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

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

#951

Post by darthwalsh »

coffeefirst wrote: post #215
monero-xmr wrote: post #4

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_auto... It wasn’t just Elon. The hype train on self driving cars was extreme only a few years ago, pre-LLM. Self driving cars exist sort of, in a few cities. Quibble all you want but it appears to me that “uber driver” is still a popular widespread job, let alone truck driver, bus driver, and “car owner” itself. I really wish the AI ceos would actually make my l…

You know what I want? A LM that navigates customer support phone trees for me. If you want to waste my time with an automated nonsense we should at least even the playing field. This is feasible with today’s technology.

Sounds like Google Duplex, but I guess they never expanded the tech beyond restaurant reservations.

But on my Pixel now, on some phone trees it shows a UI with numbers and choices, and even predicts ahead for the other choices so you aren't forced to wait. Very handy!

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

#952

Post by monkeyelite »

tim333 wrote: post #884
monkeyelite wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think of skeptics who dismissed the exponential growth of covid19 cases due to their initial low numbers. But that didn’t happen. All of the people like pg who drew these accelerating graphs were wrong. In fact, I think just about every commenter on COVID was wrong about what would happen in the early months regardless of political angle.

I remember scientists, especially epidemiologists being quite accurate. I guess the key is to not even have a political angle but instead some knowledge of what you are talking about.

I don’t remember that. How do you explain the total collapse of public trust in science and medical institutions?

Try revisiting their content from spring of 2020 (flatten the curve, wild death predictions, etc).

> I guess the key is to not even have a political angle

It’s a fantasy to imagine technical knowledge allows you to transcend the political and 2020 only reinforced that.

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

#953

Post by casualscience »

bojan wrote: post #685
casualscience wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In big companies, this is a bit slower due to the need to migrate entrenched systems and org charts into newer workflows, but I think you are seeing more productivity there too. Where this is much more obvious is in indie games and software where small agile teams can adopt new ways of working quickly... E.g. look at the indie games count on steam by year: https://steamdb.info/stats/releases/?tagid=492

The number of critically acclaimed games remains the same though. So for now we're getting quantity, but not the quality.

source?

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

#954

Post by casualscience »

kaibee wrote: post #903
casualscience wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In big companies, this is a bit slower due to the need to migrate entrenched systems and org charts into newer workflows, but I think you are seeing more productivity there too. Where this is much more obvious is in indie games and software where small agile teams can adopt new ways of working quickly... E.g. look at the indie games count on steam by year: https://steamdb.info/stats/releases/?tagid=492

Has the amount of 95%+ reviews games-released increased though? And how much of that is due to the pandemic? Its anecdotal, but the game-dev discord I'm in has had a decent reduction in # of regulars since the tail end of the pandemic 24-25. And ironically, I was one of them until recently. I think people actually just had more time.

95 is a pretty random cutoff. But you can see for yourself the number of 65%, 75%,85%,90% positively reviewed games has increased similarly: https://steamdb.info/instantsearch/?refinementList%5Btags%5D...

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

#955

Post by Auracle »

tim333 wrote: post #664
LeonB wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Washing machines created a revolution where we could now expend 1/10th of the human labour to wash the same amount of clothes as before. We now have more than 10 times as much clothes to wash. I don’t know if it’s induced demand, revealed preference or Jevon’s paradox, maybe all 3.

I saw some research once that the hours women spend doing housework hasn't changed. I think because human nature, not anything to do with the tech.

That's nonsense. It used to take women a full workday per week just to wash clothes.

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

#956

Post by mucha »

ivape wrote: post #590
badsectoracula wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Take something like JIRA, it's entirely laughable because a simple LLM can handle entire project management with freaking voice with zero programming When I used a not-so-simple LLM to make it act as a text adventure game it could barely keep track of the items in my inventory, so TBH i am a little bit skeptical that an LLM can handle entire project management - even without voice. Perhaps it might be able to use t…

There are innovative ways to accomplish the consistency you seek for the example application you mentioned. They are coming a lot sooner than you think, but hey this thread is a bit of a poker game before the flop, I’m just placing my bet - you can call the bluff. We just have to wait for the cards to flip, and that’s happening on a quadratic curve (some say exponential).

Free beer tomorrow.

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

#957

Post by jjani »

hansmayer wrote: post #709
jjani wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet we're what? 5 years into "AI will replace programmers in 6 months"? Realistically, we're 2.5 years into it at most.

No, the hype cycle started around 2019, slowly at first. The technology this is built with is more like 20 years old, so no, we are not 2.5 years at most really.

If you can quote anyone well-known saying we'd be replacing programmers in 6 months back in 2019, I'd be interested to read it.

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

#958

Post by bayareapsycho »

My last company (F50, ass engineering culture, pretends to be a tech company) went and fired all of the juniors at a certain level because "AI"

The funny part is, most of those juniors were hired in 2022-2024, and they were better hires because of the harsher market. There were a bunch of "senior engineers" who were borderline useless and joined some time between 2018-2021

I just think it's kind of funny to fire the useful people and keep the more expensive ones around who try to do more "managerial" work and have more family obligations. Smart companies do the opposite

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

#959

Post by laughing_man »

jameslk wrote: post #512
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…

Keynes suggested that by 2030, we’d be working 15 hour workweeks, with the rest of the time used for leisure. Instead, we chose consumption, and helicopter money gave us bullshit jobs so we could keep buying more bullshit. This is fairly evident by the fact when the helicopter money runs out, all the bullshit jobs get cut. AI may give us more efficiency, but it will be filled with more bullshit jobs and consumption,…

It's more likely 15% of the workforce will have jobs. They'll be working eighty hour weeks and making just enough to keep them from leaving.

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

#960

Post by laughing_man »

ireadmevs wrote: post #636
kergonath wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was extrapolating, as well. Going from children in the mines to the welfare state in a generation was quite something. Unfortunately, progress slowed down significantly for many reasons but I don’t think we should really blame Keynes for this. > We live in a time that the working class is unbelievably brainwashed and manipulated. I think it has always been that way. Looking through history, there are many examples…

There’s no middle class. You either have to work for a living or you don’t.

That's reductive. The middle class in the US commonly describes people who have access to goods and services in moderation. You aren't poor just because you can't retire.
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