"An AI Job Apocalypse?" – Goldman Sachs Report [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: "An AI Job Apocalypse?" – Goldman Sachs Report [pdf]

#51

Post by majormajor » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 1:47 AM UTC

DrewADesign wrote: post #41

sublinear wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also think there’s an enormous amount of white collar work that isn’t actually “intelligent” work. Especially in software development. That is begging the question pretty hard.

To be fair, that sort of haughty sentiment is very common among developers just before the job market demonstrates how special they’re not.

>To be fair, that sort of haughty sentiment is very common among developers just before the job market demonstrates how special they’re not.

What examples are you thinking of?

Mainly what I remember is multiple waves of previous apocalypses not materializing. Off the top of my head:

- programming will contract because of higher level languages, you won't need nearly as many people

- outsourcing will kill programming job wages because one person can write the spec and ship it off to a team that will send back the working code for 1/10th the wage

- better modeling methods will kill programming job wages because one person can write the spec and the machine will generate the code based no it

Obviously that doesn't guarantee that this time will be the same. But you seem to be making a much stronger claim about what history tells us in the opposite direction...

Re: "An AI Job Apocalypse?" – Goldman Sachs Report [pdf]

#52

Post by majormajor » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 1:48 AM UTC

ks2048 wrote: post #30

stale2002 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people saying that jobs will all go away because of technology have been wrong every single year, up to this year as well. The burden of proof seems like it's actually on you to show why this current tech boom is any different from previous ones. As to the answer to your question, well just look at what people are doing at their jobs today. Those are what replaced jobs from 2 years ago.

> The burden of proof seems like it's actually on you to show why this current tech boom is any different from previous ones. In past tech advances, there was always a long list of things that could not be automated by a machine. For some visions of "AI", almost by definition there is nothing left in that list. (Except some things, of course, where people want to interact with a human).

>For some visions of "AI", almost by definition there is nothing left in that list.

>(Except some things, of course, where people want to interact with a human).

And, of course, the things that the person holding the vision thinks they personally will still be doing. ;)

Re: "An AI Job Apocalypse?" – Goldman Sachs Report [pdf]

#53

Post by totetsu » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 1:49 AM UTC

bayarearefugee wrote: post #4

> Key to this view is our expectation that over the long run AI will create many new jobs even as it destroys existing ones. Still waiting for anyone with this viewpoint to offer a single educated guess at what any of these created jobs might look like even in very broad terms. All I ever see is basically a religious belief that surely something will arise. I get that previous automation waves have lead to new jobs i…

Maybe they don't want to draw attention to the fact that it's all gig-work.

Re: "An AI Job Apocalypse?" – Goldman Sachs Report [pdf]

#54

Post by saimiam » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 1:51 AM UTC

otterdude wrote: post #6

bayarearefugee wrote: post #4

> Key to this view is our expectation that over the long run AI will create many new jobs even as it destroys existing ones. Still waiting for anyone with this viewpoint to offer a single educated guess at what any of these created jobs might look like even in very broad terms. All I ever see is basically a religious belief that surely something will arise. I get that previous automation waves have lead to new jobs i…

> All I ever see is basically a religious belief that surely something will arise. Welcome to economics! Bullshit and conjecture all the way down.

If it were all BS, how do you explain success stories like the Internet and the notion that countries on Dell’s supply chain won’t go to war with each other?

Fundamentally, economics is the belief that humans have self-interests and act on them.

Economics is obviously not 100% right - it’s not a physical science - but more often than not, you can see it in action.

Economics is closer to weather science - we can make certain inferences and predictions which can be wrong but the basic working theory is broadly correct, imho.

Re: "An AI Job Apocalypse?" – Goldman Sachs Report [pdf]

#55

Post by hcbbh76 » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 1:51 AM UTC

bayarearefugee wrote: post #4

> Key to this view is our expectation that over the long run AI will create many new jobs even as it destroys existing ones. Still waiting for anyone with this viewpoint to offer a single educated guess at what any of these created jobs might look like even in very broad terms. All I ever see is basically a religious belief that surely something will arise. I get that previous automation waves have lead to new jobs i…

Big one is keeping state or lets say world models in sync.

You give 2 systems 2 seemingly different problems. They start building/updating tools and theories and their internal world model starts diverging. As we already see with human specialists. Now imagine 2000 different systems reality diverging. Keeping them all in sync becomes more work than the actual prob they work on.

Re: "An AI Job Apocalypse?" – Goldman Sachs Report [pdf]

#56

Post by saimiam » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 1:53 AM UTC

sublinear wrote: post #39

saimiam wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. AI weights managers - people whose job is to optimize model weights to yield highly specific outcomes 2. Agentic tourism - maybe you’ll be able to send your AI agent/robot to visit a place before you decide if it worth your time and investment 3. Vehicular trains on highways where vehicles going to similar destinations coordinate and move as a unit. There’ll be people optimising roads for this. E.g., exit lanes on…

3 and 5 have been active research for decades, 9 and 10 are obsolete sci-fi, 8 is probably impossible, and all the rest are fraud.

> obsolete sci-fi

Well, living in an AGI world was sci-fi until arguably, we found ourselves in one post 2022.

Re: "An AI Job Apocalypse?" – Goldman Sachs Report [pdf]

#57

Post by onoesworkacct » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 1:54 AM UTC

swalsh wrote: post #24

bayarearefugee wrote: post #4

> Key to this view is our expectation that over the long run AI will create many new jobs even as it destroys existing ones. Still waiting for anyone with this viewpoint to offer a single educated guess at what any of these created jobs might look like even in very broad terms. All I ever see is basically a religious belief that surely something will arise. I get that previous automation waves have lead to new jobs i…

Okay, work with me on this, because its a stretch. The new businesses created, might look very much like the old businesses that disappeared. But they're not focused on scale and profits. They're focused on an ideal of pushing the boundaries. Maybe a single craftsman making small one off hand made pieces. Maybe a pizzeria that puts out a small quantity of the best pizza. Little individual pursuits towards perfection.…

By "the alternative" are you describing our present reality? Because it sounds about right

Re: "An AI Job Apocalypse?" – Goldman Sachs Report [pdf]

#58

Post by noncoml » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 1:55 AM UTC

saimiam wrote: post #48

ks2048 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why any of these can't be done by AI. Except (7), which frankly, I don't understand what you mean.

7 - what if bots want to fcuk humans? You’re probably right that many jobs can eventually be done by AI but not on day 1. Between Day 1 of the brave new AI world and Day N, humans will be in the loop doing stuff that other humans will try to automate away ad nauseam. On Day N+1, there’ll be yet another HN question asking what exactly humans will be doing in the Braver Newer AI World.

Actually Brave New World was a utopia, not dystopia. Many confuse it with 1984.

Every need of the common people was met and their happiness was catered for. And those who were unusually independent, intellectually curious, creative or couldn’t fit in were “exiled”, to a place with their equals, where their were free to continue their studies, art, etc.

Imagine a world where the MAGAs are happy and content instead of angry.

Re: "An AI Job Apocalypse?" – Goldman Sachs Report [pdf]

#59

Post by DrewADesign » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 2:00 AM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #26

harimau777 wrote: post #13

The thing that I never hear discussed is how long it will take these "new jobs" to materialize and how much they will pay.

And what people do before the new jobs show up.

Well in the Industrial Revolution, the no-longer-necessary skilled craftsman became miserable, poorly paid cogs in service of their new automatic controllers. So a lot of us have that to look forward to.

Personally, I’ve switched back to the track I was on in my twenties: I spent the day doing moderately interesting work in a skilled trade, periodically having to haul 80lb-90lb steel machine parts up two flights of stairs in an un-air-conditioned, 100 degree manufacturing facility wearing heavy protective clothes and tools. I’ve worked in blue collar jobs before so I’m used to it, but I’ve seen a lot of developers say they’re going to be electricians or something. Good fucking luck! I’d conservatively estimate that 90% of developers I worked with are too soft, either emotionally or physically, to complete the first week of a years-long trade apprenticeship. The starting salary is only marginally better than working at Walgreens, and you’re expected to do a shitload of grunt work that is usually done by 20-year-olds. I foresee the entry-level retail, DoorDash, uber, instacart, et al scenes getting a whole lot nerdier over the next few years.

Re: "An AI Job Apocalypse?" – Goldman Sachs Report [pdf]

#60

Post by FloorEgg » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 2:03 AM UTC

bayarearefugee wrote: post #4

> Key to this view is our expectation that over the long run AI will create many new jobs even as it destroys existing ones. Still waiting for anyone with this viewpoint to offer a single educated guess at what any of these created jobs might look like even in very broad terms. All I ever see is basically a religious belief that surely something will arise. I get that previous automation waves have lead to new jobs i…

> what exactly stops AI from taking those new jobs too as soon as the need for them is recognized?

Sample efficiency, energy efficiency and training data availability.

The current tech stack is around 6 orders of magnitude behind human capabilities. We have scaled up a paradigm that's been built out continuously for decades (transistors, matrix multiplication). To close the gap requires completely reinventing the entire stack (e.g. spintronics, physical graph traversal). The most advanced tech that is only theorized and not yet even proven is still 4 orders of magnitude less energy efficient than a human, and we have no idea how to get close to the same sample efficiency.

The question you are fretting won't matter for decades, and by then our culture, social and economic framework could be totally different than it is today.

Rather than worry about something so abstract and misunderstood, I would suggest focusing your time and attention on what is within your control here and now: who do you want to help, and how can you be of help, such that your efforts are sustainable and rewarding.

And if you really want to fret something at the edge of your control, fret about how AI is being used today to manipulate you and those you know into believing things that aren't in your best interest but are in someone else's best interest. If you aren't paying, you're the product. Most free media exists manipulate you, and if it has been designed to be addictive then it's virtually guaranteed.