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The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

cnn.com

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Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#191

Post by mjburgess »

CKMo wrote: post #185

There's definitely a big problem with entry-level jobs being replaced by AI. Why hire an intern or a recent college-grad when they lack both the expertise and experience to do what an AI could probably do? Sure, the AI might require handholding and prompting too, but the AI is either cheaper or actually "smarter" than the young person. In many cases, it's both. I work with some people who I believe have the capacity…

This is always the case though. A factor of 50x productivity between expert and novice is small. Consider how long it take you to conduct foot surgery vs. a food surgeon -- close to a decade of medical school + medical experience -- just for a couple hours of work.

There have never been that many businesses able to hire novices for this reason.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#192

Post by abletonlive »

horns4lyfe wrote: post #187
abletonlive wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for saying it out loud. I meet a lot of people like you that think the same way as part of my job and they aren't willing to say it out loud. It's about protecting your work, even if an LLM can do it better. The only way an LLM can devalue your work is if it can do it better than you. And I don't just mean quality, I mean as a function of cost/quality/time. Anyway, we can be enemies I don't care - I've been ge…

lol “I do care, but not enough to actually care”

Caring doesn't mean that you stop everything you're doing to address someone's needs. That's a pretty binary world if it was the case and maybe a convenient way to look at motives when you don't want nuance.

Caring about climate change doesn't mean you need to spend your entire life planting trees instead of doing what you're doing.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#193

Post by mjburgess »

michaeldoron wrote: post #78

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…

You can pick and choose problems from history where folk belief was wrong: WW1 vs. Y2K.

This isn't very informative. Indeed, engaging in this argument-by-analoguy betrays a lack of actual analysis, credible evidence and justification for a position. Arguing "by analogy" in this way, which picks and chooses an analogy, just restates your position -- it doesnt give anyone reasons to believe it.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#194

Post by Animats »

The real bloodbath will come when coordination between multiple AIs, in a company sense, starts working. Computers have much better I/O than humans. Once a corporate organization can be automated, it will be too fast for humans to participate. There will be no place for slow people.

"Move fast and break things" - Zuckerberg

"A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week." - George S. Patton

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#195

Post by margalabargala »

geraneum wrote: post #189
drewcon wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are not familiar with exponential change so they have almost no ability to manage through exponential change. Its an apt comparison. The criticisms in the cnn article are already out date in many instances.

> Humans are not familiar with exponential change Humans are. We have tools to measure exponential growth empirically. It was done for COVID (i.e. epidemiologists do that usually) and is done for economy and other aspects of our life. If there's to be exponential growth, we should be able to put it in numbers. "True me bro" is not a good measure. Edit: typo

There's individual persons modelling exponential change just fine, and then there's what happens when you apply to the populace at large.

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#196

Post by catigula »

Animats wrote: post #194

The real bloodbath will come when coordination between multiple AIs, in a company sense, starts working. Computers have much better I/O than humans. Once a corporate organization can be automated, it will be too fast for humans to participate. There will be no place for slow people. "Move fast and break things" - Zuckerberg "A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week." - Georg…

This doesn't even make sense. What corporations do you think will exist in this world?

You're not going to sell me your SaaS when I can rent AIs to make faster cheaper IP that I actually own to my exact specifications.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#197

Post by BriggyDwiggs42 »

abracadaniel wrote: post #86
ben_w wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game theory/Nash equilibrium/Prisoner's Dilemma, and the turkey's perspective in the problem of induction. So far, for any given automation, each actor gets to cut their own costs to their benefit — and if they do this smarter than anyone else, they win the market for a bit. Every day the turkey lives, they get a bit more evidence the farmer is an endless source of free food that only wants the best for them. It's ea…

My long term fear with AI is that by replacing entry level jobs, it breaks the path to train senior level employees. It could take a couple of decades to really feel the heat from it, but could lead to massive collapse as no one is left with any understanding of how existing systems work, or how to design replacements.

If it takes a few decades, they may actually automate all but the most impressive among senior positions though.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#198

Post by mjburgess »

swyx wrote: post #102
spcebar wrote: post #74

Something is nagging me about the AI-human replacement conversation that I would love insight from people who know more about startup money than me. It seems like the AI revolution hit as interest rates went insane, and at the same time the AI that could write code was becoming available, the free VC money dried up, or at least changed. I feel like that's not usually a part of the conversation and I'm wondering if we…

its not part of the conversation because the influence here is tangential at best (1) and your sense of how much vc money is on the table at any given time is not good (2). 1a. most seed/A stage investing is acyclical because it is not really about timing for exits, people just always need dry powder 1b. tech advancement is definitely acyclical - alexnet, transformers, and gpt were all just done by very small teams w…

I'm not seeing how you're replying to this comment. I'm not sure you've understood their point.

The point is that there's a correlation between macroeconomic dynamics (ie., the price of credit increasing) and the "rise of AI". In ordinary times, absent AI, the macroeconomic dynamics would fully explain the economic shifts we're seeing.

So the question is why do we event need to mention AI in our explanation of recent economic shifts?

What phenomena, exactly, require positing AI disruption?

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#199

Post by catigula »

mlsu wrote: post #183
idkwhattocallme wrote: post #23

I worked at two different $10B+ market cap companies during ZIRP. I recall in most meetings over half of the knowledge workers attending were superfluous. I mean, we hired someone on my team to attend cross functional meetings because our calendars were literally too full to attend. Why could we do that? Because the company was growing and hiring someone to attend meetings wasn't going to hurt the skyrocketing stock.…

I suspect that these "AI layoffs" are really "interest rate" layoffs in disguise. Software was truly truly insane for a bit there. Straight out of college, no-name CS degree, making $120, $150k (back when $120k really meant $120k)? The music had to stop on that one.

That really only happened in HCOL areas.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#200

Post by Kirby64 »

al_borland wrote: post #87
edent wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buy a dishwasher - they're cheap, work really well, and don't use much energy / water. Same as a washing machine / drier. Chuck the clothes in, press a button, done. There are Roomba style lawnmowers for your grass cutting. I'll grant you painting a house and plumbing a toilet aren't there yet!

With the laundry machine and dishwasher, it still requires effort. A human needs to collect the dirty stuff, put it into the machine properly, decide when it should run, load the soap, select a cycle type, start it, monitor the machine to know when it’s done, empty the machine, and put the stuff away properly, thus starting the human side of the process again. It’s less work than it used to be, but remove the human w…

> A human needs to collect the dirty stuff, put it into the machine properly, decide when it should run, load the soap, select a cycle type, start it, monitor the machine to know when it’s done, empty the machine, and put the stuff away properly, thus starting the human side of the process again.

The really modern stuff is pretty much as simple as “load, start, unload” - you can buy combo washing machines that wash and dry your clothes, auto dispense detergent, etc. It’s not folding or putting away your clothes, and you still need to maintain it (clean the filter, add detergent occasionally, etc)… but you’re chipping away at what is left for a human to do. Who cares when it’s done? You unload it when you feel like it, just like every dishwasher.

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