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How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

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Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#81

Post by keybored »

m463 wrote: post #2

I wonder if web searches used to be pretty productive, then declined as sponsored results and SEO degraded things. Nowadays an ai assist with a web search usually eliminates the search altogether and gives you a clear answer right away. for example, "how much does a ford f-150 cost" will give you something ballpark in a second, compared to annoying "research" to find the answer shrouded in corporate obfuscation.

> I wonder if web searches used to be pretty productive, then declined as sponsored results and SEO degraded things.

Used to be.

> Nowadays an ai assist with a web search usually eliminates the search altogether and gives you a clear answer right away.

Now.

Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#82

Post by movedx01 »

entropyneur wrote: post #58
8cvor6j844qw_d6 wrote: post #10

Its depressing when people are hearing managers are openly asking all employees to pitch in ideals for AI in order to reduce employee headcount. For those hearing this at work, better prepare an exit plan.

Why is it depressing? Personally, unless the alternative is literally starving, I wouldn't want to do a job that a robot could do instead just so that I could be kept busy. That sounds like an insult to human dignity tbh.

You know what is an insult? Supermarket on my street putting on display sloppy ads with ramen bowl that has 3 different thickness chopsticks and cartoon characters with scrambled faces. Now that is an insult, because there was a human being doing that job, and I am sure there was a great "productivity boost" related to that change.

I am a heavy AI user myself, and sure as hell I am not putting my foot in that place again.

Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#84

Post by keybored »

entropyneur wrote: post #58
8cvor6j844qw_d6 wrote: post #10

Its depressing when people are hearing managers are openly asking all employees to pitch in ideals for AI in order to reduce employee headcount. For those hearing this at work, better prepare an exit plan.

Why is it depressing? Personally, unless the alternative is literally starving, I wouldn't want to do a job that a robot could do instead just so that I could be kept busy. That sounds like an insult to human dignity tbh.

Is it an insult to human dignity? Let’s go through the thought process.

Commodities are used in an enterprise. Some of the commodities are labor. That labor commodity does work. Involving automation. Eventually (so we are told) those labor commodities manage to automate some forms of labor. Making those other labor commodities redundant.

The labor commodities are discarded. Because why (sigh) use a cart when you now have a car? And you don’t even own a horse.

All of the above is presumably not an insult to human dignity. No. The insult to human dignity is being “kept busy” instead of letting billionaires hoard automation made through human labor.

Of course the real solution is not busywork. But the part about busywork was not on the top of my mind with regards to dignity in this context.

> Personally, unless the alternative is literally starving,

To put a fine point on it, yeah? Ultimately.

Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#86

Post by DrScientist »

aurareturn wrote: post #35
m463 wrote: post #2

I wonder if web searches used to be pretty productive, then declined as sponsored results and SEO degraded things. Nowadays an ai assist with a web search usually eliminates the search altogether and gives you a clear answer right away. for example, "how much does a ford f-150 cost" will give you something ballpark in a second, compared to annoying "research" to find the answer shrouded in corporate obfuscation.

then declined as sponsored results and SEO degraded things It didn't decline because of this. It declined because of a general decade long trend of websites becoming paywalled and hidden behind a login. The best and most useful data is often inaccessible to crawlers. In the 2000s, everything was open because of the ad driven model. Then ad blockers, mobile subscription model, and the dominance of a few apps such as I…

> The best and most useful data is often inaccessible to crawlers.

Interesting point.

> ost open forums are dead because discussions happen on login platforms like Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, X, Discord, etc

Ironically isn't one of the reasons some of those platforms started to use logins was so they could track users and better sell their information to ad people?

Obviously now there are other reasons as well - regulation, age verification etc.

Does this suggest that the AI/ad platforms need to tweak their economic model to share more of the revenue with content creators?

Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#88

Post by keybored »

croes wrote: post #68
entropyneur wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it depressing? Personally, unless the alternative is literally starving, I wouldn't want to do a job that a robot could do instead just so that I could be kept busy. That sounds like an insult to human dignity tbh.

That's how capitalism works. It doesn't matter if your job is useful but if you don't do anything, you don't get money. More people without jobs will be a heavy burden on social security systems, so in the end it's literally about starving.

Assuming large-scale automation[1]: workers have in aggregate automated themselves. It takes labor to automate. And yet those former workers are now a “burden”? We’re assuming automation, so was the making of the food stuff, the transportation of the food stuff, the automation of the infrastructure maintenance... was that done or not? Where is the burden being felt?

You’re gonna call the people that built everything a burden?

Either we are talking in terms of propagandistic guilt assignment, or we’re talking realpolitics. Either:

1. we can trivially support the “burden” because of automation (no burden); or

2. billionaire resource hoarders (a burden?) do not need the vast majority of their underlings (maybe just a few for Epstein 2.0) and can let them fend for themselves or die off. (It’s literally not even a question of whether they have a big red Automation Button that would sustain the “burden” indefinitely. What incentive do they have to press it?)

[1] I notice scale is a favorite buzzword now

Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#89

Post by amelius »

gyulai wrote: post #37

> The EU trails the US not only in the absolute number of AI-related patents but also in AI specialisation – the share of AI patents relative to total patents. E.U. patent law takes a very different attitude towards software patents than the U.S. Even if that wasn't the case: “Specialisation” means that no innovation unrelated to AI gets mind share, investment, patent applications. And that's somehow a good thing? No…

Makes me wonder how AI will influence the work of patent officers.

Perhaps it will make patent trolling a bit harder because it is easier to look up existing work and to check if an idea is obvious?

Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#90

Post by rwmj »

yorwba wrote: post #87
rwmj wrote: post #83

Is there a link to the actual paper anywhere? That seems like a rather large omission. Without the paper it's hard to tell what they are actually measuring.

The actual paper: https://www.eib.org/files/publications/20250383-130126-econo...

Use of AI is based on self-reported data. From the paper:

> The respondents to the interviews are senior managers or financial directors with responsibility for investment decisions and how investments are financed – for example, the owner, chief financial officer or chief executive officer

> Firms are asked the following question: “To what extent, if at all, are big data analytics and artificial intelligence used within your business? A. Not used in the business. B. Used in parts of the business. C. Entire business is organized around this technology.”

AI adoption is defined as the manager answering B or C.

I'm doubtful that this data is going to be very robust. Some senior tech managers are very keen to talk about AI, while at the same time knowing little about how much AI is actually being used by workers. At other companies you'll have people using free or personal ChatGPT accounts without the knowledge of management.

Also "big data" is not exactly AI.

The productivity information is robust as it's based on company accounts, albeit from 2024 so a couple of years out of date now.

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