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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

#131

Post by sensanaty »

pj_mukh wrote: post #42
armanckeser wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why assume token costs will increase as opposed to become commoditized?

There seems to be a weird self-fulfilling narrative here: 1) "AI companies will go bust because tokens will cost too much" >> 2) "Don't let them build data centers that will sit empty" >> 3) Demand outstrips supply by a lot >> 4) Token costs too much. This is no different from the NIMBY's that block all the housing then sit in a huff saying "see! everyone's leaving. good thing we didn't build anything!" when the rent…

Talk about a goomba fallacy. The people who are against the data center buildups (which is increasingly becoming a bipartisan issue the world over thanks to the antics of the AI psychos) are not the same people complaining about token prices. I'm sure many of them would even be gleeful if the AI companies went belly up

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#132

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

lovich wrote: post #108
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. We'd see a lot of resignations if the numbers were being fudged. Statisticians, as a rule, take a dim view of falsifying data.

We didn’t need to see resignations because they were fired when the numbers weren’t good, in his opinion, previously.[1] I get that the king does multiple things per day that used to be admin ending but we shouldn’t forget his machinations that are related to the topic at hand. The data probably isn’t 100% false but it also definitely as trustworthy as it was a year and a half ago. [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/econo…

> We didn’t need to see resignations because they were fired when the numbers weren’t good, in his opinion, previously.[1]

I mean no disrespect, but I have been following this story, as I am very interested in the quality of official statistics.

He did fire the BLS head, then tried to appoint a toady, but basically the big IB and investors threw a fit (along with some Senators) and it didn't happen.

So I regard most of the weirdness in these numbers since Covid as an artifact of the seasonality models breaking down, rather than some nefarious actions.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#133

Post by sensanaty »

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?

AI is a religion that promises CEOs, VCs and other various assorted sociopaths the promised land of not having to pay for the most expensive part of any business, its workers. They will do anything and everything in their power to reach this promised land, regardless of the cost to themselves, to their businesses or to society at large.

It is entirely irrelevant to them how useful LLM tech is. It doesn't matter that productivity is the same as it ever was just with a 10-fold increase in costs due to token-maxxing behaviour. They don't care if their software is buggier than ever, or their workers unhappier than ever, because AI promises to replace them anyways

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#134

Post by pj_mukh »

sensanaty wrote: post #131
pj_mukh wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be a weird self-fulfilling narrative here: 1) "AI companies will go bust because tokens will cost too much" >> 2) "Don't let them build data centers that will sit empty" >> 3) Demand outstrips supply by a lot >> 4) Token costs too much. This is no different from the NIMBY's that block all the housing then sit in a huff saying "see! everyone's leaving. good thing we didn't build anything!" when the rent…

Talk about a goomba fallacy. The people who are against the data center buildups (which is increasingly becoming a bipartisan issue the world over thanks to the antics of the AI psychos) are not the same people complaining about token prices. I'm sure many of them would even be gleeful if the AI companies went belly up

Doesn't matter if they're different people or if it's politically popular.

It's how the cycle would go, and in the end the same people will complain about how AI "is only for rich people" (how high token prices will express itself in populist language)

The exact thing happened to housing.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#135

Post by sensanaty »

pj_mukh wrote: post #134
sensanaty wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talk about a goomba fallacy. The people who are against the data center buildups (which is increasingly becoming a bipartisan issue the world over thanks to the antics of the AI psychos) are not the same people complaining about token prices. I'm sure many of them would even be gleeful if the AI companies went belly up

Doesn't matter if they're different people or if it's politically popular. It's how the cycle would go, and in the end the same people will complain about how AI "is only for rich people" (how high token prices will express itself in populist language) The exact thing happened to housing.

Again, the people who are anti-AI don't give a shit about token prices. They will care that AI is only for rich people, but this won't be due to token prices, but because only the wealthy will be the ones with any kind of job (if the dream of the AI overlords is to come to fruition anyways) or income stream due to displacement caused by AI

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#136

Post by pj_mukh »

sensanaty wrote: post #135
pj_mukh wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't matter if they're different people or if it's politically popular. It's how the cycle would go, and in the end the same people will complain about how AI "is only for rich people" (how high token prices will express itself in populist language) The exact thing happened to housing.

Again, the people who are anti-AI don't give a shit about token prices. They will care that AI is only for rich people, but this won't be due to token prices, but because only the wealthy will be the ones with any kind of job (if the dream of the AI overlords is to come to fruition anyways) or income stream due to displacement caused by AI

"dream of the AI overlords"

I don't care what their dream is, I care about what's happening IRL. Please read the original article again, AI is clearly being used by workers to expand their productivity (and their earning capacity). The main thing that will screw that up is if token prices spike.

"AI is only for rich people, but this won't be due to token prices"

Statement doesn't make sense. Higher prices means unaffordability. I don't know why that would change for AI tokens. Higher token prices is what will make sure advanced models are only available to capital owners

This feels "unintuitive" only because it's not the dominant narrative, but that's not a measure of accuracy. "Everybody believe so" is not a good defense.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#137

Post by pj_mukh »

hattmall wrote: post #119
pj_mukh wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this true for "all" construction? Nobody says, "The housing construction jobs are temporary, we shouldn't count them." There will always be CapEx to spend.

People say this all the time and it's a huge issue. A main driver of current housing issues is that no one wants to over scale and have too many temporary jobs that disappear if housing demand slows down. Datacenter construction jobs though are very very temporary and not really the kind of thing where we can keep building for no reason and then just tear down to rebuild again. The reason we have so many "infrastruct…

"Datacenter construction jobs though are very very temporary"

They are 5-6 year long builds with full support of the unions[1], let's just put this all aside. The jobs are good. Most people citing narratives around "what's the point of doing anything if the jobs are temporary" are people who don't have those jobs.

[1]: https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/building-trade-...

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#138

Post by pj_mukh »

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 due to more abundant measurement. There is no evidence that the same isn't happening to the rest of the professions. And to support it all, we have more infrastructure construction (datacenters).

This is the textbook basics of a growing economy with growing productivity, even though it feels paradoxical [2]

[1]: https://www.ft.com/content/f2e03bd9-af67-45c4-8e1e-79978b5bc...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#140

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]
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