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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

#571

Post by int_19h »

spicymaki wrote: post #564
gruez wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems pretty easy to work around with "UBI for citizens" only. There's not much pushback for social security, for instance, even if minorities get it.

Minorities don’t just get social security. People don’t get social security if they don’t work or don’t have a spouse who worked. They pay in to the system via payroll taxes. With UBI who is going to pay into that? UBI just seems like a pipe dream.

With UBI, everyone is going to pay into that via taxes. It's not any different from other forms of welfare.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#572

Post by int_19h »

mlinhares wrote: post #269
initramfs2 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you arrive at that conclusion? Dividing infinity by 1m or 1b doesn't matter if it's really infinite. Just make more machines to make the machines. The existential crisis happens afterwards, and people will kill themselves off without the need for any class warfare at all. In fact the owner class will die first since there will be no more conception of ownership, since everything is supposedly abundant and at…

You really believe today's billionaire class will just give up their power over the populace? A world of abundance means the billionaires are irrelevant because everyone would have access to everything and they would never let that happen. They will hoard the resources, land, anything that is needed for people to stay alive.

Your argument seems to be boiling down to, there's no point to improve quality of life because billionaires are just going to hoard all the improvements.

Surely the problem with that is the billionaires, not the world of abundance though?

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#573

Post by int_19h »

initramfs2 wrote: post #259
RevEng wrote: post #101

I was with the author on everything except one point: increasing automation will not leave us with such abundance that we never have to work again. We have heard that lie for over a century. The stream engine didn't do it, electricity didn't do it, computers didn't do it, the Internet didn't do it, and AI won't either. The truth is that as input costs drop, sales prices drop and demand increases - just like the parad…

I am also fairly certain that if we do arrive at some abundant utopia where you can wish for anything can have it arrive, society will collapse. It's just bringing up 7 billion (probably more) spoiled brats at that point of time. Work on its own is also a form of "social control". Idle hands are the devil's tools etc.

Collapse in a sense of many existing power structures becoming meaningless, yes, certainly.

But that is a good thing.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#574

Post by int_19h »

tim333 wrote: post #459
johnnyanmac wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 0.90 century old economicists were discussing the idea. https://www.npr.org/2015/08/13/432122637/keynes-predicted-we...

Keynes was a different thing - that we could cut working hours to 15 a week rather than never have to work again. I think that would be quite possible with a drop of living standards - you could do it today by moving somewhere cheap and doing some remote work. I think it didn't happen due to human nature. We both quite like doing something useful with our time and like increasing living standards. I inherited some mo…

Post-scarcity utopia was not an uncommon thing in mid-20th-century sci-fi, especially when you also include Soviet Bloc countries.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#575

Post by reg_dunlop »

qgin wrote: post #557
reg_dunlop wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people make arguments like this? "Work" isn't a finite thing. It's not like all the people in your office today had to complete 100% of their tasks, and all of them did. "Work" is not a static thing. At least not in positions of many knowledge-worker careers. The idea of a single day's unit of "work" being 100%, is really sophomoric. Also, If 100% of a labor force now has 80% more time...wouldn't it behoove th…

I don’t know if we can assume that humans will always be a value add. It’s very possible that for many thing in the medium term, putting humans in the loop will be a net negative on productivity.

Then why do parents put their children's drawings on the refrigerator? I'm not sure if your comment is completely utopian or dystopian. Either way, productivity without human evaluation is not productivity. It's a roomba stuck in a corner.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#577

Post by watt »

nemo1618 wrote: post #154
gordonhart wrote: post #23

Whenever I get worried about this I comb through our ticket tracker and see that ~0% of them can be implemented by AI as it exists today. Once somebody cracks the memory problem and ships an agent that progressively understands the business and the codebase, then I'll start worrying. But context limitation is fundamental to the technology in its current form and the value of SWEs is to turn the bigger picture into a…

"The steamroller is still many inches away. I'll make a plan once it actually starts crushing my toes." You are in danger . Unless you estimate the odds of a breakthrough at <5%, or you already have enough money to retire, or you expect that AI will usher in enough prosperity that your job will be irrelevant, it is straight-up irresponsible to forgo making a contingency plan.

Unless I misunderstand your metaphor, there is nothing you can do about the steamroller, it is going to roll, no matter what.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#578

Post by iberator »

ddtaylor wrote: post #302
paulryanrogers wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those jobs don't often pay well until you graduate out of journeyman / apprentice, or are a business owner. They usually require some training and testing ahead of time. They also carry a higher risk of serious injury or death.

The average salary for a software developer in Montana is $88k/yr. The average salary for an HVAC technician in Montana is $58k/yr. The average salary for a software developer in Oregon is $118k/yr. The average salary for an HVAC technician in Oregon is $74k/yr. It's for sure less, but the gap is smaller than some might think. I think some markets (SF) distort the cost a bit.

you will not land job as plumber or HVAC without piór experience or similar experience. People shun software developers at once im because THEY KNOW that you simply don't fit as typical candidate.

Also: people doesn't want to hire someone who got 'better' education than them... :/

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#579

Post by iberator »

sarchertech wrote: post #344
iberator wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lost my job as a software developer some time ago. Flipping burgers is WAY more demanding than I ever imagined. That's the danger of AI: It takes jobs faster than creating new ones PLUS for some fields (like software development) downshifting to just about anything else is brutal and sometimes simply not doable. Forget becoming manager at McDonald's or be even good at flipping burgers at the age of 40: you are comp…

> Forget becoming manager at McDonald's or be even good at flipping burgers at the age of 40: you are competing with 20yr olds doing sports with amazing coordination etc I have no idea what in the world you are talking about. Most 20 year olds working at McDonald’s are stoned and move at half a mile an hour whether it’s a lunch rush or it’s 2am. I worked retail for years before I finally switched full time to program…

I am not in USA. here we got swarms of Ukrainian immigrants who are super slim, fast and motivated. Very hard to compete. Obisity doesn't exist in them heh

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#580

Post by Ensorceled »

jama211 wrote: post #408
Ensorceled wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently did a contract at medium sized business with a large retail and online business that had a CFO and several accountants / bookkeepers. You're describing a situation where that CFO only needs two or three accountants and bookkeepers to run the business and would lay off two or three people. It IS about headcount in a lot of cases.

Or they’d keep the same number of people and increase total value output. Businesses tend to like the idea of growth more than cost cutting after all.

> Businesses tend to like the idea of growth more than cost cutting after all.

I would offer as counter to this view: massive layoffs across the early adopters of AI, the tech giants.

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