5 ms·

AI is already replacing thousands of jobs per month, report finds

40 points by oidar 1y ago

amilios 1y ago
How is causality figured out here? How do we know it's not just a "standard" market downturn/downsizing to compensate for previous overhiring etc.?
- torginus 1y ago
  It's simple - if they claim the loss in job numbers is due to AI, not economic downturn, that will cause more people to click on the article.
  - pixl97 1y ago
    I'd say it's a bit more complicated than that. Let's take the blame a bit farther back. Instead of the person writing the article, what about the companies laying people off. It looks much better to say "Costs savings for going to AI" versus "Economic uncertainty in future orders"
- coffeefirst 1y ago
  The report comes from a firm called Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, which sells coaching and "career transition" services. This is marketing.
ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
How many of these jobs will stay gone? I feel like I've seen this over and over where a new advancement causes job loss then management realizes it wasn't all it was cracked up to be and need to hire again.
- jerf 1y ago
  From what I can see in software space, any software-primary company that thinks AI means they can fire 3/4ths of their staff in the near future will get stomped in the market by their competitor who decided to take the 4x productivity improvement instead. It may make working for a non-software-primary company as a programmer more risky. But then, "be a value provider, where execs can draw a fairly straight line from your contribution to revenue, and not a value consumer" is not new career advice.
- pixl97 1y ago
  I think the general rule is "Longer than you can remain financially viable". See the jobless recovery after 2008 and how long it took the economy to get back on track.
psunavy03 1y ago
It's not replacing jobs. It's deferring their creation until the executives finally realize they fucked up and you can't replace a human with a glorified search engine that spews complete bullshit 30 percent of the time.
- nyc_data_geek1 1y ago
  I had a rather unsettling thought occur to me the other day. There are many people in this world, to whom truth and reality are fungible, malleable, unimportant things in the face of their agendas. These same people are overrepresented at the highest rungs of the corporate ladder, in the highest echelons of the halls of power in our world. For them, right 70% of the time is more than good enough, because that which is real has always taken a back seat to that which is expedient. So what if the Plagiarism Engine spews Confidently Stated Bullshit 30% of the time? They themselves do that at least as often, and for far more than the cost of what LLM's demand per call. Besides, they're so used to "perception=reality" that they figure for the 30% Confidently Stated Bullshit, they can just paper over it, bully, disconcert and repeat until reality matches their expedient bullshit. The sad thing is, so much of our economy and society is based on bullshit and scams now, they may not be wrong. In fact, they're probably right, for at least a significant percentage of the populace who believes chemtrails are making the frogs gay etc. I suspect some very hard lessons will need to be learned from disciplines where rigor is required 100% of the time, else lives are lost, and lives will be lost, because the business idiots will continue to shoehorn this garbage in everywhere they possibly can, to sustain the hype cycle bullshit they're all cashing in on. Only once many lives have been lost, and the link conclusively drawn to the garbage spewed by these statistical wordcloud predictive autocorrect machines, then we might see a modicum of forceful pushback. But I ain't holding my breath
arctics 1y ago
"Over the past two years, there has been a 400% increase in employers using AI in job descriptions, the firm found." How is that replacing?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- ipaddr 1y ago
  400% increase from a small pool compared to .4% decrease from a larger still means net loss jobs
- terminalshort 1y ago
  Replacing the HR drones that write them, hopefully.
- RobertDeNiro 1y ago
  There is some intense FOMO right now. I work for a large SAAS company and our guidelines went from no AI to "Use AI for everything everywhere". This does not come from a position of understanding (the people in charge are the same), but rather a deep fear that we could fall behind. Its not rooted in tangible metrics.
LurkandComment 1y ago
AI isn't about jobs and efficiency, it's about having a stronger position over labor. AI is useful, in most cases this makes existing labor better. The number of jobs that can be actually automated by it is much lower than people percieve. But the narrative is what matters. The temporary displacement and uncertainty of labor is what matters. It creates a weaker position for labor.
- formerly_proven 1y ago
  > It creates a weaker position for labor. Is this worth >1 trillion in capex? For reference, less than 100 billion have been invested into fusion energy — since 1950.
  - fifilura 1y ago
    Could be? What is your take? What does fusion energy have to do with labor cost? Obviously AI is technology that has its own value. But keeping the labor cost down by just a few percent (and handing that money to company profits) has tremendous leverage.
  - UncleMeat 1y ago
    Total wages in the us is ~11T per year. Depress the labor force a little bit, force up unemployment a little bit, and halt wage growth and you are seeing trillions in annual savings for the bosses just in the US alone.
- penguin202 1y ago
  100% spot on
- dc10tonite 1y ago
  This is an excellent point. It should also be noted that the people who want a better position over labor largely write mediocre memos, make bad decisions, barely listen in meetings, and slap together powerpoints for said meetings. As it turns out, AI can also automate the work of thousands of shitty execs and upper management. If only we could apply that pressure in their direction...
simonw 1y ago
I think this is the underlying report the article references: https://www.challengergray.com/blog/summer-lull-ends-july-job-cuts-spike-tech-ai-tariffs-blamed/ https://www.challengergray.com/blog/summer-lull-ends-july-jo... I can't tell how credible the claim is that "increased adoption of generative AI technologies by private employers led to more than 10,000 lost jobs".
GiorgioG 1y ago
[flagged]
hjouneau 1y ago
[dead]
atbpaca 1y ago
I tried ChatGPT 5 and Claude for some medium, non-trivial coding tasks in Rust, and most of the time the code does not even compile. It may work better for other programming languages. However, this make me believe that unless you want basic small functions (like convert integer to string) done by AI, betting on it to replace SDEs is still risky, as of today. On the other hand, AI tech is progressing quickly.

40 points by oidar 1y ago

How is causality figured out here? How do we know it's not just a "standard" market downturn/downsizing to compensate for previous overhiring etc.?

torginus 1y ago
It's simple - if they claim the loss in job numbers is due to AI, not economic downturn, that will cause more people to click on the article.
- pixl97 1y ago
  I'd say it's a bit more complicated than that. Let's take the blame a bit farther back. Instead of the person writing the article, what about the companies laying people off. It looks much better to say "Costs savings for going to AI" versus "Economic uncertainty in future orders"
coffeefirst 1y ago
The report comes from a firm called Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, which sells coaching and "career transition" services. This is marketing.

ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago

How many of these jobs will stay gone? I feel like I've seen this over and over where a new advancement causes job loss then management realizes it wasn't all it was cracked up to be and need to hire again.

jerf 1y ago
From what I can see in software space, any software-primary company that thinks AI means they can fire 3/4ths of their staff in the near future will get stomped in the market by their competitor who decided to take the 4x productivity improvement instead. It may make working for a non-software-primary company as a programmer more risky. But then, "be a value provider, where execs can draw a fairly straight line from your contribution to revenue, and not a value consumer" is not new career advice.
pixl97 1y ago
I think the general rule is "Longer than you can remain financially viable". See the jobless recovery after 2008 and how long it took the economy to get back on track.

psunavy03 1y ago

It's not replacing jobs. It's deferring their creation until the executives finally realize they fucked up and you can't replace a human with a glorified search engine that spews complete bullshit 30 percent of the time.

nyc_data_geek1 1y ago
I had a rather unsettling thought occur to me the other day. There are many people in this world, to whom truth and reality are fungible, malleable, unimportant things in the face of their agendas. These same people are overrepresented at the highest rungs of the corporate ladder, in the highest echelons of the halls of power in our world. For them, right 70% of the time is more than good enough, because that which is real has always taken a back seat to that which is expedient. So what if the Plagiarism Engine spews Confidently Stated Bullshit 30% of the time? They themselves do that at least as often, and for far more than the cost of what LLM's demand per call. Besides, they're so used to "perception=reality" that they figure for the 30% Confidently Stated Bullshit, they can just paper over it, bully, disconcert and repeat until reality matches their expedient bullshit. The sad thing is, so much of our economy and society is based on bullshit and scams now, they may not be wrong. In fact, they're probably right, for at least a significant percentage of the populace who believes chemtrails are making the frogs gay etc. I suspect some very hard lessons will need to be learned from disciplines where rigor is required 100% of the time, else lives are lost, and lives will be lost, because the business idiots will continue to shoehorn this garbage in everywhere they possibly can, to sustain the hype cycle bullshit they're all cashing in on. Only once many lives have been lost, and the link conclusively drawn to the garbage spewed by these statistical wordcloud predictive autocorrect machines, then we might see a modicum of forceful pushback. But I ain't holding my breath

arctics 1y ago

"Over the past two years, there has been a 400% increase in employers using AI in job descriptions, the firm found." How is that replacing?

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
ipaddr 1y ago
400% increase from a small pool compared to .4% decrease from a larger still means net loss jobs
terminalshort 1y ago
Replacing the HR drones that write them, hopefully.
RobertDeNiro 1y ago
There is some intense FOMO right now. I work for a large SAAS company and our guidelines went from no AI to "Use AI for everything everywhere". This does not come from a position of understanding (the people in charge are the same), but rather a deep fear that we could fall behind. Its not rooted in tangible metrics.

LurkandComment 1y ago

AI isn't about jobs and efficiency, it's about having a stronger position over labor. AI is useful, in most cases this makes existing labor better. The number of jobs that can be actually automated by it is much lower than people percieve. But the narrative is what matters. The temporary displacement and uncertainty of labor is what matters. It creates a weaker position for labor.

formerly_proven 1y ago
> It creates a weaker position for labor. Is this worth >1 trillion in capex? For reference, less than 100 billion have been invested into fusion energy — since 1950.
- fifilura 1y ago
  Could be? What is your take? What does fusion energy have to do with labor cost? Obviously AI is technology that has its own value. But keeping the labor cost down by just a few percent (and handing that money to company profits) has tremendous leverage.
- UncleMeat 1y ago
  Total wages in the us is ~11T per year. Depress the labor force a little bit, force up unemployment a little bit, and halt wage growth and you are seeing trillions in annual savings for the bosses just in the US alone.
penguin202 1y ago
100% spot on
dc10tonite 1y ago
This is an excellent point. It should also be noted that the people who want a better position over labor largely write mediocre memos, make bad decisions, barely listen in meetings, and slap together powerpoints for said meetings. As it turns out, AI can also automate the work of thousands of shitty execs and upper management. If only we could apply that pressure in their direction...

simonw 1y ago

I think this is the underlying report the article references: https://www.challengergray.com/blog/summer-lull-ends-july-job-cuts-spike-tech-ai-tariffs-blamed/ https://www.challengergray.com/blog/summer-lull-ends-july-jo... I can't tell how credible the claim is that "increased adoption of generative AI technologies by private employers led to more than 10,000 lost jobs".

GiorgioG 1y ago

[flagged]

hjouneau 1y ago

[dead]

atbpaca 1y ago

I tried ChatGPT 5 and Claude for some medium, non-trivial coding tasks in Rust, and most of the time the code does not even compile. It may work better for other programming languages. However, this make me believe that unless you want basic small functions (like convert integer to string) done by AI, betting on it to replace SDEs is still risky, as of today. On the other hand, AI tech is progressing quickly.