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And how will it achieve this? By eliminating jobs of course. McKinsey’s study found that generative AI and other technologies could automate work activiti

And how will it achieve this? By eliminating jobs of course. McKinsey’s study found that generative AI and other technologies could automate work activities that currently take up 60 to 70 percent of employees’ time. Who knew that 60 to 70 percent of employee's time was mostly just BS that could be easily automated by a BS generator?

BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
I did? A lot of people did? David Graeber (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs) did?
- 2devnull 3y ago
  Writing books that mean nothing to anyone of import; the ultimate bullshit job!
mo_42 3y ago
> And how will it achieve this? By eliminating jobs of course. For now, probably only white collar workers. It’s probably good if those jobs go away. Then, we need to think how to compensate those people. Capital is not evenly distributed so no compensation will just drive profits and this will not end up in the pockets of most people. I'd say the employer has to keep paying salaries for some time to let people acquire new skills.
- adventured 3y ago
  Compensate white collar workers? I don't think so. They get the same tough love that blue collar workers have been getting for over a century with each machine innovation that upended their lives. Learn to do plumbing.
  - 2devnull 3y ago
    “Learn to do plumbing.” No. There’s a union to prevent that thankfully. Don’t make this the problem of plumbers or other high paid tradespeople. Become a cop. They get high pay and they need more people desperately.
seydor 3y ago
TBF it is true. but that doesnt mean that those employees will be fired, hopefully they will be assigned to something less bullshitty. E.g. for people in academia i am sure it has removed a lot of 'bs job time' already
- nathan_compton 3y ago
  I'm in academia and the fact is that for anything not well represented in its training data, even GPT4 is next to useless.
  - seydor 3y ago
    it s been great for formatting reports etc. i find it very useful
    - nathan_compton 3y ago
      I've tried using it for correcting drafts but I've caught it not faithfully reproducing text too many times to trust it.
      - seydor 3y ago
        correcting things is obviously not it strength. but it can easily convert a bullet list to an article
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  Or maybe they'll be assigned to something even more bullshitty or just more menial.
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  > TBF it is true. but that doesnt mean that those employees will be fired, hopefully they will be assigned to something less bullshitty. I think that people miss that headcount will just stop increasing first, everyone is looking for mass layoffs and miss that other component. I don't have a problem with that. Just find it interesting that people who would have a problem with it aren't considering it.
idopmstuff 3y ago
I don't think it's reasonable to say that just because something can be automated via AI that it's BS. I've used AI to write some scripts that automate a bunch of tasks that involve pulling data from different sources and putting them into a Google Sheet for reporting purposes for an ecommerce business I own. Is reporting on the financial reporting of my business BS? Also, this study is about future gains coming from AI, so even if you take the very cynical position that LLMs/generative AI are nothing but "BS generators" today, unless you have good reason to believe that they will not improve in quality, that's not really a good basis on which to judge their future applications.
- jqpabc123 3y ago
  unless you have good reason to believe that they will not improve in quality I do. These LLMs can't tell facts from BS now. With LLMs starting to generate ever more BS, going forward it will only become harder to tell the difference --- for both them and us. What do you think will happen when LLMs start sucking in each others BS from the internet? I don't think it's possible for this sort of global BS feedback loop to produce an improvement in quality.
  - idopmstuff 3y ago
    > These LLMs can't tell facts from BS now. I think this is severely overstated as a problem that would prevent LLMs from being useful. LLMs generate BS if you use them like a search engine, but there are lots of use cases where they don't. Need to summarize a document or rephrase something in a different tone? Hallucination is really a non-issue. I've used LLMs to write scripts - while hallucination does happen, it's a situation where I can easily validate that the scripts are doing what I would expect, so hallucination isn't a serious issue.
    - MattPalmer1086 3y ago
      Exactly. There are many, many cases where AI significantly speeds up doing something. I've already used it productively for writing code, understanding how to set up new tech, summarising documents and academic papers, and writing clearer text. And I'm not a power user at all. So this will result in fewer existing jobs, and the productivity of the remaining jobs must increase. And some new jobs will be created along the way.
furyofantares 3y ago
> Who knew that 60 to 70 percent of employee's time was mostly just BS that could be easily automated by a BS generator? I feel like most office work being BS has been in the zeitgeist since before Dilbert was popular for sure. And part of why The Office works so well as a sitcom environment is we don't expect anyone to do any work there.
TeMPOraL 3y ago
> Who knew that 60 to 70 percent of employee's time was mostly just BS A lot of it is software industry's fault. Think back to all those office jobs that got eliminated by software in the past 50 years. Like secretaries, in-house art departments, ${whatever the people distributing internal memos around the office were called}, etc. The jobs may be gone, but their tasks didn't disappear. Instead, they were smeared out over the remaining workforce. How much time a week each of us spends on trying to sync up meetings with different teams, writing reports, preparing slides, managing our mailbox and calendar - or all the other tasks that are not the actual thing we are specialized in? All those things were done by in-house specialists, and like with all specialized jobs, those people were much more efficient at it. Now, they're gone, while we're left doing their jobs on top of our own, and suffering a huge context-switching penalty on top of it. I'm increasingly convinced that most of the savings software brought to office work is just an accounting trick. The secretaries, in-house graphics teams, etc. all took salaries, which were clearly visible on company balance sheets. In comes the software, out these people go, their responsibilities get distributed between all the remaining employees - suddenly, the salaries for those specialists disappear from the balance sheets, while the company... it feels like it experiences an unexplained, broad productivity drop. A great mystery. Is it because Feds are messing with interest rates? Is it because some "cost diseases"? Who knows? Doesn't matter - it looks like a global thing, so it doesn't show on the balance sheets. If Large Language Models are going to automate away all those BS tasks we've been doing, what's really happening is that they're finally materializing the gains that regular office software promised to deliver, while it in fact made things worse. (Exercise for the reader: based on the above, think about websites and apps enabling "self-service", and consider if, as individuals, we're really gaining much by being made to do for free the work that used to be someone else's job.)

BugsJustFindMe 3y ago

I did? A lot of people did? David Graeber (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs) did?

2devnull 3y ago
Writing books that mean nothing to anyone of import; the ultimate bullshit job!

mo_42 3y ago

> And how will it achieve this? By eliminating jobs of course. For now, probably only white collar workers. It’s probably good if those jobs go away. Then, we need to think how to compensate those people. Capital is not evenly distributed so no compensation will just drive profits and this will not end up in the pockets of most people. I'd say the employer has to keep paying salaries for some time to let people acquire new skills.

adventured 3y ago
Compensate white collar workers? I don't think so. They get the same tough love that blue collar workers have been getting for over a century with each machine innovation that upended their lives. Learn to do plumbing.
- 2devnull 3y ago
  “Learn to do plumbing.” No. There’s a union to prevent that thankfully. Don’t make this the problem of plumbers or other high paid tradespeople. Become a cop. They get high pay and they need more people desperately.

seydor 3y ago

TBF it is true. but that doesnt mean that those employees will be fired, hopefully they will be assigned to something less bullshitty. E.g. for people in academia i am sure it has removed a lot of 'bs job time' already

nathan_compton 3y ago
I'm in academia and the fact is that for anything not well represented in its training data, even GPT4 is next to useless.
- seydor 3y ago
  it s been great for formatting reports etc. i find it very useful
  - nathan_compton 3y ago
    I've tried using it for correcting drafts but I've caught it not faithfully reproducing text too many times to trust it.
    - seydor 3y ago
      correcting things is obviously not it strength. but it can easily convert a bullet list to an article
AlexandrB 3y ago
Or maybe they'll be assigned to something even more bullshitty or just more menial.
yieldcrv 3y ago
> TBF it is true. but that doesnt mean that those employees will be fired, hopefully they will be assigned to something less bullshitty. I think that people miss that headcount will just stop increasing first, everyone is looking for mass layoffs and miss that other component. I don't have a problem with that. Just find it interesting that people who would have a problem with it aren't considering it.

idopmstuff 3y ago

I don't think it's reasonable to say that just because something can be automated via AI that it's BS. I've used AI to write some scripts that automate a bunch of tasks that involve pulling data from different sources and putting them into a Google Sheet for reporting purposes for an ecommerce business I own. Is reporting on the financial reporting of my business BS? Also, this study is about future gains coming from AI, so even if you take the very cynical position that LLMs/generative AI are nothing but "BS generators" today, unless you have good reason to believe that they will not improve in quality, that's not really a good basis on which to judge their future applications.

jqpabc123 3y ago
unless you have good reason to believe that they will not improve in quality I do. These LLMs can't tell facts from BS now. With LLMs starting to generate ever more BS, going forward it will only become harder to tell the difference --- for both them and us. What do you think will happen when LLMs start sucking in each others BS from the internet? I don't think it's possible for this sort of global BS feedback loop to produce an improvement in quality.
- idopmstuff 3y ago
  > These LLMs can't tell facts from BS now. I think this is severely overstated as a problem that would prevent LLMs from being useful. LLMs generate BS if you use them like a search engine, but there are lots of use cases where they don't. Need to summarize a document or rephrase something in a different tone? Hallucination is really a non-issue. I've used LLMs to write scripts - while hallucination does happen, it's a situation where I can easily validate that the scripts are doing what I would expect, so hallucination isn't a serious issue.
  - MattPalmer1086 3y ago
    Exactly. There are many, many cases where AI significantly speeds up doing something. I've already used it productively for writing code, understanding how to set up new tech, summarising documents and academic papers, and writing clearer text. And I'm not a power user at all. So this will result in fewer existing jobs, and the productivity of the remaining jobs must increase. And some new jobs will be created along the way.

furyofantares 3y ago

> Who knew that 60 to 70 percent of employee's time was mostly just BS that could be easily automated by a BS generator? I feel like most office work being BS has been in the zeitgeist since before Dilbert was popular for sure. And part of why The Office works so well as a sitcom environment is we don't expect anyone to do any work there.

TeMPOraL 3y ago

> Who knew that 60 to 70 percent of employee's time was mostly just BS A lot of it is software industry's fault. Think back to all those office jobs that got eliminated by software in the past 50 years. Like secretaries, in-house art departments, ${whatever the people distributing internal memos around the office were called}, etc. The jobs may be gone, but their tasks didn't disappear. Instead, they were smeared out over the remaining workforce. How much time a week each of us spends on trying to sync up meetings with different teams, writing reports, preparing slides, managing our mailbox and calendar - or all the other tasks that are not the actual thing we are specialized in? All those things were done by in-house specialists, and like with all specialized jobs, those people were much more efficient at it. Now, they're gone, while we're left doing their jobs on top of our own, and suffering a huge context-switching penalty on top of it. I'm increasingly convinced that most of the savings software brought to office work is just an accounting trick. The secretaries, in-house graphics teams, etc. all took salaries, which were clearly visible on company balance sheets. In comes the software, out these people go, their responsibilities get distributed between all the remaining employees - suddenly, the salaries for those specialists disappear from the balance sheets, while the company... it feels like it experiences an unexplained, broad productivity drop. A great mystery. Is it because Feds are messing with interest rates? Is it because some "cost diseases"? Who knows? Doesn't matter - it looks like a global thing, so it doesn't show on the balance sheets. If Large Language Models are going to automate away all those BS tasks we've been doing, what's really happening is that they're finally materializing the gains that regular office software promised to deliver, while it in fact made things worse. (Exercise for the reader: based on the above, think about websites and apps enabling "self-service", and consider if, as individuals, we're really gaining much by being made to do for free the work that used to be someone else's job.)