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The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon

theguardian.com

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Re: The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon

#31

Post by shivpat23 »

soupfordummies wrote: post #21
Gualdrapo wrote: post #12

All I know is that trying to get a job now is being way more brutal than before. The closest thing I got this month was a scam email from an alleged "independent global senior recruiter" "currently supporting a confidential search for a company developing AI-powered digital products". The made-with-ai smell was all over the place, the company in mention allegedly was adobe, and am pretty sure they got my email from t…

I wonder if we’re actually in like a shadow recession and companies are just using AI as an excuse to do layoffs or hire less. Idk there’s a lot of diff variables and it’s complicated of course, I really don’t think it’s because “AI’s taking the jobs” tho.

Unemployment rate and labor participation rate don’t support this.. probably true for software engineering but not the broader economy afaict

Re: The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon

#32

Post by alephnerd »

soupfordummies wrote: post #21
Gualdrapo wrote: post #12

All I know is that trying to get a job now is being way more brutal than before. The closest thing I got this month was a scam email from an alleged "independent global senior recruiter" "currently supporting a confidential search for a company developing AI-powered digital products". The made-with-ai smell was all over the place, the company in mention allegedly was adobe, and am pretty sure they got my email from t…

I wonder if we’re actually in like a shadow recession and companies are just using AI as an excuse to do layoffs or hire less. Idk there’s a lot of diff variables and it’s complicated of course, I really don’t think it’s because “AI’s taking the jobs” tho.

For tech it truly depends on your geo.

If you are in Western Europe, then yes it's because of a shadow recession.

If you are in Seattle, then it's because the larger employers are shifting headcount to the Bay or abroad.

If you are not in the Bay, NYC, or Seattle, it's because domestic nearshoring during 2018-23 failed (eg. Cisco, NetApp, and Google in RTP)

I've written about this before on here [0][1]

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45466975

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47174561

Re: The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon

#33

Post by vouaobrasil »

sunnybeetroot wrote: post #18
vouaobrasil wrote: post #9

It sort of is though because more jobs are becoming more mechanical. In the past, I wouldn't mind being a programmer but now with all this AI the job sucks. AI may have made things more efficient but that also balances on the other side of the equation: the boss now expects more, and it's much less fun to produce more than to concentrate well on a single topic. So jobs suck more and that's harsh. Also, many jobs are…

Will you still hate AI when it discovers the cure for your cancer?

If I did get cancer, my survival instinct might indeed get me to use it. But I'd still hate AI because it's very likely that the cancer would be caused by all the stuff we've done to the planet and AI would then just be another bandaid that would probably in turn cause more cancer because of how it will encourage more people to use resources, and how it probably will cause more stress to the average human being.

And solving some cases of cancer is not worth the even greater medical problems AI will be foisting upon the world.

Re: The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon

#34

Post by rybosworld »

Agentic coding only became reasonably decent this past December. Even in tech, most organizations that have adopted the tools are still trying to understand how capable they are and how to use them.

Point is it's too early to declare what the effect will be. It can take years for large organizations to change the way of doing things. The only sure-fire way to speed that up is if they suddenly start losing market-share. Otherwise, it's all herd-following and complacency in the majority of companies.

Re: The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon

#35

Post by bonoboTP »

datakan wrote: post #7

Judging by the IT maturity of most of the companies I have worked with in the last 30 years, my guess is we're about 10-15 years from any serious changes, solely because adopting AI will require a few things. Most are running razor thin margins and wont be able to afford any of this, others have so much technical debt piled up that even if they could afford it they couldn't do anything without identifying ancient sys…

> It's just a nonissue for most people.

I'm not sure how relevant the sentiment of average people are regarding the future. People are generally not well tuned in to any such things. Things just happen to most of us and we spend our lives thinking about gossip and life stuff, family, friends, chores etc., not musing about the future which we have little impact on.

Think about people's views on the coronavirus in February 2020. Things can change fast, and people will be like "Where did this come from all of a sudden? I was told by all the experts that AI is a bubble and irrelevant chatbot stuff." Most people hold extremely outdated (ie ~1-3 year out of date) ideas about AI capabilities and are absolutely unable to imagine what the capabilities in 1-3 years in the future will be (because they are unable to imagine what is already possible with frontier models today).

Re: The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon

#36

Post by thinkindie »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #13

Then what is causing hiring to be so low, or the layoffs? Just a soft job market in general? The economy is actually tanking, not just "AI" jobs. Did hiring managers just pump the brakes "just in case this AI thing is real". So we should see some big spike in hiring now that we know AI isn't going to do everything? Or, the actual real numbers of hiring, is for real an indicator that AI is already taking jobs, or redu…

There are several things: * economic uncertainty (wars, energy shocks, etc) * policies chaos * end of free money (interest rates)

Re: The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon

#37

Post by jayd16 »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #13

Then what is causing hiring to be so low, or the layoffs? Just a soft job market in general? The economy is actually tanking, not just "AI" jobs. Did hiring managers just pump the brakes "just in case this AI thing is real". So we should see some big spike in hiring now that we know AI isn't going to do everything? Or, the actual real numbers of hiring, is for real an indicator that AI is already taking jobs, or redu…

AI has the mind share but I guess it's not hitting the bottom line enough for tech companies to grow.

If anything it feels like AI has sucked the air out of the room as far as investment dollars goes.

Re: The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon

#38

Post by vouaobrasil »

Mezzie wrote: post #28
sunnybeetroot wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will you still hate AI when it discovers the cure for your cancer?

People can absolutely have complicated feelings about things that help them. My life is sustained by medicine produced by large international pharma companies, and I also feel really uncomfortable about that.

Exactly right. We all have to survive on a personal level - that's our instinct. But we can only try and minimize our impact and do the best we can, even though on a global scale supporting the current system is not a good thing in many cases.

I don't think badly of anyone who uses AI who makes a living because, survival. But on the other hand, I think the world would be better off without it. One can still wish for a better world while trying to survive in the current one using the tools at one's disposal, even if that situation is suboptimal.

Re: The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon

#39

Post by sunnybeetroot »

epgui wrote: post #24
sunnybeetroot wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will you still hate AI when it discovers the cure for your cancer?

It won’t. And I will. I’m not sure if your question misunderstands what AI is and what it can do, or if it misunderstands what cancer is and how medical research works.

It was more of an expression to say that AI will improve health outcomes due to its ability to increase the speed at which research is done.

Re: The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon

#40

Post by 63stack »

sunnybeetroot wrote: post #18
vouaobrasil wrote: post #9

It sort of is though because more jobs are becoming more mechanical. In the past, I wouldn't mind being a programmer but now with all this AI the job sucks. AI may have made things more efficient but that also balances on the other side of the equation: the boss now expects more, and it's much less fun to produce more than to concentrate well on a single topic. So jobs suck more and that's harsh. Also, many jobs are…

Will you still hate AI when it discovers the cure for your cancer?

We can cross that bridge when we get there
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