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AI doesn't replace white collar work
61–70 of 110 posts
Re: AI doesn't replace white collar work
#62If I'm reading this right, the core thesis is that the main value in consulting is not in the correctness of the advice, but the ability to avoid taking responsibility. (And that this therefore cannot be automated by definition.) I suspect that will change as trust in automated systems increases. (For example the author seems to consider AI a source of "correctness", which implies this trust is already surprisingly h…
One day the first insurance company will require a company to use an Ai accountant to get a discount on the insurance.
At that day it is over for consulting.
Re: AI doesn't replace white collar work
#63The author talks about jobs requiring a human element but its not always true. A job always requires you to show your task one level higher - to the manager or whoever requires it. For example UI design can be replaced by AI. Unless UI or UX design people were bringing something like _taste_ instead of simply mechanically operating figma - they are not keeping their jobs. I genuinely don't need to learn SQL ever in m…
The joker here is: what is the purpose now of the manager who's job was to keep 7 employees happy?
Re: AI doesn't replace white collar work
#64I don’t think people actually read the article; because it makes a unique point about certain types of queries: I would have been interested in the experience and thoughts of someone whose opinions I respected, both as a social thing and to learn something. In other words, some types of questions are aimed at 1) building a social connection with the person you’re asking and 2) because you want to know what they , spe…
> It doesn’t really matter how good AI systems get, that’s not going to change, and since most white collar work deals with these kinds of problems, there is little danger in it being replaced.
Does the accounts payable team keep their jobs because their manager enjoys chatting with them? Does the junior analyst stay employed because the VP values their specific personal opinion on the Q3 revenue forecast? Note the article is about work
Re: AI doesn't replace white collar work
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
As with any tech revolution, jobs don’t go away in total but the types of jobs do. There aren’t a lot of buggy whip manufacturers any more. Professionals photography has taken a sharp decline. Certain kinds of white collar work are a dead end now.
Professional photography is still expected to grow over the next decade. It’s a competitive field but hasn’t actually shrunk much.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0254486700A
Doesn’t look like a stable, growing profession. And if you compare it to the 70s-00’s it got really rough around 2010 for obvious reasons.
Re: AI doesn't replace white collar work
#66It certainly replaced a couple of white collars that used to do translations and asset creations for CMS, in some projects that I am aware of.
Yeah my job is currently protected due to being clearance work but if we could use AI to its fullest extent we would certainly have too many employees. Perhaps the scope will just increase but until then I see people getting laid off. Obviously in the long run this is good, more productivity per employee is always better, but short term jobs are changing and people are likely getting laid off (or will at least have m…
This is the next step.
I already do less coding than I used to do, because agency work has slowly focused on a mix of SaaS products, integrations via iPaaS, serveless or managed containers.
The whole MACH development approach mantra.
Meaning that even in development, at least in consulting, the teams have become a fraction that they used to be.
AI is the next step reducing team sizes.
Re: AI doesn't replace white collar work
#67People used to be programmers, but the ratio of typing to problem solving eventually caught up. Now programming is just part of the job. Software engineering is falling to this trend too (somewhat) The solution is to stop merely thinking of yourself as a software engineer and move up to the level of “manager of agents”.. but actually, managers deal with human stuff and this is fascinatingly mechanical - in fact even…
No there isn't, because *you* aren't doing any of the actual work.
Re: AI doesn't replace white collar work
#68From my opinion, the block layoffs were a test, to see how a) a software company manages with only half of its employees now that there's powerful LLMs, and b) how the remaining employees react to the imminent threat of them being laid off as well. If block succeeds, we'll see more layoffs of that kind, probably even more extreme ones. You are not top senior level employee? Out. You don't single handedly cause 30% of…
> single person billion dollar exits
Single person, or single founder? I guess there's n0tch, but he hired people when he started making money. (There may very well be truly solo cases that I don't know about.)
A few others have commented that the job becomes a kind of hybrid. I already think of it like that. If you're a person who can talk to a client and then immediately implement something to solve a problem, that's still going to be part of the process for a while. The sales cycle is still going to be competitive, whether it's based on timing or insider connections. Software people are going to have to start thinking of themselves as small firms; you have to go close a deal and then your agent army can help you deliver.
Re: AI doesn't replace white collar work
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
As with any tech revolution, jobs don’t go away in total but the types of jobs do. There aren’t a lot of buggy whip manufacturers any more. Professionals photography has taken a sharp decline. Certain kinds of white collar work are a dead end now.
I think progessional photography is so wide as a definition that makes no sense. Product photography could be somehow replaced with AI, maybe, but not journalist photography at all. In fact, journalism photography is more importnat than ever with AI now.
Not AI related, cell phone camera related. Crushed the sector.
Re: AI doesn't replace white collar work
#70The next revolution is coming and it is well needed. Society is becoming older, more tired and we need new fresh ideas to bring a lot of fields back to life. I hope it comes soon.
I don't disagree that society is becoming older and more tired, but LLMs by definition don't bring fresh ideas. The best you could hope for is that the tokenizing brings forward similarities between fields that haven't been recognized before.