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Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

economist.com

81–90 of 164 posts

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#81
But what happens when the exec level managers are done with all these AI training sessions and rollouts and realize nothing has improved?

What about the loss of productivity of developers who are forced to entertain tons of noise about AI and take training and attend sessions which do not increase their productivity and instead takes time away from real work?

Are employers running a software shop or a church?

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is temporary, especially jobs.

insightful

I worked in a country for 10+ years where the economy was not that good. The only place with true guaranteed continuous employment are government services or adjacents. Anywhere else you would see layoffs, closures or salary stagnation.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#83
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…

GPT4 was more expensive than Astra. And by the time it didn't even have cache. Tokens are so cheap and so commoditized today that people already forgot how things were in the earlier days of LLMs.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#84
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?

Because that's been the playbook of every tech company for a decade or two. It should be our expectation that this stuff will get an expensive rug pull the instant the companies can get away with it.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#85

But what happens when the exec level managers are done with all these AI training sessions and rollouts and realize nothing has improved? What about the loss of productivity of developers who are forced to entertain tons of noise about AI and take training and attend sessions which do not increase their productivity and instead takes time away from real work? Are employers running a software shop or a church?

They can't afford to miss out or be seen as missing out. It's not rational, yet it is in a way.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#86
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Self-hosting takes either cloud- or on-prem-engineering chops, which are in short supply. In my view, that becomes the primary driver for lowering token costs. Secondary are the alternative model sources like Z.ai and Moonshot, which between open weights and lower prices help to drive commoditization. But there is a political risk with these, for example, Z.al is on the U.S. Department of Commerce Entity List, which…

On macs you just install a desktop app. What can be simpler? Decent Qwen models already doing some simpler types of agentic work.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#87
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you seem to be discounting or unaware of the possibility of a) automating a significant chunk of new buildouts, and b) domestic companies seeking a slice of the “sell open model hosting for less than competitors” pie. I truly believe the cost per token for most people will eventually go approximately to zero even in the absence of subsidy unless there is a dramatic state intervention to curtail free computing and har…

Fair callout. Strongly discounting (b) and (a) is underspecified for me to respond reasonably. Your premise of full token commoditization has a major wrinkle though. GPU-centric data centers with never allow tokens to go to zero since you have a 1.5 year technical deprecation and 5 year life on the GPUs. Maybe Cerebras or similar chip builders, after writing model weights to silicon, will improve those returns on cap…

Maybe they still want to serve the feee tokens if that gets them good training data.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#88
post #45
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also sure to be homeless by now. But despite aggressively trying to automate myself away I'm somehow more busy than ever.

Relatable. Every time I finish working on something, I spot so many more new things that can be built.

And because of you we are now looking bad, so you're pressuring us with your unleashed creativity.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#89
post #14

I hope this results in a rebalancing of the social and economic power of high-IQ versus average-IQ workers. We will need construction workers and tradespeople to build and maintain these AI data centers. Probably even with robots. But we won’t need as many engineers, lawyers, and other people whose job it is to consume and generate bits. If we tax the proceeds of AI generated productivity sufficiently, this could be…

Haven't you seen how ridiculously good robots have become?

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#90

AI boosters: "look, AI is creating jobs, all of these doomers scaring you with job loses, don't listen to them" also AI boosters: "we are going to build a million robots, and the robots will build factories producing robots, there will be infinite abundance, nobody will need to work anymore"

> there will be infinite abundance Maybe. > nobody will need to work anymore If we define "nobody" as very wealthy people who partake in that abundance while everyone else ... goes away.

When AI gets that good, a solar panel can power a pile of motors and gears to move and do work for you that previously required humans. You won't need the job, you need to solve your necessities more directly. And that job is a good fit for the AI that was so good it put you out of a job.
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