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

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

#441

Post by munksbeer »

pydry wrote: post #255
munksbeer wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The world is deglobalizing. We have had thousands of years of globalising. The trend has always been towards a more connected world. I strongly suspect the current Trump movement (and to an extent brexit depending on which brexit version you chose to listen to) will be blips in that continued trend. That is because it doesn't make sense for there to be 200 countries all experts in microchip manufacturing and banana…

>We have had thousands of years of globalising. It happens in cycles. Globalization has followed deglobalization before and vice versa. It's never been one straight line upward. >That is because it doesn't make sense for there to be 200 countries all experts in microchip manufacturing and banana growing. It'll break down into blocs, not 200 individual countries. Ask Estonia why they buy overpriced LNG from America an…

>It's never been one straight line upward.

Agree, but I never said it was.

>If you think the inability to source high end microchips from anywhere apart from Taiwan is going to prevent a future conflict (the Milton Friedman(tm) golden arches theory) then I'm afraid I've got bad news.

Why are you saying that? Again, I didn't suggest that.

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

#442

Post by ajb »

asadotzler wrote: post #430
ajb wrote: post #117

A bold assumption, that it will continue not to. I have a 185 year old treatise on wood engraving. At the time, to reproduce any image required that it be engraved in wood or metal for the printer; the best wood engravers were not mere reproducers, as they used some artistry when reducing the image to black and white, to keep the impression from continuous tones. (And some, of course, were also original artists in th…

As a graphic designer, my work didn't evaporate because Aldus shipped PageMaker. It didn't collapse when Office and the Web made clip art available to everyone. It didn't disappear when credit card, letterhead, and logo templates and generators came online. Every time a new tool allowed more DIY, the gulf between the low-effort stuff and my stuff grew and I was able to secure even more and better paying work. And usi…

I hope you are right

I'm a little confused by your point here:

>This is how engraving went too. It wasn't overnight. The tools were not distributed evenly and it was a good while before amateurs could produce anything like what the earlier professionals did.

In the case of engraving, most engravers weren't the original artist. The artist would draw their illustration on a wood blank, and the engraver would convert it to a print block. So artists were not completely replaced by photographers, except for journalistic sketchers, but the entire process changed and eliminated the job of engraving. Sure, high end artist-engravers kept going, but jobbing engravers were out of luck.

There are still a few artists who specialise in engraving. But the point here isn't whether a few of the most accomplished professionals will still be in demand, but what happens to the vast bulk of average people.

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

#443

Post by layer8 »

Kbelicius wrote: post #431
paulvnickerson wrote: post #414

This line of worry has never panned out. There are two points: 1) AI/automation will replace jobs. This is 100% certain in some cases. Look at the industrial revolution. 2) AI/automation will increase unemployment. This has never happened and it's doubtful it will ever happen. The reason is that humans always adapt and find ways to be helpful that automation can't do. That is why after 250 years after the industrial…

> 2) AI/automation will increase unemployment. This has never happened and it's doubtful it will ever happen. > The reason is that humans always adapt and find ways to be helpful that automation can't do. That is why after 250 years after the industrial revolution started, we still have single-digit unemployment. Horses, for thousand of years, were very useful to humans. Even with the various technological advances t…

You forgot “in a cost-effective manner”, and also market acceptance. You may eventually be right, but it’s a very long way off.

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

#444

Post by jaredklewis »

jrflowers wrote: post #407
jaredklewis wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cited statistics is in reference to time saved (as a percent of work hours), not a reduction in paid working hours. But more generally, my comment is not absurd; it's a pattern that has played itself out in economic history dozens of times. Despite the fact that modern textile and clothing machinery are easily 1000x more efficient than weaving cloth and sewing shirts by hand, the modern garment industry employs m…

> The cited statistics is in reference to time saved (as a percent of work hours), not a reduction in paid working hours. This makes sense. If everyone’s current workloads were suddenly cut in half tomorrow, there would simply be enough demand to double their workloads. This makes sense across the board because much like clothing and textiles, demand for every product and service scales linearly with population. I wa…

Ugh, I didn't posit that demand is infinite, nor did I even mention Jevons paradox.

In the the past 200 years we've seen colossal productivity gains from technology across every area of the economy. Over the same period, wages have increased and unemployment has remained stable. That's where my priors come from. I'll update them if we get data to the contrary, but the data we have so far (like this paper) mostly confirm them.

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

#445

Post by kbelder »

habinero wrote: post #328
henryaj wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, but that chance might be 99.7%. 'Random' isn't a pejorative.

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

#446

Post by NegativeK »

meroes wrote: post #303
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…

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 regularly get to hear veterinarian rants. AI is being forced on them by the corporate owners in multiple fronts. The pattern goes:

Why aren’t you using the AI x-ray? Because it too often misdiagnoses things and I have to spend even more time double checking. And I still have to get a radiologist consult.

Why are you frustrated that we swapped out the blood testing thingamabob with an AI machine? Because it takes 10 minutes to do what took me 30 seconds with a microscope and is STILL not doing the full job, despite bringing this up multiple times.

Why aren’t you relying more on the AI text to speech for medical notes? Because the AVMA said that a doctor has to review all notes. I do, and it makes shit up in literally every instance. So I write my own and label the transcription as AI instead of having to spend even more time correcting it.

The best part is that the majority of vets (at least in this city) didn’t do medical notes for pets. Best you’d often get when asking is a list of costs slapped together in the 48 hours they had to respond. Now, they just use the AI notes without correcting them. We’ve gone from zero notes, so at least the next doctor knows to redo everything they need, to medical notes with very frequent significant technical flaws but potentially zero indication that it’s different from a competent doctor’s notes.

This is the wrong direction, and it’s not just new doctors. It’s doctors who are short on time doing what they can with tools that promised what isn’t being delivered. Or doctors being strong armed into using tools by the PE owners who paid for something without checking to see if it’s a good idea. I honestly do believe that AI will get there, but this is a horrible way to do it. It causes harm.

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

#447

Post by octopoc »

ringeryless wrote: post #81
clarionbell wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world is deglobalizing. EU has been cutting off from Russia since the war started, and forcing medical industries to reshore since covid. At the same time it has begun drive to remilitarize itself. This means more heavy industry and all of it local. There is brewing conflict across continents. India and Pakistan, Red sea region, South China sea. The list goes on and on. It's time to accept it. The world has moved…

navel gazing will be shown to be a reactionary empty step, as all current global issues require more global cooperation to solve, not less. the individual phenomena you describe are indeed detritus of this failed reaction to an increasing awareness of all humans of our common conditions under disparate nation states. nationalism is broken by the realization that everyone everywhere is paying roughly 1/4 to 1/3 of the…

Allow me to refer you to Chesterton's Fence:

> There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, 'I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away.' To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: 'If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.' [1]

The problem with anti-border extremism is that it ignores the huge success national borders have had since pre-recorded history in building social cohesion, community, and more generally high-trust societies. All those things are precious, they are worth making sacrifices for, they are things small town America has only recently lost, and still remembers, and wants back. Maybe you haven't experienced those things, not like these people you so casually dismiss have.

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

#448

Post by kbelder »

soared wrote: post #99
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…

Similairly, while not perfect I use AI to help redesign my landscaping by uploading a picture of my yard and having it come up with different options. Also took a picture of my tire while at the garage and asked it if I really needed new tires or not. Took a picture of my sprinkler box and had it figure out what was going on. Potentially all situations where I would’ve paid (or paid more than I already was) a local l…

Now I think this conversation will happen in my lifetime:

Me: "Looks like your tire is a little low."

Youth: "How can you tell, where's your phone?"

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

#449

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

exe34 wrote: post #393
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.…

> globalization would be good for all countries, they just kinda forgot about the massive political instability it could cause Could you say a few more words on this please? Are you referring to the rise of China?

Some resources:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/14/globalisation-...

https://business.columbia.edu/sites/default/files-efs/imce-u...

But in my own words, while I think economists have always acknowledged there would be some "winners" and "losers" from globalization, I think there is widespread belief now that early globalization boosters misjudged how bad it would be for the "losers", they underestimated how much it would contribute to inequality, and they underestimated the destabilizing effect this would have on social and political systems.

At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what the reality is for globalization's benefits if so many people are turned off by it that they want to "burn the whole thing down", as that's basically what's happening now.

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

#450

Post by giobox »

quickthrowman wrote: post #150
soared wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similairly, while not perfect I use AI to help redesign my landscaping by uploading a picture of my yard and having it come up with different options. Also took a picture of my tire while at the garage and asked it if I really needed new tires or not. Took a picture of my sprinkler box and had it figure out what was going on. Potentially all situations where I would’ve paid (or paid more than I already was) a local l…

> 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

You don't even need the penny most of the time, given most car tires have tread wear bars in the tread gaps you can just look at now.
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