Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ex-Google Exec Says "The Idea That AI Will Create New Jobs Is 100% Crap"

windowscentral.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 141 posts

Re: Ex-Google Exec Says "The Idea That AI Will Create New Jobs Is 100% Crap"

#101

Post by ethbr1 »

nerevarthelame wrote: post #77

The full interview this comes from is off the rails. Gawdat says we'll have AGI by 2026 at the absolute latest, and that we will have artificial super intelligence in the immediate future. He guarantees that after destroying jobs, within 15 years we will be in a "utopia" controlled by AI. It's an absurd level of confidence for an extremely bold prediction. In his last interview from this series in 2023, Gawdat said t…

> He guarantees that after destroying jobs, within 15 years we will be in a "utopia" controlled by AI.

Given the Holocaust took ~12 years (including all the legal/political groundwork) and the Holodomor a year, the "between" doesn't fill me with confidence...

Re: Ex-Google Exec Says "The Idea That AI Will Create New Jobs Is 100% Crap"

#102

Post by ethbr1 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #78
tcfhgj wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is this "something else" in this case?

You never know beforehand. Before they existed, few would have believed the disappearing jobs would be replaced by web designers, uber drivers, youtubers, drone pilots etc.

>> But what did happen is that people were freed up to do different things. Those jobs were indirectly created by the fact that people did not need to spend so much time growing food. That allowed people to do other things to create value and improve our lives.

The key point here is that "create value" -- new jobs are created if there are new human jobs that create value.

The bifurcation of incomes pre-AI should be a warning that we're reaching a point where the average human (in physical ability and knowledge) can no longer efficiently create value.

Imagine we have robots that can physically lift and manipulate as well as the average human. And AGI that can think as well as the average human (arguably LLMs might already pass that low bar).

Should an AGI future eventuate, the distribution of that abundance is not pre-ordained. Retooling government and society into a post-capitalist system, and deciding a fair distribution to people who have little power to demand it, is going to be a mess.

Or to put it another way, how many times in history have the rich en masse voluntarily given to the poor?

Re: Ex-Google Exec Says "The Idea That AI Will Create New Jobs Is 100% Crap"

#103

Post by _DeadFred_ »

BurningFrog wrote: post #98
tcfhgj wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so if you don't know beforehand, can you even be sure that "something else" exists?

Strictly speaking, you can't be sure the sun will rise tomorrow, and you should be even less sure about this. But the sensible thing is to expect strong trends to continue.

"Intel will always be the number one chip maker. Even if things come up, they will figure it out. The strong trend of Intel's success will continue forever"

Re: Ex-Google Exec Says "The Idea That AI Will Create New Jobs Is 100% Crap"

#104

Post by lossolo »

BurningFrog wrote: post #78
tcfhgj wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is this "something else" in this case?

You never know beforehand. Before they existed, few would have believed the disappearing jobs would be replaced by web designers, uber drivers, youtubers, drone pilots etc.

We know humans have needs, and most jobs exist to meet them. The agricultural revolution mainly met one need — cheaper food with less labor.

A superintelligent AI could meet all human needs. The only remaining jobs might be those where people prefer a human touch like therapy or sex work, but such roles would be rare.

Past revolutions either made work more efficient or created new ways for humans to serve each other. Superintelligence would replace every form of work that meets human needs, so historical analogies don’t apply.

Re: Ex-Google Exec Says "The Idea That AI Will Create New Jobs Is 100% Crap"

#105

Post by showerst »

darth_avocado wrote: post #87
showerst wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think programming is a good example profession. For a simple model, let's say you hire programmers for three reasons: 1. Because you have (X) work to get done to run your business. Once that work is done, there is no more work to do. 2. Because they get work done that makes more money than you pay them, but with diminishing marginal returns. So the first programmer is worth 20x their salary, the 20th is worth 1.01x…

> So the first programmer is worth 20x their salary, the 20th is worth 1.01x their salary. > If most programmers are in the second bucket, then suddenly there's _much_ more stuff that can be built (and money made) per-programmer. So businesses will be incentivized to hire many more programmers. How do these two reconcile? If hiring more programmers is diminishing returns, why would a business hire more?

Because you've moved the frontier of who's making you money out. Now the 20th programmer is still worth 5x their salary, and you hire up to the 30th programmer to hit 1.01.

Re: Ex-Google Exec Says "The Idea That AI Will Create New Jobs Is 100% Crap"

#106

Post by ethbr1 »

guywithahat wrote: post #88
lm28469 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's just basic economics Is it ? > when something makes the economy more efficient How does "ai" make "the economy" more efficient exactly ? > people get new, better jobs Which law dictate that these jobs are better ? I don't see people getting better jobs personally, I see a shit load of people pushed into more and more precarious jobs, with less and less workers rights and job security, with stagnating wages des…

> It's just basic economics Yes, if you look up any video of an economist talking about AI, they'll bring up the industrial revolution and point out how people thought it would bring the end of employment and instead created more and better jobs. The generally accepted viewpoint is AI will make things more efficient, and thus people will be freed to do other, more important work.

> and thus people will be freed to do other, more important work

In a post-labor-scarcity world, there is no longer any "other, more important work."

Which means there's no basis for paying labor currency, which means there's no way for labor to buy things, which means we need a new method to ensure people can get things.

Re: Ex-Google Exec Says "The Idea That AI Will Create New Jobs Is 100% Crap"

#107

Post by _DeadFred_ »

xnx wrote: post #90

Historically, jobs lost to technology are eventually replaced with other jobs, though not necessarily for the displaced workers. There's always the chance that "this time it's different". What's left after machines can think better than people? Dexterous manual work that mechanical arms can't perform? The ideal situation would be that we reap the benefits of technological abundance and work less.

By historically you mean the one time. We went from a world where nearly everything was made by hand to one built on efficiency of scale, which turbocharged growth across the board. Moving from home made clothes to mass produced, etc. There isn't a new next level to take making clothes, nor everything else. There was a lot of low hanging fruit between 1880-today.

What happened in the past wasn't magic. It was logical progression from a very basic civilization to an optimized one. But AI advocates push the past as 'everything changed but magic made it work out so that will happen again'. The past’s transformation was a one-off fueled by obvious, unexploited gains. There is no “next level” waiting in clothes, shipping, energy, or most other mature systems.

Re: Ex-Google Exec Says "The Idea That AI Will Create New Jobs Is 100% Crap"

#108

Post by root_axis »

The idea that LLMs will replace us all just seems untethered from reality. Yes, they are extremely powerful and useful, with incredible potential, but I am not convinced that the cost/benefit ratio scales to the size of the entire economy.

As amazing as LLMs are, the statistical unreliability of the SOTA models means human intervention is always necessary. That's based on today's SOTA models which are already so absurdly gigantic that the DCs are disrupting civic infrastructure due to their water and power demands, and these companies still have to rate limit aggressively just to keep the service up.

Everyone knows quadratic growth doesn't scale, so I don't see how these models continue to grow in capability, while also growing in capacity to meet the demand of an "agentic economy", while still ultimately needing to pay human SMEs to verify correctness and fix mistakes. It doesn't add up.

My prediction is that we'll see increased efficiency in knowledge workers and reshaping/consolidation of certain job functions, but the structure of the economy over the next two decades won't be upended due to LLMs.

Re: Ex-Google Exec Says "The Idea That AI Will Create New Jobs Is 100% Crap"

#109

Post by tim333 »

pjmlp wrote: post #69
BurningFrog wrote: post #49

As a Software Engineer, Gawdat has no expertise in job creation. If an Economist said the same, I'd pay more attention. It's very counterintuitive, but for 250 years tech has constantly eliminated jobs, while unemployment rates have stayed the same. People have always predicted this would lead to mass unemployment, they've always been wrong, and yet they've kept predicting it. One way to explain it is that unemployed…

Like in Detroit, and Germany's Ruhrgebiet? Two examples out of plenty others, where people had to move out as means of survival.

Detroit's decline wasn't really caused by tech. More that unions jacked the wages and other costs for car production there so the production moved elsewhere.

Re: Ex-Google Exec Says "The Idea That AI Will Create New Jobs Is 100% Crap"

#110

Post by tempodox »

tcfhgj wrote: post #99
BurningFrog wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strictly speaking, you can't be sure the sun will rise tomorrow, and you should be even less sure about this. But the sensible thing is to expect strong trends to continue.

the sun "rising" tomorrow is backed by scientific knowledge about the solar system - more jobs by AI - so far - not more than wishful thinking, like many other AI promises (such as saving is from climate change).

Someone will have to clean up the mess that AI usage leaves in its wake.
Post reply on HN