8 ms·

As I see it, jobs fall on two axes: * Amount of training required (crystallized intelligence/ability) * Amount of intrinsic ability required (fluid intelligen

As I see it, jobs fall on two axes: * Amount of training required (crystallized intelligence/ability) * Amount of intrinsic ability required (fluid intelligence/ability) Some jobs require neither a huge amount of training nor inherent ability. These are paradoxically often hard to automate, because they typically require a lot of rote physical movements that are difficult for machines (e.g. fast food cook). There are few white collar jobs that fit into this category, since they’ve already been automated away. Some jobs require a lot of training but don’t require a huge amount of inherent ability. For example, after years of training, most anyone will have the skills to be an excellent truck driver. The tech equivalent would be a generic CRUD developer. These are the jobs most at risk for LLM automation. As I see it, a large proportion of white collar jobs fall into this category as well, and that’s where we’ll see the most economic disruption. Finally, some jobs require both training and ability. Regardless of how long and hard they train, most people will never be a professional athlete, because they simply lack the innate ability. The tech equivalent is something like a kernel developer or machine learning scientist. These jobs will be hardest to replace with an LLM, since they require totally novel ways of thinking that are not baked into the LLM’s training corpus. A lot of blue collar jobs are here as well: good electricians, plumbers, mechanics, contractors, etc. require both years of experience and a high level of intelligence, since every house/car/jobsite is different.

throwaway1777 4y ago
It’s always such a good idea to put things on multiple axes. I wonder if chatgpt would’ve had this insight or if it’s an example of something that would require some prompt engineering.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  au contrair -- Literally the first line of the widely known 2022 Big-Bench paper on large language models, with over 100 authors, says: Generative language models have as their core capability the production of the most likely continuation for a text sequence. This seemingly simple skill is remarkably general. Any task that can be specified and executed via text can be framed as text continuation. This encompasses a wide range of cognitive tasks, including tasks that can be resolved over chat or email, for example, or in a web forum.
  - xwdv 4y ago
    While those of us in the industry know this, this is not how it’s explained by most AI evangelists.
wslh 4y ago
It would be great to analyze this problem in a more data based way. It is also important to emphasize that this article talks about "affecting" but not about "losing". If it's only about affecting I would say that will affect almost all the workers in knowledge industries as Google affects everyone looking for searching on Internet. ChatGPT (and its variants and/or competitors) will (or are) as present in tooling as sending emails, chatting, etc. Some workers will be completely screwed (not only affected). For example, there are hundred thousands copywriters in the world they would be easily replaced by this technology. On a side note I just read the old article about "Pepsi's Nonsensical Logo Redesign Document: $1 Million for This?" [1]. The nonsensical is part of the title but not my pun. Another example is the "Just Do It" [2] Nike's slogan. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pepsis-nonsensical-logo-redesign-document-1-million-for-this/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pepsis-nonsensical-logo-redesig... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Do_It https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Do_It
hhmc 4y ago
This is a great comment, and the examples are compelling for the 3 quadrants you mentioned. But what about jobs with intrinsic ability required but not a lot of training -- I think something like bouncer/doorman might be an example of this -- but what would the white collar equivalent be? How automatable would those be?
- MontyCarloHall 4y ago
  That’s a rare category, since typically people who are naturally good at something challenging spend a lot of time doing it because it’s something they enjoy. The equivalent white collar job would be a savant who quickly masters new fields without significant effort, but again, said savants typically spend a lot of time on their field of expertise anyway. I suppose artists/musicians who have natural mastery of the canvas/instrument and thus don’t need to practice rote exercises much also fall into this category. BTW, I disagree that a bouncer falls into that category—they need to constantly physically train in the gym to maintain their physique.
- MontgomeryPi2 4y ago
  I'll offer up gifted salesperson. The kind who might not even fully understand say the tech they are selling but have innate skills at reading the room, knowing what to chase/drop, etc. It's not like they teach this in college, but the training is self taught over years I suppose.
  - G_z9 4y ago
    Why will we need to sell things to people if people have zero economic input/value?
    - astrange 4y ago
      It's impossible that people could have zero economic value. You'll notice that this is the premise of Atlas Shrugged. That's because it is usually profitable to trade with someone even if you are better at their job than they are. However even if the AIs only traded with themselves, that just means the people are left to trade with each other - you can't make a mass of people unemployed for long, they will simply employ each other.
lordnacho 4y ago
I think what's missing is an axis for humanness. There are jobs where the fact you're hiring a literal human actually matters. For one, humans can be responsible in a legal way. Pilots, various kinds of certification officials, accountants, lawyers. Two, being done by a human can be the very thing that makes the service worth buying. Masseurs, high class escorts, and butlers are all roles that machines can somewhat cater to, but the real thing is real because it's done by a person.
- CamelCaseName 4y ago
  But why should humans carry liability? Why not have a company (e.g. a self-driving car company) hold all the liability.
  - lordnacho 4y ago
    Thing I didn't mention is aligned incentives. "Pilot also wants to arrive safely so he can see his family."
    - ljlolel 4y ago
      true for pilots but not true for your other examples: "officials, accountants, lawyers"
      - lordnacho 4y ago
        But we've constructed other incentives for those people, like being allowed to keep your certification. What you say makes sense though, you should believe the pilot is in the same boat as you. Your lawyer... well there's a reason jokes about lawyers focus on why they screw over everyone else.
    - protomolecule 4y ago
      Unless he doesn't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525
ren_engineer 4y ago
UBI will pretty much be a requirement if AI lives up to the hype and doesn't hit a sudden wall in improvement again. And even physical jobs might not be safe considering transformers are being used for robotics now as well and getting great results https://twitter.com/DrJimFan/status/1640399269051133952 https://twitter.com/DrJimFan/status/1640399269051133952 basically we are heading towards utopia or dystopia, it will depend if governments actually share the wealth created by productivity gains or if they use these advancements to oppress people at a level never before possible
- Herval_freire 4y ago
  There's no raw data on ubi in an largely automated economy. It's too radical of a change to know how well it would work. Communism, in theory, worked as well too but in practice there were unanticipated side effects.
  - astrange 4y ago
    Automation increases employment. Technological unemployment is a myth. The purpose of a UBI isn't for workers whether they're unemployed by AI or not, it's for non-working household members like new parents, elderly and children. (Poverty is a household phenomenon, not an individual phenomenon.)
    - Herval_freire 4y ago
      >Automation increases employment. Technological unemployment is a myth. This is not true. It is historically true but every iteration of new technology changes society differently. You can't blindly rely on historical data you need to use common sense and logic as well. Historical data says nuclear bombs killed less people then cars. Therefore cars are more deadly then nuclear bombs. Does that work? No. It obviously doesn't. Just like you can't say that AI will cause a rise in employment. You're ignoring the common sense scenario. Can you even work out exactly what people will be employed as once AI takes over? Likely you don't, you're just being impractically data driven.
astrange 4y ago
> As I see it, jobs fall on two axes: This is an embedding of jobs into a 2-dimensional latent space, which always produces something, like those political compass memes. It's not an actual description of job requirements though because it loses a lot on the way. > Some jobs require neither a huge amount of training nor inherent ability. These are paradoxically often hard to automate, because they typically require a lot of rote physical movements that are difficult for machines (e.g. fast food cook). This is only paradoxical because you've defined your terms inappropriately. Fine motor control is an "inherent ability"; "inherent ability" is not a single number you can put on a graph. As Wittgenstein said, all philosophical problems are made up.
dieselgate 4y ago
Wow thanks a lot for giving the blue collar jobs some respect and realizing the variability of the project worked on. Most people on HN and in general seem to think it’s all bone head and monotonous work (which it can be but same for anything else) Edit- beyond that you make great points too

throwaway1777 4y ago

It’s always such a good idea to put things on multiple axes. I wonder if chatgpt would’ve had this insight or if it’s an example of something that would require some prompt engineering.

mistrial9 4y ago
au contrair -- Literally the first line of the widely known 2022 Big-Bench paper on large language models, with over 100 authors, says: Generative language models have as their core capability the production of the most likely continuation for a text sequence. This seemingly simple skill is remarkably general. Any task that can be specified and executed via text can be framed as text continuation. This encompasses a wide range of cognitive tasks, including tasks that can be resolved over chat or email, for example, or in a web forum.
- xwdv 4y ago
  While those of us in the industry know this, this is not how it’s explained by most AI evangelists.

wslh 4y ago

It would be great to analyze this problem in a more data based way. It is also important to emphasize that this article talks about "affecting" but not about "losing". If it's only about affecting I would say that will affect almost all the workers in knowledge industries as Google affects everyone looking for searching on Internet. ChatGPT (and its variants and/or competitors) will (or are) as present in tooling as sending emails, chatting, etc. Some workers will be completely screwed (not only affected). For example, there are hundred thousands copywriters in the world they would be easily replaced by this technology. On a side note I just read the old article about "Pepsi's Nonsensical Logo Redesign Document: $1 Million for This?" [1]. The nonsensical is part of the title but not my pun. Another example is the "Just Do It" [2] Nike's slogan. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pepsis-nonsensical-logo-redesign-document-1-million-for-this/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pepsis-nonsensical-logo-redesig... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Do_It https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Do_It

hhmc 4y ago

This is a great comment, and the examples are compelling for the 3 quadrants you mentioned. But what about jobs with intrinsic ability required but not a lot of training -- I think something like bouncer/doorman might be an example of this -- but what would the white collar equivalent be? How automatable would those be?

MontyCarloHall 4y ago
That’s a rare category, since typically people who are naturally good at something challenging spend a lot of time doing it because it’s something they enjoy. The equivalent white collar job would be a savant who quickly masters new fields without significant effort, but again, said savants typically spend a lot of time on their field of expertise anyway. I suppose artists/musicians who have natural mastery of the canvas/instrument and thus don’t need to practice rote exercises much also fall into this category. BTW, I disagree that a bouncer falls into that category—they need to constantly physically train in the gym to maintain their physique.
MontgomeryPi2 4y ago
I'll offer up gifted salesperson. The kind who might not even fully understand say the tech they are selling but have innate skills at reading the room, knowing what to chase/drop, etc. It's not like they teach this in college, but the training is self taught over years I suppose.
- G_z9 4y ago
  Why will we need to sell things to people if people have zero economic input/value?
  - astrange 4y ago
    It's impossible that people could have zero economic value. You'll notice that this is the premise of Atlas Shrugged. That's because it is usually profitable to trade with someone even if you are better at their job than they are. However even if the AIs only traded with themselves, that just means the people are left to trade with each other - you can't make a mass of people unemployed for long, they will simply employ each other.

lordnacho 4y ago

I think what's missing is an axis for humanness. There are jobs where the fact you're hiring a literal human actually matters. For one, humans can be responsible in a legal way. Pilots, various kinds of certification officials, accountants, lawyers. Two, being done by a human can be the very thing that makes the service worth buying. Masseurs, high class escorts, and butlers are all roles that machines can somewhat cater to, but the real thing is real because it's done by a person.

CamelCaseName 4y ago
But why should humans carry liability? Why not have a company (e.g. a self-driving car company) hold all the liability.
- lordnacho 4y ago
  Thing I didn't mention is aligned incentives. "Pilot also wants to arrive safely so he can see his family."
  - ljlolel 4y ago
    true for pilots but not true for your other examples: "officials, accountants, lawyers"
    - lordnacho 4y ago
      But we've constructed other incentives for those people, like being allowed to keep your certification. What you say makes sense though, you should believe the pilot is in the same boat as you. Your lawyer... well there's a reason jokes about lawyers focus on why they screw over everyone else.
  - protomolecule 4y ago
    Unless he doesn't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525

ren_engineer 4y ago

UBI will pretty much be a requirement if AI lives up to the hype and doesn't hit a sudden wall in improvement again. And even physical jobs might not be safe considering transformers are being used for robotics now as well and getting great results https://twitter.com/DrJimFan/status/1640399269051133952 https://twitter.com/DrJimFan/status/1640399269051133952 basically we are heading towards utopia or dystopia, it will depend if governments actually share the wealth created by productivity gains or if they use these advancements to oppress people at a level never before possible

Herval_freire 4y ago
There's no raw data on ubi in an largely automated economy. It's too radical of a change to know how well it would work. Communism, in theory, worked as well too but in practice there were unanticipated side effects.
- astrange 4y ago
  Automation increases employment. Technological unemployment is a myth. The purpose of a UBI isn't for workers whether they're unemployed by AI or not, it's for non-working household members like new parents, elderly and children. (Poverty is a household phenomenon, not an individual phenomenon.)
  - Herval_freire 4y ago
    >Automation increases employment. Technological unemployment is a myth. This is not true. It is historically true but every iteration of new technology changes society differently. You can't blindly rely on historical data you need to use common sense and logic as well. Historical data says nuclear bombs killed less people then cars. Therefore cars are more deadly then nuclear bombs. Does that work? No. It obviously doesn't. Just like you can't say that AI will cause a rise in employment. You're ignoring the common sense scenario. Can you even work out exactly what people will be employed as once AI takes over? Likely you don't, you're just being impractically data driven.

astrange 4y ago

> As I see it, jobs fall on two axes: This is an embedding of jobs into a 2-dimensional latent space, which always produces something, like those political compass memes. It's not an actual description of job requirements though because it loses a lot on the way. > Some jobs require neither a huge amount of training nor inherent ability. These are paradoxically often hard to automate, because they typically require a lot of rote physical movements that are difficult for machines (e.g. fast food cook). This is only paradoxical because you've defined your terms inappropriately. Fine motor control is an "inherent ability"; "inherent ability" is not a single number you can put on a graph. As Wittgenstein said, all philosophical problems are made up.

dieselgate 4y ago

Wow thanks a lot for giving the blue collar jobs some respect and realizing the variability of the project worked on. Most people on HN and in general seem to think it’s all bone head and monotonous work (which it can be but same for anything else) Edit- beyond that you make great points too