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AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

fastcompany.com

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Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#21

Post by exasperaited »

This is absolutely crucial to understand.

Because in any country with poor worker protections, the outcome is layoffs regardless.

AI succeeds? Layoffs of unneeded roles.

AI fails? Layoffs to cut expenditure to make up for the written-off expenditure.

In the UK, if AI makes a well-established employee redundant, the employee is entitled to redundancy pay. And if the company fucks up and overspends on chasing a ridiculous Macguffin they can't just fire people without making them formally redundant.

The damage that is going to be done in the USA if the AI bubble bursts is going to be generational.

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#22

Post by MangoToupe »

pants2 wrote: post #9

That's an interesting point that I haven't considered before: that the narrative of AI replacing jobs plus the widespread cheating in school using LLMs is making students less engaged and new graduates less employable, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy for AI.

Surely this would be indicated by a glut of unfilled job postings.

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#23

Post by qwertyuiop_ »

Glyptodon wrote: post #20

As a recently laid of senior engineer, to the extent that my job was replaced, it was replaced with offshore junior devs who'd already been working with the company for over year with a pretty rough level of productivity by man-hour, though maybe taking 3x the time to get things done is worth it if they're cheap enough. Which is to say I see my layoff as as cost cutting backed by a premise that there is no value in r…

https://www.reddit.com/r/Layoffs/comments/1j3c5in/it_seems_t...

https://bloomberry.com/blog/amazons-layoffs-tell-half-the-st...

https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/27/ibm_cuts_jobs_in_us/

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#24

Post by diamond559 »

dahart wrote: post #13

If Amazon’s layoffs aren’t AI driven, and AWS is making more money than it’s spending on AI infra… how is Amazon evidence of AI spending replacing jobs? This is an interesting topic, but this particular article left me pretty unsatisfied, it feels like juxtaposing a bunch of barely related numbers with some very popular talking points, but no new information? It hints at “AI washing” without doing any digging at all,…

AWS is making more money, they are not making money running llms. The companies didn't want to reveal internal procedures and exact profit/loss statements, is that surprising to this article writer? Sorry but MIT is more trust worthy than this stonk pumper site.

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#25

Post by diamond559 »

Glyptodon wrote: post #20

As a recently laid of senior engineer, to the extent that my job was replaced, it was replaced with offshore junior devs who'd already been working with the company for over year with a pretty rough level of productivity by man-hour, though maybe taking 3x the time to get things done is worth it if they're cheap enough. Which is to say I see my layoff as as cost cutting backed by a premise that there is no value in r…

Actual Indians, as always. Humans are cheaper, and have the capacity for long term memory formation.

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#26

Post by gregates »

zer00eyz wrote: post #19

This should shock no one. Over the last 20 years of tech, the giants have taken the smartest folks out there and put golden handcuffs on them. You could hire up all the smart folks and put them to work, or leave them out there and have them compete with you. With the launch of cloud providers and (expensive) dynamic scaling the problem only got worse. Think about hiring in the pandemic. Every one at home, with a stim…

Not to mention that there's already a small market for software products that work just like existing products that were once good, only without all the AI getting in your way at every turn. You're just not going to be making huge enterprise sales with such a product (in 2025).

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#27

Post by zero_shift »

Slightly tangential to the article: a lot of the "AI layoffs" are really just old fashioned layoffs, but with exciting press releases meant to reassure investors.

AMZN for example overhired in various functions because it expected demand that never materialised. Admitting that is bad for the share price, but writing some woo about "AI and agility" will convince at least some investors to keep the faith.

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#28

Post by gravypod »

dahart wrote: post #13

If Amazon’s layoffs aren’t AI driven, and AWS is making more money than it’s spending on AI infra… how is Amazon evidence of AI spending replacing jobs? This is an interesting topic, but this particular article left me pretty unsatisfied, it feels like juxtaposing a bunch of barely related numbers with some very popular talking points, but no new information? It hints at “AI washing” without doing any digging at all,…

I don't necessarily believe this is the best explanation but: We know the economy is doing pretty poorly and tech companies are consolidating. Amazon is losing it's two main drivers of revenue: Irresponsible startups with huge AWS spend and no pressure to optimize their stack and consumers buying treats online. Regardless if people are spending on AI, the only thing businesses are investing on is AI and analysts at AWS are likely signaling that many AI companies are not seeing a large ROI and model developers will likely build their own versions of successful products (Claude Code). AWS doesn't want to scale up it's GPU fleet and be left holding the hardware bag. Amazon can't juice numbers for consumer purchases since the rest of the economy is contracting, most people are losing jobs, etc. So the easiest way to for Amazon to juice their metrics is to offshore office work that can be done anywhere. They can claim they are using AI - but from conversations with friends who are working at Amazon this does not sound very realistic - and ride the AI bubble with no liabilities.

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#29

Post by alecco »

This week OpenAI, Google, And Perplexity announced free 1 year subscription to Indian devs. It must cost quite a fortune in inference https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c14pr0enjr6o

Not a single mention of jobs being moved to India including tens of billions of investments in new offices.

Backing links from a quick search earlier this week when an obviously Indian HNer tried to deny this was really happening:

Microsoft announces US $3bn investment over two years in India https://news.microsoft.com/en-in/microsoft-announces-us-3bn-... (Jan 2025)

Google announces $15B investment in AI hub in India https://apnews.com/article/google-artificial-intelligence-vi... (3 weeks ago)

[Indian] ex-Accenture CTO named Google Cloud’s Chief Product https://www.hindustantimes.com/trending/us/who-is-karthik-na... (last week) (a lot of people speculate they named an Indian Accenture guy to move as much as possible to India)

Big Tech giants defy US-India trade tensions, record strongest 12-month headcount growth in India in 3 years https://www.moneycontrol.com/technology/big-tech-giants-defy... (September)

https://www.reuters.com/world/india/openai-launch-first-indi...

https://www.anthropic.com/news/expanding-global-operations-t...

and so on. Something very crazy is going on.

NOTE: I am not American and this doesn't affect me directly.

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#30

Post by vatsachak »

zer00eyz wrote: post #19

This should shock no one. Over the last 20 years of tech, the giants have taken the smartest folks out there and put golden handcuffs on them. You could hire up all the smart folks and put them to work, or leave them out there and have them compete with you. With the launch of cloud providers and (expensive) dynamic scaling the problem only got worse. Think about hiring in the pandemic. Every one at home, with a stim…

Yeah with ChatGPT anyone with enough agency and programming chops can design tailored solutions for local businesses.

I don't think that ChatGPT coding is valuable but rather it's ability to tutor people and guide them towards idiomatic patterns.

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