"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

#261

Post by djhn » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 9:07 PM UTC

ednite wrote: post #201

paul7986 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed and as a UX Researcher, Designer and Front-End Dev chatGPT Plus does same level of design and front-end development I do. It takes me hours vs. chatGPT Plus five minutes or less to come up with professional logos, web app or website design around the logo and then spits out the front-end code. Once I saw that in late Fall of this year I was like yup there it is .. it can do a good portions/parts of my job. So…

Great example, and to be honest, I’m guilty of the same. I used ChatGPT to come up with a logo for one of my projects, and it only took about five minutes. The kicker? The designer I would’ve usually handed it to actually approved it and liked it. It kind of stings, though. That used to be someone’s craft, their livelihood. But like you said, the key now is finding ways to adapt, maybe by leaning more into the human…

How can it come up with a logo? Is it able to output vector graphics now?

Chatgpt and Genini choked on trying to generate even the simplest of 2d shapes, like a 5-pointed star, as svg.

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

#262

Post by soraminazuki » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 9:16 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #154

ednite wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, but what happens when those same companies start realizing it’s not just about reduced quality, but also security risks and costly errors? At some point, the savings get wiped out by the consequences. Do they go back to hiring human expertise then? I totally agree though, the business mindset of saving a buck often outweighs everything else. I’m actually going through something similar right now with a c…

They go bankrupt, get acquired, or just hope that no one notices their security mistakes. Admitting mistakes and correcting them directly is not a common thing for CEOs to do.

Just like how Equifax faced consequences for its massive data breach? Oh wait.

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

#263

Post by soraminazuki » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 9:23 PM UTC

tines wrote: post #128

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…

I would agree with you, but the people making the decision to fire or keep you don’t care about quality, nor do they care about understanding AI or its limitations. If AI mostly does kinda the right thing 70% of the time but saves the company $80k a year, that’s a no-brainer. We’re being Pollyanna-ish to think that anyone cares about the things we care about, that you mention in your post. If firing you saves $1.50 a…

Exactly, businesses will soon treat software engineering the way Google does "support." It'll all be just robots pissing everyone off. Well everyone, except the executives who will receive a nice big paycheck.

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

#264

Post by rvz » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 9:31 PM UTC

mjr00 wrote: post #219

rvz wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only if you assume the current amount of knowledge work being done, or the amount of output from knowledge work, is the maximum amount possible or desired. Which is incorrect. My point is simple: Why would I hire 100s of employees when I can cut the most junior and mid-level roles and make the seniors more productive with AI? > Every software company has a backlog of 1000 features they want to add, everywhere has a…

> Why would I hire 100s of employees when I can cut the most junior and mid-level roles and make the seniors more productive with AI? Because at competent companies juniors and mid-level employees aren't just cranking out code, they're developing an understanding of the domain and system. If all you cared about was cranking out code and features, you'd have outsourced to Infosys etc long ago. (Admittedly, many compan…

> Because at competent companies juniors and mid-level employees aren't just cranking out code, they're developing an understanding of the domain and system.

So many companies like Microsoft, Meta, Salesforce and Google (who are actively using AI just did layoffs) are some how not 'competent companies' because they believe with AI they can do more with less engineers and employees?

> This doesn't make any sense. I asked ChatGPT and it couldn't parse it either.

Made total sense for the companies I mentioned above, who just did layoffs based on 'streamlining operations' and 'effciency gains' with AI just this year (and beat their earnings estimates).

> This much is true but tech salary inflation was, again, largely a ZIRP phenomenon and has nothing to do with AI. Junior developers were never really worth $150k/year right out of university.

It's more than just that, including an increasing over-supply of software engineers in general and lots of them with highly inflated salaries regardless of rank. The point is that it wasn't sustainable in the first place and roles in the junior to mid-level will see a reduction of salaries and jobs.

Once again, knowledge workers still have a lot more to lose, rather than gain if they don't use AI.

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

#265

Post by ninetyninenine » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 9:35 PM UTC

AstroBen wrote: post #197

ninetyninenine wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is evidence we're on the right track. Are you blind? The evidence is not definitive, but it's evidence that makes it a possibility. Evidence: ChatGPT and all LLMs. You cannot realistically say that this isn't evidence. Neither of these things guarantees that AI will take over our jobs but they are datapoints that lend credence to the possibility that it will. On the other side of the coin, it is utterly unreali…

> unrealistic to say that AI will never take over our jobs That's not my position. I'm agnostic. I have no idea where it'll end up but there's no reason to have a strong belief either way The comment you originally replied to is I think the sanest thing in here. You can't just project out endlessly unless you have a technological basis for it. The current methodologies are getting into diminishing returns and we'll n…

Then we're in agreement. It's clearly not a religous debate, you're just mischaracterizing it that way.

The original comment I replied to is categorically wrong. It's not sane at all when it's rationally and factually not true. We are not projecting endlessly. We are hitting a 1 year mark of a bumpy upward trendline that's been going for over 15 years. This 1 year mark is characterized by a bump of a slight diminishing return of LLM technology that's being over exaggerated as an absolute limit of AI.

Clearly we've had all kinds of models developed in the last 15 years so one blip is not evidence of anything.

Again we already have a datapoint here. You are a human brain, we know that an intelligence up to human intelligence can be physically realized because the human brain is ALREADY a physical realization. It is not insane to draw a projection in that direction and it is certainly not an endless growth trendline. That's false.

Given the information we have you gave it an "agnostic" outlook which is 50 50. If you asked me 10 years ago whether we would hit agi or not I would've given it a 5 percent chance, and now both of us are at 50 50. So your stance actually contradicts the "sane" statement you stated you agree with.

We are not projecting to infinite growth and you disagree with that because in your own statement you believe there is a 50 percent possibility we will hit agi.

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

#266

Post by const_cast » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 9:36 PM UTC

palmotea wrote: post #252

sumeno wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure they did, or at least the ones who survived did. Offshoring went from the thing that was going to kill the US Software Engineering industry to a fairly minor portion of it with US based engineers being even more in demand than they were before

> Sure they did, or at least the ones who survived did. Offshoring went from the thing that was going to kill the US Software Engineering industry to a fairly minor portion of it with US based engineers being even more in demand than they were before Huh? Offshoring is a fairly major component of my employer's workforce, and the US software engineering staff has dwindled (along with a lot of other departments). We mo…

1. Please don't say "Huh?", you know what the person is talking about. You don't need to feign that their argument is so stupid it befuddles you.

2. Off-shoring didn't go away, sure, but it's pretty costly because you have to constantly translate culture differences, time differences, etc. Also reading code is harder than writing it, so just dumping more people to write code doesn't help much.

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

#267

Post by const_cast » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 9:39 PM UTC

bee_rider wrote: post #80

bluefirebrand wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doctors already barely see patients for more than a couple of minutes, you want them to be faster ?

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).

From me talking to Doctors, it seems most of their job is handling records, contacting insurance, prior auth, talking to pharmacists, etc. This is despite having billing specialists and admins out the wazoo.

Also their care is pretty much completely decided by insurance. What surgeries they can perform, what medicine they can give, how much, what materials they can use for surgery, and on and on. Your doctor is practicing shockingly little medicine, your real doctor is thousands of pages of guidelines created by insurers and peer-to-peer doctors who you will never meet.

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

#268

Post by const_cast » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 9:43 PM UTC

ergonaught wrote: post #120

lenerdenator wrote: post #24

It's also a great example of why tech executives shouldn't be trusted, at all. "My thing will break our entire economy. I'm still gonna build it, though." - statements dreamed up by the utterly deranged

They shouldn't be trusted for any number of reasons, but the need for social systems to adapt to reality isn't their fault.

It kind of is their fault when they're simultaneously lobbying against those social systems and designing their platforms in a way to further align with that propaganda. It seems very intentional to me.

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

#269

Post by threecheese » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 9:54 PM UTC

sumeno wrote: post #204

kunzhi wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think any of those companies learned a lesson.

Sure they did, or at least the ones who survived did. Offshoring went from the thing that was going to kill the US Software Engineering industry to a fairly minor portion of it with US based engineers being even more in demand than they were before

Large private SaaS company, non tech hub/normal US large city: 60/40 split offshore/onshore for engineering. Not minor imo. Accelerated post-COVID from maybe 10/20% India which we’d had for a decade. They are gone now, replaced with lower cost coders and a lot more of them.

The 60 is mostly farshore, unless you are a high priority project in which case you get nearshore. Rumor is it’s expanding, Vietnam can do copilot just as good as US; requirements are written in English. They’ve started shipping Vietnamese tech leads here under visas, they alone interface between Product/eng leaders and the low-English teams. For all the Merika! I hear on the news, I certainly am not seeing it in the workforce.

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

#270

Post by touisteur » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 10:36 PM UTC

sponaugle wrote: post #255

touisteur wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who can stomach it, reading aviation accident reports, listening to actual recorded voice footage, you very often read about the cognitive load of a two-person team trying to get through a shitty moment. Richard de Crespigny, who flew the Quantas A380 that blew one of its engines after a departure from Changi, explains very clearly and in a gripping way the amount of stuff happening while trying to save an…

Agree 100%. Watch a few videos on youtube from Mentour Pilot. The cognitive load is such a huge factor in so many accidents and close calls. There are also equally many accidents that could have been prevented with just a bit more automation and fault detection. Perhaps the most amazing thing is that after an accident, it can take years to get a real corrective action across the industry. It would be like level 10 CV…

With the level of regression I get from 'security patches' :-) I won't blame the conservative mindset there.

The Air France Rio-Paris crash is a good example of sudden full mistrust of automation and sensors by the crew after a sensor failure appeared and then recovered. Very, very sad transcript and analysis... I'm arguing against myself here, singe it was also a huge case of crew management failure and it might not have gone to crash with only one person in the cockpit.