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AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

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Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#411

For similar forms of automation, isn’t 13% somewhat inline with what you’d expect? For example, I wonder how many fewer juniors were needed when we had better programming languages and tools? Do certain programming practices lead to fewer new workers? How many new factory workers aren’t hired on the factory floor due to a form of automation?

How many weavers were put out of work by textile automation in the 18th century? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

all of them, which not a brilliant argument when you discover where, who and how the majority of our clothes are made today to be fair.

I’ll upvote you though because I hadn’t read the whole backstory of the luddites before.

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#412
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing for doctors. Turns out radiologists are fine, it's software engineers that should be scared.

We might end up needing 20% or so less doctors, because all that bureaucracy can be automated. A simple automated form pre-filler can save a lot of time. It’s likely that hospitals will try saving there.

Oh really?

https://medium.com/backchannel/how-technology-led-a-hospital...

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what stops the employer from hiring someone who lives in a cheaper place? I've worked with remote workers from around the world. Let me preface by saying there are of course exceptions but: What I've found is that most often Americans exhibit self-starting and creativity. What I mean by that is non-us workers are great if you give them a specific task, even a really hard task. But if you give them a nebulous proble…

Only Americans exhibit creativity and drive? What nationalistic nonsense is this? Step outside of your bubble lol.

It's easy to criticize that part but his last sentence is spot on: the creative it minds from those countries tend to migrate to places that match their entrepreneurial personality better and those usually won't be China or India but rather somewhere in America or even Europe.

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amusing to see programmers in the US promoting remote work. Do those people really believe they're the most intellectually superior to the rest of the world? If a job can be done purely remotely, what stops the employer from hiring someone who lives in a cheaper place?

> what stops the employer from hiring someone who lives in a cheaper place? I've worked with remote workers from around the world. Let me preface by saying there are of course exceptions but: What I've found is that most often Americans exhibit self-starting and creativity. What I mean by that is non-us workers are great if you give them a specific task, even a really hard task. But if you give them a nebulous proble…

> I don't think it's because Americans are better at this -- I think it's cultural.

My experience is ANY delegation incurs a big loss in agency. I want to create a startup -> my employees are much less invested than I am. My remote (French) employees are even less invested. My Ukrainian employees are completely passive and I fired them. The more the distance, the less invested, the more passive.

It’s tempting to attribute this to your country’s qualities, but my experience is every country is a mixed bag.

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#416
post #8

The accounting note is not true in the traditional sense. The field in the US is just getting offshored to India/PH/Eastern Europe for better or for worse. There is even a big push to lower the educational requirements to attain licensure in the US (Big 4 partners want more bodies and are destroying the pipeline for US students). Audit quality will continue to suffer and public filers will issue bunk financials if th…

It's amusing to see programmers in the US promoting remote work. Do those people really believe they're the most intellectually superior to the rest of the world? If a job can be done purely remotely, what stops the employer from hiring someone who lives in a cheaper place?

Regulation is for when businesses cannot regulate themselves.

In many larger companies also, nationstate threats and national security are a trending issue.

If you deal with a lot of PII, outsourcing your data processing pipelines to China isn't going to fly with Congress when you get subpoena'ed for a round with Hawley.

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#417

AI is the popular cover excuse for layoffs. I can’t think of a single job that modern AI could easily replace.

Video and graphical designers? I’m not saying this with optimism, but rather as as observation. I know a handful of digital marketers, that work for different marketing firms - and the use of GenAI for those tasks have exploded. Usually tasks which they either had in-house people, or freelancers do the work. Now they just do it themselves.

No it can't replace graphical designers except in low stakes projects. Companies won't risk their projects on cheap AI with other larger costs on the line.

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#418

AI is the popular cover excuse for layoffs. I can’t think of a single job that modern AI could easily replace.

It doesn't have to replace people on a one-for-one basis to cause job losses. Let's say LLMs make your developers 50% more efficient. Doesn't it stand to reason you can lay off the lowest performing 33% and get the same amount (or more) of work?

No, it does not stand, because you think linearly. Companies can't simply drop 33% of employees because there is competition. If competition uses both humans and AI they will get more value from both. No AI has sufficient autonomy or capability to be held accountable for its mistakes.

There is less upswing in reducing costs than in increasing profits. Companies want to increase profits actually, not just reduce costs which will be eaten away by competition. In a world where everyone has the same AIs, human still make the difference.

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI training costs are increasing around 3x annually across each of the last 8 years to achieve its performance improvements. Last year, spending across all labs was $150bn. Keeping the 3x trend means that, to keep pace with current advances, costs should rise to $450bn in 2025, $900bn in 2026, $2.7tn in 2027, $8.1tn in 2028, $25tn in 2028, and $75tn in 2029 and $225tn in 2030. For reference, the GDP of the world is a…

Be careful you're not confusing the costs of training an LLM and the spending from each firm. Much of that spending is on expanding access to older LLMs, building new infrastructure, and other costs.

That’s a fair criticism of my method, however model training costs are a significant cost centre for the labs. Modelling from there instead of from total expenditure only adds 2-3 years before model training costs are larger than the entire global economy.

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what stops the employer from hiring someone who lives in a cheaper place? I've worked with remote workers from around the world. Let me preface by saying there are of course exceptions but: What I've found is that most often Americans exhibit self-starting and creativity. What I mean by that is non-us workers are great if you give them a specific task, even a really hard task. But if you give them a nebulous proble…

>> What I've found is that only Americans exhibit self-starting and creativity. I'm going to counterpoint somewhat. I think those attributes are evenly spread into all countries, but equally I think they are uncommon in all countries. I don't live in the US. I have traveled there and elsewhere. I would agree that there are lots of cultural differences between places, even places as nominally similar as say the UK, Au…

> Israel, South Africa, Russia, all have (or had) exceptional engineering abilities developed because international support was withheld.

I think if you add the US to the list this theory disappears. It's more the frontier/self reliant/entrepreneurial attitude that I think makes the difference.

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