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I'm not worried about AI job loss

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Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#511

Post by allannienhuis »

fragmede wrote: post #397
suzzer99 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as the owner class can leverage, "Hey, that {out group} is sitting around doing nothing and getting free money!" we'll never have anything close to UBI imo.

[flagged]

> I ain't giving people something for nothing but I suspect you do, or would do that for your children or immediate family.

I'm just some dude on the internet, so my opinions are worth exactly what you're paying for them (nothing). But when I try to understand this type of thinking, this is what I come up with:

In the old days of scarce resources (vast majority of civilization), children were expected to 'repay' their elders for the care they received by taking care of them in their old age. And the competition for resources made this idea of keeping those resources for your family only important for survival.

But with the resources available today, the dynamics a very different. Currently only about 25% of total employment is in agriculture, worldwide. In the rich countries this is very significantly less. Canada is 1%, USA is 2% [worldbank]

But we're living with the cultural baggage of generations of scarcity and tribalism, which still shape our policy in a time of incredible resources provided by technology. So instead of more sharing, we choose higher standard of living for ourselves. I know it will take time to change this culturally - generations - but I'm still disappointed it's not happening faster.

[worldbank]:https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#512

Post by I-M-S »

lbreakjai wrote: post #488
techpression wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is correct, living in Sweden with pretty high levels of social protection, but even so, high levels of white collar unemployment would make our very high risk housing market (we as a population has a very high loan ratio, much of it committed to housing) collapse once people can’t pay. That would make the banks likely to collapse because their money no longer exist and they’re all of a sudden real estate brokers…

But what is their wealth, exactly? Assets which no longer have value. Money which no longer has a use. Who's going to maintain their jets when the economy collapses? Who's going to build the parts? Who's going to build the tools to build the parts? Who's going to mine the ores? Their lives are built atop the same supply chain we all depend on. They don't have their own miners, or aerospace engineers to design planes,…

They will still be ahead as long as they can provide to people swinging the batons.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#514

Post by fogzen »

SirMaster wrote: post #102

I don't worry about it because worrying about it just seems like a waste of time and an unproductive, negative way to think about things. Instead I spend my time and thought not in worry but in adapting to the changing landscape.

You don’t spend all your time doomscrolling X? :) Glad to know there’s others out there.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#515

Post by csa »

toldnotmywrath wrote: post #446
csa wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the job had better take fewer people, or the automation is not justified. In many cases, this is a fallacy. Much like programming, there is often essentially an infinite amount of (in this case) bookkeeping tasks that need to be done. The folks employed to do them work on the top X number of them. By removing a lot of the scut work, second order tasks can be done (like verification, clarification, etc.) or can…

The firm simply assumes that if the top X was sufficient in the past, it is still sufficient now. From the perspective of modern management, there's really no reason to keep people if you can automate them away.

> The firm simply assumes that if the top X was sufficient in the past, it is still sufficient now.

> From the perspective of modern management, there's really no reason to keep people if you can automate them away.

These are examples of how bad management thinks, or at best, how management at dying companies think.

Frankly, this take on “modern management” is absurd reductionist thinking.

Just a few points about how managers in successful companies think:

- Good employees are hard to find. You don’t let good people go just because you can. Retraining a good employee from a redundant role into a needed role is often cheaper than trying to hire a new person.

- That said, in any sufficiently large organization, there is usually dead weight that can be cut. AI will be a bright light that exposes the least valuable employees, imho.

- There is a difference between threshold levels of compliance (e.g., docs that have to be filed for legal reasons) and optimal functioning. In accounting, a good team will pay for themselves many times if they have the time to work on the right things (e.g., identifying fraud and waste, streamlining purchasing processes, negotiating payment terms, etc.). Businesses that optimize for making money rather than getting a random VP their next promotion via cost-cutting will embrace the enhanced capability.

Yes, AI will bring about significant changes to how we work.

Yes, there will be some turmoil as the labor market adjusts (which it will).

No, AI will not lead to a labor doomsday scenario.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#516

Post by fogzen »

ianbutler wrote: post #124
justonepost1 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: how? I’m younger than most on this site. I see the next decades of my life being defined by a multi-generational dark age via a collapse in literacy (“you use a calculator right?”), median prosperity (the only truly functional distribution system we have figured out is labor), and loss of agency (kinda obvious). This outcome is now, as of 2026, essentially priced into the public markets and accepted…

I really think the doom consensus is largely an online phenomena. We're in a tense period like the early 80s, and that would be true without AI in the mix, but I think its a matter of perspective. We're certainly still way ahead of the 1910s and the 1940s for instance (it's on us btw to make sure we don't fall to that in time). Every generation has its strains and the internet just amplifies it because outrage is cur…

Yes, doomerism is a symptom of severe doomscrolling addiction. All the people who talk like this spend all day on X. They sound like delusional drug addicts TBH.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#517

Post by hateful »

jackfranklyn wrote: post #248

[flagged]

I would imagine, in this example, that the fact that you put in the numbers yourself gives you a mental map of where the numbers are and how they relate to each other, that having AI do it for you doesn't give you.

You could stare at a large sheet of numbers for a long time, and perhaps never get the kind of context you gained by entering them.

Additionally, if there was a mistake, it may not be as noticeable.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#518

Post by throw-qqqqq »

hinkley wrote: post #272
throw-qqqqq wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People talk about how socially progressive Scandinavia is but they have a shitload of petroleum resources and that money goes into social programs Of all the Scandinavian countries, only Norway has any oil resources of significance. The Scandinavian welfare model is primarily tax-funded.

My quick look at Swedish exports shows that the largest export is finished equipment at 14%, fuel exports at 7.1, 4.8% wood and paper, 3.6% iron and steel, of which I'm sure a lot of that equipment is made. 3.4% plastics, which is just oil in another form. It looks like you're right and their oil exports are all import/export rather than domestic, but that's still a good bit of mineral wealth.

Yes Sweden has non-trivial mineral resources, but nothing like e.g. China, Russia or Australia though.

The Scandinavian social programs are funded by high taxation. It is mostly a result of political prioritization, and not a windfall of natural resources.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#519

Post by lbrito »

coffeebeqn wrote: post #468
lbrito wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The black plague's capital-concentration aftermath supposedly fueled the renaissance and the city-state ascensions, and ultimately the great land discoveries of the 14th and 15th centuries. Not sure if there's an analogy to make somewhere though

Billionaires are confused why we aren’t excited about an event that’s closest to one that killed 50% of the population in Europe

They're between not caring and welcoming that outcome. A 50% reduction in non-billionaire population is highly desirable for effective altruists.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#520

Post by mbgerring »

georgemcbay wrote: post #356
mbgerring wrote: post #330

Something I don’t see enough people talking about is how AI will reduce barriers to entry. One of the things that drove the tech boom in the 2010s was cloud computing driving the cost of starting an internet company into the ground. What happens when there’s software you think should exist, and you no longer need to hire a bunch of people at $150k-$250k per year to build it?

> What happens when there’s software you think should exist, and you no longer need to hire a bunch of people at $150k-$250k per year to build it? What happens when 200 out-of-work former software engineers take a look at your software and use LLMs to quickly build their own version each undercutting everyone else's prices in a race to the bottom?

I think what I’m saying is that there’s a lot of software that doesn’t get built at all because the cost of serving a particular niche market is still too high, and that AI may put some of those markets within reach.

So, those software engineers may be able to move sideways instead of competing to build the same software.

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