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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

#151

Post by tempfile »

atrus wrote: post #130
ozgrakkurt wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can’t replace a human for support, it is not even close to replacing a junior developer. It can’t replace any advice job because it lies instead of erroring. As an example if you want diet advice, it can lie to you very convincingly so there is no point in getting advice from it. Main value you get from a programmer is they understand what they are doing and they can take the responsibility of what they are develo…

> As an example if you want diet advice, it can lie to you very convincingly so there is no point in getting advice from it. How exactly is this different from getting advice from someone who acts confidently knowledgeable? Diet advice is an especially egregious example, since I can have 40 different dieticians give me 72 different diet/meal plans with them saying 100% certainty that this is the correct one. It's bad…

Do people actually behave this way with you? If someone presents a plan confidently without explaining why, I tend to trust them less (even people like doctors, who just happen to start with a very high reputation). In my experience people are very forthcoming with things they don't know.

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

#152

Post by flmontpetit »

chgs wrote: post #113
decimalenough wrote: post #88

I'm generally an AI skeptic, but it seems awfully early to make this call. Aside from the obvious frontline support, artist, junior coder etc, a whole bunch of white collar "pay me for advice on X" jobs (dietician, financial advice, tax agent, etc), where the advice follows set patterns only mildly tailored for the recipient, seem to be severely at risk. Example: I recently used Gemini for some tax advice that would…

I tend to use ai for the same things I’d have used Google for in 2005. Google is pretty much useless now as it changed into ann ad platform, and I suspect AI will go the same way soon enough.

It seems like an obvious thing on the surface, but I've already noticed that when asked questions on LLM usage (eg building RAG pipelines and whatnot), ChatGPT will exclusively refer you to OpenAI products.

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

#153

Post by ninetyninenine »

dcchuck wrote: post #134
decimalenough wrote: post #88

I'm generally an AI skeptic, but it seems awfully early to make this call. Aside from the obvious frontline support, artist, junior coder etc, a whole bunch of white collar "pay me for advice on X" jobs (dietician, financial advice, tax agent, etc), where the advice follows set patterns only mildly tailored for the recipient, seem to be severely at risk. Example: I recently used Gemini for some tax advice that would…

I actually paid for tax advice from one of those big companies (it was recommended - last time I will take that person's recommendations!). I was very disappointed in the service. It felt like the person I was speaking to on the phone would have been better of just echoing the request into AI. So I did just that as I waited on the line. I found the answer and the tax expert "confirmed" it.

According to the article the Tax expert still has a job though.

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

#154

Post by Garlef »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #50
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…

> it can destroy value of entire sectors. Think of resume-sending. Once both sides are automated, the practice is actually superfluous "Like all ‘magic’ in Tolkien, [spiritual] power is an expression of the primacy of the Unseen over the Seen and in a sense as a result such spiritual power does not effect or perform but rather reveals: the true, Unseen nature of the world is revealed by the exertion of a supernatural…

Interesting: At first I was objecting in my mind ("Clearly, the magic - LLMs - can create effect instead of only revealing it.") but upon further reflecting on this, maybe you're right:

First, LLMs are a distillation of our cultural knowledge. As such they can only reveal our knowledge to us.

Second, they are limited even more so by the users knowledge. I found that you can barely escape your "zone of proximal development" when interacting with an LLM.

(There's even something to be said about prompt engineering in the context of what the article is talking about: It is 'dark magic' and 'craft-magic' - some of the full potential power of the LLM is made available to the user by binding some selected fraction of that power locally through a conjuration of sorts. And that fraction is a product of the craftsmanship of the person who produced the prompt).

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

#155

Post by loloquwowndueo »

soared wrote: post #99
decimalenough wrote: post #88

I'm generally an AI skeptic, but it seems awfully early to make this call. Aside from the obvious frontline support, artist, junior coder etc, a whole bunch of white collar "pay me for advice on X" jobs (dietician, financial advice, tax agent, etc), where the advice follows set patterns only mildly tailored for the recipient, seem to be severely at risk. Example: I recently used Gemini for some tax advice that would…

Similairly, while not perfect I use AI to help redesign my landscaping by uploading a picture of my yard and having it come up with different options. Also took a picture of my tire while at the garage and asked it if I really needed new tires or not. Took a picture of my sprinkler box and had it figure out what was going on. Potentially all situations where I would’ve paid (or paid more than I already was) a local l…

Once they have you hooked they’ll start jacking up the prices.

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

#157

Post by ninetyninenine »

quickthrowman wrote: post #150
soared wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similairly, while not perfect I use AI to help redesign my landscaping by uploading a picture of my yard and having it come up with different options. Also took a picture of my tire while at the garage and asked it if I really needed new tires or not. Took a picture of my sprinkler box and had it figure out what was going on. Potentially all situations where I would’ve paid (or paid more than I already was) a local l…

> Also took a picture of my tire while at the garage and asked it if I really needed new tires or not. You can use a penny and your eyeballs to assess this, and all it costs is $0.01

I find it easily hallucinates this stuff. It’s understanding of a picture is decidedly worse then its understanding of words. Be careful here about asking if it needs a tire change it is likely giving you an answer that only looks real.

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

#158

Post by franticgecko3 »

ozgrakkurt wrote: post #105
decimalenough wrote: post #88

I'm generally an AI skeptic, but it seems awfully early to make this call. Aside from the obvious frontline support, artist, junior coder etc, a whole bunch of white collar "pay me for advice on X" jobs (dietician, financial advice, tax agent, etc), where the advice follows set patterns only mildly tailored for the recipient, seem to be severely at risk. Example: I recently used Gemini for some tax advice that would…

It can’t replace a human for support, it is not even close to replacing a junior developer. It can’t replace any advice job because it lies instead of erroring. As an example if you want diet advice, it can lie to you very convincingly so there is no point in getting advice from it. Main value you get from a programmer is they understand what they are doing and they can take the responsibility of what they are develo…

I agree with most of your points but this one

>I find it useful for some coding tasks but think LLMs were overestimated and it will blow up like NFTs

No way. NFTs did not make any headway in "the real world": their value proposition was that their cash value was speculative, like most other Blockchain technologies, and that understandably collapsed quickly and brilliantly. Right now developers are using LLMs and they have real tangible advantages. They are more successful than NFTs already.

I'm a huge AI skeptic and I believe it's difficult to measure their usefulness while we're still in a hype bubble but I am using them every day, they don't write my prod code because they're too unreliable and sloppy, but for one shot scripts <100 lines they have saved me hours, and they've entirely replaced stack overflow for me. If the hype bubble burst today I'd still be using LLMs tomorrow. Cannot say the same for NFTs

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

#159

Post by solfox »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #77
solfox wrote: post #67

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…

If it actually works like that, it'll be just like all labor-saving innovations, going back to the loom and printing press and the like; people will lose their job, but it'll be local / individual tragedies, the large scale economic impact will likely be positive. It'd still suck to lose your job / vocation though, and some of those won't be able to find a new job.

Honestly, much of work under capitalism is meaningless (see: The Office). The optimistic take is that many of those same paper-pushing roles could evolve into far more meaningful work—with the right training and opportunity (also AI).

When the car was invented, entire industries tied to horses collapsed. But those that evolved, leveled up: Blacksmiths became auto mechanics and metalworkers, etc.

As a creatively minded person with entrepreneurial instincts, I’ll admit: my predictions are a bit self-serving. But I believe it anyway—the future of work is entrepreneurial. It’s creative.

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