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How employment changes when firms adopt generative AI

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Re: How employment changes when firms adopt generative AI

#51

Post by Retric »

jorisw wrote: post #24
Retric wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not supported by the evidence. Current rates of employment are well below historic levels. In preindustrial societies nearly everyone was working to support themselves and their families, these days a huge percentage of the population is in education, retirement, prison, disability, etc. The only way jobs have kept up with automation is when you ignore population growth, but more people naturally increases the…

> That’s not supported by the evidence. Current rates of employment are well below historic levels. What evidence? Wasn’t employment in engineering down before all this could’ve gotten enough widespread traction to actually displace jobs?

Programming/engineering may be of supreme concern to you, but they made a much wider claim.

> There's never been an automation revolution that worked otherwise.

Requires all automation to have zero effect on net jobs long term. Meanwhile the percentage of people working is down so that’s clearly not true.

Re: How employment changes when firms adopt generative AI

#52

Post by protocolture »

Retric wrote: post #48
protocolture wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Current rates of employment are well below historic levels. Ignoring for a second that net jobs and employment rates aren't really the same thing. >In preindustrial societies nearly everyone was working to support themselves and their families, these days a huge percentage of the population is in education which may be investing in their future but isn’t directly producing anything. Retirement as a percentage of the…

> Banks employ more people after introducing ATM's than before. Not as a percentage of the population. In 1967 the US population in 1967 was 200 million today it’s 350 million. Globally the growth was even faster. Your farming productivity numbers are also very exaggerated. The actual percentage of the population was very high because of food spillage, and inconsistent productivity due to weather etc. They often need…

>Not as a percentage of the population. In 1967 the US population in 1967 was 200 million today it’s 350 million. Globally the growth was even faster.

Didnt I address that explicitly?

Re: How employment changes when firms adopt generative AI

#53

Post by protocolture »

monjedetonsura wrote: post #44
bigfatkitten wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big 4 Australian banks (Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, National Australia Bank and Westpac) all employ pretty much the same number of people now as they did 25 years ago, but their workforce composition has changed. More software developers, fewer branch staff.

~20% outsorced workforce in places like India, Vietnam and Philipines nowadays

An outsourced job is still a job.

Its just for the government to rebalance the economy if those jobs are desirable to reshore.

Re: How employment changes when firms adopt generative AI

#54

Post by protocolture »

watwut wrote: post #32
protocolture wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim is and always has been that automation increases net jobs. There's never been an automation revolution that worked otherwise. The counter claim that LLMs were special for some reason has never been supported. And a lot of its proponents have other axes to grind, like UBI, Socialism, Communism etc. It would suit their worldview for this time to be different, and so thats the message they push.

> The counter claim that LLMs were special for some reason has never been supported. And a lot of its proponents have other axes to grind, like UBI, Socialism, Communism etc. No, they are mostly right wing capitalists. LLM is not a left wing project. UBI is something they talked about, but super hard to believe it is anything but a way to shut up critics. > The claim is and always has been that automation increases n…

>No, they are mostly right wing capitalists. LLM is not a left wing project. UBI is something they talked about, but super hard to believe it is anything but a way to shut up critics.

The proponents of the claim not the proponents of LLMs.

Re: How employment changes when firms adopt generative AI

#55

Post by Retric »

protocolture wrote: post #52
Retric wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Banks employ more people after introducing ATM's than before. Not as a percentage of the population. In 1967 the US population in 1967 was 200 million today it’s 350 million. Globally the growth was even faster. Your farming productivity numbers are also very exaggerated. The actual percentage of the population was very high because of food spillage, and inconsistent productivity due to weather etc. They often need…

>Not as a percentage of the population. In 1967 the US population in 1967 was 200 million today it’s 350 million. Globally the growth was even faster. Didnt I address that explicitly?

Not in your post, if you did you could quote an actual rebuttal that larger populations don’t inherently need more food, increase the need for banking services, etc etc.

You also found it odd I didn’t “remove non participants” but preindustrial societies didn’t necessarily have formal jobs for people. You’ll note I didn’t exclude modern stay at home parents as non workers because labor is the metric not if you have formal employment.

Re: How employment changes when firms adopt generative AI

#56

Post by protocolture »

Retric wrote: post #50
bigfatkitten wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m only counting the Australian FTE. The numbers are up if you count the outsourcing.

The Australian population size isn’t pretty much the same as it was 25 years ago. 28 million in 2026 vs 18.8 million in 2001 is a ~50% jump… So no the numbers are down significantly even with outsourcing.

I really hate the (very australian) propensity to take an argument about X, and make it about X as a proportion of Y, pretending they are exactly the same statistic.

LNP: Taxes less.

Labor: Taxes less (as a proportion of GDP)

(Seeing as GDP includes government spending, it seems like you can make the rate of tax go down by increasing government spending by more than taxes increase)

If a claim is about X, introducing another variable doesn't invalidate the claim about X.

Re: How employment changes when firms adopt generative AI

#57

Post by Retric »

protocolture wrote: post #56
Retric wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Australian population size isn’t pretty much the same as it was 25 years ago. 28 million in 2026 vs 18.8 million in 2001 is a ~50% jump… So no the numbers are down significantly even with outsourcing.

I really hate the (very australian) propensity to take an argument about X, and make it about X as a proportion of Y, pretending they are exactly the same statistic. LNP: Taxes less. Labor: Taxes less (as a proportion of GDP) (Seeing as GDP includes government spending, it seems like you can make the rate of tax go down by increasing government spending by more than taxes increase) If a claim is about X, introducing…

In this case my original post that everyone was responding to here was talking about employment as a function of population as obviously a larger population needs more food etc.

Ignoring that when the global population is likely to peak soon due to falling birth rates is a massive mistake. Jobs in a world of falling population and increasing automation is largely uncharted territory.

Re: How employment changes when firms adopt generative AI

#58

Post by protocolture »

Retric wrote: post #55
protocolture wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not as a percentage of the population. In 1967 the US population in 1967 was 200 million today it’s 350 million. Globally the growth was even faster. Didnt I address that explicitly?

Not in your post, if you did you could quote an actual rebuttal that larger populations don’t inherently need more food, increase the need for banking services, etc etc. You also found it odd I didn’t “remove non participants” but preindustrial societies didn’t necessarily have formal jobs for people. You’ll note I didn’t exclude modern stay at home parents as non workers because labor is the metric not if you have f…

>Ignoring for a second that net jobs and employment rates aren't really the same thing.

Net Jobs can increase while their percentage of all jobs drops. These things aren't necessarily linked or related. There isnt really a built in expectation that banking for 10 million people needs 10 times less staff than banking for 100 million people.

Re: How employment changes when firms adopt generative AI

#59

Post by Retric »

protocolture wrote: post #58
Retric wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in your post, if you did you could quote an actual rebuttal that larger populations don’t inherently need more food, increase the need for banking services, etc etc. You also found it odd I didn’t “remove non participants” but preindustrial societies didn’t necessarily have formal jobs for people. You’ll note I didn’t exclude modern stay at home parents as non workers because labor is the metric not if you have f…

>Ignoring for a second that net jobs and employment rates aren't really the same thing. Net Jobs can increase while their percentage of all jobs drops. These things aren't necessarily linked or related. There isnt really a built in expectation that banking for 10 million people needs 10 times less staff than banking for 100 million people.

Demand scales with population, if the average person talks to a bank teller for 10 minutes a month having 10x the number of people doesn’t lower that number.

If automation doesn’t cost jobs, then growing the population shouldn’t change the overall employment rate meaningfully.

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