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US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

bloomberg.com

61–70 of 303 posts

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#61

That thing that reassures me is that I kind of think most people in software aren't doing much useful work anyway, so if the whole thing was really driven by hiring the fewest humans possible to get the work done, companies probably could have fired half of us even without AI.

This matches my experience at MSFT. Very little work for too many people, MSFT CFO also said in the latest earnings calls that MSFT will have fewer people next year than this year, they offered buyouts to tenured people, did layoffs in LinkedIn not sure if there’s more to come.

Think this is the FAANGs entering their stodgy middle life phase like Oracle et al did decades ago. Except for Google they haven't done anything innovative in like a decade. It's time to wring money out of the monopoly and buy companies to add to that.

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the goal is to replace workers who cost $10,000/mo with an AI agent that costs $8,000/mo

$8000/month is way too low. If you're only spending $8000/month on AI you're in drastic danger of being replaced by a more efficient AI firm.

You should replace a team of 7 costing $70,000/mo with a team of 2 costing $30,000/mo and $100,000/mo in ai tokens.

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#63
post #4

I think people are blaming AI for a recession caused by trump’s tarrifs and the oil crisis. Businesses fear that oil prices may explode until enough of the economy enters a recession that oil demand decreases, and are already feeling the supply crunch

This comment is completely divorced from the facts given in the article. The main point is that certain types of jobs like customer service reps, secretaries and sales people are being disproportionately affected. If it was just general fears about the economy overall one would expect a more broad-based impact.

If you replace customer service with LLMs I will look for a way to stop doing business with you.

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#64
post #4

I think people are blaming AI for a recession caused by trump’s tarrifs and the oil crisis. Businesses fear that oil prices may explode until enough of the economy enters a recession that oil demand decreases, and are already feeling the supply crunch

GDP is not suffering — quite the opposite, 2% real annual growth in Q1 — so recession is definitionally inaccurate.

We’ll need new terms if Musk and Altman make infinity GDP and everyone else is unemployable.

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#65
post #4

I think people are blaming AI for a recession caused by trump’s tarrifs and the oil crisis. Businesses fear that oil prices may explode until enough of the economy enters a recession that oil demand decreases, and are already feeling the supply crunch

Yet the stock market is reaching ATH, I don't think recession is the accurate word. I also think the fixation on Trump is misleading and takes away from the actual structural side effects of dollar issuance via unbacked fiat. It's convenient scapegoating to take your attention away from the long lingering issue of US dollar dominance and debt that is now causing large social divide and standard of living. The physics…

The stock market isn't the economy. Note that stock prices are denominated in dollars. If the dollar price of a stock doubles, but in the same time period the value of the dollar halves, then the stock's value hasn't gone up at all. Compare the price of the Dow Jones to to gold and its value peaked in 1999, and has been nosediving for the past 18 months[0]. The ratio right now is the same as it was in late 2008. Obviously gold isn't a perfect standard candle, but given that inflation has obviously been rampant in recent years, we should obviously treat any economic metric that does not control for inflation with healthy skepticism.

[0] https://www.macrotrends.net/1378/dow-to-gold-ratio-100-year-...

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#66
post #4

I think people are blaming AI for a recession caused by trump’s tarrifs and the oil crisis. Businesses fear that oil prices may explode until enough of the economy enters a recession that oil demand decreases, and are already feeling the supply crunch

GDP is not suffering — quite the opposite, 2% real annual growth in Q1 — so recession is definitionally inaccurate.

2% is not the opposite of suffering. It's suffering-adjacent. It loses ground to China.

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#67
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is completely divorced from the facts given in the article. The main point is that certain types of jobs like customer service reps, secretaries and sales people are being disproportionately affected. If it was just general fears about the economy overall one would expect a more broad-based impact.

Those are the same roles that get axed first in any recession. Anything under “SG&A” is overhead that can be reduced.

Indeed, it's exactly what you'd expect if more people quit buying stuff.

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#68
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet the stock market is reaching ATH, I don't think recession is the accurate word. I also think the fixation on Trump is misleading and takes away from the actual structural side effects of dollar issuance via unbacked fiat. It's convenient scapegoating to take your attention away from the long lingering issue of US dollar dominance and debt that is now causing large social divide and standard of living. The physics…

The stock market isn't the economy. Note that stock prices are denominated in dollars. If the dollar price of a stock doubles, but in the same time period the value of the dollar halves, then the stock's value hasn't gone up at all. Compare the price of the Dow Jones to to gold and its value peaked in 1999, and has been nosediving for the past 18 months[0]. The ratio right now is the same as it was in late 2008. Obvi…

Cool. Now use the value of a dollar denominated in Bitcoin. Or do you only like cherry picking your statistics?

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#69
post #4

I think people are blaming AI for a recession caused by trump’s tarrifs and the oil crisis. Businesses fear that oil prices may explode until enough of the economy enters a recession that oil demand decreases, and are already feeling the supply crunch

In economies that revolve around credit/debt (the US), once credit stops EXPANDING , that's a huge force pushing the economy down . If everyone's already taken on as much debt as they can, and interest rates aren't consistently marching lower for ~25 straight years, it's going to be a little harder to grow. Doesn't make it impossible, just harder. We're paying for growth we got 25 years ago now. Wish we invested that…

This is precisely why DJT wants to control the Fed and lower interest rates. It would be a short-term win for him and the economy.
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