Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theregister.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 503 posts

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

#301

Post by ericmcer »

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…

This is a great point, I was just using it understand various DMV procedures. It is invaluable for navigating bureaucracy so if your job is to ingest and regurgitate a bunch of documents and procedures you may be highly at risk here.

That is a great use for it too, rather than replacing artists we have personal advisors who can navigate almost any level of complex bureaucracy instantaneously. My girlfriend hates AI, like rails against it at any opportunity, but after spending a few hours on the DMV website I sat down and fed her questions into Claude and had answers in a few seconds. Instant convert.

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

#303

Post by meroes »

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…

My dentist already uses something called OverJet(?) that reads X-rays for issues. They seem to trust it and it agreed with what they suspected on the X-rays. Personally, I’ve been misdiagnosed through X-rays by a medical doctor so even being an LLM skeptic, Im slightly favorable to AI in medicine.

But I already trust my dentist. A new dentist deferring to AI is scary, and obviously will happen.

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

#304

Post by venantius »

It is possible for all of the following to be true: 1. This study is accurate 2. We are early in a major technological shift 3. Companies have allocated massive amounts of capital to this shift that may not represent a good investment 4. Assuming that the above three will remain true going forward is a bad idea

The .com boom and bust is an apt reference point. The technological shift WAS real, and the value to be delivered ultimately WAS delivered…but not in 1999/2000.

It may be we see a massive crash in valuations but AI still ends up the dominant driver of software value over the next 5-10 years.

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

#305

Post by mprovost »

Attrecomet wrote: post #274
tbrownaw wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 […

For some applications it feels like half the signal of whether you're qualified is whether the CV is set in Computer Modern, ie was produced via LaTeX.

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

#306

Post by jimmyjazz14 »

Eliezer wrote: post #302

Translators? Graphic artists? The omission of the most obviously impacted professions immediately identifies this as a cooked study, along with talking about LLMs as "chatbots". I wonder who paid for it.

are graphic artists actually getting replaced by AI? If so that would surprise me for as impressive as AI image generation is, very little of what it does seems like it would replace a graphic artists.

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

#307

Post by unquietwiki »

DoughnutHole wrote: post #233
ozgrakkurt wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can’t replace a human for support, it is not even close to replacing a junior developer. It can’t replace any advice job because it lies instead of erroring. As an example if you want diet advice, it can lie to you very convincingly so there is no point in getting advice from it. Main value you get from a programmer is they understand what they are doing and they can take the responsibility of what they are develo…

> It can’t replace a human for support It doesn’t wholly replace the need for human support agents but if it can adequately handle a substantial number of tickets that’s enough to reduce headcount. A huge percentage of problems raised in customer support are solved by otherwise accessible resources that the user hasn’t found. And AI agents are sophisticated enough to actually action on a lot of issues that require ac…

I already know of at least one company that's pivoted to using a mix of AI and off-shoring their support, as well as some other functions; that's underway, with results unclear, aside from layoffs that took place. There was also a brouhaha a year or two ago when a mental health advocacy tried using AI to replace their support team... did not go as planned when it suggested self-harm to some users.

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

#308

Post by lithocarpus »

ta20240528 wrote: post #200
atrus wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As an example if you want diet advice, it can lie to you very convincingly so there is no point in getting advice from it. How exactly is this different from getting advice from someone who acts confidently knowledgeable? Diet advice is an especially egregious example, since I can have 40 different dieticians give me 72 different diet/meal plans with them saying 100% certainty that this is the correct one. It's bad…

" since I can have 40 different dieticians give me 72 different diet/meal plans with them saying 100% certainty that this is the correct one." Because, as Brad Pilon of intermittent fasting fashion repeatedly stresses, "All diets work."* * Once there is an energy deficit.

[dead]

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

#309

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

Jensson wrote: post #53
Zanfa wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Search is distinct from Google's expansive ad network. Google search is now garbage, but their ads are everywhere are more profitable than ever.

Most Google ads comes from Google search, its a misconception Google derives most of their profits from third party ads that is just a minor part of Googles revenue.

You misunderstand. Making organic search results shittier will drive up ad revenue as people click on sponsored links in the search results page instead.

Not a sustainable strategy in the long term though.

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

#310

Post by aaronbaugher »

meroes wrote: post #303
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…

My dentist already uses something called OverJet(?) that reads X-rays for issues. They seem to trust it and it agreed with what they suspected on the X-rays. Personally, I’ve been misdiagnosed through X-rays by a medical doctor so even being an LLM skeptic, Im slightly favorable to AI in medicine. But I already trust my dentist. A new dentist deferring to AI is scary, and obviously will happen.

I had a misread X-ray once, and I can see how a machine could be better at spotting patterns than a tired technician, so I'm favorable too. I think I'd like a human to at least take a glance at it, though.

The mistake on mine was caught when a radiologist checked over the work of the weekend X-ray technician who missed a hairline crack. A second look is always good, and having one look be machine and the other human might be the best combo.

Post reply on HN