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The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

cnn.com

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Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#101

Post by rfrey »

johnbenoe wrote: post #21
darth_avocado wrote: post #8

I don’t understand how any business leader can be excited about humans being replaced by AI. If no one has a job, who’s going to buy your stuff? When the unemployment in the country goes up, consumer spending slows down and recession kicks in. How could you be excited for that?

You ever thought there’s more to life than work lol. Maybe humans can approach a new standard of living…

The most powerful nation on earth isn't even willing to extend basic health care to the masses, nevermind freeing them to pursue a higher calling than enriching billionaires.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#102

Post by swyx »

spcebar wrote: post #74

Something is nagging me about the AI-human replacement conversation that I would love insight from people who know more about startup money than me. It seems like the AI revolution hit as interest rates went insane, and at the same time the AI that could write code was becoming available, the free VC money dried up, or at least changed. I feel like that's not usually a part of the conversation and I'm wondering if we…

its not part of the conversation because the influence here is tangential at best (1) and your sense of how much vc money is on the table at any given time is not good (2).

1a. most seed/A stage investing is acyclical because it is not really about timing for exits, people just always need dry powder

1b. tech advancement is definitely acyclical - alexnet, transformers, and gpt were all just done by very small teams without a lot of funding. gpt2->3 was funded by microsoft, not vc

2a. (i have advance knowledge of this bc i've previewed the keynote slides for ai.engineer) free vc money slowed in 2022-2023 but has not at all dried up and in fact reaccelerated in a very dramatic way. up 70% this yr

2b. "vc" is a tenous term when all biglabs are >>10b valuation and raising from softbank or sovereign wealth. its no longer vc, its about reallocating capital from publics to privates because the only good ai co's are private

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#103

Post by JKCalhoun »

darth_avocado wrote: post #29
FeteCommuniste wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the idea is that the people left working will be made so productive and wealthy thanks to the miracle of AI that they can more than make up the difference with extravagant consumption.

If you want to see what that looks like, just look at the economy of India. Do we really want that?

I'd been thinking modern day Russia, but I admit to being ignorant of a lot of countries outside the U.S.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#104

Post by phendrenad2 »

These are the moments that make millionaires. A majority of people believe that AI is going to thoroughly disrupt society. They've been primed to worry about an "AI apocalypse" by Hollywood for their entire lives. The prevailing counter-narrative is that AI is going to flop. HARD. You can't get more diametrically opposed than that. If you can correctly guess (or logically determine) which is correct, and bet all of your money on it, you can launch yourself into a whole other echelon of life.

I've been a heavy user of AI ever since ChatGPT was released for free. I've been tracking its progress relative to the work done by humans at large. I've concluded that it's improvements over the last few years are not across-the-board changes, but benefit specific areas more than others. And unfortunately for AI hype believers, it happens to be areas such as art, which provide a big flashy "look at this!" demonstration of AI's power to people. But... try letting AI come up with a nuanced character for a novel, or design an amplifier circuit, or pick stocks, or do your taxes.

I'm a bit worried about YCombinator. I like Hacker News. I'm a bit worried that YC has so much riding on AI startups. After machine learning, crypto, the post-Covid 19 healthcare bubble, fintech, NFTs, can they take another blow when the music stops?

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#105

Post by JKCalhoun »

johnbenoe wrote: post #21
darth_avocado wrote: post #8

I don’t understand how any business leader can be excited about humans being replaced by AI. If no one has a job, who’s going to buy your stuff? When the unemployment in the country goes up, consumer spending slows down and recession kicks in. How could you be excited for that?

You ever thought there’s more to life than work lol. Maybe humans can approach a new standard of living…

If someone is going to suggest UBI, I wish they could explain to me how Reservations have failed so hard in the U.S.. I think that would be a cautionary tale.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#106

Post by drewcon »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #94
michaeldoron wrote: post #78

Every time an analyst gives the current state of AI-based tools as evidence supporting AI disruption being just a hype, I think of skeptics who dismissed the exponential growth of covid19 cases due to their initial low numbers. Putting that aside, how is this article called an analysis and not an opinion piece? The only analysis done here is asking a labor economist what conditions would allow this claim to hold, and…

I'm not seeing how comparing AI to a virus that killed millions and left tens of millions crippled is an effective way to support your argument.

Humans are not familiar with exponential change so they have almost no ability to manage through exponential change.

Its an apt comparison. The criticisms in the cnn article are already out date in many instances.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#107

Post by JKCalhoun »

johnbenoe wrote: post #45
darth_avocado wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m yet to be convinced that if majority of the humans are out of work, the government will be able to take care of them and allow them to “pursue their calling”. Hunger games is a more believable outcome to me.

[flagged]

To the degree we feel capable, I suspect many of us are doing "what we can".

The worst it gets of course, the more each of us will feel capable of.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#108

Post by elcapitan »

ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #93

Imagine you had a crystal ball that lets you look 10 years into the future, and you asked it about whether we underestimate or overestimate how many jobs AI will replace in the future. It flickers for a moment, then it either says "In 2025, mankind vastly underestimated the amount of jobs AI can do in 2035" or "In 2025, mankind vastly overestimated the amount of jobs AI can do in 2035" How would you use that informat…

If I had a crystal ball that lets me look 10 years into the future and I wanted to invest in the stock market, I would ask it about the stock market.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#109

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #67
roenxi wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being confused by the numbers. We aren't trying to maximise consumer spending, the point is to maximise living standards. If the market equilibrium price of all goods was $0 consumer spending would be $0 and living standards would be off the charts. It'd be a great outcome. It just happens that up to this point there have been things that couldn't be done by capital. Now we're entering a world where there isn'…

In theory. In reality, how are the benefits of all this efficiency going to be distributed to the people who aren't working? I sure don't see any calls for higher taxes and more wealth redistribution.

The source article is an analysis of an interview (https://www.axios.com/2025/05/28/ai-jobs-white-collar-unempl...) where the CEO of Anthropic called for higher taxes and more wealth redistribution.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#110

Post by DrillShopper »

pixl97 wrote: post #70
DrillShopper wrote: post #3

I look forward to the day where executive overpromises and engineering underdeliveries bring about another AI winter so the useful techniques can continue without the stench of the "AI" association and so the grifters go bankrupt.

Just like the internet was a fad, right?

More like the dot-com bubble
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