Why don’t we see it in the aggregate job data? Could it be that people sometimes lose jobs for “reasons” but that’s just the normal flow of the economy? Until there’s some effect on actual unemployment rates I wouldn’t be worried.
Willison on Merchant's "Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry"
41–50 of 96 posts
Re: Willison on Merchant's "Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry"
#42I think the article is about “copywriters” who aren’t true copywriters but those who were writing junk articles for SEO. Once AI can write proper compelling converting copy then I’ll change my mind.
How do you know you aren’t reading it every day?
Because I tried using LLMs to write a compelling copy for a landing page and it’s just not that great. I tried a lot. A real copywriter will do a lot of research about your ICP and write targeted copy.
Re: Willison on Merchant's "Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry"
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Government job programs were a defining feature of economic prosperity during the New Deal. Saying jobs for the sake of jobs are bad isn’t historically true.
People doing jobs with no inherent value still need food, shelter, healthcare,… all provided by other people. Further, the cost difference (for there must be a cost difference or we wouldn’t have anyone choosing AI) must come from somewhere, that money is not being used to pay people (or even the same person) doing productive work. I can see some limited scenarios in up and coming industries or strategically importan…
Clearly those jobs have "inherent value", or The Market would not have sunk a few billion into automating away the people that do them. These are jobs that people have been doing for years, and been getting paid money to do.
Look at how things went for the "Learn to code" workforce. They were told that software would be a valuable skill to have, and sunk a lot of time and money into fronted coding bootcamps. The job market in 2025 looks very different with Sonnet 4.5, which is particularly good at frontend code. What skills would you tell all those copywriters to go re-train in? How confident are you that won't be useless in 10, 15 years? Maybe you can say that they should have trained in other fields of software, but hindsight is 20/20.
I am not saying automation is bad, or that the jobs we have today should be set in stone and nothing change. But, there will be society level ramifications if we take some significant fraction of the workforce and tell them they're out of a job. Society can absorb the impact of a small fraction of the workforce going out of a job, but not a big one.
Re: Willison on Merchant's "Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry"
#44My additional commentary on this one is not worth much - I suggest reading the original article instead: https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/i-was-forced-to-use-ai-u...
Even that short changes the original source: https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/i-was-forced-to-use-ai-u... I bookmarked the series which looks exactly like what everyone in tech is saying ISN’T happening: https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/s/ai-killed-my-job But I’m sure somebody will blow this off as “it’s only three examples and is not really representative” But if it is representative… “then it’s not as bad as ot…
The world changes and jobs cease to exist. Historically there hasn't been a great deal of support for those who lose their jobs to change.
While there are issues that are AI specific, I don't feel as if this is one of them. This happens for many reasons, of which AI is just one. In turn, I think this means that the way to address the problem of job loss should not be AI soecific.
If it turns out that AI does not create more jobs than are lost; that will be a new thing. I think that can happen, but on a longer timeframe.
When most jobs can be done by AI, we will need a societal change to deal with that. That will be where people need a livelihood, not necessarily a job. I have read pieces nearly a hundred years old saying this, there are almost certainly much earlier writings that identify this needs to be addressed.
There will undoubtedly be a few individuals that will seek to accumulate wealth and power who aim to just not employ humans. I don't think that can happen on a systemic scale because it would be too unstable.
Two of the things that supports wealth inequality is 1) people do not want to risk what they currently have, and 2) they are too busy surviving to do anything about it.
A world where people lose their jobs and have no support results in a populace with nothing to lose and time to act. That state would not last long.
Re: Willison on Merchant's "Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry"
#45If a human component is required in addition to the cheaply machine-automated part, that belies the claim that 'most of the work has already been done'. The human part, turning it from slop to polished, becomes the most important part of the work, and then (and in any case) should be paid at human rates.
Hmm. "Commoditize your complement".
That is, if you're selling razor blades, you want the handle and the shaving cream to be cheap. Well then, if you're turning slop into polished, then you want the slop to be cheap. And AI makes it much cheaper.
Re: Willison on Merchant's "Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry"
#46The problem isn't getting rid if people's jobs. Jobs are not inherently valuable. The problem is we have not built a society or economy where everyone can thrive regardless of their employment.
>The problem is we have not built a society or economy where everyone can thrive regardless of their employment.
The way I'd read this sentiment is that the arrangement of society is ultimately arbitrary and if we could only choose a different system we could by truly free. I'm not sure if I'm reading you correctly or not. That said, my impression is that people will not really be able to get away from something like that looks like traditional jobs. The core traits seem to be group dynamics, hierarchical competition, status-attainment -- all where resources are not infinite nor are opportunities for status.
We've already had sufficient technological advances such that people would not need to do much labor, but functionally speaking I just don't think people can organize themselves into _any_ possible arrangement. I think the potential arrangements that could exist are limited by nature.
Re: Willison on Merchant's "Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry"
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't think of a more insufferable AI cheerleader. I wish I could hide all submissions of his blogposts, as well as his comments. (Note that I flag neither.)
Anything I could do to be less insufferable? (Odd to see a complaint about me being an "AI cheerleader" attached to a post about the negative impact of AI on copywriting and how I think that sucks.)
[flagged]
Re: Willison on Merchant's "Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry"
#48The problem isn't getting rid if people's jobs. Jobs are not inherently valuable. The problem is we have not built a society or economy where everyone can thrive regardless of their employment.
That's like saying "the problem isn't the unmaintainable cost of healthcare, it's that we haven't eliminated all diseases and aging". I.e. the latter is a long way off, and might not ever be 100% feasible, so it's horrifying and inhumane to imply we should allow the suffering caused by the former in the meantime.
Re: Willison on Merchant's "Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry"
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Besides the fact that you do have conflicts of interest (disclosing them doesn't negate them), you don't seem to understand that given how all of the Big AI players have shown themselves to be ruthless and shamelessly dishonest (hoovering up people's creative work without concern for its licensing, aggressively scraping websites to the point of DDOSing them, disregarding robots.txt and using residential IPs to disgui…
The purpose of disclosure is to allow people to make their own decisions about how trustworthy I am as a source of information. If I started rejecting access to early models over a desire to avoid conflicts of interest my coverage would be less useful to people. I think most of my regular readers understand that. I was responsible for one of the first widely read reports on the ethics of model training back in 2022 w…
This is a disappointing thread to find - HN is usually a little more thoughtful than throwing around insults like "insufferable AI cheerleader".
If I can provide a different perspective, I find your writing on LLMs to be useful. I've referenced your writing to coworkers in an effort to be a little more rigorous when it comes to how we use these new (often unintuitive) tools.
I think the level of disclosure you do is fine. Certainly a better effort at transparency than what most writers are willing to do.
Re: Willison on Merchant's "Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry"
#50The problem isn't getting rid if people's jobs. Jobs are not inherently valuable. The problem is we have not built a society or economy where everyone can thrive regardless of their employment.
The only thing that seems hopeful is that people are finally talking about it at mass scale. I promise you as an anarchist agitator that is unbelievably new just even in the last couple years and precisely what usually happens prior to actual direct action. My fellow anarchists hate the fact that Donald Trump did more for anarchist-socialist praxis than every other socialist writer in history.
Please don’t speak for all anarchists like your individual perspective is some kind of truth.