131–140 of 1001 posts
I think everyone is missing the bigger picture. This is not a matter of whether AI will replace humans whole sale. There are two more predominant effects: 1. You’ll need fewer humans to do the same task. In other forms of automation, this has led to a decrease in employment. 2. The supply of capable humans increases dramatically. 3. Expertise is no longer a perfect moat. I’ve seen 2. My sister nearly flunked a coding…
Every time an analyst gives the current state of AI-based tools as evidence supporting AI disruption being just a hype, I think of skeptics who dismissed the exponential growth of covid19 cases due to their initial low numbers. Putting that aside, how is this article called an analysis and not an opinion piece? The only analysis done here is asking a labor economist what conditions would allow this claim to hold, and…
It's not CNN exlusive. Newsmedia that did not evolve towards clicks, riling up people, hatewatching and paid propaganda to the highest bidder went extinct a decade ago. This is what did evolve.
These are the moments that make millionaires. A majority of people believe that AI is going to thoroughly disrupt society. They've been primed to worry about an "AI apocalypse" by Hollywood for their entire lives. The prevailing counter-narrative is that AI is going to flop. HARD. You can't get more diametrically opposed than that. If you can correctly guess (or logically determine) which is correct, and bet all of y…
Why is that the counter-narrative? Doesn't it seem more likely that it will contine to gradually improve, perhaps asymptotically, maybe be more specifically trained in the niches where it works well, and it will just become another tool that humans use?
Maybe that's a flop compared to the hype?
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In theory. In reality, how are the benefits of all this efficiency going to be distributed to the people who aren't working? I sure don't see any calls for higher taxes and more wealth redistribution.
The source article is an analysis of an interview ( https://www.axios.com/2025/05/28/ai-jobs-white-collar-unempl... ) where the CEO of Anthropic called for higher taxes and more wealth redistribution.
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What makes you think productive work is what consulting companies are selling? They're there for laundering accountability. When you bring in consultants to roll out your corporate AI strategy, and it all falls apart in a few years, you can say, "we were following best practices, nobody could have anticipated X," where X is whatever failure mode ultimately tanks the AI strategy.
Do you think that it's possible in principle to have a better or worse corporate AI strategy? I do, and because I do, it seems clear that companies paying top dollar are doing so because they expect a better one. There's no reason to pay KPMG's rates if all you need is a fall guy. Most criticisms I see of management consulting seem to come from the perspective, which I get the sense you subscribe to, that management…
Every time an analyst gives the current state of AI-based tools as evidence supporting AI disruption being just a hype, I think of skeptics who dismissed the exponential growth of covid19 cases due to their initial low numbers. Putting that aside, how is this article called an analysis and not an opinion piece? The only analysis done here is asking a labor economist what conditions would allow this claim to hold, and…
Besides the labor economist bit, it also makes the correct point that tech people regularly exaggerate and lie. A great example of this is biotech, a field I work in.
These are the moments that make millionaires. A majority of people believe that AI is going to thoroughly disrupt society. They've been primed to worry about an "AI apocalypse" by Hollywood for their entire lives. The prevailing counter-narrative is that AI is going to flop. HARD. You can't get more diametrically opposed than that. If you can correctly guess (or logically determine) which is correct, and bet all of y…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes you think productive work is what consulting companies are selling? They're there for laundering accountability. When you bring in consultants to roll out your corporate AI strategy, and it all falls apart in a few years, you can say, "we were following best practices, nobody could have anticipated X," where X is whatever failure mode ultimately tanks the AI strategy.
Do you think that it's possible in principle to have a better or worse corporate AI strategy? I do, and because I do, it seems clear that companies paying top dollar are doing so because they expect a better one. There's no reason to pay KPMG's rates if all you need is a fall guy. Most criticisms I see of management consulting seem to come from the perspective, which I get the sense you subscribe to, that management…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> All the people employed by the government and blue collar workers If people don’t have jobs, government doesn’t have taxes to employ other people. If CEOs are salivating at the thought of replacing white collar workers, there is no reason to think next step of AI augmented with robotics won’t replace blue collar workers as well.
> If CEOs are salivating at the thought of replacing white collar workers, there is no reason to think next step of AI augmented with robotics won’t replace blue collar workers as well. Robotics seems harder, though, and has been around for longer than LLMs. Robotic automation can replace blue collar factory workers, but I struggle to imagine it replacing a plumber who comes to your house and fixes your pipes, or a w…
Over the last few years, I've seen a few in use here in Berlin: https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/robot-waiter-for-sale.html
> or someone who restocks shelves at grocery stores
For physical retail, or home delivery?
People are working on this for traditional stores, but I can't tell which news stories are real and which are hype — after around a decade of Musk promising FSD within a year or so, I know not to simply trust press releases even when they have a video of the thing apparently working.
For home delivery, this is mostly kinda solved: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE
> Plus, in the case of service work like being a waiter, I imagine some customers will always be willing to pay for a human face.
Sure… if they have the money.
But can we make an economy where all the stuff is free, and we're "working" n-hours a day smiling at bad jokes and manners of people we don't like, so we can earn money to spend to convince someone else who doesn't like us to spend m-hours a day smiling at our bad jokes and manners?
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The opposite is more true imo. It's the AI hype squad that are banking their future on AI magically turning into AGI; because, you know, it surprised us once.
Not really — even if AGI doesn’t work and these models don’t get any better, there’s still enormous value to be mined just from harnessing the existing state of the art. Or these guys pivot and go back to building CRUD apps. They’re either at the front of something revolutionary… or not… and they’ll go back to other lucrative big tech jobs.