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

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

#641

Post by pera »

bootsmann wrote: post #634
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…

[flagged]

For those outside of the US:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_inauguration_of_Donal...

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

#642

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

catigula wrote: post #296
ajmurmann wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am VERY pro-immigration. I do have concerns about the H1B program though. IMO it's not great for both immigrant workers, as well as non-immigrant workers because it creates a class of workers for whom it's harder to change employers which weakens their negotiation position. If this is the case for enough of the workforce it artificially depresses wages for everyone. I want to see a reform that makes it much easier…

I want to use you as a bit of a sounding board, so don't take this as negative feedback. The problem is that the left, which was historically pro-labor, abdicated this position for racial reasons, and the right was always about maximizing the economic zone.

I saw a report recently about the political left in Denmark, who are basically one of the the only progressive movements in countries that understood what it takes to maintain support, and hence Denmark has had much less of a rise in support for far right parties than other countries in the world. Here's an article, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/magazine/denmark-immigrat....

Basically, progressives in Denmark have argued for very strict immigration rules, the essential argument being that Denmark has an expensive social welfare state, and to get the populace to support the high taxes needed to pay for this, you can't just let anyone in who shows up on your doorstep.

The American left could learn a ton of lessons from this. I may loath Greg Abbott for lots of reasons, but I largely support what he did bussing migrants to NYC and other liberal cities. Many people in these cities wanted to bask in the feelings of moral superiority by being "sanctuary cities", but public sentiment changed drastically when they actually had to start bearing a large portion of the cost of a flood of migrants.

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

#643

Post by apwell23 »

roenxi wrote: post #631
godelski wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

As far as I've seen we appear to already have self driving vehicles, the main barriers are legal and regulatory concerns rather than the tech. If a company wanted to put a car on the road that beetles around by itself there aren't any crazy technical challenges to doing that - the issue is even if it was safer than a human driver the company would have a lot of liability problems.

> the main barriers are legal and regulatory concerns rather than the tech

they have failed in sfo, phoenix and other cities that rolled red carpet for them

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

#644

Post by atleastoptimal »

losing jobs is the biggest predictable hazard of AI but far from the biggest

however there seems to be a big disconnect on this site and others

If you believe AGI is possible and that AI can be smarter than humans in all tasks, naturally you can imagine many outcomes far more substantial than job loss.

However many people don’t believe AGI is possible, thus will never consider those possibilities

I fear many will deny the probability that AGI could be achieved in the near future, thus leaving themselves and others unprepared for the consequences. There are so many potential bad outcomes that could be avoided merely if more smart people realized the possibility of AGI and ASI, and would thus rationally devote their cognitive abilities to ensuring that the potential emergence of smarter than human intelligences goes well.

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

#645

Post by apwell23 »

tsunamifury wrote: post #594
godelski wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[flagged]

did you by any chance send money to nigerian prince ?

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

#646

Post by formerly_proven »

drodgers wrote: post #537
jaggederest wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these folks are once again seeing the first 1/4 of a sigmoid curve and extrapolating to infinity.

No doubt from me that it’s a sigmoid, but how high is the plateau? That’s also hard to know from early in the process, but it would be surprising if there’s not a fair bit of progress left to go. Human brains seem like an existence proof for what’s possible, but it would be surprising if humans also represent the farthest physical limits of what’s technologically possible without the constraints of biology (hip size,…

Progress so far has been half and half technique and brute force. Overall technique has now settled for a few years, so that's mostly in the tweaking phase. Brute force doesn't scale by itself and semiconductors have been running into a wall for the last few years. Those (plus stagnating outcomes) seem decent reasons to suspect the plateau is neigh.

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

#647

Post by tim333 »

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?

Four years into people mocking "we'll have self driving cars next year" while they are on the street daily driving around SF.

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

#648

Post by roenxi »

apwell23 wrote: post #643
roenxi wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I've seen we appear to already have self driving vehicles, the main barriers are legal and regulatory concerns rather than the tech. If a company wanted to put a car on the road that beetles around by itself there aren't any crazy technical challenges to doing that - the issue is even if it was safer than a human driver the company would have a lot of liability problems.

> the main barriers are legal and regulatory concerns rather than the tech they have failed in sfo, phoenix and other cities that rolled red carpet for them

Pretty solid evidence that self driving cars already exist though.

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

#649

Post by [deleted] »

tim333 wrote: post #647
godelski wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Four years into people mocking "we'll have self driving cars next year" while they are on the street daily driving around SF.

[deleted]

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

#650

Post by RivieraKid »

roenxi wrote: post #631
godelski wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

As far as I've seen we appear to already have self driving vehicles, the main barriers are legal and regulatory concerns rather than the tech. If a company wanted to put a car on the road that beetles around by itself there aren't any crazy technical challenges to doing that - the issue is even if it was safer than a human driver the company would have a lot of liability problems.

This is just not true, Waymo, MobilEye, Tesla and Chinese companies are not bottlenecked by regulations but by high failure rate and / or economics.
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