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The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

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Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#411

Post by absurdo »

beepbooptheory wrote: post #409
snowwrestler wrote: post #400

Historically, people have been pretty good at predicting the effects of new technologies on existing jobs. But quite bad at predicting the new jobs / careers / industries that are eventually created with those technologies. This is why free market economies create more wealth over time than centrally planned economies: the free market allows more people to try seemingly crazy ideas, and is faster to recognize good id…

So, we are doomed to work forever, just maybe different jobs?

Basically yeah. You live in a world of layered servitude and, short of a financial windfall that hoists you up for some time, you’re basically guaranteed to work your entire life, and grow old, frail and poor. This isn’t a joke, it’s reality for many people that’s hidden from us to keep us deluded. Similar to my other mini-rant, I don’t have any valid answers to the problem at hand. Just acknowledging how fucked things are for humanity.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#412

Post by baby_souffle »

xp84 wrote: post #266
abracadaniel wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My long term fear with AI is that by replacing entry level jobs, it breaks the path to train senior level employees. It could take a couple of decades to really feel the heat from it, but could lead to massive collapse as no one is left with any understanding of how existing systems work, or how to design replacements.

> It could take a couple of decades to really feel the heat from it, but could lead to massive collapse When you consider how this interacts with the population collapse (which is inevitable now everywhere outside of some African countries) this seems even worse. In 20 years, we will have far fewer people under age 60 than we have now, and among that smaller cohort, the percentage of people at any given age who have…

> Worst case, AI overtakes the Class of 2020 and moves up the experience-equivalence ladder faster than 1 year per year, so it starts taking out the classes of 2015, 2010, etc.

This is my bet. Similar to Moores law. Where it plateaus is anybody’s guess…

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#413

Post by xg15 »

sevensor wrote: post #12

What AI is going to wipe out is white collar jobs where people sleepwalk through the working day and carelessly half ass every task. In 2025, we can get LLMs to do that for us. Unfortunately, the kind of executive who thinks AI is a legitimate replacement for actual work does not recognize the difference. I expect to see the more credulous CEOs dynamiting their companies as a result. Whether the rest of us can surviv…

> What AI is going to wipe out is white collar jobs where people sleepwalk through the working day and carelessly half ass every task.

Note that AI wipes out the jobs, but not the tasks themselves. So if that's true, as a consumer, expect more sleepwalked, half-assed products, just created by AI.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#414

Post by aianus »

absurdo wrote: post #411
beepbooptheory wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, we are doomed to work forever, just maybe different jobs?

Basically yeah. You live in a world of layered servitude and, short of a financial windfall that hoists you up for some time, you’re basically guaranteed to work your entire life, and grow old, frail and poor. This isn’t a joke, it’s reality for many people that’s hidden from us to keep us deluded. Similar to my other mini-rant, I don’t have any valid answers to the problem at hand. Just acknowledging how fucked thin…

No, it's quite easy to make $1mm in a rich country and move to a poorer country and chill if you so desire.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#415

Post by satvikpendem »

beepbooptheory wrote: post #409
snowwrestler wrote: post #400

Historically, people have been pretty good at predicting the effects of new technologies on existing jobs. But quite bad at predicting the new jobs / careers / industries that are eventually created with those technologies. This is why free market economies create more wealth over time than centrally planned economies: the free market allows more people to try seemingly crazy ideas, and is faster to recognize good id…

So, we are doomed to work forever, just maybe different jobs?

Of course. I mean this has never not been the case unless you are independently wealthy. Work always expands, that's why it's a fallacy to think that if we just had more productivity gains that we'd work half the time; no, there are always new things to do tomorrow that were not possible yesterday.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#416

Post by tdeck »

Maybe someone can help me wrap my head around this in a different way, because here's how I see it.

If these tools are really making people so productive, shouldn't it be painfully obvious in companies' output? For example, if these AI coding tools were an amazing productivity boost in the end, we'd expect to see software companies shipping features and fixes faster than ever before. There would be a huge burst in innovative products and improvements to existing products. And we'd expect that to be in a way that would be obvious to customers and users, not just in the form of some blog post or earnings call.

For cost center work, this would lead to layoffs right away, sure. But companies that make and sell software should be capitalizing on this, and only laying people off when they get to the point of "we just don't know what to do with all this extra productivity, we're all out of ideas!". I haven't seen one single company in this situation. So that makes me think that these decisions are hype-driven short term thinking.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#417

Post by tw04 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #400

Historically, people have been pretty good at predicting the effects of new technologies on existing jobs. But quite bad at predicting the new jobs / careers / industries that are eventually created with those technologies. This is why free market economies create more wealth over time than centrally planned economies: the free market allows more people to try seemingly crazy ideas, and is faster to recognize good id…

But also it potentially means mass unemployment and we have literally no plan in place if that happens beyond complete societal collapse.

Even if you think all the naysayers are “luddites”, do you really think it’s a great idea to have no backup plan beyond “whupps we all die or just go back to the Stone Age”?

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#418

Post by tdeck »

izabera wrote: post #242
abletonlive wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a big issue in the short term but in the long term I actually think AI is going to be a huge democratization of work and company building. I spend a lot of time encouraging people to not fight the tide and spend that time intentionally experimenting and seeing what you can do. LLMs are already useful and it's interesting to me that anybody is arguing it's just good for toy applications. This is a poisonous mi…

what does "huge democratization of work" even mean? what world do you people live in? the current global unemployment rate on my planet is around 5% so that seems pretty democratised already?

I've noticed that when people use the term "democratization" in business speak, it makes sense to replace it with "commodification" 99% of the time.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#419

Post by satvikpendem »

aianus wrote: post #414
absurdo wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically yeah. You live in a world of layered servitude and, short of a financial windfall that hoists you up for some time, you’re basically guaranteed to work your entire life, and grow old, frail and poor. This isn’t a joke, it’s reality for many people that’s hidden from us to keep us deluded. Similar to my other mini-rant, I don’t have any valid answers to the problem at hand. Just acknowledging how fucked thin…

No, it's quite easy to make $1mm in a rich country and move to a poorer country and chill if you so desire.

It's not that easy, as in, you can make the money but the logistics of moving and living in another country are always harder than expected, both culturally and bureaucratically.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#420

Post by CMCDragonkai »

tdeck wrote: post #416

Maybe someone can help me wrap my head around this in a different way, because here's how I see it. If these tools are really making people so productive, shouldn't it be painfully obvious in companies' output? For example, if these AI coding tools were an amazing productivity boost in the end, we'd expect to see software companies shipping features and fixes faster than ever before. There would be a huge burst in in…

It's cause there are still bottlenecks. AI is definitely boosting productivity in specific areas, but the total system output is bottlenecked. I think we will see these bottlenecks get rerouted or refactored in the coming years.
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