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The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

cnn.com

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Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#611

Post by jjani »

godelski wrote: post #588
digitcatphd wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As of now yes. But we are still in day 0.1 of GenAI. Do you think this will be the case when o3 models are 10x better and 100x cheaper? There will be a turning point but it’s not happened yet.

Yet we're what? 5 years into "AI will replace programmers in 6 months"? 10 years into "we'll have self driving cars next year" We're 10 years into "it's just completely obvious that within 5 years deep learning is going to replace radiologists" Moravec's paradox strikes again and again. But this time it's different and it's completely obvious now, right?

> Yet we're what? 5 years into "AI will replace programmers in 6 months"?

Realistically, we're 2.5 years into it at most.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#612

Post by threeseed »

pixl97 wrote: post #70
DrillShopper wrote: post #3

I look forward to the day where executive overpromises and engineering underdeliveries bring about another AI winter so the useful techniques can continue without the stench of the "AI" association and so the grifters go bankrupt.

Just like the internet was a fad, right?

Internet only became a fad once it was already large and had tens of millions of users.

I remember the pre-Web days of Usenet and BBS and no one thought those were trendy.

AI is far more akin to crypto.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#613

Post by kilroy123 »

brokegrammer wrote: post #560

We don't need AI to wipe out entry-level office jobs. David Graeber wrote about this in Bullshit Jobs. But now that we have AI, it's a good excuse to wipe out those jobs for good, just like Elon did after he acquired Twitter. After that, we can blame AI for the deed.

I've thought a lot about this. I think this is exactly what is happening. I've seen this first hand.

A lot of the BS jobs are being killed off. Do some non-bs jobs get burn up in the fire along the way, yes. But it's only the beginning.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#614

Post by disambiguation »

jsnider3 wrote: post #374
disambiguation wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But really, a lot of the knowledge worker jobs it "replaces" weren't providing real value anyway. I think quotes around "real value" would be appropriate as well. Consider all the great engineering it took to create Netflix, valued at $500b - which achieves what SFTP does for free.

Netflix's value comes from being convenient and compatible with the copyright system in a way sharing videos P2P definitely isn't.

I'm not advocating for p2p, but rather drawing attention to the word "value" and what it means to create it. For example, would netflix as a piece of software hold any value if the company were to suddenly lose all its copyrights and IP licenses? Whereas something like an operating system or excel has standalone utility, netflix is only as valuable as its IP. The software isn't designed to create value, but instead to fully utilize the value of a piece of property. It's an important distinction to keep in mind especially when designing such software. Now consider that in the streaming world there isn't just netflix, but prime, Hulu, HBO, etc. Etc.

The parent comment was complaining about certain employees contributions to "real value" or lack thereof. My question is, how do you ascertain the value of work in this context where the software isn't what's valuable but the IP is, and further how do justify working on a product thats already a solved problem and still refer to it as "creating 'real' value"?

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#615

Post by notyouraibot »

The hype around AI replacing software engineers is truly delusional. Yes they are very good at solving known problems, writing for loops and boilerplate code but introduce a little bit of complexity and creativity and it all fails. There have been countless tasks that I have given to AI, to which it simply concluded its not possible and suggested me to use several external libraries to get it done, after a little bit of manual digging, I was able to achieve that same task without any libraries and I'm not even a seasoned engineer.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#616

Post by wiseowise »

conradkay wrote: post #599
wiseowise wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never understand this argument. If you have a super tool, that can magically double your output, why would you suddenly double your output publicly? So that you now work twice essentially for the same money? You use it to work less, your output stays static or marginally improves - that’s smart play. Note: I’m talking about your run of the mill SE waggie work, not startups where your food is based on your outp…

That only works if you're one of very few people with the tool. Otherwise the rest of your team is now 2x as productive as you.

That’s assuming they were as productive as me in the first place.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#617

Post by saubeidl »

leflambeur wrote: post #468
simonsarris wrote: post #465

I think the real white collar bloodbath is that the end of ZIRP was the end of infinite software job postings, and the start of layoffs. I think its easy to now point to AI, but it seems like a canard for the huge thing that already happened. just look at this: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1JmOr In terms of magnitude the effect of this is just enormous and still being felt, and never recovered to pre-2020 lev…

It's simply the old Capital vs Labor struggle. CEOs and VCs all sing in the same choir, and for the past 3 years the tune is "be leaner". p.s.: I'm a big fan of yours on Twitter.

Except Labor in Tech is unique in that it has zero class consciousness and often actively roots for their exploiters.

If we were to unionize, we could force this machine to a halt and shift the balance of power back in our favor.

But we don't, because many of us have been brainwashed to believe we're on the same side as the ones trying to squeeze us.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#618

Post by amarcheschi »

eastbound wrote: post #531
autobodie wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keynes lived in a time when the working class was organized and exerting its power over its destiny. We live in a time that the working class is unbelievably brainwashed and manipulated.

It is very possible that foreign powers use AI to generate social media content in mass for propaganda. If anything, the internet up to 2015 seemed open for discussion and swaying by real people’s opinion (and mockery of the elite classes), while manipulation and manufactured consent became the norm after 2017.

Italian party Lega (in the government coalition) has been using deep fakes for some time now. It's not only ridiculous, it's absolutely offensive to the people they mock - von Der leyen, other Italian politicians... -

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#619

Post by SarahC_ »

jameslk wrote: post #512
simonsarris wrote: post #465

I think the real white collar bloodbath is that the end of ZIRP was the end of infinite software job postings, and the start of layoffs. I think its easy to now point to AI, but it seems like a canard for the huge thing that already happened. just look at this: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1JmOr In terms of magnitude the effect of this is just enormous and still being felt, and never recovered to pre-2020 lev…

Keynes suggested that by 2030, we’d be working 15 hour workweeks, with the rest of the time used for leisure. Instead, we chose consumption, and helicopter money gave us bullshit jobs so we could keep buying more bullshit. This is fairly evident by the fact when the helicopter money runs out, all the bullshit jobs get cut. AI may give us more efficiency, but it will be filled with more bullshit jobs and consumption,…

"Bullshit jobs" are the rubbish required to keep the paperwork tidy, assessed and filed. No company pays someone to do -nothing-.

AI isn't going to generate those jobs, it's going to automate them.

ALL our bullshit jobs are going away, and those people will be unemployed.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#620

Post by hyperadvanced »

Flemlo wrote: post #570
threeseed wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are we in 0.1 of GenAI ? It's been developed for nearly a decade now. And each successive model that has been released has done nothing to fundamentally change the use cases that the technology can be applied to i.e. those which are tolerant of a large percentage of incoherent mistakes. Which isn't all that many. So you can keep your 10x better and 100x cheaper models because they are of limited usefulness let al…

A decade? The explosion of funding, awareness etc only happened after gpt-3 launch

Funding is behind the curve. Social networks existed in 2003 and Facebook became a billion dollar company a decade later. AI horror fantasies from the 90’s still haven’t come true. There is no god, there is no Skynet.
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