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AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

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Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#571

Post by _heimdall »

Eisenstein wrote: post #529
_heimdall wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't particularly care about whether one currency is devalued relative to another. Sure that can matter, international trade is important today, but I care about whether my currency is being devalued relative to the products I actually buy day to day. The dollar is being devalued every time more money is injected into the system, either by government printing or banks printing more money via unsecured debt. When t…

> The dollar is being devalued every time more money is injected into the system, I was pointing out somewhat pedantically that 'devalued' has a specific meaning and 'to lose purchasing power' is not it. > When the total amount of currency in circulation goes up my money was devalued, prices will always go up when the money supply increases. If you got more of that money to cover increased costs then it wouldn't be a…

Sounds like we just fundamentally disagree here, nothing wrong with that.

I view the increase in money supply a core issue that harms all of us. Yes, it wouldn't technically matter if all of us received the new money in a perfect allocation based on the amount of money we currently hold - if I have $100 and the supply increases by 2% I'm fine if I now have $102. It never works like that though, and never will.

Allocation is only one of the challenges to deal with when debasing the currency by increasing supply.

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#572

Post by evilduck »

klysm wrote: post #535
evilduck wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're hypothesizing, then the thin wrapper organizations should or would bear those same taxation and penalty costs when outsourcing and their prices would also be going up.

Not if they are based in a different country

What would be the point? If the outsourced devs are based in another country and the thin wrapper shell company selling outsourced devs as a service are based in another country, the expenses to either are likely be to reported to the IRS and State governments identically.

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#573

Post by qgin »

system2 wrote: post #446
qgin wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a big hospital system, nurses call patients with complex medical issues and help organize appointments and tests and whatnot. Previously, they had about 20 people who would transcribe recordings of the calls and then write up documentation for the medical records. Now AI transcribes and writes the report and sends it to the nurse to sign off / make edits.

I am familiar with SOAP. But before AI it was already there, similar voice to text apps. Maybe they became more aware of this tool now?

I think for these tools that still less than a full Drop-in Office Worker Replacement, it takes some time within organizations to figure out how they can be used to reduce human labor needs.

So what might start out as an additive tool for existing workers, over time, managers start to see ways to reorganize the work between AI and humans and find efficiencies that can lead to headcount changes.

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#574

Post by permalac »

xandrius wrote: post #235
laweijfmvo wrote: post #2

wait until the GPUs and data centers start getting written off for being obsolete in a couple years when we still have nothin but fancy auto complete.

I'd be glad to take any sweet obsolete enterprise HW off them.

Electricity bill would be huge. Great heaters tho

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#575

Post by 59nadir »

WalterSear wrote: post #311
franktankbank wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What dev to do then?

IMHO, there's never been a better time to build your own product and learn to sell it. The effort that AI implementation requires is clearly exponential to complexity of the organization. You can build faster now that you ever have: I am building faster than I have in 25 years of engineering. You have more capable support for all the unfamiliar processes of building a business imaginable. And almost everyone larger t…

Productivity has always been inversely exponentially correlated with manpower, I don't think this is related to AI, and I don't think AI speeds anything up in this scenario. If nothing else you're now constraining what could be one-man development speed to the speed of a chat-session, which is much, much slower.

If you know what you're doing (and most times even if you don't, yet) it's much faster to work actually solo, without bothering with any AI assistance except at most something like one-line auto-complete on command.

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#576

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

rs186 wrote: post #333
jdlshore wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out the HIRE Act.

Looks like it's being pushed by a Republican senator without obvious support from the other side. I'm sure Google, Meta and hundreds of other companies will pay big $$ to make sure nothing comes out of it.

No need for any industry push-back apparently - Trump seems to be in process of TACOing out of his H-1B changes, now saying that US doesn't have enough talented people.

Maybe more people would pursue tech careers and higher education if there were more and better paying jobs here ... but there appear to be plenty of people here already with the expertise and looking for jobs. 600 former Meta AI employees for a start, not to mention countless highly experienced people not able to find work due to age discrimination (incl. companies giving the job to a cheaper foreigner).

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#577

Post by Eisenstein »

_heimdall wrote: post #571
Eisenstein wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The dollar is being devalued every time more money is injected into the system, I was pointing out somewhat pedantically that 'devalued' has a specific meaning and 'to lose purchasing power' is not it. > When the total amount of currency in circulation goes up my money was devalued, prices will always go up when the money supply increases. If you got more of that money to cover increased costs then it wouldn't be a…

Sounds like we just fundamentally disagree here, nothing wrong with that. I view the increase in money supply a core issue that harms all of us. Yes, it wouldn't technically matter if all of us received the new money in a perfect allocation based on the amount of money we currently hold - if I have $100 and the supply increases by 2% I'm fine if I now have $102. It never works like that though, and never will. Alloca…

There is no perfect policy and everything has a trade-off. I guess the question really is 'what happens if we can't increase money supply?' and determining whether we'd we better off with those effects.

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#578

Post by Anamon »

davedx wrote: post #521
nsainsbury wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, things are different this time (as someone who has been in this industry for about 20 years now) and I don't see these jobs coming back. For one, many of these companies are now used to their tech teams being remote. The tools, culture, infra, etc. over the last ~5 years has all become remote which lessens the shock of going fully offshore. Two, many tech teams in the western world are already partially offshore…

I think in the very long term though what will happen is countries like India will actually end up with salaries comparable to western workers, so even though the gap might be smaller, the cost/benefit ratio will change again.

That happened during the last offshoring hype cycle as well. Those Indian developers aren't stupid -- the ones who deliver quality work will soon move somewhere they can earn a salary to reflect that, and it will be comparable to a US/UK/EU salary. Companies who insist on sticking to low salaries are left with the worst people.

I worked with some very good offshore engineers. They all left pretty quickly for a job with double the salary, or moved abroad outright to claim it. The only ones who stuck around were the ones whose poor skills kept them from landing a better job.

It's also great for productivity when your offshore team is a rapidly rotating cast. I remember being in meetings where without any announcement, half of the developers who had slowly started to get to know the project were replaced with new faces who had no idea what they were supposed to do.

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#579

Post by NaomiLehman »

decimalenough wrote: post #226
nine_k wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While what you write is correct, the parent speaks about the most expensive tier of Indian cities, which are quite a bit nicer.

Well, no, not really. Top tier Indian cities like Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai are expensive and horribly dysfunctional when it comes to pollution, traffic, hygiene, dealing with government bureaucracy, etc. Having money insulates you from some but by no means all of this.

how are they expensive?

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#580

Post by throw234234234 »

lazide wrote: post #511
throw234234234 wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of tech has this culture in general: "fake it till you make it". I see this a lot in the startup culture as well.

Also a huge problem. Sometimes to the point of clear fraud/criminality.

Sad thing is that it works, and more than it works, it gives you an advantage over the people who actually do the right thing.

If you can work it out as you go and get away with it by definition you become the "first mover" over someone who only sells once they have the full capability. The incentive is there to do the wrong thing to win in the market as a whole.

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