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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

#761

Post by fallingknife »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #722
nxm wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 trillion in unnecessary Covid related spending when Covid impact was winding down was the key reason for inflation. "$2000 checks!" was the campaign slogan

We're blaming the 1000 dollar stimulus checks to the people and not the massive PPP loans that the government never bothered to collect on? It's amazing how well billionaires trained us to fight amongst one another as they ransack in broad daylight.

It's all the same money printing. The issue is that people generally believe that emergency measures were justified in early 2020 when the crisis hit and there were so many unknowns, but not justified a year later when the virus was already endemic and the vaccine was out.

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

#762

Post by chrsw »

directevolve wrote: post #551
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.

We’re already heading toward the sigmoid plateau. The GPT 3 to 4 shift was massive. Nothing since had touched that. I could easily go back to the models I was using 1-2 years ago with little impact on my work. I don’t use RAG, and have no doubt the infrastructure for integrating AI into a large codebase has improved. But the base model powering the whole operation seems stuck.

> I could easily go back to the models I was using 1-2 years ago with little impact on my work.

I can't. GPT-4 was useless for me for software development. Claude 4 is not.

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

#763

Post by zkry »

tdeck wrote: post #416

Maybe someone can help me wrap my head around this in a different way, because here's how I see it. If these tools are really making people so productive, shouldn't it be painfully obvious in companies' output? For example, if these AI coding tools were an amazing productivity boost in the end, we'd expect to see software companies shipping features and fixes faster than ever before. There would be a huge burst in in…

I find that this is on point. I've seen a lot of charts on the AI-hype side of things showing exponential growth of AI agent fleets being used for software development (starting in 2026 of course). Take this article for example: https://sourcegraph.com/blog/revenge-of-the-junior-developer

Ok, so by 2027 we should be having fleets of autonomous AI agents swarming around every bug report and solving it x times faster than a human. Cool, so I guess by 2028 buggy software will be a thing of the past (for those companies that fully adopt AI of course). I'm so excited for a future where IT projects stop going overtime and overbudget and deliver more value than expected. Can you blame us for thinking this is too good to be true?

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

#764

Post by didntcheck »

bojan wrote: post #691
pydry wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump didnt kick off the layoffs. It was the war with Russia that drove the fed to raise interest rates in 2022 - a measure that was intended to curb inflation triggered by spikes in the prices of economic inputs (gas, oil, fertilizer, etc.). The tech layoffs started later that year. Widespread job cuts are an intended effect of raising interest rates - more unemployed = less spending = keeps a lid on inflation. AI i…

"War with Russia" sounds like someone willingly started that war, and Russia was the target. Of course, nothing is further from the truth. "Russian invasion of Ukraine" is what should be written there.

I don't see how that follows at all. "War with x" is a factual statement with no implications of moral culpability in either direction

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

#765

Post by TexanFeller »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #601
yobbo wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that literally massive amounts of this workforce couldn't possibly be filled by domestic grads One theory is that the benefit they might be providing over domestic "grads" is lack of prerequisites for promotion above certain levels (language, cultural fit, and so on). For managers, this means the prestige of increased headcount without the various "burdens" of managing "careerists". For example, less plaus…

Careerists: What does this term mean?

People more concerned about getting a promotion than they are taking pride in doing quality work that makes a difference. Corporate rubrics for promotion have little to do with doing great work and careerists focus heavily on playing these stupid games set up by HR execs.

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

#766

Post by tim333 »

xorcist wrote: post #705
tim333 wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They are self driving the same way a tram or subway can be self driving. They traffic a tightly bounded designated area. They're not competing with human drivers. Still a marvel of human engineering, just quite expensive compared with other forms of public transport. It just doesn't compete in the same space and likely never will.

They are literally competing with human uber drivers in the area they operate and also having a much lower crash and injury rate.

I admit they don't operate everywhere - only certain routes. Still they are undoubtedly cars that drive themselves.

I imagine it'll be the same with AGI. We'll have robots / AIs that are much smarter than the average human and people will be saying they don't count because humans win X Factor or something.

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

#767

Post by [deleted] »

CKMo wrote: post #185

There's definitely a big problem with entry-level jobs being replaced by AI. Why hire an intern or a recent college-grad when they lack both the expertise and experience to do what an AI could probably do? Sure, the AI might require handholding and prompting too, but the AI is either cheaper or actually "smarter" than the young person. In many cases, it's both. I work with some people who I believe have the capacity…

[deleted]

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

#768

Post by anshumankmr »

CKMo wrote: post #185

There's definitely a big problem with entry-level jobs being replaced by AI. Why hire an intern or a recent college-grad when they lack both the expertise and experience to do what an AI could probably do? Sure, the AI might require handholding and prompting too, but the AI is either cheaper or actually "smarter" than the young person. In many cases, it's both. I work with some people who I believe have the capacity…

>Not that I'm saying AI is a god-send, but new grads and entry-level roles are kind of screwed.

A company that I know of is having a L3 hiring freeze also and some people are downgraded from L4 to L3 or L5 to L4 also.. Getting more work for less cost.

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

#769

Post by Mistletoe »

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…

This is so cool. Had no idea FRED had data like this. They have everything.

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

#770

Post by absurdo »

infinitebit wrote: post #552

So glad to see a MSM outlet take the words of an AI ceo with even a single grain of salt. I’ve been really disappointed with the way so many publications have just been breathlessly repeating what is essentially a sales pitch. (ftr i’m not even taking a side re: is AI going to take all the jobs. regardless of what happens the fact remains that the reporting has been absolute sh*t on this. i guess “the singularity is…

HN does the same. We don’t really have a platform on the internet for good discussions so we mostly get regurgitated talking points and a lot of flags/downvotes if it’s deemed a serious enough issue (f.e. pandemic) that taking a contrary stance is strictly forbidden.
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