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Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists

theregister.com

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Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists

#271

Post by ravenstine »

epicureanideal wrote: post #266
ravenstine wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't trust what anyone says in this space because there is so much money to be made (by a fraction of people) if AI lives up to its promise, and money to be made to those who claim that AI is "bullshit". The only thing I can remotely trust is my own experience. Recently, I decided to have some business cards made, which I haven't done in probably 15 years. A few years ago, I would have either hired someone on Five…

But didn't we have business card template programs, and even free suggested business card designs from the companies that sell business cards, almost immediately after they opened for business on the internet?

That's missing the point, and is kind of like saying why bother paying someone to build you a house when there are DIY home building kits. (or why even buy a home when you can live in a van rent-free)

The point is that I would have paid for another human being's time. Why? Because I am not a young man anymore, and have little desire to do everything myself at this point. But now, I don't have to pay for someone's time, and that surplus time doesn't necessarily transfer to something equivalent like magic.

Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists

#273

Post by andrewmutz »

decimalenough wrote: post #88

I'm generally an AI skeptic, but it seems awfully early to make this call. Aside from the obvious frontline support, artist, junior coder etc, a whole bunch of white collar "pay me for advice on X" jobs (dietician, financial advice, tax agent, etc), where the advice follows set patterns only mildly tailored for the recipient, seem to be severely at risk. Example: I recently used Gemini for some tax advice that would…

"AI is all hype and is going to destroy the labor market"

Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists

#274

Post by Attrecomet »

tbrownaw wrote: post #205
Attrecomet wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the whole process is revealed to be meaningless busywork. But that step has been taken for a long time, as soon as automated systems and barely qualified hacks were employed to filter applications. I mean, they're trying to solve a hard and real problem, but those solutions are just bad at it.

Doesn't this assume that a resume has no actual relation to reality?

The technical information on the cv/resume is, in my opinion, at most half of the process. And that's assuming that the person is honest, and already has the cv-only knowledge of exactly how much to overstate and brag about their ability and to get through screens.

Presenting soft skills is entirely random, anyway, so the only marker you can have on a cv is "the person is able to write whatever we deem well-written [$LANGUAGE] for our profession and knows exactly which meaningless phrases to include that we want to see".

So I guess I was a bit strong on the low information content, but you better have a very, very strong resume if you don't know the unspoken rules of phrasing, formatting and bragging that are required to get through to an actual interview. For those of us stuck in the masses, this means we get better results by adding information that we basically only get by already being part of the in-group, not by any technical or even interpersonal expertise.

Edit: If I constrain my argument to CVs only, I think my statement holds: They test an ability to send in acceptably written text, and apart from that, literally only in-group markers.

Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists

#276

Post by dismalaf »

decimalenough wrote: post #88

I'm generally an AI skeptic, but it seems awfully early to make this call. Aside from the obvious frontline support, artist, junior coder etc, a whole bunch of white collar "pay me for advice on X" jobs (dietician, financial advice, tax agent, etc), where the advice follows set patterns only mildly tailored for the recipient, seem to be severely at risk. Example: I recently used Gemini for some tax advice that would…

Google (non-Gemini) has always been a great source for tax advice, at least here in Canada because, if nothing else, the government's website appears to leave all its pages available for indexing (even if it's impossible to navigate on its own).

Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists

#277

Post by deadbabe »

Companies have been wanting to lay people off. Using AI as an excuse is a convenient way to turn a negative into a positive.

Truth is, companies that don’t need layoffs are pushing employees to use AI to supercharge their output.

You don’t grow a business by just cutting costs, you need to increase revenue. And increasing revenue means more work, which means it’s better for existing employees to put out more with AI.

Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists

#278

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

karpour wrote: post #232
colinmorelli wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the real value of AI that, I think, we're just starting to get into. It's less about automating workflows that are inherently unstructured (I think that we're likely to continue wanting humans for this for some time). It's more about automating workflows that are already procedural and/or protocolized, but where information gathering is messy and unstructured (I.e. some facets of law, health, finance, etc). U…

I recently tried looking up something about local tax law in ChatGPT. It confidently told me a completely wrong rule. There are lots of sources for this, but since some probably unknowingly spread misinformation, ChatGPT just treated it as correct. Since I always verify what ChatGPT spits out, it wasn't a big deal for me, just a reminder that it's garbage in, garbage out.

I think this will be fixed by having LLM trained not on the whole internet but on well curated content. To me this feels like the internet in maybe 1993. You see the potential and it’s useful. But a lot of work and experimentation has to be done to work out use cases.

I think it’s weird to reject AI based on its current form.

Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists

#279

Post by JohnMakin »

ravenstine wrote: post #271
epicureanideal wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But didn't we have business card template programs, and even free suggested business card designs from the companies that sell business cards, almost immediately after they opened for business on the internet?

That's missing the point, and is kind of like saying why bother paying someone to build you a house when there are DIY home building kits. (or why even buy a home when you can live in a van rent-free) The point is that I would have paid for another human being's time. Why? Because I am not a young man anymore, and have little desire to do everything myself at this point. But now, I don't have to pay for someone's tim…

You do pay for it though. Compute isn't free.

Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists

#280

Post by henryaj »

jacamera wrote: post #241
dingnuts wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hallucination" implies that the LLM holds some relationship to truth. Output from an LLM is not a hallucination, it's bullshit[0]. > Using your dietician example: we often know quite well what types of foods to eat or avoid based on your nutritional needs No we don't. It's really complicated. That's why diets are popular and real dietitians are expensive. and I would know, I've had to use one to help me manage an ea…

Exactly! All LLMs do is “hallucinate”. Sometimes the output happens to be right, same as a broken clock.

You imply that, like a stopped clock, LLMs are only right occasionally and randomly. Which is just nonsense.
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