think AI generated content is actually the end of it.

Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists

#67

Post by solfox »

Extrapolating from my current experience with AI-assisted work: AI just makes work more meaningful. My output has increased 10x, allowing me to focus on ideas and impact rather than repetitive tasks. Now apply that to entire industries and whole divisions of labor: manual data entry, customer support triage, etc. Will people be out of those jobs? Most certainly. But it gives all of us a chance to level up—to focus on more meaningful labor.

As a father, my forward-thinking vision for my kids is that creativity will rule the day. The most successful will be those with the best ideas and most inspiring vision.

Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists

#68

Post by BrtByte »

jofzar wrote: post #16

Not replacing jobs yet. Seen a whole lot of gen AI deflecting customer questions which would have been previously tickets. That is a reduced ticket volume that would have been taken by a junior support engineer. We are a couple of years away from the death of the level 1 support engineer. I can't even imagine what's going to happen to the level 0 IT support.

Yeah, exactly. It's not about a sudden "mass firing" event - it's more like a slow erosion of entry-level roles

Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists

#69

Post by philipov »

Jensson wrote: post #53
Zanfa wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Search is distinct from Google's expansive ad network. Google search is now garbage, but their ads are everywhere are more profitable than ever.

Most Google ads comes from Google search, its a misconception Google derives most of their profits from third party ads that is just a minor part of Googles revenue.

You are talking past each other. They say "Google search sucks now" and you retort with "But people still use it." Both things can be true at the same time.

Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists

#70

Post by xnorswap »

sph wrote: post #17
sct202 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or customer service. My last few online store issues have been fully chatbot when they used to be half chatbot for intake and half person.

I have survived until today using the shibboleth "let me speak to a human" [1] The day this doesn't work any more, is the day I stop paying for that service. We should make a list of companies that still have actual customer service. 1: https://xkcd.com/806/ - from an era when the worst that could happen was having to speak with incompetent, but still human, tech support.

It no longer works for virgin media (UK cable monopoly).

I got myself into a loop where no matter what I did, there was no human in the loop.

Even the "threaten to cancel" trick didn't work, still just chatbots / automated services.

Thankfully more and more of the UK is getting FTTH. Sadly for me I accidentally misunderstood the coverage checker when I last moved house.

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