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The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

cnn.com

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Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#31

Post by sevensor »

DrillShopper wrote: post #3

I look forward to the day where executive overpromises and engineering underdeliveries bring about another AI winter so the useful techniques can continue without the stench of the "AI" association and so the grifters go bankrupt.

The implosion of this AI bubble is going to have a stupendous blast radius. It’s never been harder to distinguish AI from “things people do with computers” more generally. The whole industry is implicated, complicit, and likely to suffer when AI winter arrives. Dotcom bust didn’t just hit people who were working for pets.com.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#32

Post by codr7 »

whynotminot wrote: post #13

There’s a hype machine for sure. But the last few paragraphs of the piece kind of give away the game — the author is an AI skeptic judging only the current products rather than taking in the scope of how far they’ve come in such a short time frame. I don’t have much use for this short sighted analysis. It’s just not very intelligent and shows a stubborn lack of imagination. It reminds me of that quote “it is difficul…

The opposite is more true imo.

It's the AI hype squad that are banking their future on AI magically turning into AGI; because, you know, it surprised us once.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#33

Post by paulluuk »

Around the time when bitcoin started to get serious public attention, late 2017, I remember feeling super hyped about it and yet everyone told me that money spent on bitcoin was wasted money. I really believed that bitcoin, or at least cryptocurrency as a whole, would fundamentally change how banking and currencies would work. Now, almost 10 years later, I would say that it did not live up to my believe that it would "fundamentally" change currencies and banking. It made some minor changes, sure, but if it weren't for the value of bitcoin, it would still be a nerdy topic about as well known as perlin noise. Although I did make quite a lot of money from it, though I sold out way too soon.

As a research engineer in the field of AI, I am again getting this feeling. People keep doubting that AI will have any kind of impact, and I'm absolutely certain that it will. A few years ago people said "AI art is terrible" and "LLMs are just autocomplete" or the famous "AI is just if-else". By now it should be pretty obvious to everyone in the tech community that AI, and LLMs in particular, are extremely useful and already have a huge impact on tech.

Is it going to fulfill all the promises made by billionaire tech CEOs? No, of course not, at least not on the time scale that they're projecting. But they are incredibly useful tools that can enhance efficiency of almost any job that involves setting behind a computer. Even just something like copilot autocomplete or talking with an LLM about a refactor you're planning, is often incredibly useful. And the amount of "intelligence" that you can get from a model that can actually run on your laptop is also getting much better very quickly.

The way I see it, either the AI hype will end up like cryptocurrency: forever a part of our world, but never quite lived up to it's promises, but I made a lot of money in the meantime. Or the AI hype will live up to it's promises, but likely over a much longer period of time, and we'll have to test whether we can live with that. Personally I'm all for a fully automated luxury communism model for government, but I don't see that happening in the "better dead than red" US. It might become reality in Europe though, who knows.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#34

Post by righthand »

golol wrote: post #16

> To be clear, Amodei didn’t cite any research or evidence for that 50% estimate. I truly belive these types of paper don't deserve to be valued so much.

Yes we live in a world where no “experts” are required to provide any evidence or truth, but media outlets will gladly publish every false word and idea. For the same reason these Ceos want to wipe their workforce for more money, not a functioning society.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#35

Post by munksbeer »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #22
darth_avocado wrote: post #8

I don’t understand how any business leader can be excited about humans being replaced by AI. If no one has a job, who’s going to buy your stuff? When the unemployment in the country goes up, consumer spending slows down and recession kicks in. How could you be excited for that?

> If no one has a job, who’s going to buy your stuff? All the people employed by the government and blue collar workers? All the entrepreneurs, gig workers, black market workers, etc? It's easy to imagine a world in which there are way less white collar workers and everything else is pretty much the same. It's also easy to imagine a world in which you sell less stuff but your margins increase, and overall you're bett…

>It's also easy to imagine a world in which you sell less stuff but your margins increase, and overall you're better off, even if everybody else has less widgets.

History seems to show this doesn't happen. The trend is not linear, but the trend is that we live better lives each century than the previous century, as our technology increases.

Maybe it will be different this time though.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#36

Post by darth_avocado »

johnbenoe wrote: post #21
darth_avocado wrote: post #8

I don’t understand how any business leader can be excited about humans being replaced by AI. If no one has a job, who’s going to buy your stuff? When the unemployment in the country goes up, consumer spending slows down and recession kicks in. How could you be excited for that?

You ever thought there’s more to life than work lol. Maybe humans can approach a new standard of living…

I’m yet to be convinced that if majority of the humans are out of work, the government will be able to take care of them and allow them to “pursue their calling”. Hunger games is a more believable outcome to me.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#37

Post by jellicle »

GardenLetter27 wrote: post #10
monero-xmr wrote: post #4

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_auto... It wasn’t just Elon. The hype train on self driving cars was extreme only a few years ago, pre-LLM. Self driving cars exist sort of, in a few cities. Quibble all you want but it appears to me that “uber driver” is still a popular widespread job, let alone truck driver, bus driver, and “car owner” itself. I really wish the AI ceos would actually make my l…

Bureaucracy and regulation is the main issue there though. Like in Europe where you're forced to pay a notary to start a business - it's not really even necessary, nevermind something that couldn't be automated, but it's just but of the establishment propping up bureaucrats. Whereas LLMs and generative models in art and coding for example, help to avoid loads of bureaucracy in having to sort out contracts, or even hi…

We are going to have an ever-increasing supply of stories along the lines of "used a LLM to write a contract; contract gave away the company to the counterparty; now trying to get a court to dissolve the contract".

Sure you'll have destroyed the company, but at least you'll have avoided bureaucracy.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#38

Post by FeteCommuniste »

darth_avocado wrote: post #29
FeteCommuniste wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the idea is that the people left working will be made so productive and wealthy thanks to the miracle of AI that they can more than make up the difference with extravagant consumption.

If you want to see what that looks like, just look at the economy of India. Do we really want that?

Certainly not what I want, but it looks like we could be headed there. And the "industry leaders" seem cool with it, to judge by their politics.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#39

Post by whynotminot »

codr7 wrote: post #32
whynotminot wrote: post #13

There’s a hype machine for sure. But the last few paragraphs of the piece kind of give away the game — the author is an AI skeptic judging only the current products rather than taking in the scope of how far they’ve come in such a short time frame. I don’t have much use for this short sighted analysis. It’s just not very intelligent and shows a stubborn lack of imagination. It reminds me of that quote “it is difficul…

The opposite is more true imo. It's the AI hype squad that are banking their future on AI magically turning into AGI; because, you know, it surprised us once.

Not really — even if AGI doesn’t work and these models don’t get any better, there’s still enormous value to be mined just from harnessing the existing state of the art.

Or these guys pivot and go back to building CRUD apps. They’re either at the front of something revolutionary… or not… and they’ll go back to other lucrative big tech jobs.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#40

Post by johnbenoe »

codr7 wrote: post #27
johnbenoe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ever thought there’s more to life than work lol. Maybe humans can approach a new standard of living…

Excellent choice of words there: new standard. I'm sure we are, but it doesn't look like an improvement for most people.

Not yet at least, but there’s no stopping this kind of efficiency jump. Anyone who thinks otherwise is in denial.
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