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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

#291

Post by victorbjorklund »

colinmorelli wrote: post #110
gilbetron wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know it was correct without being a tax expert? And consulting a tax expert would give you legal recourse if it was wrong.

As for correctness, they mentioned the LLM citing links that the person can verify. So there is some protection at that level. But, also, the threshold of things we manage ourselves versus when we look to others is constantly moving as technology advances and things change. We're always making risk tradeoff decisions measuring the probability we get sued or some harm comes to us versus trusting that we can handle som…

But if you dont know anything about programming a link to a library/etc is not so useful. Same if you dont know about tax law and it cities the tax code and how it should be understood (the code is correct but the interpretation is not)

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

#292

Post by mordymoop »

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.

Same is true of humans fwiw.

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

#294

Post by qoez »

Chatbots probably won't be the final interface. But machine learning in general is a full on revolutionary tech (much clearer now than ten years ago) that hasn't been explored fully and will eventually be quite disruptive on the scale of computers on the economy probably. Though it likely won't take the form it's taking today (chatbots etc).

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

#295

Post by lukeschlather »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #163
thatjoeoverthr wrote: post #15

My primary worry since the start has been not that it would "replace workers", but that it can destroy value of entire sectors. Think of resume-sending. Once both sides are automated, the practice is actually superfluous. The concept of "posting" and "applying" to jobs has to go. So any infrastructure supporting it has to go. At no point did it successfully "do a job", but the injury to the signal to noise ratio wipe…

Until we solve the hallucination problem google search still has a place of power as something that doesn’t hallucinate. And even if we solve this problem of hallucination, the ai agents still need a platform to do search. If I was Google I’d simply cut off public api access to the search engine.

People talk about LLM hallucinations as if they're a new problem, but content mill blog posts existed 15 years ago, and they read like LLM bullshit back then, and they still exist. Clicking through to Google search results typically results in lower-quality information than just asking Gemini 2.5 pro. (which can give you the same links formatted in a more legible fashion if you need to verify.)

What people call "AI slop" existed before AI and AI where I control the prompt is getting to be better than what you will find on those sorts of websites.

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

#296

Post by nradov »

jll29 wrote: post #282

Read Paul Tetlock's research about so-called "experts" and their inability to make good forecasts. Here's my own take: - It is far too early to tell. - The roll-out of ChatGPT caused a mind-set revolution. People now "get" what is possible already now, and it encourages conceiving and persuing new use cases on what people have seen. - I would not recommend any kinds to train to become a translator for sure; even befo…

Video VFX artists are already suffering from lower demand.

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

#297

Post by BoredPositron »

voxl wrote: post #290
jll29 wrote: post #282

Read Paul Tetlock's research about so-called "experts" and their inability to make good forecasts. Here's my own take: - It is far too early to tell. - The roll-out of ChatGPT caused a mind-set revolution. People now "get" what is possible already now, and it encourages conceiving and persuing new use cases on what people have seen. - I would not recommend any kinds to train to become a translator for sure; even befo…

Name a better duo: software engineering hype cycles and anti-intellectualism

We were the stochastic parrots all along.

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

#298

Post by mac-attack »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #240
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…

"I'm generally an AI skeptic, but it seems awfully early to make this call." What call. Maybe some readers miss the (perhaps subtle) difference between "Generative AI is not ..." and "Generative Ai is not going to ..." Then first can be based on fact, e.g., what has happened so far. The second is based on pure speculation. No one knows what will happen in the future. HN is continually being flooded with speculation,…

> In contrast, this article, i.e., the paper it discusses, is is based on what has happened so far.

What happened in 2023 and 2024 actually

Nitpicky but it's worth noting that last year's AI capabilities are not the April 2025 AI capabilities and definitely won't be the December 2025 capabilities.

It's using deprecated/replaced technology to make a statement, that is not forward projecting. I'm struggling to see the purpose. It's like announcing that the sun is still shining at 7pm, no?

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

#299

Post by nemo44x »

AI makes people more productive so that incentivizes me to hire more people, not less. In many cases anyhow.

If each of my developers is 30% more productive that means we can ship 30% more functionally which means more budget to hire more developers. If you think you’ll just pocket that surplus you have another thing coming.

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

#300

Post by sxg »

jll29 wrote: post #282

Read Paul Tetlock's research about so-called "experts" and their inability to make good forecasts. Here's my own take: - It is far too early to tell. - The roll-out of ChatGPT caused a mind-set revolution. People now "get" what is possible already now, and it encourages conceiving and persuing new use cases on what people have seen. - I would not recommend any kinds to train to become a translator for sure; even befo…

> Read Paul Tetlock's research about so-called "experts" and their inability to make good forecasts

Do you mean Philip Tetlock? He wrote Superforecasting, which might be what you're referring to?

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