"AI Will Replace All the Jobs " Is Just Tech Execs Doing Marketing • Hacker News Board

Re: "AI Will Replace All the Jobs " Is Just Tech Execs Doing Marketing

#131

Post by monknomo » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 3:59 PM UTC

bluefirebrand wrote: post #109

bee_rider wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m actually not clear on what percentage of the doctor’s work-time is spend doing things other than talking to patients (like arguing with insurance or making records).

The solution to doctors arguing with insurance isn't "have an AI do it" it's universal health care so doctors don't need to worry about insurance in the slightest I worked on software for electronic medical record note taking and I'm not sure how an LLM can help a doctor speed that up tbh. All of the stats need to be typed into the computer regardless. The LLM can't really speed that up?

I have no expertise and am prepared to be quite wrong, but I wonder if llm's would be good at listening to a session, and/or a doctor dictating, and putting the right stats in the right place, and the dictated case history into a note.

I think llm's are alright at speech recognition and that sort of unstructured to structured text manipulation. At least, in my corner of the customer success world I've seen some uses along those lines

Re: "AI Will Replace All the Jobs " Is Just Tech Execs Doing Marketing

#132

Post by tines » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 4:00 PM UTC

palmotea wrote: post #124

tines wrote: post #115

People compare AI to the automation that happened in e.g. car factories. Lots of people were put out of jobs, and that’s just the way things go, they say. But the difference is that automotive automation does create way more jobs than it destroyed. Programmers, designers, machine maintainers, computer engineers, mechanical engineers, materials scientists, all have a part to play in making those machines. More people…

I think one interesting way to frame AI is that it will "degrade" jobs: force speed-ups and remove much of the enjoyable and engaging aspects and replace them with drudgery.

That’s a good way to think of it. I think it’s degrading every aspect of life. We’re so obsessed with metrics and efficiency that we don’t know how to live any more.

Re: "AI Will Replace All the Jobs " Is Just Tech Execs Doing Marketing

#133

Post by ilaksh » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 4:01 PM UTC

parineum wrote: post #111

ilaksh wrote: post #90

The biggest reason there is such a difference of opinion on this is that people have fundamentally different worldviews. If you have bought into the singularity concept and exponential acceleration of computing performance, then you are likely to believe that we are right on track to shortly have smarter-than-human AI. This is also related to just having a technology-positive versus negative worldview. Many people li…

I think you're missing a third conglomerate that, I think, is actually the most influential. It's not unlike the crypto space; you've got your true believers, your skeptics and thirdly, your financially motivated hype men. The CEOs if these publicly traded companies and companies that want to be bought are the latter and they are the ones who are behind stories where "the ai lies so we don't turn it off!!!" hype that…

I think those CEOs like Altman and Amodei do find it convenient to hype their products like that, but also they believe in computing exponentials and artificial superintelligence etc.

Re: "AI Will Replace All the Jobs " Is Just Tech Execs Doing Marketing

#134

Post by roywiggins » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 4:02 PM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #40

roywiggins wrote: post #5

What if it just makes most jobs worse, or replaces good jobs with more, worse jobs? "Meat robot constantly monitored and directed by AI overlords" is technically a job.

> What if it just makes most jobs worse, or replaces good jobs with more, worse jobs? Right. Consider: 1) Senior engineer writing code vs. 2) Senior engineer prompting and code reviewing LLM agent The senior engineer is essential to the process in each case, because the LLM agent left to its own devices will produce nonfunctional crap. But think about the pleasantness of the job and the job satisfaction of the senior…

This is more or less what happened to artisans during the industrial revolution: sell your tools, become a widget hammerer on the assembly line. Lots of jobs created for widget hammerers. Not a great deal for a lot of people. Deskilling jobs demonstrably sucks for the people with skills!

Re: "AI Will Replace All the Jobs " Is Just Tech Execs Doing Marketing

#135

Post by FirmwareBurner » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 4:03 PM UTC

lambdasquirrel wrote: post #130

ednite wrote: post #108

Not an expert here, just speaking from experience as a working dev. I don’t think AI is going to replace my job as a software developers anytime soon, but it’s definitely changing how we work (and in many cases, already has). Personally, I use AI a lot. It’s great for boilerplate, getting unstuck, or even offering alternative solutions I wouldn’t have thought of. But where it still struggles sometimes is with the why…

The AI I use at work can’t set up IAM correctly, didn’t even know it needed to, let alone associate said IAM principal with the correct k8s RBAC groups. I do appreciate that it ground through a lot of boilerplate, but I’m concerned that it’s like buying a new Sony or Leica camera as a beginner photographer. As with your non-coder VBA friend, it might make them think they’re a lot more skilled than they really are. An…

>The AI I use at work can’t set up IAM correctly

Can you? :D

Based on my favorite quote from the I, Robot(2004) movie with Will Smith when he got roasted by a robot:

  W.S.:  "You are just a machine. An imitation of life. Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?*
  Robot:  "Can you?"

Which I think applies to a lot of anti-AI sentiments. Sure, the AI doesn't know how to do X, Y, Z but then most people also don't know X, Y and Z. Sure, people can learn how to X, Y and Z, but then so can an AI. ChatGPT couldn't initially draw anime, now they trained it to do that and it can. Similarly it can also learn how to set up IAM correctly if they bother to train it well enough for that task. But for now, like you discovered, we're far away form an AI that's universally good at everything but I expect specialisation will arrive sooner than later.

Re: "AI Will Replace All the Jobs " Is Just Tech Execs Doing Marketing

#136

Post by AstroBen » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 4:03 PM UTC

ninetyninenine wrote: post #116

sulam wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t project trends out endlessly. If you could, FB would have 20B users right now based on early growth (just a random guess, you get the point). The planet would have 15B people on it based on growth rate up until the 90s. Google would be bigger than the world GDP. Etc. One of the more bullish AI people has said the models performance scales with log of compute (Sam Altman). Do you know how hard it will be to…

>You can’t project trends out endlessly. But this is not just an endless projection. In one sense we can't have economic growth and energy consumption go endlessly as that will eat up all the available resources on earth, there is a physical hard line. However for AI this is not the case. There is literally an example of human level intelligence exiting in the real world. You're it. We know we haven't even scratched…

There's no evidence we're even on the right track to have human level intelligence so no, I don't think it's realistic to say that

Counterpoint: our brains use about 20 watts of power. How much does AI use again? Does this not suggest that it's absolutely nothing like what our brains do?

Re: "AI Will Replace All the Jobs " Is Just Tech Execs Doing Marketing

#137

Post by DebtDeflation » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 4:04 PM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #117

skwee357 wrote: post #37

The problem with “AI will replace all jobs” hype, is that it also comes with a flavor of “and we all will do creative work”, while in reality AI replaces all the creative work and people go back to collecting garbage or other physically demanding and mundane jobs.

Yep, that's going to be the main outcome I suspect. The bottom 50% or maybe even 80 to 90% of knowledge workers are going to have to go back to physical work. That too will eventually be automated, but I suspect things like construction work (including the many trades wrapped up therein) will be toward the end of that.

Maybe that's why the current administration is pushing so hard to bring back low end manufacturing.

If you're a SWE, Accountant, Marketer, HR person, etc. put out of work by AI, now you can screw together iPhones for just over minimum wage. And if we run out of those jobs, there's always picking vegetables now that all the migrants are getting deported.

It would not surprise me one bit if the Tech CEOs see things this way.

Re: "AI Will Replace All the Jobs " Is Just Tech Execs Doing Marketing

#138

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 4:04 PM UTC

AstroBen wrote: post #70

lapcat wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if it just makes most jobs worse, or replaces good jobs with more, worse jobs? Right. Consider: 1) Senior engineer writing code vs. 2) Senior engineer prompting and code reviewing LLM agent The senior engineer is essential to the process in each case, because the LLM agent left to its own devices will produce nonfunctional crap. But think about the pleasantness of the job and the job satisfaction of the senior…

As of right now it's actually making my job much more enjoyable. It lets me focus on the things I enjoy thinking about - code design, architecture, and the higher level of how to solve problems I haven't seen any evidence its made progress on these which is nice

[deleted]

Re: "AI Will Replace All the Jobs " Is Just Tech Execs Doing Marketing

#139

Post by palmotea » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 4:04 PM UTC

tines wrote: post #132

palmotea wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one interesting way to frame AI is that it will "degrade" jobs: force speed-ups and remove much of the enjoyable and engaging aspects and replace them with drudgery.

That’s a good way to think of it. I think it’s degrading every aspect of life. We’re so obsessed with metrics and efficiency that we don’t know how to live any more.

Yeah, modern society (essentially neoliberal capitalism) does not prioritize quality of life. The apotheosis is maximum output (shareholder profits), even if that means if the vast majority of people are miserable and unhappy (because the low quality of their work-life is not compensated by the products and services they're given access to).

Re: "AI Will Replace All the Jobs " Is Just Tech Execs Doing Marketing

#140

Post by gosub100 » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 4:05 PM UTC

eranation wrote: post #16

My personal thoughts on this are - A good lawyer + AI will likely win in court against a non lawyer with AI who would likely win in court against just an AI - A good software engineer + AI will ship features faster / safer vs a non engineer with AI, who will beat just AI - A good doctor + AI will save more lives than a non doctor + AI, who will perform better than just AI As long as a human has a marginal boost to AI…

A bad doctor with AI can commit malpractice longer by throwing AI under the bus. It remains to be tested, but a plaintiff suing a professional who uses AI may have a harder time prevailing if the defendant uses Shaggy defense and points to the Black Box that is shielded behind layers of third parties and liability limitations.