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Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions

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Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions

#91

Post by tunesmith »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #61
tunesmith wrote: post #30

Unfortunately it will take longer for our bosses to walk it back. I feel like I'm fighting the battle daily, telling execs what kind of work LLMs do not replace... it's very slippery, they keep on doing the rhetorical texas two-step - I don't think they even realize they're doing it. We communicate that LLM is amplifying, they hear it can replace. "No, we need humans to help with specs" "But AI can help with that." "…

> "But only help, they can't come up with the idea." "Sure they can, we can just ask them." I've had multiple instances now where AI left to it's own devices has solved a tricky problem that I honestly didn't think it was capable of. I routinely have them design their own experiment loops, learn from each round and iterate on the process. Multiple times it has lead to a needle moving change with no need for human int…

> I've had multiple instances now where AI left to it's own devices has solved a tricky problem that I honestly didn't think it was capable of.

Who cares that you've had multiple instances? Everyone has had multiple instances. The question is whether that happens in EVERY instance. Because when someone's laid off, that's what the exec believes, that the person isn't needed at all.

I'm not arguing that AI won't replace jobs - it's clear that jobs are already disappearing "because of AI". I'm not even arguing that it is immoral (even though it is). I'm arguing that it is short-sighted and unwise.

Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions

#92

Post by gxs »

One of the things missed with AI is that it’s enabled people to do more - either by augmenting skill sets or augmenting bandwidth

In my own circles this has led to more work not less

Expectations are higher, SLAs are tighter. Which makes sense - if a company can mine more gold with less works, they aren’t going to retire workers they will ask for even more gold

Managers are coding again, analysts are expected to write better requirements and do more of their own analytics, lots of worn all around

Eventually we will saturate that and need new people again

I don’t disagree with the general principle that people will lose jobs, I just a) don’t think it will be as accelerated as people claim and b) more obviously the disruption will be felt in roles that are more rote and mechanical in nature - e.g. peoples whose job is in the family of summarizing data or compiling metrics, generating simple content (slide decks), etc and slowly creep up from there

AI is one of those garbage in garbage out things and so far the quality out when the input quality has been great from what I’ve seen. Just a note preemptively to the nay sayers

Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions

#93

Post by atleastoptimal »

Are they walking back their PR or their actual beliefs?

I think they realize that even if AI takes all jobs, the process to getting there will be less turbulent if they obfuscate and minimize it, until the working class no longer has leverage, rather than sounding the alarm earlier, leading to a more concerted populist uprising, and then AI is regulated far more than they want

Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions

#95

Post by pessimizer »

beepbopboopp wrote: post #19
blitzar wrote: post #7

They won't be trillionaires with that attitude. They could have kept saying the line "Ai will replace all the jobs by the end of the year " for another 20 years.

If you think there is even a 2% chance you're going to need a government bailout over the next decade, you simply cant be calling your product the grim reaper.

Especially when the chance they'll get that bailout is around 99.9999999%. That bag has already been got. Doesn't matter if AI ultimately turns out to be useless for anything but children's toys because the productivity it adds to IT work is exactly offset by the amount of bugs it both adds and has to find.

The psychopaths that are pushing it will be arguing over who gets to be president of the world in 2044. This arguing will not be done in any public forum, but over a grouptext.

Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions

#96

Post by MagicMoonlight »

AI lets me be far more productive, creating far more demand. Before I wouldn’t have made half the stuff I’ve made, because it was too time consuming. The lowered opportunity cost has led to me having more to do.

It doesn’t have this effect for morons. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can easily slop out some garbage, but you won’t be able to iterate on it or maintain it. These models will produce some really stupid outputs unless you actively fight them. Then if you try and add something new, you’re slapping new layers of slop onto the stinking pile.

I’m not concerned about losing my job with these current slop models. Most employees can barely read and write, they aren’t suddenly going to produce entire systems just because they can slop stuff out.

Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions

#97

Post by watwut »

aresant wrote: post #66

This is an absolutely classic PR "submarine" effort to reframe the impact of AI Paul Graham has mandatory essay on this - https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html (1) More than 50% of Americans at this point are more concerned about AI than excited for it - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/03/12/key-findi... (2) Popular media is feeding into this zeitgeist with headlines like - "Prepare for an AI jobs ap…

The most maddening thing is that in our current timeline, the more obviously you lie and bullshit, the more you get rewarded. And winners can lie and bullshit with even less pushback, creating deadly cycle.

Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions

#98

Post by windexh8er »

simonw wrote: post #37

OK, this is weird. The article says: > OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in an interview with Commonwealth Bank of Australia CEO Matt Comyn on Tuesday, said he was “pretty wrong” about AI’s economic impact—a reversal from his June 2025 warnings that entry-level roles were at serious risk. But the link to the interview goes to this 2m11s YouTube video, and he doesn't use say anything of the sort: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=…

For those that write and shill for these orgs, almost full time, I could see how this type of admission is damning.

Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions

#99

Post by tunesmith »

datakan wrote: post #45
tunesmith wrote: post #30

Unfortunately it will take longer for our bosses to walk it back. I feel like I'm fighting the battle daily, telling execs what kind of work LLMs do not replace... it's very slippery, they keep on doing the rhetorical texas two-step - I don't think they even realize they're doing it. We communicate that LLM is amplifying, they hear it can replace. "No, we need humans to help with specs" "But AI can help with that." "…

It tells you a lot about your execs and how little they care, either for their employees or their customers. The quarterly profits are their God and they will worship at the altar of the stock price. Instead of finding ways to make AI enhance their employees and make them more productive, they immediately jump to ways to eliminate employees. It's the opposite of a growth mentallity. I'd love for these executives to s…

I think there's something else psychological going on. What you describe is a rational approach based off of bad values. But I think I'm also seeing something weirdly irrational.

It's like an (emotional) depression or something. Scarcity thinking, the inability to think expansively. People are so sure that everything around them is shrinking that they feel an instinct to hunker down, shrink, and cut as well. Like it doesn't occur to them that they don't have to feel that way. The execs I work with, none of them strike me as spreadsheet-driven greedy people. They seem more freaked out than that.

Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions

#100

Post by suzzer99 »

watwut wrote: post #97
aresant wrote: post #66

This is an absolutely classic PR "submarine" effort to reframe the impact of AI Paul Graham has mandatory essay on this - https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html (1) More than 50% of Americans at this point are more concerned about AI than excited for it - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/03/12/key-findi... (2) Popular media is feeding into this zeitgeist with headlines like - "Prepare for an AI jobs ap…

The most maddening thing is that in our current timeline, the more obviously you lie and bullshit, the more you get rewarded. And winners can lie and bullshit with even less pushback, creating deadly cycle.

This has been largely true for the history of tech. The most-hyped technology usually wins out over the best technology.
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