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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

#961

Post by noisy_boy »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #544
tdeck wrote: post #416

Maybe someone can help me wrap my head around this in a different way, because here's how I see it. If these tools are really making people so productive, shouldn't it be painfully obvious in companies' output? For example, if these AI coding tools were an amazing productivity boost in the end, we'd expect to see software companies shipping features and fixes faster than ever before. There would be a huge burst in in…

Regarding the impact of LLMs on non-programming tasks, check out this one: https://www.ft.com/content/4f20fbb9-a10f-4a08-9a13-efa1b55dd... > The bank [Goldman Sachs] now has 11,000 engineers among its 46,000 employees, according to [CEO David] Solomon, and is using AI to help draft public filing documents. > The work of drafting an S1 — the initial registration prospectus for an IPO — might have taken a six-person te…

I mean that's such a text heavy area anyway. I am not an expert in filing S1 but won't a lot of it be more or less boilerplate + customisations specific to the offering? Any reasonably advanced model should be able to take you a good chunk of the way. Then iterate with a verifier type model + a few people to review; even with iterations that should definitely shorten the overall time. It seems like such a perfect use case for an LLM - what am I missing that is hidden in the scepticism of the sibling comments?

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

#962

Post by noisy_boy »

sram1337 wrote: post #407
qgin wrote: post #406

I often see people say “AI can’t do ALL of my job, so that means my job is safe. But what this means at scale, over time, is that if AI can do 80% of your job, AI will do 80% of your job. The remaining 20% human-work part will be consolidated and become the full time job of 20% of the original headcount while the remaining 80% of the people get fired. AI does not need to do 100% of any job (as that job is defined tod…

...or your job goes from commanding a $200k/yr salary to $60k/yr. Hopefully that's enough to pay your mortgage.

I am more worried about the resultant breakdown of the social order due to the social pressures and hopelessness and it's ramifications. Which next-bonus-cycle CEOs don't give a shit about. UBI is just talk (which few are talking) and even that has issues.

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

#963

Post by asah »

abracadaniel wrote: post #86
ben_w wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game theory/Nash equilibrium/Prisoner's Dilemma, and the turkey's perspective in the problem of induction. So far, for any given automation, each actor gets to cut their own costs to their benefit — and if they do this smarter than anyone else, they win the market for a bit. Every day the turkey lives, they get a bit more evidence the farmer is an endless source of free food that only wants the best for them. It's ea…

My long term fear with AI is that by replacing entry level jobs, it breaks the path to train senior level employees. It could take a couple of decades to really feel the heat from it, but could lead to massive collapse as no one is left with any understanding of how existing systems work, or how to design replacements.

I've heard this fear for decades about COBOL programmers, and yet I don't see this bubbling up except higher costs.

If there's a shortage, in the free market, humans will retrain.

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

#964

Post by tim333 »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #892
tim333 wrote: post #885

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like all the farmers soil shoveling jobs were stolen by tractors. People moved on to more interesting things.

In all previous such revolutions, humans were freed to do more productive work while the cost of goods came down. But that doesn’t mean the same is true this time. Now the revolution does not make physical tasks easier (like ploughing or spinning thread) but intellectual labor. This time, there are no jobs to go to, since those jobs are also done by AI.

There are still interacting with other humans jobs.

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

#965

Post by qgin »

noisy_boy wrote: post #962
sram1337 wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...or your job goes from commanding a $200k/yr salary to $60k/yr. Hopefully that's enough to pay your mortgage.

I am more worried about the resultant breakdown of the social order due to the social pressures and hopelessness and it's ramifications. Which next-bonus-cycle CEOs don't give a shit about. UBI is just talk (which few are talking) and even that has issues.

Currently the United States is in the process of making Medicaid and SNAP / food stamps contingent on being employed.

We’re further from UBI than we’ve ever been.

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

#966

Post by tim333 »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #729
tim333 wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Four years into people mocking "we'll have self driving cars next year" while they are on the street daily driving around SF.

Yes, but ... The argument that self-driving cars should be allowed on public roads as long as they are statistically as safe as human drivers (on average) seems valid, but of course none of these cars have AGI... they perform well in the anticipated simulator conditions in which they were trained (as long as they have the necessary sensors, e.g. Waymo's lidar, to read the environment in reliable fashion), but will no…

Well, it depends on the details. I'd trust a Waymo as much as an Uber but I'm pretty skeptical of the Tesla stuff they are launching in Austin.

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

#969

Post by acquisitionsilk »

pera wrote: post #632
topspin wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"shouldn't it be painfully obvious in companies' output?" No. The bottleneck isn't intellectual productivity. The bottleneck is a legion of other things; regulation, IP law, marketing, etc. The executive email writers and meeting attenders have a swarm of business considerations ricocheting around in their heads in eternal battle with each other. It takes a lot of supposedly brilliant thinking to safely monetize all…

Bullshit: Chatbots are not failing to demonstrate a tangible increase in companies' output because of regulations and IP law, they are failing because they are still not good for the job. LLMs only exist because the companies developing them are so ridiculously powerful that can completely ignore the rule of law, or if necessary even change it (as they are currently trying to do here in Europe). Remember we are talki…

Piracy when the local pleb does it, brilliancy when the new VC-fat wunderkind does it

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

#970

Post by gibbitz »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #879
oblio wrote: post #851

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Spoken like middle management. If a knowledge worker is only putting in 4 hours they're either mismanaged or dead weight. Fire their manager and see if they are more effective, if not, then let them go. As a developer I routinely work 9 hour days without lunch and so do the others on my team and most people I've worked with as a developer. Myths like the 10% developer and lazy 4 hour knowledge workers are like the myth of the welfare queen. We really need to be more aware that when we complain about 5% of people that it becomes 100% to those outside of the field.
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