21–30 of 104 posts
Most of the alarmist writing I see about AI displacing workers or suddenly and drastically changing the economy seem to be written by people who are pretty removed from technology or the actual businesses in which AI is allegedly replacing people. Their theses on AI are not as much a criticism of AI as much as a desire to frame capitalism itself within their own system of ethics and advocate for some form of reform;…
U.S. unemployment rate is steady at ~4% and we are now almost 4 years after the release of ChatGPT. The Jobs Apocalypse seems to be always on the horizon. UBI is being pushed by college educated workers burnt out of white collar work (understandably), but when you suggest to them working construction, teaching school, or working in a hospital, they deflect and go quiet.
by some measures unemployment is at 25% and this aligns with my personal experience much better than frankly the bs 4% rate that is being pushed by this admin https://www.lisep.org/tru
U.S. unemployment rate is steady at ~4% and we are now almost 4 years after the release of ChatGPT. The Jobs Apocalypse seems to be always on the horizon. UBI is being pushed by college educated workers burnt out of white collar work (understandably), but when you suggest to them working construction, teaching school, or working in a hospital, they deflect and go quiet.
1) initial signs of AI adoption harming job growth got the signal backwards: It's not that we didn't hire Jrs because we had AI now, its that we didn't hire Jrs because they used AI now, and it was hard to reconcile this with our standing hireability signals: code quality, side projects, portfolio, etc.
2) The TAM argument for AI replacing all work is not even required. Anthropic and company (and several future companies) can become fantastically wealthy beyond anyone's dreams just by following claude code subscription model to make life easier for workers, who in turn gladly pay for the subcription.
both are here with more details, apologies for links to personal (ad-free) blog
The government will try at all costs to implement an AI tax, just because they can and because that's their job, to fleece us all. Then they will try in the name of 'peace/climate/asteroid/terrorism' to make the whole world comply or China will eat their lunch
U.S. unemployment rate is steady at ~4% and we are now almost 4 years after the release of ChatGPT. The Jobs Apocalypse seems to be always on the horizon. UBI is being pushed by college educated workers burnt out of white collar work (understandably), but when you suggest to them working construction, teaching school, or working in a hospital, they deflect and go quiet.
Real unemployment has been steadily growing along U6 numbers
i'm sure it's meant in some kind of technical sense that is precisely defined in the field of economics, but this use of the word "rational" is irritating: > This demand externality traps rational firms in an automation arms race, displacing workers well beyond what is collectively optimal. you can't be trapped in a sub-optimal situation and be rational at the same time. the rational thing for these rational competit…
This is the bit that is tripping you up. The market is composed of more than just the these potentially agreeing parties, so there is no case where all parties can even come together to agree. It's rational for any party to break the agreement or be stealthy and attempt to take the upper hand while the visible players are all patting themselves on the back for their self-inflicted restraint. It's rational for one party to encourage everyone to come together to agree, to distract from their own actions to undercut everyone else.
On top of that, such agreement would potentially qualify as collusion, allowing an upstart to cry foul.
It's all game theory.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a lot of that type of slop on LinkedIn (with accompanying slop comments) but they're not taken anywhere as seriously as the more thoughtful blog posts like this Also in technical circles, we're pretty aware of the marketing/self-promotional nuance of the "our AI accidentally hacked X company" type of press releases, which perhaps the general public may not take with as large a grain of salt
I dont read linkedin. I was not referencing linkedin. Among other sources, the primary one is literally AI companies themselves. And people close to them. The "it will replace workers" is pro-ai talking and selling point.
And on a restrospective point, I think one of the easiest jobs for AI to do right now is software engineering. But on the whole, while there certainly have been layoffs, software engineering hiring has still been mostly a net positive[0].
And that's just for formal software engineering jobs; if we define a software engineer as a human creating software, then I think AI as a tool has created a LOT more (perhaps not employed as one, but say, a realtor creating their own sofware for personal use) software engineers than the amount that it's actually replaced. In a sense, because of AI, there are more software engineers now than ever before.
[0]: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/state-of-the-job-...
Most of the alarmist writing I see about AI displacing workers or suddenly and drastically changing the economy seem to be written by people who are pretty removed from technology or the actual businesses in which AI is allegedly replacing people. Their theses on AI are not as much a criticism of AI as much as a desire to frame capitalism itself within their own system of ethics and advocate for some form of reform;…
Most of the alarmist writing I see about AI displacing workers or suddenly and drastically changing the economy ... are from pro-ai boosters trying to create hype around AI. They are not criticism of ai, they are openly stated goals and aspirations.
One of the people in the company I work for/with is a non-programmer that has a “vibe coding consulting” gig on the side.
Basically half of their Linkedin is about how they’re shipping features at half the speed as developers, with quality, etc.
They’re not.
They took about three months to prototype something that was rejected for not working/unreadable code. Another team built the same feature from scratch in a week.
Seeing the other side of the grift is kind of pathetic.
i'm sure it's meant in some kind of technical sense that is precisely defined in the field of economics, but this use of the word "rational" is irritating: > This demand externality traps rational firms in an automation arms race, displacing workers well beyond what is collectively optimal. you can't be trapped in a sub-optimal situation and be rational at the same time. the rational thing for these rational competit…
> you can't be trapped in a sub-optimal situation and be rational at the same time Yes you can that’s what tragedy of the commons is. Rational means you take the choice that provides the most value for yourself. Without a cartel (hard) or government regulation this situation happens all the time.
You can be trapped in sub-optimal situation because it's a local maxima; not because of tragedy of commons, which is something different.
Society can be trapped in local maxima and that would be because of tragedy of commons, and individuals can be trapped in local maxima but that's distinct from tragedy of commons.