6 ms·

Maybe an unpopular opinion, but some jobs shouldn't exist. We should fire some terrible jobs that can be done by machines. Most of the content being manufactur

by jms703 2y ago

Maybe an unpopular opinion, but some jobs shouldn't exist. We should fire some terrible jobs that can be done by machines. Most of the content being manufactured today is quite lazy and I'm fine with AI writing it because I won't see it anyway. But replacing a person without helping them grow into a new and more impactful job isn't the way to do this. I wish more companies would 'fire' certain types of work and help their employees grow into other roles.

doe_eyes 2y ago
The problem is that many of what you describe as "terrible" jobs are just a low-overhead way for creative folks to pay their bills. You don't make a living writing timeless poems or painting masterpieces, at least not usually. You make a living doing copyediting or painting commissioned artwork - and then work on achieving greatness in your free time. AI doesn't have to be good to destroy this income. This is making it harder for creativity to thrive. Relatively few budding artists can count on private patronage or government sponsorship, and both of these come with plenty of strings attached. And pie-in-the-sky ideas like universal income are not going to wish the problem away.
- sroussey 2y ago
  There is some history here, like the musicians that went on strikes and picketed radio stations after one dared to play a record on the radio instead of a live orchestra!
  - xanderlewis 2y ago
    The difference is that arguably this is the endgame — the entire process can now be automated. Every doomsday prediction is wrong… until the final one isn’t.
    - jncfhnb 2y ago
      The entire process is very much not automated
      - xanderlewis 2y ago
        Music in general isn’t (and never will be), but the generation of musak that’s good enough for most commercial purposes very nearly is.
        miohtama 2y ago
        Also the creation of musak can be done by much more wider amount of people and requires less studying. Like driver I we requires less studying than driving a black cab without GPS.
        jncfhnb 2y ago
        Music is sort of its own thing. Individual musicians can put their music out there and gain a following. Visual art not so much. Not many people care about “great artists”. Most visual artists make a living making art assets of no particular individual expression and are at a lot of risk imo. I’m not sure that I believe most musicians make a living composing music.
  - jordanb 2y ago
    Is that how they secured their rights to residuals?
- alwa 2y ago
  Of course there are plenty of creative people who pay the bills by doing things other than the commoditized analogue to their art, no? The stereotypical actor waiting tables comes to mind, as does Einstein in the patent office. (Edit: this submission seems timely and relevant - The Blue Collar Jobs of Philip Glass - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41240152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41240152 )
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    > waiting tables Yeah but talk about terrible jobs. If I were an artist I think I'd prefer doing commodity art pieces to pay the bills vs. working in a restaurant. And yes, it's subjective. I know some people probably like waiting tables.
    - CRConrad 2y ago
      Heh, this is kinda funny... > > waiting tables > Yeah but talk about terrible jobs. From sibling comment to yours, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41276998 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41276998 : > ...a great deal of implicit classism ('i don't want to do a job like that, therefore such jobs are worthless').
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    Has it occurred to you that those jobs are finite? Can restaurants continue to exist if we have scores of under/unemployed people working as waitstaff, who don't make enough money to eat out themselves? Previous rounds of innovation and steep changes in work/jobs, all the way back to the industrial revolution, were both a) not seamless transitions and left huge swathes of highly skilled people impoverished for the remainder of their lives, and b) for those who did transition to new jobs, there were new jobs for them to transition to. Not everyone can learn to be an AI developer. What jobs does AI create? Is everyone who isn't well versed enough in IT infrastructure going to have get a job as a janitor working the data centers for Azure cloud? Those are going to be some clean bloody floors. I get so tired of the rhetorical "this has happened before," no it really fucking hasn't. Not on this scale, and not when having money was so utterly critical to one's ability to survive.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  > Relatively few budding artists can count on private patronage or government sponsorship, and both of these come with plenty of strings attached. It follows that mass-AI adoption should tilt the creative economic model more towards state-funding, ideally supported by a tax on AI usage. (i.e. taxing and reallocating some of the value saved by using it, to redress the things it's probably destroying)
  - klyrs 2y ago
    > ideally supported by a tax on AI usage. Curious to see how you'd write this legislation. Because I know a lot of programmers and lawyers, and they're all a lot better at finding loopholes than preventing them.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      Target AI infrastructure providers. Ideally metered by perf-per-energy-per-time. You'll tax out some low-value use cases, but that seems less concerning as long as the tax rates are kept modest (<10%).
      - klyrs 2y ago
        Those are some pretty high-level bullet points. Say I'd like to build out a rendering farm with a bunch of GPUs to support the movie industry. On paper, my hardware is good for rendering, crypto, and AI. Do I get taxed?
        ethbr1 2y ago
        If it were going to be implemented, I think only imposing it on large+ clouds that offer IaaS/PaaS would make sense. That would simplify collection and traceability. And a bit of extra pressure on decentralization wouldn't be the worst thing.
  - gruez 2y ago
    >state-funding, ideally supported by a tax on AI usage Why should the state be funding artists in the first place? If the public can't be convinced to patronize artists directly (eg. buying their stuff), what makes you think they'd want to be compelled to fund artists via taxation?
Oras 2y ago
That’s the problem right now. Throughout the history, jobs get diminished and new ones came on. However, the transition took many many years to happen. Take an example a conductor in a bus to collect the fare, took many years to replace and via stages. With AI, there are so many jobs (I agree shouldn’t exist) that had been impacted really quick before even preparing to learn a new skill. Another problem is you don’t expect everyone to learn at the same pace.
immibis 2y ago
The problem is that we have chosen an economic system based around jobs. If you don't have a job, you die - quickly or slowly, directly or indirectly, doesn't matter, society has no use for you. So people are obviously incentivized to try to create bullshit jobs they can slot into.
- mvdtnz 2y ago
  As opposed to employed people, who live forever.
  - immibis 2y ago
    Employed people live the natural length of their lives. Unemployed people tend to die sooner rather than later, of things like hunger or hypothermia.
YesBox 2y ago
That brings up an old question: who gets to decide a job is terrible? Concentrated power multiplies the force of its actions, whether (subjectively) good or (subjectively) bad. See the danger? Maybe someday, someone in power will decide a job you gain fulfillment from is a terrible job.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > That brings up an old question: who gets to decide a job is terrible? Well, if a job can be done by a machine, it should be done by a machine - after all, if there is one thing common across humanity, it is the desire for progress. The problem is that unlike what was believed a century ago, automation did not lead to less work for humans at all, quite the contrary: our ancestors fought (often literally to death) for the 40 hour week, and that was enough to feed a family on. Nowadays both people have to work (way more than) 40 hours a week to afford a shack, and politicians wonder our generation doesn't have kids. Guess fucking what, why they don't. And ask yourself where the fuck all that extra wealth from all the women working full-time ended up, hint: not in your bank account.
  - vouaobrasil 2y ago
    > Well, if a job can be done by a machine, it should be done by a machine - after all, if there is one thing common across humanity, it is the desire for progress. Is that really progress though? Honestly, more and more jobs can be done by machines. But what about the fact that human beings need to connect and feel at least that they are contributing somewhat to society? Progress is not synonymous with automation. And it's not universal across humanity. The Amish recognize that not all automation is good and they hold meetings to decide which technologies should be introduced. Many people realize that there is an ideal point of automation -- and complete automation is not ideal.
    - mschuster91 2y ago
      > Is that really progress though? Honestly, more and more jobs can be done by machines. But what about the fact that human beings need to connect and feel at least that they are contributing somewhat to society? Well, if people's basic needs would be taken care of (=UBI financed by taxes on automation, or by just plainly taxing the rich), they could have time left for actually contributing to society - anything from caring for the elderly to making art.
SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
The problem is that the author's job was already pretty far down the "fire certain types of work" pipeline. By his own account, he was writing 1 column every 3 weeks, for an unprofitable magazine, as a freelancer with no formal employment relationship. If they'd been responsible in the way you're wishing for, they would have never hired him at all, knowing they don't have the money to treat him as a valued employee.
ThrowawayR2 2y ago
> "Maybe an unpopular opinion, but some jobs shouldn't exist." Easy to say until your profession is next up on the chopping block.
elsonrodriguez 2y ago
If you have tried to use a search engine to look anything up in the last few years you have seen AI generated articles that aimlessly meander for paragraphs without providing an actual answer to your question. Those answers were previously (occasionally)contained within succinct articles written by someone who did some research or was an SME. Maybe it was the case that content farms were degrading the ability for information to be found on the internet, but AI has basically dropped a nuke on search results. It is a wasteland and nothing is alive there.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 2y ago
  Let’s not rewrite history here. Search results were full of aimless, meandering SEO-optimized articles long before it became possible to generate those with LLMs.
- lemoncookiechip 2y ago
  To be fair to LLMs, you can create a custom rule for it to be brief and concise, or pretty much anything really. I personally blame the users who are actively trying to seem like wordsmiths by having all the pointless fluff around the meat and potatoes.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  I am not sure if AI is purely to blame for this. Looking at recipes I have to scroll through lot of text to see the recipe and ingredients list... Similar thing goes for product recommendations. I remember it being pretty bad even before LLMs.

by jms703 2y ago

doe_eyes 2y ago

The problem is that many of what you describe as "terrible" jobs are just a low-overhead way for creative folks to pay their bills. You don't make a living writing timeless poems or painting masterpieces, at least not usually. You make a living doing copyediting or painting commissioned artwork - and then work on achieving greatness in your free time. AI doesn't have to be good to destroy this income. This is making it harder for creativity to thrive. Relatively few budding artists can count on private patronage or government sponsorship, and both of these come with plenty of strings attached. And pie-in-the-sky ideas like universal income are not going to wish the problem away.

sroussey 2y ago
There is some history here, like the musicians that went on strikes and picketed radio stations after one dared to play a record on the radio instead of a live orchestra!
- xanderlewis 2y ago
  The difference is that arguably this is the endgame — the entire process can now be automated. Every doomsday prediction is wrong… until the final one isn’t.
  - jncfhnb 2y ago
    The entire process is very much not automated
    - xanderlewis 2y ago
      Music in general isn’t (and never will be), but the generation of musak that’s good enough for most commercial purposes very nearly is.
      - miohtama 2y ago
        Also the creation of musak can be done by much more wider amount of people and requires less studying. Like driver I we requires less studying than driving a black cab without GPS.
      - jncfhnb 2y ago
        Music is sort of its own thing. Individual musicians can put their music out there and gain a following. Visual art not so much. Not many people care about “great artists”. Most visual artists make a living making art assets of no particular individual expression and are at a lot of risk imo. I’m not sure that I believe most musicians make a living composing music.
- jordanb 2y ago
  Is that how they secured their rights to residuals?
alwa 2y ago
Of course there are plenty of creative people who pay the bills by doing things other than the commoditized analogue to their art, no? The stereotypical actor waiting tables comes to mind, as does Einstein in the patent office. (Edit: this submission seems timely and relevant - The Blue Collar Jobs of Philip Glass - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41240152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41240152 )
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  > waiting tables Yeah but talk about terrible jobs. If I were an artist I think I'd prefer doing commodity art pieces to pay the bills vs. working in a restaurant. And yes, it's subjective. I know some people probably like waiting tables.
  - CRConrad 2y ago
    Heh, this is kinda funny... > > waiting tables > Yeah but talk about terrible jobs. From sibling comment to yours, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41276998 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41276998 : > ...a great deal of implicit classism ('i don't want to do a job like that, therefore such jobs are worthless').
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  Has it occurred to you that those jobs are finite? Can restaurants continue to exist if we have scores of under/unemployed people working as waitstaff, who don't make enough money to eat out themselves? Previous rounds of innovation and steep changes in work/jobs, all the way back to the industrial revolution, were both a) not seamless transitions and left huge swathes of highly skilled people impoverished for the remainder of their lives, and b) for those who did transition to new jobs, there were new jobs for them to transition to. Not everyone can learn to be an AI developer. What jobs does AI create? Is everyone who isn't well versed enough in IT infrastructure going to have get a job as a janitor working the data centers for Azure cloud? Those are going to be some clean bloody floors. I get so tired of the rhetorical "this has happened before," no it really fucking hasn't. Not on this scale, and not when having money was so utterly critical to one's ability to survive.
ethbr1 2y ago
> Relatively few budding artists can count on private patronage or government sponsorship, and both of these come with plenty of strings attached. It follows that mass-AI adoption should tilt the creative economic model more towards state-funding, ideally supported by a tax on AI usage. (i.e. taxing and reallocating some of the value saved by using it, to redress the things it's probably destroying)
- klyrs 2y ago
  > ideally supported by a tax on AI usage. Curious to see how you'd write this legislation. Because I know a lot of programmers and lawyers, and they're all a lot better at finding loopholes than preventing them.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    Target AI infrastructure providers. Ideally metered by perf-per-energy-per-time. You'll tax out some low-value use cases, but that seems less concerning as long as the tax rates are kept modest (<10%).
    - klyrs 2y ago
      Those are some pretty high-level bullet points. Say I'd like to build out a rendering farm with a bunch of GPUs to support the movie industry. On paper, my hardware is good for rendering, crypto, and AI. Do I get taxed?
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        If it were going to be implemented, I think only imposing it on large+ clouds that offer IaaS/PaaS would make sense. That would simplify collection and traceability. And a bit of extra pressure on decentralization wouldn't be the worst thing.
- gruez 2y ago
  >state-funding, ideally supported by a tax on AI usage Why should the state be funding artists in the first place? If the public can't be convinced to patronize artists directly (eg. buying their stuff), what makes you think they'd want to be compelled to fund artists via taxation?

Oras 2y ago

That’s the problem right now. Throughout the history, jobs get diminished and new ones came on. However, the transition took many many years to happen. Take an example a conductor in a bus to collect the fare, took many years to replace and via stages. With AI, there are so many jobs (I agree shouldn’t exist) that had been impacted really quick before even preparing to learn a new skill. Another problem is you don’t expect everyone to learn at the same pace.

immibis 2y ago

The problem is that we have chosen an economic system based around jobs. If you don't have a job, you die - quickly or slowly, directly or indirectly, doesn't matter, society has no use for you. So people are obviously incentivized to try to create bullshit jobs they can slot into.

mvdtnz 2y ago
As opposed to employed people, who live forever.
- immibis 2y ago
  Employed people live the natural length of their lives. Unemployed people tend to die sooner rather than later, of things like hunger or hypothermia.

YesBox 2y ago

That brings up an old question: who gets to decide a job is terrible? Concentrated power multiplies the force of its actions, whether (subjectively) good or (subjectively) bad. See the danger? Maybe someday, someone in power will decide a job you gain fulfillment from is a terrible job.

mschuster91 2y ago
> That brings up an old question: who gets to decide a job is terrible? Well, if a job can be done by a machine, it should be done by a machine - after all, if there is one thing common across humanity, it is the desire for progress. The problem is that unlike what was believed a century ago, automation did not lead to less work for humans at all, quite the contrary: our ancestors fought (often literally to death) for the 40 hour week, and that was enough to feed a family on. Nowadays both people have to work (way more than) 40 hours a week to afford a shack, and politicians wonder our generation doesn't have kids. Guess fucking what, why they don't. And ask yourself where the fuck all that extra wealth from all the women working full-time ended up, hint: not in your bank account.
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  > Well, if a job can be done by a machine, it should be done by a machine - after all, if there is one thing common across humanity, it is the desire for progress. Is that really progress though? Honestly, more and more jobs can be done by machines. But what about the fact that human beings need to connect and feel at least that they are contributing somewhat to society? Progress is not synonymous with automation. And it's not universal across humanity. The Amish recognize that not all automation is good and they hold meetings to decide which technologies should be introduced. Many people realize that there is an ideal point of automation -- and complete automation is not ideal.
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    > Is that really progress though? Honestly, more and more jobs can be done by machines. But what about the fact that human beings need to connect and feel at least that they are contributing somewhat to society? Well, if people's basic needs would be taken care of (=UBI financed by taxes on automation, or by just plainly taxing the rich), they could have time left for actually contributing to society - anything from caring for the elderly to making art.

SpicyLemonZest 2y ago

The problem is that the author's job was already pretty far down the "fire certain types of work" pipeline. By his own account, he was writing 1 column every 3 weeks, for an unprofitable magazine, as a freelancer with no formal employment relationship. If they'd been responsible in the way you're wishing for, they would have never hired him at all, knowing they don't have the money to treat him as a valued employee.

ThrowawayR2 2y ago

> "Maybe an unpopular opinion, but some jobs shouldn't exist." Easy to say until your profession is next up on the chopping block.

elsonrodriguez 2y ago

If you have tried to use a search engine to look anything up in the last few years you have seen AI generated articles that aimlessly meander for paragraphs without providing an actual answer to your question. Those answers were previously (occasionally)contained within succinct articles written by someone who did some research or was an SME. Maybe it was the case that content farms were degrading the ability for information to be found on the internet, but AI has basically dropped a nuke on search results. It is a wasteland and nothing is alive there.

fshbbdssbbgdd 2y ago
Let’s not rewrite history here. Search results were full of aimless, meandering SEO-optimized articles long before it became possible to generate those with LLMs.
lemoncookiechip 2y ago
To be fair to LLMs, you can create a custom rule for it to be brief and concise, or pretty much anything really. I personally blame the users who are actively trying to seem like wordsmiths by having all the pointless fluff around the meat and potatoes.
Ekaros 2y ago
I am not sure if AI is purely to blame for this. Looking at recipes I have to scroll through lot of text to see the recipe and ingredients list... Similar thing goes for product recommendations. I remember it being pretty bad even before LLMs.