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I'm worried it might get bad

danielmiessler.com

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Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#31

Post by hyperhello »

Take the even more global view of the United States. We can grow more than enough good food for everyone, and there is plenty of land. We have water, working infrastructure, and all the other ingredients.

The rest is just giving people money to do what they please. Really. Do we need faster technology? Do we need to alloy new metals or develop new medicines?

No. We could live the spartan life of fifty years ago, or a hundred. The population will keep reliably replenishing. The rest is all just fashion.

When, not if, AI takes over crummy jobs that people don’t want to do, and society makes a mass change to deal with that, you’ll be surprised how fast it goes back to whatever equilibrium there is.

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#32

Post by throwway120385 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #25
maxehmookau wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I still think we're seeing layoffs due to _overhiring_ in 2020. AI makes a nice excuse when laying these people off because CEOs can say their huge investments in AI are starting to pay off because they don't need the humans. Turns out, they never needed those humans in the first place. That doesn't answer the other side of the problem though, that it's so hard to find work right now, even for folks who would…

Sure it does. If everybody overhired, then nobody needs to hire now. And the few places that do are inundated with all the laid-off job seekers, so odds on getting hired at one of them are very low.

At my employer the overhiring was in areas where there wasn't actually a business case. For example they staffed an entire internal team to build a unified portal between all of the software systems the company acquired through acquisitions. That team produced nothing and at great expense. They got laid off last year, and the funds re-allocated toward hiring in areas that produced revenue or reduced expenses.

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#33

Post by aaomidi »

andyfilms1 wrote: post #14

I've said this before, but the only thing that will convince me that these companies are actually laying people off due to AI will be when they start replacing their leadership staff with it. Until that happens--IMO it's just an excuse to reduce the overhired workforce without tanking their stock.

Why would leadership replace themselves?

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#34

Post by Thrymr »

billfor wrote: post #8

Those people will go back to doing whatever they would have been doing before the technology revolution, which actually wasn’t so long ago… Like maybe go work at a shipyard. We can only build two ships a year it seems…

Who is going to be buying ships?

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#35

Post by maxehmookau »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #25
maxehmookau wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I still think we're seeing layoffs due to _overhiring_ in 2020. AI makes a nice excuse when laying these people off because CEOs can say their huge investments in AI are starting to pay off because they don't need the humans. Turns out, they never needed those humans in the first place. That doesn't answer the other side of the problem though, that it's so hard to find work right now, even for folks who would…

Sure it does. If everybody overhired, then nobody needs to hire now. And the few places that do are inundated with all the laid-off job seekers, so odds on getting hired at one of them are very low.

Fair point. Depressing, but it makes sense.

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#37

Post by assword »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #25
maxehmookau wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I still think we're seeing layoffs due to _overhiring_ in 2020. AI makes a nice excuse when laying these people off because CEOs can say their huge investments in AI are starting to pay off because they don't need the humans. Turns out, they never needed those humans in the first place. That doesn't answer the other side of the problem though, that it's so hard to find work right now, even for folks who would…

Sure it does. If everybody overhired, then nobody needs to hire now. And the few places that do are inundated with all the laid-off job seekers, so odds on getting hired at one of them are very low.

[dead]

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#38

Post by lucasyvas »

aaomidi wrote: post #27
mholt wrote: post #23

Don't worry -- soon after that, there will be high demand for human coders as companies scramble to hire to rewrite all the buggy and vuln-ridden AI-hallucinated software. We're on the verge of two revolutions in tech, not one.

I wouldn’t bet on this

Just become a black hat then. It will be easy to find problems in everything but the very top percent of AI generated software.

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#39

Post by strict9 »

I agree with many of the author's observations. I see a lot of the same thing in my circles.

Where my views differ are when it comes to the leap between layoffs and AI.

Corporate leadership is eager to reduce the biggest source of cost (employees) and happy to use AI as cover. But it's not the reality. AI isn't adding productivity to the company's bottom line in numbers big enough to rationalize the layoffs.

I can point to zero tech roles eliminated where AI performed the same function. Despite the fact me and everyone in my circles use AI on a daily basis and are big proponents of it.

I think the author's biggest incorrect assertion is accepting corporate PR as gospel like this:

>Salesforce says AI bots now do 50% of the company's work. They're pushing what they call a "digital workforce" where AI agents handle customer service, sales, and even coding tasks.

All of these companies have great incentive to say AI is replacing workers. But so far no proof has been offered.

Eventually we will get a recession. For a lot of people that work in tech it feels like we are already in one.

But I do not share the author's concerns with AI taking everyone's jobs in the next few months or years.

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#40

Post by OgsyedIE »

Many commenters say that AI is overblown and they're right. But the rise in labor precarity in almost all sectors is real.

If the effect size isn't attributable to AI, then it must be the case that we have been in an unacknowledged recession for over a year.

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