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AI doesn't replace white collar work

marble.onl

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Re: AI doesn't replace white collar work

#91

Post by pjmlp »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #90
pjmlp wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only companies would actually hire people instead of optimising their worksheets for late stage capitalism at the expense of human capital. New skills mean shit when there is no job market that can take everyone. Usually people that have such takes of yours, never had to actually fight months, years, to finally get back on track. Naturally, when selling AI, the take is to downplay its impact on people lives.

I sympathise with the perspective - but software has always been this way, there’s always been creative destruction and the field has never stood still. We signed up for this. YOU signed up for this. No one owes anyone a job. When the activities that create value change, move with it or get left behind. If you prefer a vocation which has been the same for centuries that option is open to you. But to get into the soft…

I definitely did not sign for this, and I am very critical of taking part in any project whose goal is to make people jobless.

Re: AI doesn't replace white collar work

#92

Post by oytis »

kantord wrote: post #56
ctoth wrote: post #18

It's the same error pattern every time: identify what AI is currently "bad" at, define that as the essential core of the work, declare the work safe. Wait 6 months, shocked Pikachu gif.

interesting, this is basically what Venkatesh Rao pointed out back in 2013: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2013/07/10/you-are-not-an-artisan... Basically we do not rationally analyze what work can be automated and what work is forever safe. We just assume that "sexy work" is safe, and work backwards to figure out how to explain this belief to ourselves.

Such a fascinating blog post! At first I could not believe it was written in 2013. But the more I think about it, the less I understand what he is actually trying to say. Anyway, the point that we (erroneously) see less prestigious jobs as more automatable is spot-on

Re: AI doesn't replace white collar work

#93

Post by kevinh »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #84
pjmlp wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fallacy is to believe there is still a place for everyone.

If only someone could invent some kind of educational institution to teach people new skills! People could learn things and join the workforce! /s

Sure, you could go to an educational institution for 2-4 years and hope that your new job doesn't get automated away before you graduate.

Re: AI doesn't replace white collar work

#95

Post by Natfan »

brtkwr wrote: post #47

If your plan for humanity is to maintain the current number of jobs on one planet, sure, AI is a threat. But if you think we should be building civilisations beyond Earth, terraforming, mining the outer solar system, understanding the universe — then a 10x productivity gain per person isn't a disruption. It's barely enough to get started. We need 100x. 1000x. And we'll still be short-handed. The chain of operation ne…

slop comment. we've barely left our own planet, let alone the solar system

Re: AI doesn't replace white collar work

#96

Post by daxfohl »

est31 wrote: post #55

From my opinion, the block layoffs were a test, to see how a) a software company manages with only half of its employees now that there's powerful LLMs, and b) how the remaining employees react to the imminent threat of them being laid off as well. If block succeeds, we'll see more layoffs of that kind, probably even more extreme ones. You are not top senior level employee? Out. You don't single handedly cause 30% of…

I was there for three years. Every year a new top-level initiative, every year the new initiative failed to make a dent in the market. I think this shift was just an admission that the business is now in maintenance mode, harden up the existing cash cows and drop the new initiatives. That said, the existence of AI will impede hiring because if investors say "you should look into blub!", corp can say "our AI is already looking into it," rather than keeping extra humans on hand.

Re: AI doesn't replace white collar work

#97

Post by daxfohl »

keiferski wrote: post #75
ctoth wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn’t really matter how good AI systems get, that’s not going to change, and since most white collar work deals with these kinds of problems, there is little danger in it being replaced. Does the accounts payable team keep their jobs because their manager enjoys chatting with them? Does the junior analyst stay employed because the VP values their specific personal opinion on the Q3 revenue forecast? Note the a…

I wouldn’t frame it as “chatting with,” more like, corporations want people in certain roles to deal with things, more than they necessarily want just the results that said person gives. Depends on the job and situation of course. When you have X employee in a certain role, you know someone is “handling” a particular thing. With AI that isn’t really clear. Maybe you just get the same person owning the responsibilitie…

I think the word "entirely" is missing from the last line. A significant amount of white collar tasks are getting replaced, and eventually that leads to a need for fewer white collar employees, which subsequently also leads to less communication overhead and less of a need for humans in the loop to interpret subtleties, desires, etc. But that need will always be there at some level, or we'll have very intelligent AI agents that very intelligently blackmail your vendor's CEO because they have determined that to be the fastest way to get the TPS report you asked for. Humans still need to be there as guardrails at a minimum, but also because humans understand humans, and humans are your customers.

So yes, white collar jobs will be replaced, but they won't be replaced entirely.

Re: AI doesn't replace white collar work

#98

Post by pjmlp »

kypro wrote: post #57

Technology didn't replace agricultural workers either, but you'd think it did when you consider how few people work in agriculture as a share of the population today. By providing productivity tools you do effectively replace jobs because there's only so much of a good or service a person will want to consume. For example, just because a game dev studios can make 10x more games with AI, this doesn't mean the industry…

Except those manual labor jobs can eventually be covered by robots as well.

Re: AI doesn't replace white collar work

#99

Post by brtkwr »

Natfan wrote: post #95
brtkwr wrote: post #47

If your plan for humanity is to maintain the current number of jobs on one planet, sure, AI is a threat. But if you think we should be building civilisations beyond Earth, terraforming, mining the outer solar system, understanding the universe — then a 10x productivity gain per person isn't a disruption. It's barely enough to get started. We need 100x. 1000x. And we'll still be short-handed. The chain of operation ne…

slop comment. we've barely left our own planet, let alone the solar system

fair, lets leave space. even here on earth, 10x productivity gain from AI isn't enough. we're underresourced on problems we've had for centuries, e.g. poverty, disease, work/life balance and more recently climate, etc.

Re: AI doesn't replace white collar work

#100

Post by brtkwr »

pjmlp wrote: post #78
brtkwr wrote: post #47

If your plan for humanity is to maintain the current number of jobs on one planet, sure, AI is a threat. But if you think we should be building civilisations beyond Earth, terraforming, mining the outer solar system, understanding the universe — then a 10x productivity gain per person isn't a disruption. It's barely enough to get started. We need 100x. 1000x. And we'll still be short-handed. The chain of operation ne…

People still do press buttons, handle the few tasks still not available to robots, do maintenance as needed, it just happens they are now a fraction of what used to provide work to a whole village.

You are likely living in a bubble if you actually think this. Less than 2 billion people in the world have used AI chatbots, let alone frontier AI models of any kind. I much prefer the bicycle analogy for AI, its just a force multiplier.
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