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Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

economist.com

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Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#61

Post by binary132 »

alanmoraes wrote: post #28

> The Economist estimates that AI has so far created around 1m new jobs in America. That easily exceeds the roughly 200,000 lay-offs attributed to AI since mid-2023, and appears more than enough to offset weaker hiring in many back-office roles. America’s AI infrastructure splurge has created many of them. (...) That building spree requires armies of workers: electricians to wire them, HVAC specialists to stop racks…

“One million high-paying upper-middle class family supporting jobs were destroyed, but on the bright side, one million minimum-wage Walmart greeter jobs were created! See? We’re breaking even!”

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#62

Post by gruez »

lioeters wrote: post #49
gruez wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The Economist, Silicon Valley's primary submarine, dispels the notion that AI causes unemployment because SV has realized that the peasants get unruly. ??? From a few months ago: https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20260516_DE_...

Every single aspect of that cover is manipulative marketing.

Right, but OP's implication is that they're trying to placate the masses (that somehow read the economist?), even though a few months before they were putting out alarmist covers. You can't have it both ways. If you're arguing that economist being pro-job loss is part of a globalist conspiracy and so is the economist being anti-job loss, then you just created an unfalsifiable statement, a "heads I win, tails you lose" argument.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#63

Post by ProllyInfamous »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #25

I've spent 10 years implementing new technology into businesses from all over the world and the thing that has killed the most projects at the proof of concept phase has not been whether it works. It's whether the cost of going to production from PoC produces a significant ROI. AI is absolutely changing the economics there. Humans were simply nowhere near answering all the useful questions they had which software cou…

>people who couldn't afford to answer questions they've long wondered about can afford to answer them.

If the software isn't downright free – today, you can slap a $349 RTX 5060 [†] into any POS surplus computer and have an offline assistant, running Llama or Ornith, via Ollama in linux (i.e. the LLM and OS are FREE open-source software) [∑]

I have a working demo of this that has been shown/leant to several friends, and they're all surprised that it "all works so well, without being online, for only a few hundred dollars."

When I've demonstrated Mistral-small on my 5070Ti... that has been a real jaw dropper. I haven't shown anybody qwen3.8:27b, yet... but dammmmm, what a month of learning it's been.

----

A friend that was going through wifecancer confided in me that "you can ask it anything, without feeling embarassed" – and that has stuck with me (that so many smart people are afraid to ask simple questions [*], out of perceptional worries).

----

[†] (8GB DDR7) brand new from Wal-Mart

[∑] My first linux/LLM machine was built with setup help from Perplexity.ai (with a dozen "assists" - I am bluecollar, non-coder). This used an obsolete i5 (and $200 used VEGA64 GPU) to create a decent Llama3.1 LLM machine (~100wpm typeback, perhaps 70 tokens/s).

[*] even to their own detriment, of shame, when simple solutions often do exist

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#64

Post by mbgerring »

I was laid off as a senior product manager in December of 2025. I’ve been looking for a new job in clean energy (which is supposedly “having a moment” due to data centers) since then. There is no “jobs boom”. There are certainly job openings — black holes into which you can lodge your resume. Occasionally, multiple rounds of interviews that go nowhere. I’ve been paying my bills as an art fabricator and live event electrician, the kinds of blue collar jobs that are supposed to make up for the destruction of “knowledge work”. The work is inconsistent, and the pay is less than half of what I made before. There is no “jobs boom”, of any kind.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#65

Post by pj_mukh »

alanmoraes wrote: post #28

> The Economist estimates that AI has so far created around 1m new jobs in America. That easily exceeds the roughly 200,000 lay-offs attributed to AI since mid-2023, and appears more than enough to offset weaker hiring in many back-office roles. America’s AI infrastructure splurge has created many of them. (...) That building spree requires armies of workers: electricians to wire them, HVAC specialists to stop racks…

"easily exceeds the roughly 200,000 lay-offs attributed to AI "

Except that is hogwash, "attributed to AI" is basically the CEO screwing up something in the business and AI-washing their mistake because it's convenient.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#66

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

billsmithaustin wrote: post #58

Does anyone here question the integrity of the US government’s jobs report two months away from a mid-term election?

Not really. We'd see a lot of resignations if the numbers were being fudged. Statisticians, as a rule, take a dim view of falsifying data.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#67

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

K0nserv wrote: post #40
konaraddi wrote: post #7

Paywalled > On September 4th the Bureau of Labour Statistics reported that the American economy added 162,000 jobs in August, far above expectations. Good news that ought to be taken with a pinch of salt given how the current administration responds to unfavorable BLS data - > On Friday, August 1, [2025] President Trump fired Dr. Erika McEntarfer from her role as the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BL…

Even outside of the current administration, isn't BLS data notorious for being adjusted after the fact, often downwards? Basing reporting on fresh BLS data seems ill-advised.

Yeah, it's survey based and some employers don't hit the first few deadlines.

Last month got revised to being positive, at the same time that this month was being released.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#68

Post by Yizahi »

armanckeser wrote: post #36
elmer2 wrote: post #32

I'm a consultant and I've already worked for multiple AI companies that shut down over the last two years. I think the main problem is that they all are relying on the big token providers and trying to capture value with various services. At some point the token costs will increase so much, it will put all of these AI companies out of business. Don't get me wrong. AI is definitely useful. The high costs are currently…

Why assume token costs will increase as opposed to become commoditized?

That would be even worse for them, since then current customers of these AI-middleman corpos would just start deploying their own self-hosted and private LLM services. In before the complexity argument, there may well be some completely different middlemen corpos, who will assist in such deployments and initial ramp-ups.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#70

Post by rayiner »

binary132 wrote: post #61
alanmoraes wrote: post #28

> The Economist estimates that AI has so far created around 1m new jobs in America. That easily exceeds the roughly 200,000 lay-offs attributed to AI since mid-2023, and appears more than enough to offset weaker hiring in many back-office roles. America’s AI infrastructure splurge has created many of them. (...) That building spree requires armies of workers: electricians to wire them, HVAC specialists to stop racks…

“One million high-paying upper-middle class family supporting jobs were destroyed, but on the bright side, one million minimum-wage Walmart greeter jobs were created! See? We’re breaking even!”

Building and maintaining data centers aren’t minimum wage jobs. They are the best kind of jobs: accessible to somewhat above average people across a broad range of backgrounds. (As opposed to upper middle class knowledge worker jobs that are only accessible to the cognitive top 10%.)
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