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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

#101

Post by R_D_Olivaw »

georgeburdell wrote: post #5

I can’t read the article but in my group, which is not terribly AI exposed due to its hands-on nature, we are in fact hiring extra people into next year to handle additional AI initiatives that I am confident will succeed. In subsequent years, the plan as I have heard it is to let headcount go down by attrition. I would not take extra hiring now as evidence that AI is preserving job numbers.

This is indeed HN, so comments are of course skewed to a particular upper echelon of knowledge work, but I'll ask anyways:

When you say (and perhaps you might speculate across other businesses) "hiring extra people... To handle AI initiatives" does that mean you're hiring Very niche and specialized AI people to handle these initiatives? I'm curious because I have seen some versions of this sentiment on HN and it sort of feels like reading "at my company we're hiring more quantum physicists because of these initiatives".

Basically, how much of the general populace is actually going to have a shot at nabbing a slice of this meager pie?

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#102

Post by scott_weber »

Havoc wrote: post #60
HumblyTossed wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, software is cheaper and so people who couldn't afford to answer questions they've long wondered about can afford to answer them. Temporarily. Token price will rise sharply when the bills finally come due.

No longer convinced that’s true. Some of the indebted providers might go under but there is nothing preventing someone from just setting up a new provider and serving tokens debt free. GLM or whatever. That provides continuous downward pressure on token prices even if it isn’t Astra level

Agree model providers can't take much margin, a few percent plus maybe a bit extra from those willing to pay for a "better" model. Upstream is more concentrated: TSMC, NVIDIA, AMD could maybe raise prices and capture more of the value, which would affect open model providers.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#103

Post by bluefirebrand »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #84
armanckeser wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, this exactly.

People in this thread are discussing it as if it is a question of pure economics. It's not! It's a question of "how much do we think we can get away with charging"

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#104

Post by xlayn »

No they are not, try to change jobs and if you can't or takes a really long time you know this is some of the finest baloney. And no, it's not creating a lot of jobs, one one of the kind that will be destroyed by AI no, and that's the point... you built something that removes the pricey laywer, software developer, insurance policy writer, designer, etc... and replace it with a ONE TIME go work under the sun with no ac in the middle of nowhere as a contractor of the contractor of the contractor... So sure, I'm a dooms-scroll-lover, sure the 10000000 new part time possitions with no benefit of any kind will be the biggest work boom EVER... you will just go to compete with all the other people already doing that... and you know what happens when there is a queue of 100 to flip burgers or "highly technical non AI replaceable work like weld or electricist" right??

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#105

Post by windward »

pram wrote: post #27
windward wrote: post #17

While I'm still catastrophically worried about what AI means for my career, I've noticed that my current employer - very AI forward, and growing the team - is still facing an ever expanding backlog. High productivity is generally good for the employee, unless you're productive enough you run out of work to do. So how much code is needed?

Yes I’ve seen very little change over the past 3 years in my role (platform engineering) except mostly JIRA tickets are more unreadable because people just have Claude vomit a novel into it. I mean I use it every day of course, but the velocity of work doesn’t really seem to be budging lol. And frankly a lot of time wasted on AI made gadgets, and meetings about those gadgets (look at this dashboard Claude made! etc)

>just have Claude vomit a novel into it

True, that's the other side of it: my daily work has lost the fun reward loop and I'm being alienated from my colleagues. But I still have colleagues!

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#106

Post by zx8080 »

BatchJob wrote: post #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?

The Church of Chief Executives.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#107

Post by lovich »

xlayn wrote: post #104

No they are not, try to change jobs and if you can't or takes a really long time you know this is some of the finest baloney. And no, it's not creating a lot of jobs, one one of the kind that will be destroyed by AI no, and that's the point... you built something that removes the pricey laywer, software developer, insurance policy writer, designer, etc... and replace it with a ONE TIME go work under the sun with no a…

AI has completely broken interviewing as well. The asks I am getting in the few interviews I can achieve are schizophrenic.

They have pretty uniformly wanted me to demonstrate using AI but then freak out and interrogate me for every prompt and then want me to demonstrate I can do the task by hand. And that’s only after getting through the AI run filtering that gives a different score everytime your unchanged resume is run through the model.

It’s dark times for employment currently unless you’ve got a rare nepotism path.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#108

Post by lovich »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #66
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.

We didn’t need to see resignations because they were fired when the numbers weren’t good, in his opinion, previously.[1]

I get that the king does multiple things per day that used to be admin ending but we shouldn’t forget his machinations that are related to the topic at hand.

The data probably isn’t 100% false but it also definitely as trustworthy as it was a year and a half ago.

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/articles/trump-fired-bls-c...

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#109

Post by Mountain_Skies »

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?

Yes, but if you haven't been questioning them for the past couple of decades, you haven't been paying attention.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#110

Post by DonsDiscountGas »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #84
armanckeser wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> the instant the companies can get away with it

LLMs have no lock in. Switching costs are zero. It's really not clear that instant will ever come

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