Economists can’t figure out that skyrocketing corporate profits result in skyrocketing inflation for workers because their models don’t let them consider that the majority of workers have given up the power to negotiate wages, so I certainly would not trust their determinations regarding the job market with respect to AI. Burying one’s head in the sand makes everyone look A-OK and that perspective error skews their entire field’s work.
Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists
351–360 of 503 posts
Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists
#352Earlier 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.
OT but funny: I see a YouTube video with a lot of before and after photos where the coach guarantees results in 60 days. It was entirely focused on avoiding stress and strongly advised against caloric restriction. Something like sleeping is many times more important than exercise and exercise is many times more important than diet.
From what I know dieticians don't design exercise plans. (If true) the LLM has better odds to figure it out.
Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> A second look is always good, and having one look be machine and the other human might be the best combo
For now I agree. 2-4 years from now it can be 20 ultra strong models each trained somewhat differently that converse on the X-ray and reach a conclusion. I don't think technicians will have much to add to the accuracy.
Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists
#354I'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…
The biggest harm today is people in training for "people interaction" specialties with a high degree of empathy / ability to read others: psychology, counseling, forensic interviewing. They pay a lot of money (or it's invested in them) to get trained and then have to do practical residency / internship: they need to do those interships NOW, and a significant proportion of the population that they'd otherwise interact with to do so is off faffing about with AI. The fact that anecdotally they can't seem to create "convincing" enough AIs to take the place of subjects is damning.
Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists
#355My 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…
> This is what happened to Google Search. It, like cable news, does kinda plod along because some dwindling fraction of the audience still doesn't "get it", but decline is decline.
Well their Search revenue actually went up last quarter, as all quarters. Overall traffic might be a bit down (they don't release that data so we can't be sure) but not revenue. While I do take tons of queries to LLMs now, the kind of queries Google actually makes a lot of money on (searching flights, restaurants etc) I don't go to an LLM for - either because of habit or because of fear these things are still hallucinating. If Search was starting to die I'd expect to see it in the latest quarter earnings but it isn't happening.
Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 mean…
The headline is about wages and jobs. It’s very possible that AI could result in time savings of 50% of work hours in a week and still have no impact on wages or jobs. This is because the economy is not a static thing. If one variable changes (productivity), it’s not a given that GDP will remain constant and jobs/wages will consequently be reduced. More likely is that all of the variables are always in flux, reacting…
> It’s very possible that AI could save 50% of work hours in a week and still have no impact on wages or jobs.
I like this sentence because it is grammatically and syntactically valid but has the same relationship to reality as say, the muttering of an incantation or spell has, in that it seeks to make the words come true by speaking them.
Aside from simply hoping that, if somebody says it it could be true, “If everyone’s hours got cut in half, employers would simply keep everyone and double wages” is up there with “It is very possible that if my car broke down I’d just fly a Pegasus to work”
Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists
#357I'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 thought process sort of implies that there's a limited amount of work that's available to do, and once AI is doing all of it, that everyone else will just sit on their hands and stop using their brains to do stuff.
Even if every job that exists today were currently automated _people would find other stuff to do_. There is always going to be more work to do that isn't economical for AIs to do for a variety of reasons.
Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists
#358My 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…
> This is what happened to Google Search This is completely untrue. Google Search still works, wonderfully. It works even better than other attempts at search by the same Google. For example, there are many videos that you will NEVER find on Youtube search that come up as the first results on Google Search. Same for maps: it's much easier to find businesses on Google Search than on maps. And it's even more true for n…
Yeah I agree. But this is a strong perception and why Google stock is quite cheap (people are afraid Search is dying).
I think Search has its place for years to come (while it will evolve as well with AI) and that Google is going to be pretty much unbeatable unless it is broken up.
Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists
#359Read 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.
It has been a very, very long time since editors have been proof-reading prose for typos and grammar mistakes, and you don't need LLMs for that. Good editors do a lot more creative work than that, and LLMs are terrible at it.
Re: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
The headline is about wages and jobs. It’s very possible that AI could result in time savings of 50% of work hours in a week and still have no impact on wages or jobs. This is because the economy is not a static thing. If one variable changes (productivity), it’s not a given that GDP will remain constant and jobs/wages will consequently be reduced. More likely is that all of the variables are always in flux, reacting…
Very well, I acknowledge this point. However, the parent comment is about an examination of what has happened so far and facts that feed into the paper and its conclusions. I was focused on what I see as important gaps in measuring impact of AI, and its actual (if difficult to measure) impact right now.
The paper analyzes facts re: wages and jobs, which I think are (comparatively) easy to measure as compared with productivity, and are also an area where people have concerns about the impact of AI.
Mostly people aren't worried about productivity itself, which would be weird. "Oh no, AI is making us way more productive, and now we're getting too much stuff done and the economy is growing too much." The major concern is that the productivity is going to impact jobs and wages, and at least so far (according to this particular paper) that seems to not be happening.