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US Job Market Visualizer

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Re: US Job Market Visualizer

#171

Post by NiloCK »

gzread wrote: post #145
nlawalker wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: kitchen appliance analogies, I stand by my "AI is a dishwasher" analogy. It's annoying that the dishes still have some pooled water in them when the cycle finishes; it doesn't always get everything perfectly clean; I have to know not to put the knives or the wooden stuff or anything fancy in it. But in spite of all of that, I use it every day, it's a huge productivity boost, and I'd hate to be without it.

And other people choose to wash dishes by hand and they're fine with it and not significantly less productive. The use of a dishwasher wasn't forced on everyone.

I've worked in dish pit.

I can tell you that I didn't observe a single hand-wash-only holdout.

Perhaps such holdouts existed at a point, but a restaurant can only flatter the ego of their performatively-unproductive seniors for so long. Competition exists.

Re: US Job Market Visualizer

#172

Post by adolph »

visarga wrote: post #10

If AI produces surplus where does it go? Not talking about investment backed datacenter buildout and AI labs. Talking about the results of AI work... I think AI outcomes distribute to contexts where it is used, and produce a change in how we work, what work we take on. Competition takes care of taking those surpluses and investing them in new structure, which becomes load bearing and we can't do without it anymore. I…

> In the end it looks like we are treading water, just like it was when computers got 1M times faster in a couple of decades, but we felt very little improvement in earnings or reduction in work.

I think this is a very important point. The hedonic treadmill means real gains are discounted. The novelty information cycle is like an Osborn Effect for improvements, like the semi-annual Popular Mechanic's flying car covers where there is an enticing future perpetually nearly here and at the same time disappointingly never materialized.

Re: US Job Market Visualizer

#173

Post by j3k3 »

gzread wrote: post #151
dwroberts wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI has already won. It's taking over. It might be a year or two, or five, or ten, but AI isn't slowing down, nobody is going to pause, and there's a whole shit ton of work people do that won't be meaningful or economically relevant in the very near term Maybe it was linked from a comment somewhere on HN but just today I saw a post saying “Microwaves are the future of all food: if you don’t think so, you better get…

This is a great analogy, because just like AI, microwaves are good for quick fixes, tasks where you don't really care about the quality and would rather minimise the effort.

But a microwave does exactly what it says on the tin, every time, without fail.

LLMs require a lot more effort.

Re: US Job Market Visualizer

#174

Post by beanjuiceII »

gzread wrote: post #151
dwroberts wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI has already won. It's taking over. It might be a year or two, or five, or ten, but AI isn't slowing down, nobody is going to pause, and there's a whole shit ton of work people do that won't be meaningful or economically relevant in the very near term Maybe it was linked from a comment somewhere on HN but just today I saw a post saying “Microwaves are the future of all food: if you don’t think so, you better get…

This is a great analogy, because just like AI, microwaves are good for quick fixes, tasks where you don't really care about the quality and would rather minimise the effort.

how is it a great analogy? do microwaves improve as fast as AI has been?

Re: US Job Market Visualizer

#175

Post by mjr00 »

cj wrote: post #152
mjr00 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cooking with an oven is more of a special occasion thing than the default cooking method that it was before. This is an incredible self-report. If you consider microwaved meals to be your default method of cooking and not something primarily for reheating leftovers or defrosting frozen meat, I sincerely hope you've gotten your cholesterol and blood pressure checked recently. That is not normal.

I haven't used my oven since buying a counter top air fryer (and a sous vide) a couple years ago. I can't think of a single reason why anyone needs a full size oven on a daily basis unless you're cooking for a large family.

Sure, but we were talking about using microwaves as your primary cooking appliance.

Re: US Job Market Visualizer

#176

Post by gdhkgdhkvff »

gzread wrote: post #145
nlawalker wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: kitchen appliance analogies, I stand by my "AI is a dishwasher" analogy. It's annoying that the dishes still have some pooled water in them when the cycle finishes; it doesn't always get everything perfectly clean; I have to know not to put the knives or the wooden stuff or anything fancy in it. But in spite of all of that, I use it every day, it's a huge productivity boost, and I'd hate to be without it.

And other people choose to wash dishes by hand and they're fine with it and not significantly less productive. The use of a dishwasher wasn't forced on everyone.

It is significantly less productive to hand wash dishes. But that’s fine to do manually if you wish for something that takes up maybe half an hour of your own time every several days. It’s not fine if washing dishes is your job. No company is going to hire an artisanal dish hand washer that refuses to use a dishwasher.

Re: US Job Market Visualizer

#177

Post by nitwit005 »

holmesworcester wrote: post #45

It's wild that there are as many jobs in the category "Top Executives" as in the category "Retail Sales Worker". This makes sense given both automation and the US's role in the global economy, but it runs somewhat contrary to standard ideas of class and inequality.

I took one glance at the chart and decided the results were impossible because of that.

Apparently "top executive" median pay is $105,350 per year: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/management/top-executives.htm

Re: US Job Market Visualizer

#178

Post by quietsegfault »

givemeethekeys wrote: post #99

Question for those in the know: are IT jobs being affected the same as software engineering jobs with all the consolidation and AI? Whats the outlook like? Thank you!

Like, IT helpdesk? Yes. Almost all of the tickets I create as a "knowledge worker" to my enterprise helpdesk are sloved by an AI assistant - group ownership, adding me to an app, etc.

Re: US Job Market Visualizer

#179

Post by lich_king »

observationist wrote: post #22

It's kinda cool to see a whole lot of otherwise intelligent people who are so dogmatically and ideologically opposed to anything AI that they're going to willfully dismiss anything that AI produces regardless of utility. It's not great for them, but it's a definite advantage for people who are already in the mindset of distinguishing and discriminating information and sources on merit, instead of running an "AI bad"…

> It might be a year or two, or five, or ten

Ah, the classic, forever-untestable "it's just around the corner" hypothesis.

I've lived through multiple "it's gonna be over in 12-18 months" arguments since November 2022. It's a truism for any technology to say that it's going to get better over time. But if you're convinced that "AI has already won", why not make a specific prediction? What jobs are going to be obsolete by when?

Re: US Job Market Visualizer

#180

Post by w10-1 »

jvanderbot wrote: post #107

My takeaway here: 3.XT $ of US salaries are the TAM for AI companies. Apple, a very successful company, makes 300B/y revenue? (ish) ~10% is all you need to be Apple. And, it can work by taking all of 10% of the jobs and collecting the whole salary (the AI employee -- dubious proposition), or by taking 10% of everyone's salary and automating part of everyone's job (the AI "tool" -- much more plausible). If "part" bein…

The replace-work TAM is overstated because it fails to address transaction costs, which are astronomical when refactoring work and dislodging stakeholders with sunk costs. Coding is now the leading app for AI now because it had already been factored to support division of labor, outsourcing, and remote work.

It's also understated, because the real value of AI is not in replacing work, but making new products possible either because it's finally cheap enough to make them, or because -- AI.

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