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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

#311

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

jcelerier wrote: post #83
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generative AI has failed to automate anything at all so far. (Racist memes and furry pornography doesn't count.)

Yeah no, I'm seeing more and more shitty ai generated ads, shop logos, interior design & graphics for instance in barber shops, fast food places etc. The sandwich shop next to my work has a music playlist which is 100% ai generated repetitive slop. Do you think they'll be paying graphic designers, musicians etc. for now on when something certainly shittier than what a good artist does, but also much better than what…

That's not automation, that's replacing a product with a cheaper and shittier version.

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

#312

Post by spondylosaurus »

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…

> Text editors (people that edit/proofread prose, not computer programs) will be replaced by LLMs.

This is such a broad category that I think it's inaccurate to say that all editors will be automated, regardless of your outlook on LLMs in general. Editing and proofreading are pretty distinct roles; the latter is already easily automated, but the former can take on a number of roles more akin to a second writer who steers the first writer in the correct direction. Developmental editors take an active role in helping creatives flesh out a work of fiction, technical editors perform fact-checking and do rewrites for clarity, etc.

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

#313

Post by jhp123 »

The thing about AI is that it doesn't work, you can't build on top of it, and it won't get better.

It doesn't work: even for the tiny slice of human work that is so well defined and easily assessed that it is sent out to freelancers on sites like Fiverr, AI mostly can't do it. We've had years to try this now, the lack of any compelling AI work is proof that it can't be done with current technology.

You can't build on top of it: unlike foundational technologies like the internet, AI can only be used to build one product, a chatbot. The output of an AI is natural language and it's not reliable. How are you going to meaningfully process that output? The only computer system that can process natural language is an AI, so all you can do is feed one AI into another. And how do you assess accuracy? Again, your only tool is an AI, so your only option is to ask AI 2 if AI 1 is hallucinating, and AI 2 will happily hallucinate its own answer. It's like The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, Cat E trying to clean up the mess Cat D made trying to clean up the mess Cat C made and so on.

And it won't get any better. LLMs can't meaningfully assess their training data, they are statistical constructions. We've already squeezed about all we can from the training corpora we have, more GPUs and parameters won't make a meaningful difference. We've succeeded at creating a near-perfect statistical model of wikipedia and reddit and so on, it's just not very useful even if it is endlessly amusing for some people.

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

#314

Post by hangonhn »

venantius wrote: post #304

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 del…

That's a repeating pattern with technologies. Most of the early investments don't pay off and the transformation does happen but also quite a bit later than people predicted. This was true of the steam engine, the telegraph, electricity, and the railroad. It actually tends to be the later stage investors who reap most of the reward because by then the lessons have been learned and solutions developed.

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

#315

Post by 9rx »

throwaway35364 wrote: post #237
9rx wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They will have to go back to training Why? When we've seen a sector collapse, the new jobs that rush in to fill the void are new, never seen before, and thus don't have training. You just jump in and figure things out along the way like everyone else. The problem, though, is that people usually seek out jobs that they like. When that collapses they are left reeling and aren't apt to want to embrace something new. T…

What if no jobs, or fewer jobs than before, rush in to fill the void this time? You only need so many prompt engineers when each one can replace hundreds of traditional workers.

> What if no jobs, or fewer jobs than before, rush in to fill the void this time?

That means either:

1. The capitalists failed to redeploy capital after the collapse.

2. We entered into some kind of post-capitalism future.

To explore further, which one are you imagining?

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

#317

Post by jalev »

The headline is a bit baity (in that the article is describing no job losses because there hasn't been any economic benefit to LLM/GenAI to justify it), but what if we re-ran the study in a country _without_ exceptionally strong unionisation participation? Would we see the same results?

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

#318

Post by krainboltgreene »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #50
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…

> it can destroy value of entire sectors. Think of resume-sending. Once both sides are automated, the practice is actually superfluous "Like all ‘magic’ in Tolkien, [spiritual] power is an expression of the primacy of the Unseen over the Seen and in a sense as a result such spiritual power does not effect or perform but rather reveals: the true, Unseen nature of the world is revealed by the exertion of a supernatural…

Yeah man, I'm not so sure about that. My father made good money writing resumes in his college years studying for his MFA. Same for my mother. Neither of them were under the illusion that writing/receiving resumes was important or needed. Nor were the workers or managers. The only people who were confused about it were capitalists who needed some way to avoid losing their sanity under the weight of how unnecessary they were in the scheme of things.

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

#319

Post by mediaman »

karpour wrote: post #232
colinmorelli wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the real value of AI that, I think, we're just starting to get into. It's less about automating workflows that are inherently unstructured (I think that we're likely to continue wanting humans for this for some time). It's more about automating workflows that are already procedural and/or protocolized, but where information gathering is messy and unstructured (I.e. some facets of law, health, finance, etc). U…

I recently tried looking up something about local tax law in ChatGPT. It confidently told me a completely wrong rule. There are lots of sources for this, but since some probably unknowingly spread misinformation, ChatGPT just treated it as correct. Since I always verify what ChatGPT spits out, it wasn't a big deal for me, just a reminder that it's garbage in, garbage out.

Out of curiosity, did you try this in o3?

O3's web research seems to have gotten much, much better than their earlier attempts at using the web, which I didn't like. It seems to browse in a much more human way (trying multiple searches, noticing inconsistencies, following up with more refined searches, etc).

But I wonder how it would do in a case like yours where there is conflicting information and whether it picks up on variance in information it finds.

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

#320

Post by rafaelmn »

mac-attack wrote: post #298
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

I feel like model improvement is severely overstated by the benchmarks and the last release cycle basically made no difference to my use cases. If you gave me Claude 3.5 and 3.7 I couldn't really tell the difference. OpenAI models feel like they are regressing, and LLAMA 4 regressed even on benchmarks.

And the hype was insane in 2023 already - it's useful to compare actual outcomes vs historic hype to gauge how credible the hype sellers are.

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