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

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

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Jensen Huang said this recently, and I've had a similar opinion for a while, but a lot of companies seem uncreative with how they use their employees. like google probably has >10k people working on stuff like "ensure gmail refresh button is the correct size", but why not fund teams to take on new and more risky projects... maybe part of it is that the type of people who work at big tech companies are not int…

> like google probably has >10k people working on stuff like "ensure gmail refresh button is the correct size", but why not fund teams to take on new and more risky projects... maybe part of it is that the type of people who work at big tech companies are not interested in risky projects Wow, I really hope that you're just too young to remember when Google famously invested in tons of "let's see what happens" project…

yeah I was being very hyperbolic (and am on the younger side, so tbh wasn't very aware of a lot the x projects... I think those are even riskier than I meant.)

google was probably the worst example for me to use tbh, especially since it still has such a good culture of funding researchers. There was a "meme" a few years ago saying gmail's UI has dozens teams working on each of the different buttons, so that was why I said google/gmail.

huang's original comment was referencing layoffs due to AI, and I think a lot of the "maintaining/replacing existing stuff" engineers are at the most risk atm. But why lay people off why they could be pushed to work on new risky projects :-/

I do sort of think the stereotype of killing projects is kind in the vein of what I meant. like idk, google has so much money I feel like they don't need ~everything to clearly and immediately fit into their ai / data / advertising / search stuff. earnings - expenses is so huge, I think it should be fine to just allow some things to stay "small" without being a more "distinguished" moonshot-style project.

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

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

Look at the reply to you above

> In both Germany and Switzerland, health insurance is mandatory and not employer-based - so you cannot simply say "no". In fact, in Germany you pay much more than in US as a share of your income, especially if your income is at least like 30% more than a national median: 1000+ EUR is a minimum per person per month (probably higher today). It doesn't cover dental care - you will pay in full - that's why many people travel to Turkey, or Eastern Europe, or to Baltic countries - just to take some dental care - which is extremely expensive in any German speaking country - we are talking about multiple months of your income after taxes.

By that definition someone making the equivalent of $100k in Germany could be “worried about healthcare”. And in many countries with public healthcare, people are worried about paying for access to better private healthcare.

So by the metric of “worrying about healthcare access” almost no one is above the poverty line.

There are people in the US making $100k who are genuinely worried about healthcare access. Say someone who retires early at 55 and has enough savings to provide $100k income but is 10 years away from Medicare. But acting like it is at all remotely normal for a single person making $100k to lack healthcare access or to be “living in poverty” by any objective measure is absurd.

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

#283
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naive at best; Your statement doesn’t exclude greed as a driving factor. The legality of actions have nothing to do with the morality underlying them.

There's nothing immoral here. Shareholders aren't morally obligated to provide extra jobs for people who aren't adding value.

Great strawman; keep trucking

I never said anything about obligation. Of course they’re not obliged to provide extra jobs, but it is a moral obligation to treat those whom you employ with dignity. I would love to understand what you actually define as a moral obligation considering your vacuous response.

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

#285
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does it not? We have a ton of social programs.

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

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

much of our current economic and social problems stem from efforts to collect _less_ takes from corporations and the wealthy. So yeah, collecting more taxes -- from those who can afford it -- would make a big difference.

Couldn't think of a more incorrect diagnosis if I tried. State government budgets have been ballooning for the last decade; but political leaders don't give a shit about tracking outcomes, only celebrating starting things and how much money they spend.

you haven't tried very hard

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

#287
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How does it not? We have a ton of social programs.

it is the richest country in the world, mate. Every citizen should get a comfortable life, not just a $1,000 check. But most of the money must go to the military and Wall Street.

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

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could I please ask what stats you used? Intuition says the valuation is too large and implies replacement, would be interesting to see something backing it up.

The 1.5T investment size was widely reported last year. AFAIK, they are required to spend all that money in the next few years if they survive for that long. Here's one place reporting it: https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/sam-altman-open... OpenAI also announced enough deals this year to more than double that amount. But I don't think anybody has put those announcements together and deduplicated them.

That part I get, the white collar work part is what I'm looking for.

Thanks for the response.

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

#289
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customer support? Clearly the first to be cut if there are fewer customers to support, and in any case considered completely expendable and optional. Internal support roles? Also extremely expendable from your average management's perspective.

Maybe I just don’t know how the business works. Many of the support calls that I make are for things or services that I’ve had for a while, not just purchased. So I expected that to be more of a trailing indicator rather than the first area hit.

In hard times, why wouldn't it be viewed as a cost center as much as anything else?

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

#290
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool. Now use the value of a dollar denominated in Bitcoin. Or do you only like cherry picking your statistics?

Pretty sure that would just reinforce my point...

Great. Do it against the European stock market and really drive home your point. Bitcoin versus the European market, indexed from 2010.
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