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White-collar AI apocalypse narrative is just another bullshit

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Re: White-collar AI apocalypse narrative is just another bullshit

#91

Post by windward »

guzfip wrote: post #80
windward wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I get to continue the hedonistic life without having to plan for a long slaughter? That's not such a bad way to go.

No you don’t get the hedonistic life. The turkey gets a hedonistic life because its value is in its consumption. It’s worth more to its owner fattened up as much as possible. You on the other hand, are not bred to be consumed. And in fact the fatter you are, the more expensive and less useful you become. So what you get is more likely starvation, if you aren’t culled to free resources.

The fatter I am, the more capital I have. History bodes well for capital in times of peace.

Re: White-collar AI apocalypse narrative is just another bullshit

#92

Post by lelanthran »

mjd wrote: post #88
lelanthran wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every company I have ever worked for has wanted to produce more better stuff to sell for more money. So has every company I've ever been in, but at the same time, there problem was never production, it was always sales. No company I have ever been in had the problem of "demand is so large that even if we double output we still cannot satisfy it". Both things are true at the same time - companies want to produce mor…

In companies I've worked for, Sales has often come to management saying things like: * I couldn't sell our product because our competitor's has a certain feature. How soon can we have that feature? * I can't make any new sales, but prospective customers keep telling me they need a solution for a similar problem. Could we expanded our product line? * Some customers could be using a certain feature of our product, but…

I'm currently in the sales channel, and all customers say things like this, then back off the minute a quote is sent through. It's so common it's even easy to spot now:

1. When a manager at some client says "How much will it costs us for you to add $FOO to the product?" I don't even bother updating the sales forecast with the quote I send them.

2. When they say "How soon can we have this?", that's when I actually update the sales forecasts.

So if your sales guys are saying "Look, customer said they'd go with us if only we had $FOO", they're failing the Mom Test[1] - the person they spoke just didn't want to be too negative, didn't know how to say "No" to a charming and likeable person[2], etc.

Sales is a function of the demand in the market. When the demand is (for example) 200 units/m of something, doubling your output does not let you sell 400 units/m.

Also, it sounds that your argument is for software products only, which is a tiny part of the economy. I was really talking about companies that sell non-software products/services - their sales is not limited by software development, it's limited by their market reach.

Even if those companies doubled their developer headcount, it'll have pretty much zero impact on revenue.

I mean, look, I can see you're arguing in good faith here, so I'm trying to do the same, but IME productivity simply doesn't have any effect on revenue, all it can do is lower costs.

----------------

[1] This is such a short and valuable read, that I recommend it to everyone I meet who is trying to do sales.

[2] If you're not charming or likeable, then you shouldn't be in sales in the first place.

Re: White-collar AI apocalypse narrative is just another bullshit

#93

Post by lelanthran »

aurareturn wrote: post #62
gloxkiqcza wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some ways AI sounds almost utopian. I theory it could redistribute manpower more evenly between small and large businesses, allowing them to compete more fairly and improving the efficiency of capitalism (the idealistic model, not the real world state). However, than you remember that the AI tech is currently almost fully in control by the big tech (and its next generation) and you have to ask whether they’ll be a…

Whoever has compute, will have the power. This is why big tech is plowing $1t into data center capex in 2026. Disclaimer: I'm an AI compute investor.

> Whoever has compute, will have the power.

Nonsense. There's a temporary shortage, but even with the shortage it's still a commodity.

Re: White-collar AI apocalypse narrative is just another bullshit

#94

Post by rspoerri »

wilkystyle wrote: post #87
rspoerri wrote: post #32

People tend to forget how fast technological development advances. Even if you lived trough it you tend to forget how recently the world looked very different. - before 2012 there was no smartphone - before 2001 there was no wikipedia - before 1995 less then 10 percent of the rich country home users had internet - before 2023 there was no ai available to home users. Hardware has been getting faster by a factor of 100…

Technology advances quickly, but the apocalypse narrative is still bullshit. The reality is much closer to what it has always been: technological advances are a way to enhance what humans can do, not replace them. Being adaptable and adopting a spirit of learning and growth is (as it always has been) a key factor in a successful career trajectory. Through a sufficiently narrow lens, any technological advancement can…

Why is it an apocalypse if people don't have jobs anymore? Why is it an apocalypse if the most intelligent being in the world isn't a human anymore.

It will be a major change, but only to people that see it as a thread to their existence - to not work anymore - are in real danger. There are tons of people in our society that are fine without working. We could tend to our children, we could tend to our elders. We could do arts and improve our world instead of competing and being better then others.

Re: White-collar AI apocalypse narrative is just another bullshit

#95

Post by _DeadFred_ »

rspoerri wrote: post #94
wilkystyle wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology advances quickly, but the apocalypse narrative is still bullshit. The reality is much closer to what it has always been: technological advances are a way to enhance what humans can do, not replace them. Being adaptable and adopting a spirit of learning and growth is (as it always has been) a key factor in a successful career trajectory. Through a sufficiently narrow lens, any technological advancement can…

Why is it an apocalypse if people don't have jobs anymore? Why is it an apocalypse if the most intelligent being in the world isn't a human anymore. It will be a major change, but only to people that see it as a thread to their existence - to not work anymore - are in real danger. There are tons of people in our society that are fine without working. We could tend to our children, we could tend to our elders. We coul…

Because all signs right now are pointing to new locked in systems of control instead of shared prosperity. These companies were supposedly non-profits who were supposedly deep thinking on improving things but they can't even get a basic narrative/philosophy out of how things will improve and have instead pivoted to for profit.

Our systems of power are locked in caveman style thought and don't seem capable of creating something new, just applying new tech to very very old, very coercive systems of power. Gone are the techno optimist days replaced by the tech companies with enshitification with them explicitly stating you will live worse so that they can have more profit, and that if there is nothing you can do to stop them, they will cater to their worst instincts.

Re: White-collar AI apocalypse narrative is just another bullshit

#96

Post by fastforwardius »

aurareturn wrote: post #15

Let's suppose you are a medium sized business. You've always wanted to provide top quality customer service but couldn't do it before because you'd need to hire 5 people to do it right. Instead, you strategically decided to not provide quality customer service and sell the product at a lower price than competitors. So you have no customer service person in the company. Service is bad. It limits growth. But it was str…

Or more likely - you are a large business.

You provide customer support but think it's just a cost center so you happily reduce workforce by 90% and count on AI to cover the workload.

The non-trivial cases end up with the remaining workforce. They get burned out, but luckily there is plenty of people looking for any job.

Re: White-collar AI apocalypse narrative is just another bullshit

#97

Post by danaris »

rspoerri wrote: post #32

People tend to forget how fast technological development advances. Even if you lived trough it you tend to forget how recently the world looked very different. - before 2012 there was no smartphone - before 2001 there was no wikipedia - before 1995 less then 10 percent of the rich country home users had internet - before 2023 there was no ai available to home users. Hardware has been getting faster by a factor of 100…

But we also hit serious diminishing returns effects—in the last decade for hardware, in the last 2-3 years for LLMs.

Just because things have advanced in leaps and bounds for X amount of time does not mean they will continue to do so at the same (or increasing) rates indefinitely.

The problem is that just what will end up being the thing that advances dramatically in the next few years is often very unpredictable, especially if one is looking at surface-level trends over the last few years.

Given what we, who have a better understanding of them than "wow, look how far they've come since 2018", can see, LLMs seem unlikely to advance by another 100x over the next several years. Frankly, another 100% seems unlikely. (Though of course, quantifying LLM performance is a tricky proposition to begin with...it is, to a large extent, a qualitative endeavor.)

Re: White-collar AI apocalypse narrative is just another bullshit

#98

Post by sifar »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #95
rspoerri wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it an apocalypse if people don't have jobs anymore? Why is it an apocalypse if the most intelligent being in the world isn't a human anymore. It will be a major change, but only to people that see it as a thread to their existence - to not work anymore - are in real danger. There are tons of people in our society that are fine without working. We could tend to our children, we could tend to our elders. We coul…

Because all signs right now are pointing to new locked in systems of control instead of shared prosperity. These companies were supposedly non-profits who were supposedly deep thinking on improving things but they can't even get a basic narrative/philosophy out of how things will improve and have instead pivoted to for profit. Our systems of power are locked in caveman style thought and don't seem capable of creating…

Right. Technology is more distributed, empowering for the individual, however the power that wields it is stuck in a more feudalistic mindset and so we get this weird state where technological advancements seem more dystopian.

Re: White-collar AI apocalypse narrative is just another bullshit

#99

Post by ctoth »

wilkystyle wrote: post #87
rspoerri wrote: post #32

People tend to forget how fast technological development advances. Even if you lived trough it you tend to forget how recently the world looked very different. - before 2012 there was no smartphone - before 2001 there was no wikipedia - before 1995 less then 10 percent of the rich country home users had internet - before 2023 there was no ai available to home users. Hardware has been getting faster by a factor of 100…

Technology advances quickly, but the apocalypse narrative is still bullshit. The reality is much closer to what it has always been: technological advances are a way to enhance what humans can do, not replace them. Being adaptable and adopting a spirit of learning and growth is (as it always has been) a key factor in a successful career trajectory. Through a sufficiently narrow lens, any technological advancement can…

Okay. So you talk to your personal math tutor and you learn math. That the AI knows. Are you gonna get paid to use that? I don't understand "there is a machine which will teach you everything, so you'll be fine" when "there is a machine that will teach you everything and will work cheaper than you" is also true. Please explain?

Re: White-collar AI apocalypse narrative is just another bullshit

#100

Post by ctoth »

rspoerri wrote: post #94
wilkystyle wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology advances quickly, but the apocalypse narrative is still bullshit. The reality is much closer to what it has always been: technological advances are a way to enhance what humans can do, not replace them. Being adaptable and adopting a spirit of learning and growth is (as it always has been) a key factor in a successful career trajectory. Through a sufficiently narrow lens, any technological advancement can…

Why is it an apocalypse if people don't have jobs anymore? Why is it an apocalypse if the most intelligent being in the world isn't a human anymore. It will be a major change, but only to people that see it as a thread to their existence - to not work anymore - are in real danger. There are tons of people in our society that are fine without working. We could tend to our children, we could tend to our elders. We coul…

Every real-world example of material needs being met without economic competition (dorms, retirement communities, high school) produces vicious social hierarchies, not enlightenment." But this's a full blog post, someday, not an HN comment. Just for now realize that Star Trek is probably actually high school hell if you think about it for five minutes.
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