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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

#871

Post by kbelder »

solumunus wrote: post #629
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.

I use LLM’s daily and live them but at the current rate of progress it’s just not really something worth worrying about. Those that are hysterical about AI seem to think LLM’s are getting exponentially better when in fact diminishing returns are hitting hard. Could some new innovation change that? It’s possible but it’s not inevitable or at least not necessarily imminent.

I agree that the core models are only going to see slow progression from here on out, until something revolutionary happens... which might be a year from now, or maybe twenty years. Who knows.

But we are going to see a huge explosion in how those models are integrated into the rest of the tech ecosystem. Things that a current model could do right now, if only your car/watch/videogame/heart monitor/stuffed animal had a good working interface into an AI.

Not necessarily looking forward to that, but that's where the growth will come.

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

#872

Post by drewcon »

bayarearefugee wrote: post #539
drewcon wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are not familiar with exponential change so they have almost no ability to manage through exponential change. Its an apt comparison. The criticisms in the cnn article are already out date in many instances.

As a developer that uses LLMs, I haven't seen any evidence that LLMs or "AI" more broadly are improving exponentially, but I see a lot of people applying a near-religious belief that this is happening or will happen because... actually, I don't know? because Moore's Law was a thing, maybe? In my experience, for practical usage LLMs aren't even improving linearly at this point as I personally see Claude 3.7 and 4.0 as…

5 years ago commercial image gen produced hallucinatory dream like blobs.

2 years ago it was cool but unreliable.

Today I just did an entire “photo shoot” in Midjourney.

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

#873

Post by sfblah »

causal wrote: post #363
gcanyon wrote: post #347

...everyone here saying "someday AI will but not today" while failing to acknowledge that for a lot of things "someday" is 2026, and for an even larger number of things it's 2027, and we can't even predict whether or not in 2028 AI will handle nearly all things...

The problem is that it's hard to pin down any job that's been eliminated by AI even after years of having LLMs. I'm sure it will happen. It just seems like the trajectory of intelligence defies any simple formula.

I literally am in the process of firing someone who we no longer need because of efficiencies tied to GenAI. I work at a top-10 tech company. So, there you go. That's one job.

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

#874

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

DonHopkins wrote: post #431
trhway wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI has been also consuming Dilbert as part of its training...

Worse yet, AI has been consuming Scott Adams quotes as part of its training... "The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently. It’s just easier this way for everyone. You don’t argue with a four-year old about why he shouldn’t eat candy for dinner. You don’t punch a mentally handicapped guy even if he punches…

>Worse yet

Should have been 'better still'.

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

#875

Post by brfox »

niuzeta wrote: post #847
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…

FRED continues to amaze me with the kind of data they have availab.e

That's from Indeed. And, Indeed has fewer job postings overall [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUS]. Should we normalize the software jobs with the total number of Indeed postings? Is Indeed getting less popular or more popular over this time period? Data is complicated

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

#876

Post by nova22033 »

aikinai wrote: post #814
oblio wrote: post #807

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People a decade from now will think Elon slashed Twitter's employee count by 90% because of some AI initiative, and not because he simply thought he could run a lot leaner. That part is so overblown. Twitter was still trying to hit moonshots. X is basically in "keep the lights on" mode as Musk doesn't need more. Yeah, if Google decides it doesn't want to grow anymore, it can probably cut it's workforce by 90%. And…

What moonshots has Twitter gone for in the last decade? Feature velocity is also higher since the acquisition.

What happened to X, the payment app?

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

#878

Post by HenryBemis »

> To be clear, Amodei didn’t cite any research or evidence for that 50%

This reminds me the "Walter White" meme "I am the documentation". When the CEO of a company that makes LLM says something like that, "I perk up and listen" (to quote the article).

When a doctor says "water in my village is bad quality, it gives diarrhea to 30% of the villagers", I don't need a fancy study from some university. The doctor "is the documentation". So if the Anthropic/ChatGPT/LLaMa/etc. (mixing companies and products, it's ok though) say that "so-and-so", they see the integrations, enhancements, compliments, companies ordering _more_ subscriptions, etc.

In my current company (high volume, low profit margin) they told us "go all in on AI". They see that (e.g. with Notion-like-tools) if you enable the "AI", that thing can save _a lot_ of time on "Confluence-like" tasks. So, paying $20-$30-$40 per person, per month, and that thing improving the productivity/output of an FTE by 20%-30% is a massive win.

So yes, we keep the ones we got (because mass firings, ministry of 'labour', unions, bad marketing, etc.). Headcount will organically be reduced (retirements, getting a new job, etc.) combined with minimizing new hires, and boom! savings!!

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

#879

Post by tonyedgecombe »

oblio wrote: post #851
Slow_Hand wrote: post #846

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to undercut your point - because you’re largely correct - but this is my reality. I have a decent-paying job in which I work roughly 15 hrs a week. Sometimes more when work scales up. That said, I’m not what you’d call a high-earning person (I earn < 100k) I simply live within my means and do my best to curb lifestyle creep. In this way, Keynes’ vision is a reality, but it’s a mindset and we also have to know whe…

You're lucky. Most companies don't accept that. Frequently, even when they have part time arrangements, the incentives are such that middle managers are incentivized to squeeze you (including squeezing you out), despite company policies and HR mandates.

Which is a shame because I bet most knowledge workers aren't putting in more than three or fours hours of solid work. The rest of the time they are just keeping a seat warm.

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

#880

Post by rbultje »

Lu2025 wrote: post #848
e40 wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also section 174’s amortization of software development had a big role.

I agree, R&D change is what triggered 2022 tech layoffs. Coders used to be free, all this play with Metaverse and such was on public dime. As soon as a company had to spend real money, it all came crashing down.

This is a weird take. Employees are supposed to be business expenses, that's the core idea of running a business: profit = revenue - expenses, where expenses are personnel / materials, and pay taxes over profit. Since the R&D change, businesses can't fully expense employees and need to pay (business) taxes over their salaries. Employees - of course - still pay personal taxes also (as was always the case).
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