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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

#321

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

My biggest concern about AI is that it will make us better at things that we're already doing. Things that we would've stopped doing if we hadn't had such a slow introduction to their consequences, consequences that we're now accustomed to--but not adapted to. Frog in slowly warming water stuff like the troubling relationship between advertising and elections, or the lack of consent in our monetary systems.

I'm worried the shock will not be abrupt enough to encourage a proper rethink.

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

#323

Post by quickthrowman »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #157
quickthrowman wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also took a picture of my tire while at the garage and asked it if I really needed new tires or not. You can use a penny and your eyeballs to assess this, and all it costs is $0.01

I find it easily hallucinates this stuff. It’s understanding of a picture is decidedly worse then its understanding of words. Be careful here about asking if it needs a tire change it is likely giving you an answer that only looks real.

I agree with you, my post was about not using AI to check tread depth and relying on a penny and your own eyesight instead, illustrated here: https://www.bridgestonetire.com/learn/maintenance/how-to-che...

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

#324

Post by Zanfa »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #245
Zanfa wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "Google's search is garbage" paradigm is starting to get outdated Quite the opposite. It's never been more true. I'm not saying using LLMs for search is better, but as it stands right now, SEO spammers have beat Google, since whatever you search for, the majority of results are AI slop. Their increased revenue probably comes down to the fact that they no longer show any search results in the first screenful at…

Can you give an example of an everyday person search that generates a majority of AI slop? If anything my frustration with google search comes from it being much harder to find niche technical information, because it seems google has turned the knobs hard towards "Treat search queries like they are coming from the average user, so show them what they are probably looking for over what they are actually looking for."

Basically any product comparison or review for example.

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

#326

Post by kypro »

rafaelmn wrote: post #320
mac-attack wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 credi…

That's interesting. I think there's been some pretty significant improvements in the rate of hallucinations and accuracy of the models, especially when it comes to rule following. Perhaps the biggest improvement though is in the size of context windows which are huge compared to this time last year.

Maybe progress over the last 2-3 months is hard to see, but progress over the last 6 is very clear.

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

#327

Post by bredren »

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,…

> According to the study, "users report average time savings of just 2.8 percent of work hours" from using AI tools. That's a bit more than one hour per 40 hour work week.

Could be data is lagging as sibling comment said but this seems wildly difficult to report on a number like this.

It also doesn't take into account the benefits to colleagues of active users of LLMs (second order savings).

My use of LLMs often means I'm saving other people time because I can work through issues without communications loops and task switching. I can ask about much more important, novel items of discussion.

This is an important omission that lowers the paper's overall value and sets it up for headlines like this.

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

#328

Post by habinero »

henryaj wrote: post #280
jacamera wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! All LLMs do is “hallucinate”. Sometimes the output happens to be right, same as a broken clock.

You imply that, like a stopped clock, LLMs are only right occasionally and randomly. Which is just nonsense.

It's true, though. It strings together plausible words using a statistical model. If those words happen to mean something, it's by chance.

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

#329

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

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,…

> "Generative AI is not ..."

But here's the thing - there is already plenty of documented proof of individuals losing their job to ChatGPT. This is an article from 2 years ago: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/02/ai-taki...

Early on in a paradigm shift, when you have small moves, or people are still trying to figure out the tech, it's likely that individual moves are hard to distinguish from noise. So I'd argue that a broad-based, "just look at the averages" approach is simply the wrong approach to use at this point in the tech lifecycle.

FWIW, I'd have to search for it, but there were economic analyses done that said it took decades for the PC to have a positive impact on productivity. IMO, this is just another article about "economists using tools they don't really understand". For decades they told us globalization would be good for all countries, they just kinda forgot about the massive political instability it could cause.

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

Not true. The article specifically calls into question whether the massive spending on AI is worth it. AI is obviously an investment, so determine whether it's "worth it", you need to consider future outcomes.

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

#330

Post by nzeid »

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…

> 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.

These examples aren't wrong but you might be overstating their impact on the economy as a whole.

E.g. the overwhelming majority of people do not pay solely for tax advice, or have a dietician, etc. Corporations already crippled their customer support so there's no remaining damage to be dealt.

Your tax example won't move the needle on people who pay to have their taxes done in their entirety.

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