US Job Market Visualizer

However I was completely unimpressed with this tool when I saw it this weekend for two reasons:

The first is directly related to how this is built:

> These are rough LLM estimates, not rigorous predictions.

This visualization is neat (well except for reason number two), but it's pretty much just AI slop repackaged. There's no substance behind any of these predictions. Now I'm perfectly open to the critique that normal BLS predictions are also potentially slop, but I don't see how this is particularly valuable.

And the second, like 8% of male population I'm colorblind, so I can't read this chart.

For the record, I do agentic coding pretty much everyday, have shipped AI products, done work in AI research, etc.

Ironically, it's comments like yours that keep me the most skeptical. The fact that an attack on a strawman is the top comment really makes me feel like there is some sort of true mania here that I might even be a bit caught up in.

Apple, a very successful company, makes 300B/y revenue? (ish)

~10% is all you need to be Apple.

And, it can work by taking all of 10% of the jobs and collecting the whole salary (the AI employee -- dubious proposition),

or by taking 10% of everyone's salary and automating part of everyone's job (the AI "tool" -- much more plausible).

If "part" being automated is >10%, we all win in the long run, every company gets productivity growth without cost growth, etc etc.

If you add in data center costs, and multiple competing AI companies, and then expand the TAM to all white collar work worldwide, you can make everyone successful beyond their wildest dreams with a "20% of work for 20% of the cost" model. Again, how you distribute that 20% remains to be seen (20% new unemployment, or new 0% unemployment with "tools".

I formalized my thoughts here: https://jodavaho.io/posts/ai-jobpocolypse.html

So, you know how looking at one pattern and then just saying "this one will be like that one?" without considering the similarities and differences is similar to what people complain about AIs doing?

Consider: Unlike my Microwave, Claude can work on Claude. Unlike my Microwave, Claude gets better at more things. Unlike my microwave, we do not know what causes Claude to work so well. My Microwave cannot improve the process that makes my microwave.

Also, um.

I'm not sure if you noticed?

But machines are everywhere.

I'm typing on one while another one (a microwave, in fact!) heats my breakfast, while another one washes my clothes, while another one vacuums my floor, while another one purifies the air in my room, while another one heats the air in my room, while another one monitors my doors and windows for unauthorized entry and another one keeps my food cool and another one pumps the Radon gas out of my basement and another one scoops my cat's poop.