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I'm not worried about AI job loss

davidoks.blog

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Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#501

Post by NateEag »

ianbutler wrote: post #124
justonepost1 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: how? I’m younger than most on this site. I see the next decades of my life being defined by a multi-generational dark age via a collapse in literacy (“you use a calculator right?”), median prosperity (the only truly functional distribution system we have figured out is labor), and loss of agency (kinda obvious). This outcome is now, as of 2026, essentially priced into the public markets and accepted…

I really think the doom consensus is largely an online phenomena. We're in a tense period like the early 80s, and that would be true without AI in the mix, but I think its a matter of perspective. We're certainly still way ahead of the 1910s and the 1940s for instance (it's on us btw to make sure we don't fall to that in time). Every generation has its strains and the internet just amplifies it because outrage is cur…

None of that answers the question:

How will this technology be good for humanity as a whole?

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#502

Post by pjmlp »

toldnotmywrath wrote: post #446
csa wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the job had better take fewer people, or the automation is not justified. In many cases, this is a fallacy. Much like programming, there is often essentially an infinite amount of (in this case) bookkeeping tasks that need to be done. The folks employed to do them work on the top X number of them. By removing a lot of the scut work, second order tasks can be done (like verification, clarification, etc.) or can…

The firm simply assumes that if the top X was sufficient in the past, it is still sufficient now. From the perspective of modern management, there's really no reason to keep people if you can automate them away.

See self checkouts at supermarkets, with teams reduced to when checkouts go bad, or filling the shelves.

Not only do the prices increase, now we get pushed to their jobs for free, while the chains layoff their employees.

Hence why I usually refuse to use them if I have to take some additional extra time queuing.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#505

Post by BobbyTables2 »

automation2026 wrote: post #500
y0eswddl wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when. people have been saying that since 2022. when and how. hmm?? show your work. or is this just more slype being spewed...

In 2014, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19B and they had 55 employees

Correction: 55 grossly underpaid employees!

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#506

Post by BobbyTables2 »

pjmlp wrote: post #502
toldnotmywrath wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The firm simply assumes that if the top X was sufficient in the past, it is still sufficient now. From the perspective of modern management, there's really no reason to keep people if you can automate them away.

See self checkouts at supermarkets, with teams reduced to when checkouts go bad, or filling the shelves. Not only do the prices increase, now we get pushed to their jobs for free, while the chains layoff their employees. Hence why I usually refuse to use them if I have to take some additional extra time queuing.

I have mixed feelings on these.

For a full cart, I expect a cashier or to be available.

If I have 3-5 items, I’d rather do it myself than wait.

That said, even 20-30 years ago, long before self checkout, at places like WalMart, one could wait 15-20 minutes in line. They had employees but were too cheap to have enough. They really didn’t care.

I don’t even understand how that math works. I might have kept going there if they had a few extra lowly paid cashiers around.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#507

Post by 0_____0 »

Animats wrote: post #334
jackfranklyn wrote: post #248

[flagged]

> automation tools ... eliminates the boring part of the job, and then the job description shifts. But the job had better take fewer people, or the automation is not justified. There's also a tradeoff between automation flexibility and cost. If you need an LLM for each transaction, your costs will be much higher than if some simple CRUD server does it. Here's a nice example from a more physical business - sandwich ma…

The Nala bot reminded me of the guys at Felipe's in Cambridge MA. When they're building burritos during dinner rush, you'd swear to god that multiple different ingredients were following a ballistic trajectory toward the tortilla at any given time. If there was a salsa radar it would show multiple inbounds like the Russkies were finally nuking us.

ETA: It didn't remind me of this because the robot is good at what it does. It reminded me of just how far away from human capabilities SOTA robotic systems are.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#508

Post by allannienhuis »

socalgal2 wrote: post #394
atlintots wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't afford an apartment because the ownership class is working very hard to keep housing prices high while paying you as little as possible for the two decades you have been working. Not because some disabled person elsewhere is struggling to get by on government loans and welfare.

The ownership class is doing no such thing. Zoning, regulation, nimby-ism are what keep prices high.

who do you think is responsible for all of those things, if not the ownership class?

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#509

Post by hananova »

I'm honestly also not worried about AI job loss. But for a far darker reason: I think it's a self-solving problem.

Once techbros take it too far where an actual significant amount of people face job loss and thus face hardships in housing and feeding themselves, society as a whole is going to wish it nipped AI in the bud when it still could. Knowing techbros though, their moment of introspection, if it ever comes, will come far too late.

To me, actively trying to cause mass job loss in a country with essentially zero social security sounds, actively trying to get as many people in the "nothing to lose" state as possible, sounds genuinely suicidal.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#510

Post by mxkopy »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #359
OccamsMirror wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re describing task reallocation, but the bigger second-order effect is where the firm can now source the remaining human judgment. AI reduces the penalty for weak domain context. Once the work is packaged like that, the “thinking part” becomes far easier to offshore because: - Training time drops as you’re not teaching the whole craft, you’re teaching exception-handling around an AI-driven pipeline. - Quality bec…

"it is already showing up as stagnant or declining Western salaries" Real median salary, and real median wages are both rising for the last couple years. Maybe they would have risen faster if there was no AI, but I don't think you can say there has been a discernible impact yet.

I’d like a source for that. College graduates are no longer at an employment advantage compared to their uneducated peers. The average age of a new hire increased by 2 years over the past 4 years.

Young people in the west have definitely seen declining salaries, if only by virtue of the fact that they’re not being offered at all.

https://www.clevelandfed.org/publications/economic-commentar...

https://www.reveliolabs.com/news/social/65-and-still-clockin...

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