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AI Is Starting to Threaten White-Collar Jobs. Few Industries Are Immune

15 points by moose_man 3y ago

moose_man 3y ago
Can democracy survive this? I doubt it, not after free trade gutted all blue collar work.
- cranberryturkey 3y ago
  democracy died when they allowed politicians to accept bribes from lobbyists.
  - Bostonian 3y ago
    When the government has massive power to tax and regulate, it's inevitable that affected companies and individuals and companies will try to influence the exercise of that power. A more constrained government is the simplest way to reduce the amount of lobbying.
johnny99k 3y ago
This is a mistake. AI isn't ready to replace some of these jobs. Duolingo's AI lessons are horrible.
- htrp 3y ago
  Can you elaborate there?
  - johnny99k 3y ago
    yes. Duolingo fired 10% of their contractor language staff (and said they will be using AI) and I know for a fact are using AI to generate some of their language lessons. The lessons that are AI generated are obvious and many times are completely incorrect.
- fzeroracer 3y ago
  Unfortunately, that's not going to stop them. I have a feeling we're going to see a lot of companies self-destruct over incredibly poor short-term decision making as they make their services demonstrably far worse.
  - Kon-Peki 3y ago
    Exactly, Duolingo got rid of a bunch of people. It happened. On the other hand, they won the Super Bowl with a push notification timed to their TV commercial.
- lm28469 3y ago
  It doesn't have to be better, or even good, just cheaper
neom 3y ago
https://archive.is/iWbRd https://archive.is/iWbRd
rabbits77 3y ago
The article makes a bold claim and then provides scant evidence. One of the cases it highlights makes mention of "no code tools", but nothing to do with the actual AI they claim is at work. Let me provide a counter point: I work for one of the largest corporations in the US, inside an organization dedicated to advancing AI solutions across the enterprise. I would know of anything sufficiently advanced to "threaten" anyone's job white collar or not. This is simply not the case. (going to be a little vague here for the sake of anonymity) Here's a few examples where I see the opposite of the claimed effect. 1. In the call centers: at best improved search capabilities can help agents do work faster, maybe ultimately such productivity gains could reduce staffing, but that'll probably never happen. Search is improved a little with AI, but LLMs are kind of garbage. We've even partnered with a Big Tech Company With Famous AI People and the results are unusable. 2. Back office: call it the shuffling of papers. Think of the series of transformations of, say, new orders and things like that as they pass through various systems. These are already automated to the hilt at most every company! AI is maybe assisting with quality control a bit but whatever jobs exist in this area already survived being automated. They aren't going anywhere. 3. Fraud detection: Any company operating at any scale already has great (almost all automated) systems in place for detecting whether they are getting ripped off. Again, already automated to the hilt and anyone with a job in this area isn't going to lose it to any amount of further automation. Articles like the one linked to need to explain, at the very least, exactly which jobs in 2024 have already escaped 50 years of automation efforts. It should beggar belief that somehow these corporations that ruthlessly cut and automate already somehow have jobs left which don't actually require a person! Anything short of actual AGI (that is, a perfect human simulacrum that can be infinitely cloned) isn't the threat to human employment that these articles want us to believe. The real question is what motivates these outlandish claims? My best guess is that it's paid PR firms seeding these articles at respectable news outlets like the WSJ just to keep pumping up the bubble a bit more. Keep it going and let the early money get a sweet exit before this whole thing collapses.
- throw1234651234 3y ago
  As an insider, you likely sold out to our AI overlords and worship Roko's Basilisk, with your only aim to deceive us to pave the way for our AI masters. Joking aside, I can't even get ChatGPT to find an import or sort a list without dropping items. Everything it does has to be triple-checked. Imo, AI has the same problem as website generators did in the past. It's all fine until you need to change some specific details and have to go into the Spaghetti code.
qgin 3y ago
In the near term, it won't be so much about AI completely 100% replacing certain jobs as much as 1 human employee + AI replacing 10 previously employed humans doing that same job.
hansvm 3y ago
Maybe eventually. Here's a transcript from my most recent advanced LLM powered customer service experience: Me: <specific billing question> AI: Would you please repeat that? Me: <that same question, copy-pasted> AI Would you please repeat that? ...<bemused/amused, suspecting AI, I repeated a dozen times with no change in the AI response>... Me: Are you just ChatGPT? May I please talk to a real person? <system immediately connects me to a person> I'm bullish, and I think we'll get there, but there are precious few jobs that kind of AI can actually replace at present. Maybe a few customers give up but stay subscribed, so the ROI is good? The tech is piss-poor though if you don't have a human in the loop to work around the 10-90% error rate in common menial tasks.

15 points by moose_man 3y ago

moose_man 3y ago

Can democracy survive this? I doubt it, not after free trade gutted all blue collar work.

cranberryturkey 3y ago
democracy died when they allowed politicians to accept bribes from lobbyists.
- Bostonian 3y ago
  When the government has massive power to tax and regulate, it's inevitable that affected companies and individuals and companies will try to influence the exercise of that power. A more constrained government is the simplest way to reduce the amount of lobbying.

johnny99k 3y ago

This is a mistake. AI isn't ready to replace some of these jobs. Duolingo's AI lessons are horrible.

htrp 3y ago
Can you elaborate there?
- johnny99k 3y ago
  yes. Duolingo fired 10% of their contractor language staff (and said they will be using AI) and I know for a fact are using AI to generate some of their language lessons. The lessons that are AI generated are obvious and many times are completely incorrect.
fzeroracer 3y ago
Unfortunately, that's not going to stop them. I have a feeling we're going to see a lot of companies self-destruct over incredibly poor short-term decision making as they make their services demonstrably far worse.
- Kon-Peki 3y ago
  Exactly, Duolingo got rid of a bunch of people. It happened. On the other hand, they won the Super Bowl with a push notification timed to their TV commercial.
lm28469 3y ago
It doesn't have to be better, or even good, just cheaper

neom 3y ago

https://archive.is/iWbRd https://archive.is/iWbRd

rabbits77 3y ago

The article makes a bold claim and then provides scant evidence. One of the cases it highlights makes mention of "no code tools", but nothing to do with the actual AI they claim is at work. Let me provide a counter point: I work for one of the largest corporations in the US, inside an organization dedicated to advancing AI solutions across the enterprise. I would know of anything sufficiently advanced to "threaten" anyone's job white collar or not. This is simply not the case. (going to be a little vague here for the sake of anonymity) Here's a few examples where I see the opposite of the claimed effect. 1. In the call centers: at best improved search capabilities can help agents do work faster, maybe ultimately such productivity gains could reduce staffing, but that'll probably never happen. Search is improved a little with AI, but LLMs are kind of garbage. We've even partnered with a Big Tech Company With Famous AI People and the results are unusable. 2. Back office: call it the shuffling of papers. Think of the series of transformations of, say, new orders and things like that as they pass through various systems. These are already automated to the hilt at most every company! AI is maybe assisting with quality control a bit but whatever jobs exist in this area already survived being automated. They aren't going anywhere. 3. Fraud detection: Any company operating at any scale already has great (almost all automated) systems in place for detecting whether they are getting ripped off. Again, already automated to the hilt and anyone with a job in this area isn't going to lose it to any amount of further automation. Articles like the one linked to need to explain, at the very least, exactly which jobs in 2024 have already escaped 50 years of automation efforts. It should beggar belief that somehow these corporations that ruthlessly cut and automate already somehow have jobs left which don't actually require a person! Anything short of actual AGI (that is, a perfect human simulacrum that can be infinitely cloned) isn't the threat to human employment that these articles want us to believe. The real question is what motivates these outlandish claims? My best guess is that it's paid PR firms seeding these articles at respectable news outlets like the WSJ just to keep pumping up the bubble a bit more. Keep it going and let the early money get a sweet exit before this whole thing collapses.

throw1234651234 3y ago
As an insider, you likely sold out to our AI overlords and worship Roko's Basilisk, with your only aim to deceive us to pave the way for our AI masters. Joking aside, I can't even get ChatGPT to find an import or sort a list without dropping items. Everything it does has to be triple-checked. Imo, AI has the same problem as website generators did in the past. It's all fine until you need to change some specific details and have to go into the Spaghetti code.

qgin 3y ago

In the near term, it won't be so much about AI completely 100% replacing certain jobs as much as 1 human employee + AI replacing 10 previously employed humans doing that same job.

hansvm 3y ago

Maybe eventually. Here's a transcript from my most recent advanced LLM powered customer service experience: Me: <specific billing question> AI: Would you please repeat that? Me: <that same question, copy-pasted> AI Would you please repeat that? ...<bemused/amused, suspecting AI, I repeated a dozen times with no change in the AI response>... Me: Are you just ChatGPT? May I please talk to a real person? <system immediately connects me to a person> I'm bullish, and I think we'll get there, but there are precious few jobs that kind of AI can actually replace at present. Maybe a few customers give up but stay subscribed, so the ROI is good? The tech is piss-poor though if you don't have a human in the loop to work around the 10-90% error rate in common menial tasks.