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AI to hit 40% of jobs and worsen inequality, IMF says

74 points by ode 3y ago

spaceman_2020 3y ago
No one really knows how AI will develop and what sort of capabilities the next iterations will have. These kind of predictions are pointless. 1 year ago if you’d told me that commercial photographers would be toast, I wouldn’t have believed you. But after Midjourney V6, I have zero doubts that commercial photography is absolutely doomed.
- omeid2 3y ago
  We don't need to predict what the next iteration will have to calculate the damage, just understanding what "this iteration can do" is almost enough to cover that 40% job losses due to increased productivity.
- Retric 3y ago
  It’s really hard to say how many unsolved issues with AI are going to be fixed tomorrow vs 20+ years from now. Midjourney v6 still has massive issues with lining up stuff that goes behind something else and I have no idea if that’s fixable or an inherent limitation to their approach. Hands have noticeably improved, but are still very hit and miss etc. What’s really frustrating is I often can’t tell if I’m bad at prompts or the underlying system is has issues.
- huytersd 3y ago
  If we get to a point where AI can generate realistic 3D models it’s game over for a lot of things. If you have a 3D model of a character it completely eliminates continuity issues. At that point entire games and movies should be possible without a single actor/actress or any support crew.
  - guappa 3y ago
    It's not like animating a 3d model is easy…
    - huytersd 3y ago
      If it’s rigged, it’s extremely easy. Rigging is already automated for most humanoid characters…
      - coffeebeqn 3y ago
        If anything it’s easier. It gives a nice abstraction to capture and transform movement rather than figuring out each frame how to draw everything from scratch
    - lucubratory 3y ago
      Animating 3D models isn't safe from AI either: https://youtu.be/8oIQy6fxfCA?si=8Vy0p4LNAm6r547D https://youtu.be/8oIQy6fxfCA?si=8Vy0p4LNAm6r547D It's not just NVIDIA, Ubisoft also has some very impressive research in this area. I believe Ubisoft has already implemented some of the new tech in their recent games - it makes sense, they have hundreds and hundreds of people work on their games and they require huge amounts of animation, any savings there are going to be huge for them.
  - smt88 3y ago
    There are some companies working on using AI for animating the movements, although I'm sure full models aren't far off.
- AzuraIsCool 3y ago
  Why do you think commercial photography is toast? (asking as someone who paid obscene amount to few photographers last year ((wedding, budoir, maternity photos hoot))
  - guappa 3y ago
    You can just ask "make photo of a baby" to a computer. Why do you need the actual baby when you can have a fake baby with mangled hears and 7 fingers per hand?
    - aquafox 3y ago
      Becaus you can't do that if you want a professional photo of your baby.
      - b112 3y ago
        This isn't about this moment. You think "now" is "always like this"??? Future images will make real babies look ugly in comparison.
      - foota 3y ago
        You can with finetuning, but I think parent is being sarcastic :-) I think the point is that no one (ok, not no one, but few people) will view fake photos in the same way as real ones when it comes to sentimentality.
        Gigachad 3y ago
        It’s probably good enough to replace blog post header images that served close to no value to begin with. Everything else is still to be seen.
    - spaceman_2020 3y ago
      > Why do you need the actual baby when you can have a fake baby with mangled hears and 7 fingers per hand? Comments like these are fine on Twitter and Facebook, but if you're on HackerNews, commenting on an article about AI, it makes you look completely out of touch. You've clearly not kept pace with the technology and are just repeating verbatim what you saw 6 months ago. HN, as a whole, has been so behind the curve that it's not even funny.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  I'm not so sure, at all. I think folks are woefully underestimating most people's desires for at least some level of "authenticity". For example, in the past 6-9 months or so, it feels like nearly every random blog post or corporate announcement I read feels the need to use an AI-generated header image. I understand why - "stock imagery" has always been used to paint a scene for an article. The thing is, though, is that, at least for me, it just cheapens the use of imagery in the first place. Every time I see one of these now I roll my eyes, I think they look cheesy and stupid. Even ones that are photo-realistic quality, you can tell by the composition that it's just generic AI. If you make something ridiculously cheap to produce, it also has the effect of discounting the value people take from it.
  - cryptoz 3y ago
    MJ 6 is only a few weeks old or so though (I think…internet time is weird, but not 6 months for sure!) and is quickly becoming nearly indistinguishable from real photos. And that’s not even mentioning the obvious future v7. We’re crossing the uncanny valley and soon enough you won’t know if an image is real or AI. The tell-tale signs will fade (already are) and the “authenticity” you speak of will actually be there. So to speak.
    - master234 3y ago
      [dead]
    - bawolff 3y ago
      I don't think it really matters though. I can already take a photorealistic photo with my camera, no AI needed. We don't hire photographers just because they can create photorealistic images, we hire them because they can take the right photorealistic images.
      - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
        Thanks very much for putting the point I was trying to make so well and succinctly. It's similar to how people are worried about AI killing all programming jobs. Yes, I've also been blown away by the ability of LLMs to write some code, but my value as a developer comes more from being detail oriented, understanding when requirements are underspecified, thinking through edge-cases, and then finally being able to turn this into something a machine can execute. Compilers didn't put earlier assembly language programmers out of business, it just required most programmers to program differently. While I do worry about the sheer number of jobs (because I think more junior, entry-level jobs will get supplanted, which makes it harder to move up the career ladder in the first place), I think people will still want the expertise of good photographers.
- adra 3y ago
  I have no idea what you're getting a commercial photography has been on the edge of obscurity for a long time, and there's little new here. Of the several photographers I've known in my years, there's only maybe a couple that managed to make an actual career out of it. I'm not entirely sure a final nail will be from AI, but there are def. too many people chasing too few jobs in that industry.
- dtf 3y ago
  Why do people pay premium for "hand made", "artisanal" etc? If AI is cheap, then by using AI generated content to cut costs, you will cheapen your brand by association. There are examples of brands doing this to themselves already.
  - janalsncm 3y ago
    Some people pay a premium for handmade, artisanal stuff. In the past, that was the only option. Today, most people buy mass produced goods. You can still buy handmade furniture, but most don’t. You can still ride a horse-drawn carriage, most don’t.
    - omeid2 3y ago
      And who says you can't use AI to produce cheaper "handmade" and "artisanal" stuff? I am not saying this in gist or to as a gotcha, the reality is that many --I dare say majority of-- "handmade" and "artisanal" brands are just that "brands" and are often only slightly --if that-- different from their mass produced "counter-parts". And yes, I hate how much quote I had to use too, you can blame the marketing people for that.
  - spaceman_2020 3y ago
    I literally used Midjourney to create luxury brand quality images for one of my d2c product. The images are at par with print ads for top tier luxury brands. My friends who work in creative industries had to zoom in 300% to spot that its AI generated. Average consumers won’t be able to tell at all Do yourself a favor and head over to Midjourney’s explore tab after signing up for an account.
Animats 3y ago
We may have passed "peak office". Despite heavy pressure from the "get back to work or else" movement and the commercial real estate industry, office occupancy in the US is still way below pre-pandemic levels.
mil22 3y ago
Whenever I read stories like this, I'm always reminded of Chapter 7 of Hazlitt's book Economics in One Lesson, "The Curse of Machinery."
bawolff 3y ago
On the brightside (quote from actual study): "However, if productivity gains are sufficiently large, income levels could surge for most workers."
- guappa 3y ago
  lol, sure…
- mysecretaccount 3y ago
  Increased profits from increased productivity have not resulted in increased income for most workers in recent (~half a century) history.
  - nfw2 3y ago
    They have if you zoom out to the global scale
    - ioblomov 3y ago
      Exactly. China created a middle class the size of the United States all in one generation.
    - mysecretaccount 3y ago
      Sure, but that isn't meaningful in this case - the vast majority of the new marginal profit goes to share and business-holders regardless.
  - yoav 3y ago
    It’ll be great for freelancers and terrible for employees.
- InCityDreams 3y ago
  Ah, the trickle-down effect we've been hearing so much of.
laydn 3y ago
The general consensus seems to be that low income and low skill workers will be affected real soon. I don't know where we currently are in the hockey stick curve in ML/AI development, but if it keeps developing at this pace it will soon start hitting high-skill and high-income workers, and then we're going to have a huge economic problem.
- aurareturn 3y ago
  I see high income, high skilled workers being affected earlier. There's nothing to automate away the cleaner I'm hiring to clean my house once a week.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    Except without the high income job, you can't afford the housecleaner.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      So the house cleaners won’t be automated away, just unemployed because nobody can pay them.
      - yoav 3y ago
        And the high skilled worker unemployed they’ll both downsize their house and have time to clean it themselves
        bee_rider 3y ago
        And we all lose as a society, as we waste a little bit more specialization.
    - b112 3y ago
      But society needs to afford the garbageman, the janitor, the person who fixes the street lights. Most work done is like this, still, even today. It may be replaced down the road, but an AI model won't help someone take out the trash.
ksec 3y ago
Let's define AI here means assisted intelligence. AI will likely replaces jobs and create jobs at the same time. As most optimist will tell you. The problem is the skill set mismatch will never be caught up fast enough for most human being. This will definitely create or widen inequality. However regulate AI aka EU also wouldn't help. You may slow it down but the result is still the same. I don't have a solution. I know the basic common theme to this question on HN is UBI. But I have yet to see or read anyone's answer to how UBI solves housing issues. ( Which is a problem slightly different in different location / country / politics ) I guess that is a different topic.
- pierat 3y ago
  > I don't have a solution. I know the basic common theme to this question on HN is UBI. But I have yet to see or read anyone's answer to how UBI solves housing issues. ( Which is a problem slightly different in different location / country / politics ) I guess that is a different topic. The first thing would be to de-profitize places for humans to live. Interest rates for humans with 0,1, or 2 homes could be set to low or preferably 0 interest. Taxes for homes could skyrocket after 2 homes, as to make parasitical rental companies uneconomical. AirBNB and similar rental structures can be required to business and hotelier standards (aka: make it uneconomical). Banks can also be compelled to take evidence of "paid $2000/mo rental for X years" as proof of paying same for mortgage. Companies who want to be in the rental industry must follow stringent cost-lowering structures, like rent control and other de-profiting strategies. And also, we need to build housing of all sorts, and not just single home dwellings and apartments. We're missing the various sorts of "middle urbanized housing" cause it's illegal.
  - master234 3y ago
    [dead]
donmcronald 3y ago
I think all the AI stuff is oversold. I don’t think it’s very good, but I think it’s going to be hugely successful because big companies will happily replace people with half broken garbage. They don’t care if nothing works because no one will have working systems and we’re forced to buy a lot of their junk no matter what due to oligopolies and monopolies, especially for critical services like communications, electricity, etc..
- RodgerTheGreat 3y ago
  Perhaps more to the point, executives will replace people with half broken garbage and then ride the wave of cost savings and innovation woo just long enough to cash out a fat bonus and bounce to another organization like a swarm of locusts.
- visarga 3y ago
  I don't think the market will allow that. AI doesn't do autonomy well. It can work ok for a few steps, maybe surpassing average humans, but in long time horizon tasks it doesn't carry out. Companies need their people to extract the AI juice, they need humans-in-the-loop. Especially in critical tasks. Even if AI can't carry out serious tasks, it can still have better form than humans, it would be an improvement for customer support compared to what some companies are doing today (almost nothing). We still need humans to escalate to, when AI is useless. I hope instead of leading to layoffs AI will lead to competition on quality, diversity, price or customizability. Raising the bar for everyone, instead of replacing us. Is there any reason a company would prefer lowering costs to competing for market share with AI? There's more upside to increasing profits than reducing costs.
  - mola 3y ago
    I think the market already allowed that. AI shitifying everything is just another step (a big one) in the same direction we've been heading anyway. Think about offshoring support representatives. Instead of someone actually trying to help you get someone bound to a script and following the motions. This infected the entire service culture. And the market accepted.it,because all big companies did the same. AI in support roles is an obvious next step, now that everyone is used to scripted interaction, a half baked AI solution is not much worse. AI
mrtksn 3y ago
What if the last available job ever is a soldier? I mean, if the only scarcity becomes about owning and having place to put the machines that work for you and no human work is better than the machine work maybe those who don't have AI to work for them will try to destroy those who have and seize the machines and the resources(energy, space, other machines). Maybe its a bit of a stretch but I don't believe that people will be like "oh crap, my skills don't make me a living anymore. bad luck, nothing I can do about it". Currently people in disadvantage(real or perceived) are already revolting against affirmative action and cheaper labor from abroad.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  If you look at modern warfare the drone is replacing the soldier already. That’ll only accelerate and multi modal generative AI will help that.
  - mrtksn 3y ago
    True but the the current drones are made by people. If the thing beocmes a political movement, think a charismatic populist leader rallying people against the people with the smart machines, people can destroy the AI folks way before the AI folks can make machines that make other machines autonomously.
    - janalsncm 3y ago
      If anything, history has gone in the opposite direction. The Luddites who broke into factories and smashed machines? Publicly executed. The same argument you’re making about automation could’ve been made 70 years ago before outsourcing was the norm. Those factory workers whose jobs were sold for pennies on the dollar? They will rise up against the factory owners. Actually, it turns out that racism is a pretty powerful distraction.
      - mrtksn 3y ago
        Luddites might have lost but the governments and the industrialists also got lots of restraints against actual problems that the industrial revolution caused. Pensions, working condition requirements, environment protections, restrictions on child labour etc. Luddites were early reactionaries without a real solution to actual problems, then the world has seen successful movements that proposed workable solutions for the real problems. I don't believe even a bit that the progress can be stopped, can't even be slowed IMHO. However the society will be dramatically transformed and that transform wouldn't end as a libertarian dream world.
jandrewrogers 3y ago
I am sure this will happen eventually but there is extreme uncertainty as to the actual timelines. Any attempts to aggressively manage it much too early (our current position in the timeline) or much too late will cause extraordinary harm to the entire population. I would argue that the timing of policy related to this issue can do at least as much damage as the technology itself.
ndjshe3838 3y ago
Can someone give me an actual example of what jobs you think are going to be replaced by these AIs? I feel like these discussions are always so high level/hand wavy
- master234 3y ago
  [dead]
- gnicholas 3y ago
  I have a friend who is a partner at a big law firm. They are launching a platform that facilitates the creation, analysis, and revision of legal contracts. Platforms like this will have a huge impact on law firms, small and large. The biggest deals will always get human scrutiny, but midsize deals will probably be done with tools like these. Law school graduates who expected to be able to make six-figure salaries to pay off their six-figure debts are going to be negatively impacted. The smart ones are already trying to figure out how to use these tools, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and which areas of law are going to be affected less (litigation versus transaction).
  - Sateeshm 3y ago
    > The smart ones are already trying to figure out how to use these tools, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and which areas of law are going to be affected less (litigation versus transaction). I don't think it matters much. Eventually most AI tools will be as easy to use as a smartphone. Why waste time learning ever changing AI workflows and APIs at this point.
    - gnicholas 3y ago
      Understanding how the tools work can help them to choose a practice area that will be less affected, if they so desire.
aml183 3y ago
I feel like this is said about every technology. It reminds me of this Silicon Valley scene: https://youtu.be/w61d-NBqafM?si=hCY58gE6b2pV9khm https://youtu.be/w61d-NBqafM?si=hCY58gE6b2pV9khm 100 years ago, nobody could imagine a job like computer programmer. Jobs will disappear, but new jobs will be created.
poisonborz 3y ago
Ah IMF, the trusted compass of technological advancement.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
Some more discussion on the official post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38997832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38997832
waingake 3y ago
If we valued time* instead of capital then this would be seen as great news. * I.e your one fleeting existence on earth.
sershe 3y ago
Wasn't the preliminary consensus from current studies that LLMs improve the performance more for the workers with lower initial performance, in various fields (copywriters, developers)? I.e. C worker becomes a B+ worker, but A worker becomes A.1 worker. So if anything, it should reduce inequality...
aubanel 3y ago
I often hear the argument "the destroyed jobs will be replaced easily, as has been the case in all technological revolutions", but I think it's deeply flawed: Up to know, all technological revolutions have occurred in an exponentially growing economy. That's why Schumpeter's "creative destruction" was not a problem: it was compensated by the opening of new areas for growth, mostly unlocked by consuming more resources. But now we are hitting the limits of the planet, and amongst others the limit of extraction rhythm for most our materials. So the exponential growth can't continue. (apart from the growth from technological progress, which will be much lower) That's where the argument doesn't hold: we do not have a growing supply of work anymore, so the increased productivity of some workers will just prevent the others from working.

74 points by ode 3y ago

spaceman_2020 3y ago

No one really knows how AI will develop and what sort of capabilities the next iterations will have. These kind of predictions are pointless. 1 year ago if you’d told me that commercial photographers would be toast, I wouldn’t have believed you. But after Midjourney V6, I have zero doubts that commercial photography is absolutely doomed.

omeid2 3y ago
We don't need to predict what the next iteration will have to calculate the damage, just understanding what "this iteration can do" is almost enough to cover that 40% job losses due to increased productivity.
Retric 3y ago
It’s really hard to say how many unsolved issues with AI are going to be fixed tomorrow vs 20+ years from now. Midjourney v6 still has massive issues with lining up stuff that goes behind something else and I have no idea if that’s fixable or an inherent limitation to their approach. Hands have noticeably improved, but are still very hit and miss etc. What’s really frustrating is I often can’t tell if I’m bad at prompts or the underlying system is has issues.
huytersd 3y ago
If we get to a point where AI can generate realistic 3D models it’s game over for a lot of things. If you have a 3D model of a character it completely eliminates continuity issues. At that point entire games and movies should be possible without a single actor/actress or any support crew.
- guappa 3y ago
  It's not like animating a 3d model is easy…
  - huytersd 3y ago
    If it’s rigged, it’s extremely easy. Rigging is already automated for most humanoid characters…
    - coffeebeqn 3y ago
      If anything it’s easier. It gives a nice abstraction to capture and transform movement rather than figuring out each frame how to draw everything from scratch
  - lucubratory 3y ago
    Animating 3D models isn't safe from AI either: https://youtu.be/8oIQy6fxfCA?si=8Vy0p4LNAm6r547D https://youtu.be/8oIQy6fxfCA?si=8Vy0p4LNAm6r547D It's not just NVIDIA, Ubisoft also has some very impressive research in this area. I believe Ubisoft has already implemented some of the new tech in their recent games - it makes sense, they have hundreds and hundreds of people work on their games and they require huge amounts of animation, any savings there are going to be huge for them.
- smt88 3y ago
  There are some companies working on using AI for animating the movements, although I'm sure full models aren't far off.
AzuraIsCool 3y ago
Why do you think commercial photography is toast? (asking as someone who paid obscene amount to few photographers last year ((wedding, budoir, maternity photos hoot))
- guappa 3y ago
  You can just ask "make photo of a baby" to a computer. Why do you need the actual baby when you can have a fake baby with mangled hears and 7 fingers per hand?
  - aquafox 3y ago
    Becaus you can't do that if you want a professional photo of your baby.
    - b112 3y ago
      This isn't about this moment. You think "now" is "always like this"??? Future images will make real babies look ugly in comparison.
    - foota 3y ago
      You can with finetuning, but I think parent is being sarcastic :-) I think the point is that no one (ok, not no one, but few people) will view fake photos in the same way as real ones when it comes to sentimentality.
      - Gigachad 3y ago
        It’s probably good enough to replace blog post header images that served close to no value to begin with. Everything else is still to be seen.
  - spaceman_2020 3y ago
    > Why do you need the actual baby when you can have a fake baby with mangled hears and 7 fingers per hand? Comments like these are fine on Twitter and Facebook, but if you're on HackerNews, commenting on an article about AI, it makes you look completely out of touch. You've clearly not kept pace with the technology and are just repeating verbatim what you saw 6 months ago. HN, as a whole, has been so behind the curve that it's not even funny.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
I'm not so sure, at all. I think folks are woefully underestimating most people's desires for at least some level of "authenticity". For example, in the past 6-9 months or so, it feels like nearly every random blog post or corporate announcement I read feels the need to use an AI-generated header image. I understand why - "stock imagery" has always been used to paint a scene for an article. The thing is, though, is that, at least for me, it just cheapens the use of imagery in the first place. Every time I see one of these now I roll my eyes, I think they look cheesy and stupid. Even ones that are photo-realistic quality, you can tell by the composition that it's just generic AI. If you make something ridiculously cheap to produce, it also has the effect of discounting the value people take from it.
- cryptoz 3y ago
  MJ 6 is only a few weeks old or so though (I think…internet time is weird, but not 6 months for sure!) and is quickly becoming nearly indistinguishable from real photos. And that’s not even mentioning the obvious future v7. We’re crossing the uncanny valley and soon enough you won’t know if an image is real or AI. The tell-tale signs will fade (already are) and the “authenticity” you speak of will actually be there. So to speak.
  - master234 3y ago
    [dead]
  - bawolff 3y ago
    I don't think it really matters though. I can already take a photorealistic photo with my camera, no AI needed. We don't hire photographers just because they can create photorealistic images, we hire them because they can take the right photorealistic images.
    - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
      Thanks very much for putting the point I was trying to make so well and succinctly. It's similar to how people are worried about AI killing all programming jobs. Yes, I've also been blown away by the ability of LLMs to write some code, but my value as a developer comes more from being detail oriented, understanding when requirements are underspecified, thinking through edge-cases, and then finally being able to turn this into something a machine can execute. Compilers didn't put earlier assembly language programmers out of business, it just required most programmers to program differently. While I do worry about the sheer number of jobs (because I think more junior, entry-level jobs will get supplanted, which makes it harder to move up the career ladder in the first place), I think people will still want the expertise of good photographers.
adra 3y ago
I have no idea what you're getting a commercial photography has been on the edge of obscurity for a long time, and there's little new here. Of the several photographers I've known in my years, there's only maybe a couple that managed to make an actual career out of it. I'm not entirely sure a final nail will be from AI, but there are def. too many people chasing too few jobs in that industry.
dtf 3y ago
Why do people pay premium for "hand made", "artisanal" etc? If AI is cheap, then by using AI generated content to cut costs, you will cheapen your brand by association. There are examples of brands doing this to themselves already.
- janalsncm 3y ago
  Some people pay a premium for handmade, artisanal stuff. In the past, that was the only option. Today, most people buy mass produced goods. You can still buy handmade furniture, but most don’t. You can still ride a horse-drawn carriage, most don’t.
  - omeid2 3y ago
    And who says you can't use AI to produce cheaper "handmade" and "artisanal" stuff? I am not saying this in gist or to as a gotcha, the reality is that many --I dare say majority of-- "handmade" and "artisanal" brands are just that "brands" and are often only slightly --if that-- different from their mass produced "counter-parts". And yes, I hate how much quote I had to use too, you can blame the marketing people for that.
- spaceman_2020 3y ago
  I literally used Midjourney to create luxury brand quality images for one of my d2c product. The images are at par with print ads for top tier luxury brands. My friends who work in creative industries had to zoom in 300% to spot that its AI generated. Average consumers won’t be able to tell at all Do yourself a favor and head over to Midjourney’s explore tab after signing up for an account.

Animats 3y ago

We may have passed "peak office". Despite heavy pressure from the "get back to work or else" movement and the commercial real estate industry, office occupancy in the US is still way below pre-pandemic levels.

mil22 3y ago

Whenever I read stories like this, I'm always reminded of Chapter 7 of Hazlitt's book Economics in One Lesson, "The Curse of Machinery."

bawolff 3y ago

On the brightside (quote from actual study): "However, if productivity gains are sufficiently large, income levels could surge for most workers."

guappa 3y ago
lol, sure…
mysecretaccount 3y ago
Increased profits from increased productivity have not resulted in increased income for most workers in recent (~half a century) history.
- nfw2 3y ago
  They have if you zoom out to the global scale
  - ioblomov 3y ago
    Exactly. China created a middle class the size of the United States all in one generation.
  - mysecretaccount 3y ago
    Sure, but that isn't meaningful in this case - the vast majority of the new marginal profit goes to share and business-holders regardless.
- yoav 3y ago
  It’ll be great for freelancers and terrible for employees.
InCityDreams 3y ago
Ah, the trickle-down effect we've been hearing so much of.

laydn 3y ago

The general consensus seems to be that low income and low skill workers will be affected real soon. I don't know where we currently are in the hockey stick curve in ML/AI development, but if it keeps developing at this pace it will soon start hitting high-skill and high-income workers, and then we're going to have a huge economic problem.

aurareturn 3y ago
I see high income, high skilled workers being affected earlier. There's nothing to automate away the cleaner I'm hiring to clean my house once a week.
- fragmede 3y ago
  Except without the high income job, you can't afford the housecleaner.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    So the house cleaners won’t be automated away, just unemployed because nobody can pay them.
    - yoav 3y ago
      And the high skilled worker unemployed they’ll both downsize their house and have time to clean it themselves
      - bee_rider 3y ago
        And we all lose as a society, as we waste a little bit more specialization.
  - b112 3y ago
    But society needs to afford the garbageman, the janitor, the person who fixes the street lights. Most work done is like this, still, even today. It may be replaced down the road, but an AI model won't help someone take out the trash.

ksec 3y ago

Let's define AI here means assisted intelligence. AI will likely replaces jobs and create jobs at the same time. As most optimist will tell you. The problem is the skill set mismatch will never be caught up fast enough for most human being. This will definitely create or widen inequality. However regulate AI aka EU also wouldn't help. You may slow it down but the result is still the same. I don't have a solution. I know the basic common theme to this question on HN is UBI. But I have yet to see or read anyone's answer to how UBI solves housing issues. ( Which is a problem slightly different in different location / country / politics ) I guess that is a different topic.

pierat 3y ago
> I don't have a solution. I know the basic common theme to this question on HN is UBI. But I have yet to see or read anyone's answer to how UBI solves housing issues. ( Which is a problem slightly different in different location / country / politics ) I guess that is a different topic. The first thing would be to de-profitize places for humans to live. Interest rates for humans with 0,1, or 2 homes could be set to low or preferably 0 interest. Taxes for homes could skyrocket after 2 homes, as to make parasitical rental companies uneconomical. AirBNB and similar rental structures can be required to business and hotelier standards (aka: make it uneconomical). Banks can also be compelled to take evidence of "paid $2000/mo rental for X years" as proof of paying same for mortgage. Companies who want to be in the rental industry must follow stringent cost-lowering structures, like rent control and other de-profiting strategies. And also, we need to build housing of all sorts, and not just single home dwellings and apartments. We're missing the various sorts of "middle urbanized housing" cause it's illegal.
- master234 3y ago
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donmcronald 3y ago

I think all the AI stuff is oversold. I don’t think it’s very good, but I think it’s going to be hugely successful because big companies will happily replace people with half broken garbage. They don’t care if nothing works because no one will have working systems and we’re forced to buy a lot of their junk no matter what due to oligopolies and monopolies, especially for critical services like communications, electricity, etc..

RodgerTheGreat 3y ago
Perhaps more to the point, executives will replace people with half broken garbage and then ride the wave of cost savings and innovation woo just long enough to cash out a fat bonus and bounce to another organization like a swarm of locusts.
visarga 3y ago
I don't think the market will allow that. AI doesn't do autonomy well. It can work ok for a few steps, maybe surpassing average humans, but in long time horizon tasks it doesn't carry out. Companies need their people to extract the AI juice, they need humans-in-the-loop. Especially in critical tasks. Even if AI can't carry out serious tasks, it can still have better form than humans, it would be an improvement for customer support compared to what some companies are doing today (almost nothing). We still need humans to escalate to, when AI is useless. I hope instead of leading to layoffs AI will lead to competition on quality, diversity, price or customizability. Raising the bar for everyone, instead of replacing us. Is there any reason a company would prefer lowering costs to competing for market share with AI? There's more upside to increasing profits than reducing costs.
- mola 3y ago
  I think the market already allowed that. AI shitifying everything is just another step (a big one) in the same direction we've been heading anyway. Think about offshoring support representatives. Instead of someone actually trying to help you get someone bound to a script and following the motions. This infected the entire service culture. And the market accepted.it,because all big companies did the same. AI in support roles is an obvious next step, now that everyone is used to scripted interaction, a half baked AI solution is not much worse. AI

mrtksn 3y ago

What if the last available job ever is a soldier? I mean, if the only scarcity becomes about owning and having place to put the machines that work for you and no human work is better than the machine work maybe those who don't have AI to work for them will try to destroy those who have and seize the machines and the resources(energy, space, other machines). Maybe its a bit of a stretch but I don't believe that people will be like "oh crap, my skills don't make me a living anymore. bad luck, nothing I can do about it". Currently people in disadvantage(real or perceived) are already revolting against affirmative action and cheaper labor from abroad.

fnordpiglet 3y ago
If you look at modern warfare the drone is replacing the soldier already. That’ll only accelerate and multi modal generative AI will help that.
- mrtksn 3y ago
  True but the the current drones are made by people. If the thing beocmes a political movement, think a charismatic populist leader rallying people against the people with the smart machines, people can destroy the AI folks way before the AI folks can make machines that make other machines autonomously.
  - janalsncm 3y ago
    If anything, history has gone in the opposite direction. The Luddites who broke into factories and smashed machines? Publicly executed. The same argument you’re making about automation could’ve been made 70 years ago before outsourcing was the norm. Those factory workers whose jobs were sold for pennies on the dollar? They will rise up against the factory owners. Actually, it turns out that racism is a pretty powerful distraction.
    - mrtksn 3y ago
      Luddites might have lost but the governments and the industrialists also got lots of restraints against actual problems that the industrial revolution caused. Pensions, working condition requirements, environment protections, restrictions on child labour etc. Luddites were early reactionaries without a real solution to actual problems, then the world has seen successful movements that proposed workable solutions for the real problems. I don't believe even a bit that the progress can be stopped, can't even be slowed IMHO. However the society will be dramatically transformed and that transform wouldn't end as a libertarian dream world.

jandrewrogers 3y ago

I am sure this will happen eventually but there is extreme uncertainty as to the actual timelines. Any attempts to aggressively manage it much too early (our current position in the timeline) or much too late will cause extraordinary harm to the entire population. I would argue that the timing of policy related to this issue can do at least as much damage as the technology itself.

ndjshe3838 3y ago

Can someone give me an actual example of what jobs you think are going to be replaced by these AIs? I feel like these discussions are always so high level/hand wavy

master234 3y ago
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gnicholas 3y ago
I have a friend who is a partner at a big law firm. They are launching a platform that facilitates the creation, analysis, and revision of legal contracts. Platforms like this will have a huge impact on law firms, small and large. The biggest deals will always get human scrutiny, but midsize deals will probably be done with tools like these. Law school graduates who expected to be able to make six-figure salaries to pay off their six-figure debts are going to be negatively impacted. The smart ones are already trying to figure out how to use these tools, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and which areas of law are going to be affected less (litigation versus transaction).
- Sateeshm 3y ago
  > The smart ones are already trying to figure out how to use these tools, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and which areas of law are going to be affected less (litigation versus transaction). I don't think it matters much. Eventually most AI tools will be as easy to use as a smartphone. Why waste time learning ever changing AI workflows and APIs at this point.
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    Understanding how the tools work can help them to choose a practice area that will be less affected, if they so desire.

aml183 3y ago

I feel like this is said about every technology. It reminds me of this Silicon Valley scene: https://youtu.be/w61d-NBqafM?si=hCY58gE6b2pV9khm https://youtu.be/w61d-NBqafM?si=hCY58gE6b2pV9khm 100 years ago, nobody could imagine a job like computer programmer. Jobs will disappear, but new jobs will be created.

poisonborz 3y ago

Ah IMF, the trusted compass of technological advancement.

deleted 3y ago

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ChrisArchitect 3y ago

Some more discussion on the official post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38997832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38997832

waingake 3y ago

If we valued time* instead of capital then this would be seen as great news. * I.e your one fleeting existence on earth.

sershe 3y ago

Wasn't the preliminary consensus from current studies that LLMs improve the performance more for the workers with lower initial performance, in various fields (copywriters, developers)? I.e. C worker becomes a B+ worker, but A worker becomes A.1 worker. So if anything, it should reduce inequality...

aubanel 3y ago

I often hear the argument "the destroyed jobs will be replaced easily, as has been the case in all technological revolutions", but I think it's deeply flawed: Up to know, all technological revolutions have occurred in an exponentially growing economy. That's why Schumpeter's "creative destruction" was not a problem: it was compensated by the opening of new areas for growth, mostly unlocked by consuming more resources. But now we are hitting the limits of the planet, and amongst others the limit of extraction rhythm for most our materials. So the exponential growth can't continue. (apart from the growth from technological progress, which will be much lower) That's where the argument doesn't hold: we do not have a growing supply of work anymore, so the increased productivity of some workers will just prevent the others from working.