Economists are pr people. Of course they would say that.
Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists
111–120 of 503 posts
Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists
#112My primary worry since the start has been not that it would "replace workers", but that it can destroy value of entire sectors. Think of resume-sending. Once both sides are automated, the practice is actually superfluous. The concept of "posting" and "applying" to jobs has to go. So any infrastructure supporting it has to go. At no point did it successfully "do a job", but the injury to the signal to noise ratio wipe…
Resume-sending is a great example: if everyone's blasting out AI-generated applications and companies are using AI to filter them, the whole "application" process collapses into meaningless busywork
input -> ai expand -> ai compress -> input'
Where input' is a distorted version of input. This is the new reality.
We should start to be less impressed volume of text and instead focus on density of information.
Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists
#113I'm generally an AI skeptic, but it seems awfully early to make this call. Aside from the obvious frontline support, artist, junior coder etc, a whole bunch of white collar "pay me for advice on X" jobs (dietician, financial advice, tax agent, etc), where the advice follows set patterns only mildly tailored for the recipient, seem to be severely at risk. Example: I recently used Gemini for some tax advice that would…
I tend to use ai for the same things I’d have used Google for in 2005.
Google is pretty much useless now as it changed into ann ad platform, and I suspect AI will go the same way soon enough.
Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists
#114I see Ai not replacing all workers but reducing head count.
On a software team I could see a team of 8 reduced to a team of 4 with Ai.
Especially in smaller, leaner companies.
You already see attorneys using it to write briefs; often to hilarious effect. These are clearly the precursor though to a much reduced need to for Jr / associate level attorneys at firms.
Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists
#115I'm generally an AI skeptic, but it seems awfully early to make this call. Aside from the obvious frontline support, artist, junior coder etc, a whole bunch of white collar "pay me for advice on X" jobs (dietician, financial advice, tax agent, etc), where the advice follows set patterns only mildly tailored for the recipient, seem to be severely at risk. Example: I recently used Gemini for some tax advice that would…
> I recently used Gemini for some tax advice that would have cost hundreds of dollars to get from a licensed tax agent.
That’s like buying a wrench and changing your own spark plugs. Wrenches are not putting mechanics out of business.
Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists
#116[dead]
Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists
#117A bold assumption, that it will continue not to.
I have a 185 year old treatise on wood engraving. At the time, to reproduce any image required that it be engraved in wood or metal for the printer; the best wood engravers were not mere reproducers, as they used some artistry when reducing the image to black and white, to keep the impression from continuous tones. (And some, of course, were also original artists in their own right). The wood engraving profession was destroyed by the invention of photo-etching (there was a weird interval before the invention of photo etching, in which cameras existed but photos had to be engraved manually anyway for printing).
Maybe all the wood engravers found employment; although I doubt it. But at this speed, there will be a lot of people who won't be able to retrain during employment and will either have to use up their savings while doing so, or have to take lower paid jobs.
Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Generative AI has failed to automate anything at all so far. (Racist memes and furry pornography doesn't count.)
Yeah no, I'm seeing more and more shitty ai generated ads, shop logos, interior design & graphics for instance in barber shops, fast food places etc. The sandwich shop next to my work has a music playlist which is 100% ai generated repetitive slop. Do you think they'll be paying graphic designers, musicians etc. for now on when something certainly shittier than what a good artist does, but also much better than what…
> Do you think they'll be paying graphic designers, musicians etc. for now on
People generating these things weren't ever going to be customers of those skillsets. Your examples are small business owners basically fucking around because they can, because it's free.
Most barber shops just play the radio, or "spring" for satellite radio, for example. AI generated music might actively lose them customers.
Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists
#119I'm generally an AI skeptic, but it seems awfully early to make this call. Aside from the obvious frontline support, artist, junior coder etc, a whole bunch of white collar "pay me for advice on X" jobs (dietician, financial advice, tax agent, etc), where the advice follows set patterns only mildly tailored for the recipient, seem to be severely at risk. Example: I recently used Gemini for some tax advice that would…
I’m a bit of a skeptic too and kind of agree on this. Also, the human employee displacement will be slow. It will start by not eliminating existing jobs but just eliminating the need for additional headcount, so it caps the growth of these labor markets. As it does that, the folks in the roles leveraging AI the most will start slowly stealing share of demand as they find more efficient and cheaper ways to perform the work. Meanwhile, core demand is shrinking as self service by customers is increasingly enabled. Then at some step pattern, perhaps the next global business cycle down turn, the headcount starts trending downward. This will repeat a handful of times, probably taking decades to be measured in aggregate by this type of study.
Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists
#120This is just objectively false. My friend is a freelance copy writer and live in the freelance world. It is 100% replacing writing jobs, editing jobs, and design jobs.
To be fair, those jobs were already pretty precarious.
Ever since the explosion in popularity of the internet in the 2000's, anything journalism related has been in terminal decline. The arrival of the smartphones accelerated this process.