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US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

bloomberg.com

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Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#261

Post by dragontamer »

oliwarner wrote: post #254
dragontamer wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxes. If these companies can afford $trillions, then the government can collect some dues that can fund retraining programs or whatever.

Taxes on what? Corps are famously good at burying profits under expenditure and mergers. And what are you retraining to? We've long abandoned serious manufacturing and mining. Most people's job is the application of knowledge and communication and LLMs are coming for them all. From retail and call centres through to doctors and lawyers. We can't all retrain as plumbers, waiters and surgeons.

> Corps are famously good at burying profits under expenditure and mergers

Cool. Let's start with taxing those, or any other place where they bury or hide from taxes. Thanks for the suggestion.

We can also tax on the numbers of job losses vs capital expenditures. IE: if you spend a $Billion on stuff while firing tons of workers, you get taxed more.

-------

As far as retraining: easy solution. Whatever people want to retrain to. The details will work themselves out. The important tidbit is to have large scale mass retraining if this really is the future.

It's not like the government forced me into my current job. I'm more than capable of choosing a new field myself.

And if YOU can't see the possibilities, them you don't have to take the retraining program. But from my perspective, there's plenty of work needed in the USA to improve our country. Plenty of problems to solve.

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#262

Post by frm88 »

torben-friis wrote: post #110
amazingamazing wrote: post #31

The reality no one ever wants to talk about is that big tech doesn't need as many employees that it has. Anyone who has worked in big tech knows it is true.

Have you read the article? This is about professions like paralegals or translators, not engineers.

Broadcast announcers and radio discjockeys -20.8 - this doesn't sound like AI related, more like a social/political phenomenon. Same with sales engineers.

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#263

Post by AbbeFaria »

treis wrote: post #61
AbbeFaria wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This matches my experience at MSFT. Very little work for too many people, MSFT CFO also said in the latest earnings calls that MSFT will have fewer people next year than this year, they offered buyouts to tenured people, did layoffs in LinkedIn not sure if there’s more to come.

Think this is the FAANGs entering their stodgy middle life phase like Oracle et al did decades ago. Except for Google they haven't done anything innovative in like a decade. It's time to wring money out of the monopoly and buy companies to add to that.

It’s more nuanced than that. There are lines of business where there is plenty of growth and places where growth has stagnated or business is decelerating.

In the former, you can see some of the products that MSFT is shipping such as MAIA chips, Azure Horizon DB, MSFT Fabric, Sovereign clouds etc. These businesses are seeing steady growth and there’s plenty of work to be done whereas for products like IoT, XBox and anything to do with gaming in general etc you will see that there isn’t much growth left and yet these products have a lot of headcount behind them.

So MSFT isn’t stagnating (revenue keeps increasing). Although there are quite a few businesses within MSFT that can use a lot of headcount reduction, this is my take as a low level L63 grunt.

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#264

Post by bdangubic »

danaris wrote: post #256
bdangubic wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

republicans are much much bigger spenders than democrats by miles. they are “anti socialism” publicly but are 2nd largest socialist party on the planet (behind china).

"Socialism" isn't just "the government spending money". In order to be socialism, it has to be spending money specifically to help the people, and broadly to reduce inequality. Republicans do not do that, by any stretch of the imagination.

farmers would like a word

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#265

Post by brazukadev »

winrid wrote: post #127
mapontosevenths wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats been mostly straightened out for years. This is tariffs, oil, and uncertainty more than anything. When I worked in finance the thing that made the analysts happiest was a split election wherein neither side could accomplish much. We now have the opposite of that, and worse a capricious leader who makes huge changes without much justification or explanation. Pressing "shuffle" on the economic policy doesn't help…

Fun fact the US government was designed to be ineffective on purpose. It's not supposed to do much by design

The US government is far from ineffective, it might just have been designed to not benefit the people.

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#267

Post by treis »

AbbeFaria wrote: post #263
treis wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think this is the FAANGs entering their stodgy middle life phase like Oracle et al did decades ago. Except for Google they haven't done anything innovative in like a decade. It's time to wring money out of the monopoly and buy companies to add to that.

It’s more nuanced than that. There are lines of business where there is plenty of growth and places where growth has stagnated or business is decelerating. In the former, you can see some of the products that MSFT is shipping such as MAIA chips, Azure Horizon DB, MSFT Fabric, Sovereign clouds etc. These businesses are seeing steady growth and there’s plenty of work to be done whereas for products like IoT, XBox and a…

These businesses didn't stop growing. They grew by how you say. Steady growth into adjacent markets and acquisitions. Not through innovative new products.

It's just a different mindset. It's no longer move fast and be first. It's well we'll get there eventually. Let's do it cost constrained and with minimal risk.

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#268

Post by paulddraper »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #106
jdietrich wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Brit, it seems hilarious that a single person with an income of $97k would be on the poverty line. That's more than double the median income for all households in the UK. A lot of Americans don't seem to realise how fantastically wealthy they are compared to the rest of the world. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...

$97k per year isn’t that much when health insurance premiums are $500 to $1,500 per person per month with $5k to $15k annual out of pocket maximums. You have to build up decent savings to ensure you can take care of yourself for when you lose your income.

“Not that much” and “living in poverty” are different.

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#269

Post by lotsofpulp »

paulddraper wrote: post #268
lotsofpulp wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$97k per year isn’t that much when health insurance premiums are $500 to $1,500 per person per month with $5k to $15k annual out of pocket maximums. You have to build up decent savings to ensure you can take care of yourself for when you lose your income.

“Not that much” and “living in poverty” are different.

Some people in some countries might consider not having access to healthcare (or worrying about it) as living in poverty.

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#270

Post by new_account_100 »

senordevnyc wrote: post #102
new_account_100 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're checking on open-registration internet forums (HackerNews in particular), you will never see "the people" wake up. If you're arguing against "AI" on HackerNews, you might as well join the Washington Generals. You and your opinion are tolerated only as long as there is a more popular pro-AI opinion in the replies to your comment.

In my observation, HN is rapidly turning into an extremely bitter and cynical anti-AI echo chamber.

They've been banning my accounts for bitter and cynical anti-AI opinions for years. Whatever is making it through the filters to you is only a fraction of the real anti-AI animus expressed by the human users of this site.
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