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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

#461

Post by decimalenough »

gilbetron wrote: post #102
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…

How do you know it was correct without being a tax expert? And consulting a tax expert would give you legal recourse if it was wrong.

I was looking to compute how much I can retroactively claim this year for a deduction I did not claim earlier. The LLM response pointed me to the tax office's calculator for doing exactly this, and I already knew the values of all the inputs the calculator wanted. So, yes, I'm confident it's correct.

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

#462

Post by timmytokyo »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #127
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…

Ironically, your example is what you used to get from a Google search back when Google wasn't aggressively monetized and enshittified.

I think this is an important point. It's easy to lose track of just how bad search has gotten over the years because the enshittification has been so gradual. The replacement of search by AI is capturing so many people's imaginations because it feels like the way google felt when it first came around.

If AI replaces search, I do wonder how long before AI becomes just as enshittified as search did. You know google/OpenAI/etc will eventually need to make this stuff profitable. And subscriptions aren't currently doing that.

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

#463

Post by surement »

pixl97 wrote: post #203
surement wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have any of these economists ever tried to scrape by as an entry-level graphic designer/illustrator? "Equip yourself with skills that other people are willing to pay for." –Thomas Sowell

The general thought works good until it doesn't.

It definitely always works. If your skills become obsolete then it's time to find new ones or stop working.

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

#464

Post by inftech »

I didn't read the article so I don't know what they are saying nor what data they are using to support their points but I think this is just a bif lie.

They are saying AI is not replacing jobs but every week we get news about companies cutting hundreds or thousands of jobs and replacing these jobs with AI, and other news about companies halting hiring because of AI, so how AI is not replacing jobs?

And then markets are flooded with new unemployed workers replaced by AI, and it's is well known inside the Economics and by common folks too that when markets have abundant labor wages go down. So how AI is not hurting wages?

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

#465

Post by n_ary »

johnfn wrote: post #235
akshaybhalotia wrote: post #219

I humbly disagree. I've seen team members and sometimes entire teams being laid off because of AI. It's also not just layoffs, the hiring processes and demand have been affected as well. As an example, many companies have recently shifted their support to "AI first" models. As a result, even if the team or certain team members haven't been fired, the general trend of hiring for support is pretty much down (anecdotal)…

How do you know that these layoffs are the result of AI, rather than AI being a convenient place to lay the blame? I've seen a number of companies go "AI first" and stop hiring or have layoffs (Salesforce comes to mind) but I suspect they would have been in a slump without AI entirely.

You are indeed correct according to my opinion. Salesforce went too deep into BlockChain and BigData and probably never recovered from the sunk costs. But to stay relevant they again need to risk another bet but also need to conserve(death by a thousand cuts and all) so they layoff while jumping on AI bandwagon. And how fortunate it is that LLM sellers tout productivity gain(zero backing data but hey) as a benefit, so it also falsely support their failure as a success.

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

#466

Post by n_ary »

venantius wrote: post #304

It is possible for all of the following to be true: 1. This study is accurate 2. We are early in a major technological shift 3. Companies have allocated massive amounts of capital to this shift that may not represent a good investment 4. Assuming that the above three will remain true going forward is a bad idea The .com boom and bust is an apt reference point. The technological shift WAS real, and the value to be del…

True. But like the dot come bust, ultimate winner may not be LLM or even AI but something else entirely using the left over hardware and infrastructure which was intended for AI.

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

#467

Post by n_ary »

asadotzler wrote: post #394
venantius wrote: post #304

It is possible for all of the following to be true: 1. This study is accurate 2. We are early in a major technological shift 3. Companies have allocated massive amounts of capital to this shift that may not represent a good investment 4. Assuming that the above three will remain true going forward is a bad idea The .com boom and bust is an apt reference point. The technological shift WAS real, and the value to be del…

The dot com boom gave us $1T in physical broadband, fiber, and cellular networking that's added many many trillions to the economy since. What's LLM-based AI gonna leave us when its bubble pops? Will that AI infrastructure be outliving its creators and generating trillions for the economy when all the AI companies collapse and are sold off for parts and scrap?

It is hard to tell at this point about the AI/LLM. But the powerful hardware backing it has numerous potential in other research and innovations which are not yet clear to us. Just like the fiber and cellular network made Meta or Airbnb obscenely rich, the hardware may as well facilitate other forms of tech, may be quantum computing or heck even blockchain may be back(surprisingly these are suddenly very legal and less regulated this year!) or who knows what might be new.

While LLM trend is already going to the dumpster(notice how we no longer receive 1b/4b/8b models from Meta since LLama4 and similar competitors but only from china?), I firmly believe that commodity hardware will improve in this race to allow running LLMs(or their next iteration) on regular devices and become as ubiquitous as Siri/Cortana.

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

#468

Post by ProllyInfamous »

jmacd wrote: post #364

I am currently dealing with a relatively complex legal agreement. It's about 30 pages. I have a lawyer working on it who I consider the best in the country for this domain. I was able to pre-process the agreement, clearly understand most of the major issues, and come up with a proposed set of redlines all relatively easily. I then waited for his redlines and then responded asking questions about a handful of things h…

I am a semi-retired blue collar electrician. Higher IQ, but lowly certifications (definitely not a lawyer).

Currently I have initiated a lawsuit in my US state's small claims civil court, over a relatively simple payment dispute. Without the ability to bounce legal questions/tact/procedurals off of Perplexity, I wouldn't have felt comfortable enough to represent myself in court.

Even if I were to need a lawyer on this simple case, the majority of the "leg work" has already been completed by free, non-pay LLMs.

My court date is early June; I'm both nervous and excited (for restitution)!

----

I have a judge brother and have been arguing for years that law clerking is probably in its last gasps of career-entry; Chief Justice Roberts's end of 2023 SCOTUS report was a refreshing read to share among family members (which argued that LLMs will provide more accessibility to judiciary by commoners).

Personally, I already would rather have a jury of LLMs deciding most legal outcomes (albeit would need to be impartially programmed, if that's even possible). Definitely would make for better democratic accessibility.

I found Bruce Schneier's recent article "Reimagining Democracy" [1] quite an interesting thought experiment (which is about his hosting intellectuals in their discussions of creating entirely new democracies utilizing modern technologies). It'd be super fair if a trusted AI government could lead to better democracies than "modern capitalism" can / has.

[1] schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/04/reimagining-democracy-2.html

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

#469

Post by n_ary »

nico wrote: post #167

Also in the news today: > Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI. The company is going to be ‘AI-first,’ says its CEO. https://www.theverge.com/news/657594/duolingo-ai-first-repla... - And within that article: > von Ahn’s email follows a similar memo Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke sent to employees and recently shared online. In that memo, Lütke said that before teams asked for more headcount or resources, they neede…

> “why they cannot get what they want done using AI.”

Or in other words the CEO had proven entirely out of touch with the actual work and how far away he is removed from entire company operation.

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

#470

Post by n_ary »

rspoerri wrote: post #10

All the jobs (11) they looked at are at least medium level complexity and task delegating. They are the ones giving out time-consuming, low level jobs to cheap labour (assistants etc.) . They can save time and money by directly doing it using AI assistants instead of waiting to have an assistant available. I am 100% convinced that Ai will and already has destroyed lots of Jobs. We will likely encounter world order di…

> We will likely encounter world order disrupting changes in the coming decades when computer get another 1000 times faster and powerful in the coming 10 years.

Sadly for several decades, as computers got faster, only tracking and ads got more pervasive. Also as hardware became stronger, computer games, media quality improved. We also got planet burning blockchain and crypto mining for a while.

In terms of intelligence, we started with clippy, Eliza, stayed with Cortana and Siri, now have LLMs. We will move forward with LLMs for a while until something more impressive comes out and mirrors more humane nature.

Also GenZ is literally second worst off generation after the silent generation, growing up in unprecedented prosperity to be only be stunted by global pandemic following by crazy oligarchs trying to bring back techno-feudal age while their parents prepare to sell of the last glimmer of inheritance to finance retirement and healthcare. I honestly do not blame them.

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