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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

#141

Post by HyperL0gi »

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…

GPT 5.6 Luna is ten times cheaper than GPT 4o and outperforms it. I genuinely don’t think Luna is more expensive to serve than GPT 4o.

If you were charging $10 per month per user for your SaaS when GPT 4o was launched, you can easily charge $5 now and increase your profit.

I’m not sure why you believe things will become more expensive.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#142

Post by [deleted] »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #117
kalleboo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the robots are just a few years away. I thought that spatial reasoning was going to be a lot harder for AI, but Astra is showing that progress on that front is also moving very rapidly.

humanoid robots are decades away, and they are not going to be good or cheap for a long time.

[deleted]

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#143

Post by dfwedsf »

pj_mukh wrote: post #138
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…

"you built something that removes the pricey laywer, software developer, insurance policy writer, designer" This statement is untrue. The people have the judgement, the AI does the rote work. The rest is marketing fluff and/or leadership fumbles. You can't get rid of judgement (unless of course leadership is fumbling). With more AI, you got more radiology requests, and more radiologists [1] and better health results…

Exactly spot on.

Why are people so stupid?

E.g. take the radiology example. In the past people would not have been sent to a radiologist due to resource constraints.

But because of AI you now more capacity - therefore there is an INCREASE in radiology requests.

And this is going to be the common theme - there are lots of things that people are doing right now has an implicit constraint. AI will unlock new capacity so we will see MORE of it -> this will actually create a bizarre scenario of a labour shortage in many respects.

I know that's not what Amodei and Altman want to hear but... ha.

THis is why people are so bad at predictions - they look at one variable move and forget the rest / many 'unknowns' they did not foresee.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#144

Post by mancerayder »

I'm very senior and in a HCOL, relatively booming city. It's never been so hard to find a job despite never being so qualified. I can code, run infra, scale startups, do hands on, manage, present, I can do anything. But that's not what they are looking for. Dozens and dozens of my applications are rejected, with no first screens.

The same resume, just with a few less years experience at the same place, just a few years ago got recruiter pings.

It's insane and I'm very worried about the future of our jobs. I also don't think AI is legitimately replacing people, as at work people are producing terrible slop and having my team review it. That's not less work, that's more work.

Has Idiocracy reached our industry?

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#145

Post by Art9681 »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #117
kalleboo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the robots are just a few years away. I thought that spatial reasoning was going to be a lot harder for AI, but Astra is showing that progress on that front is also moving very rapidly.

humanoid robots are decades away, and they are not going to be good or cheap for a long time.

Decades? Or less than a decade?

Less than a decade with 99.999% certainty.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#146

Post by mancerayder »

japhyr wrote: post #50
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…

Are you seeing companies that are in over their heads because they don't have enough domain knowledge? I think that's always been an issue in tech, but it feels like AI exacerbates the issue. I see people starting companies and services where their primary domain knowledge seems to be whatever their AI tells them. It's sometimes enough to get off the ground, but I wonder how long it takes for customers/clients who ac…

I'm seeing it at small scale around me. I view it as a Dunning Kruger enablement - AI gives confident answers and long-winded explanations on domains distinct from the person asking, making it hard to verify. The user of AI now feel they have replaced someone's advice. I see it in Technology at work (particularly in architecture) but also in non work things like plumbing, law, medicine. We're all doctors and physical therapists now, for example. Also we don't need psychologists, either.

Everyone is obsolete. Just upload the MRI report to Claude and let it tell you what you should do.

When people talked about AI being a catastrophe to befall us, I thought people were picturing killer robots. What's happening instead is something else - the enablement of stupidity.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#147

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#148

Post by dgellow »

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?

What happened when they all pushed cryptocurrency and nothing actually came for it? Nothing. They just stop talking about it, quietly shutdown their revolutionary services.

What happened when they all pushed for metaverse things? Nothing. Shutdown quietly, move to the next big trend you’re not allowed to ignore.

That’s it. That’s the pattern. Here some companies will get a bit of value, most won’t. Though the job of software engineer has been transformed that’s the main real impact. But companies who didn’t get much value from all their AI projects will shut them down quietly, and LLMs will just became another tool in the standard company toolbox. Until a new trend comes along

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#149

Post by dgellow »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #77

"AI startups are hiring like there's no tomorrow." For AI startups there eventually may be no tomorrow How many of these startups are profitable Perhaps the greatest "AI"-related job losses will be failed "AI" startups More BS "jobs" created from throwaway investment capital instead of business success

Also, anyone can take a frontier model, point it at your AI startup website/app, and replicate what makes it unique in a fraction of the time it has taken the original implementers. There is nothing magical about most companies, you cannot replicate Apple but any SaaS can be cloned quite well with a bit of time. Unless you have a really unique niche with high entry cost, or a really unique dataset, or something else that really differentiate you from all the competitors, you will find that your space gets crowded very quickly

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#150

Post by wand3r »

The jobs numbers have been terrible and revised down. Huge amounts of people have dropped out if the workforce or are employed in multiple part times or struggling seriously in a single full time.

I saw an article here about the job market for writers. I can't recall, but I think it was a blog post saying like "AI is bad and has annoying prose so GOOD writers will thrive". The comments rightfully pointed out that not everything requires good writing and many companies will "buy" writing for llm prices as good enough to save money.

I bring it up because that is where someone simply articulated the obvious point I hadn't really thought through: the cascade. What happens when millions of copywriters, non famous journalist, average graphic designers, etc. get laid off. Millions of people will drive the price of labor WAY down as this wage bubble wanders through industries popping every few months. If the supply if labor becomes massive, we will have this debt spiral or stagflationary labor market that causes chaos. Ultimately, capital owners accrue the most value and can buy tons of assets for cheap. Unless, it turns out a middle classes consumption is like...important for our country to function.

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