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Knowledge work is too broad a definition. There’s immense potential to reduce the “creative drudgery” in work - think background art, music for malls, first dra

Knowledge work is too broad a definition. There’s immense potential to reduce the “creative drudgery” in work - think background art, music for malls, first drafts of company comms… Some knowledge work has more leverage than other knowledge work. We don’t have a term for this distinction right now. But the low-leverage work will get automated, leaving us with more pleasant, higher-level, more creative jobs. This is just a continuation of the trend that saw most people leave the factory and sit down at air conditioned desks. Knowledge workers can keep up if they stop thinking of themselves as workers and start thinking of themselves as automators of knowledge work.

Havoc 2y ago
AI will create new jobs. Good jobs too. But not enough to absorb the losses volume wise and also not accessible to all. Some office Karen that calls google homepage „the internet“ and struggles using shift key to capitalize (true story) is not going to automate anything whatsoever in a world where even tech people struggle to keep up Or put different yes jobs but at different level entirely. So we’re still going to be stuck with a huge societal problem of people displaced with no place to go > But the low-leverage work will get automated Is this accurate? In my mind whether something can/will get automated is not linked to level of leverage it has.
- cadamsdotcom 2y ago
  Plenty of computer illiterate people abound. They’re delivering your food and keeping the streets swept. There’s more than enough work in the physical world. Your hypothetical Karen will either retrain or fall behind and the world will go on. For a relatable present-day example of the structural unemployment you’re alluding to, consider the typical HN comment by the person who sent 500+ resumes only to get no response and/or be ghosted. Whatever skills they’re plying aren’t needed by employers - even though they’re software skills. Implying there exist sub-categories of software skills that are not needed in today’s economy. It’s possible for annyone to get left behind if they don’t upskill. But yet, unemployment in the US is insanely low: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59431 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59431 How do you square that circle? I don’t think there is or will be structural unemployment, but there’ll always be anecdotes to support fearmongering about it.
  - Havoc 2y ago
    The current unemployment situation seems largely irrelevant to a future scenario where mass AI roll out happens. Things are likely to change somehow. Probably dramatically. So more of the same is probably not what the future holds > They’re delivering your food and keeping the streets swept And when we automate those? If you keep automating stuff eventually you run out of places to put the displaced people. Does that not seem intuitively logical to you? Upskilling doesn’t magically solve that problem. It just saturates a different level. Bit like going to Uni used to be a certain win now less so because everyone is going to Uni.
    - cadamsdotcom 2y ago
      Who’s rolling out, managing, scaling, and iterating this mass AI? How many mass AIs are there going to need to be? Who’s deciding what to use it for?? Who’s auditing the mass AI’s output? Who will you call when the AI inevitably go off the rails? Who will debug the mass AI that went off the rails so the lessons can be learned and integrated into the next generation of mass AI? Who will build, deploy, and supervise that next generation of mass AI? These and other questions, attempted thoughtfully one by one, should make it harder and harder to hold on to a belief that we can ever run out of work for humans. The work will keep getting better as more is done for us - more creative, and less drudgerous; but it’ll never stop being directed by us because we are the interface to the human world.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
the problem is that it requires very few knowledge users to design things vs the many that it takes to put them into production the question remains, what will the other 90% who aren't needed anymore do in order to survive economically?

Havoc 2y ago

AI will create new jobs. Good jobs too. But not enough to absorb the losses volume wise and also not accessible to all. Some office Karen that calls google homepage „the internet“ and struggles using shift key to capitalize (true story) is not going to automate anything whatsoever in a world where even tech people struggle to keep up Or put different yes jobs but at different level entirely. So we’re still going to be stuck with a huge societal problem of people displaced with no place to go > But the low-leverage work will get automated Is this accurate? In my mind whether something can/will get automated is not linked to level of leverage it has.

cadamsdotcom 2y ago
Plenty of computer illiterate people abound. They’re delivering your food and keeping the streets swept. There’s more than enough work in the physical world. Your hypothetical Karen will either retrain or fall behind and the world will go on. For a relatable present-day example of the structural unemployment you’re alluding to, consider the typical HN comment by the person who sent 500+ resumes only to get no response and/or be ghosted. Whatever skills they’re plying aren’t needed by employers - even though they’re software skills. Implying there exist sub-categories of software skills that are not needed in today’s economy. It’s possible for annyone to get left behind if they don’t upskill. But yet, unemployment in the US is insanely low: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59431 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59431 How do you square that circle? I don’t think there is or will be structural unemployment, but there’ll always be anecdotes to support fearmongering about it.
- Havoc 2y ago
  The current unemployment situation seems largely irrelevant to a future scenario where mass AI roll out happens. Things are likely to change somehow. Probably dramatically. So more of the same is probably not what the future holds > They’re delivering your food and keeping the streets swept And when we automate those? If you keep automating stuff eventually you run out of places to put the displaced people. Does that not seem intuitively logical to you? Upskilling doesn’t magically solve that problem. It just saturates a different level. Bit like going to Uni used to be a certain win now less so because everyone is going to Uni.
  - cadamsdotcom 2y ago
    Who’s rolling out, managing, scaling, and iterating this mass AI? How many mass AIs are there going to need to be? Who’s deciding what to use it for?? Who’s auditing the mass AI’s output? Who will you call when the AI inevitably go off the rails? Who will debug the mass AI that went off the rails so the lessons can be learned and integrated into the next generation of mass AI? Who will build, deploy, and supervise that next generation of mass AI? These and other questions, attempted thoughtfully one by one, should make it harder and harder to hold on to a belief that we can ever run out of work for humans. The work will keep getting better as more is done for us - more creative, and less drudgerous; but it’ll never stop being directed by us because we are the interface to the human world.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

the problem is that it requires very few knowledge users to design things vs the many that it takes to put them into production the question remains, what will the other 90% who aren't needed anymore do in order to survive economically?