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AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study
- techpineapple 1y agoI’m suss about this paper when it makes this claim: “where AI is more likely to automate, rather than augment , human labor.” Where is AI currently automating human labor? Not Software Engineering. Or - what’s the difference between AI that augments me so I can do the job of three people and AI that “automates human labor”
- lotsofpulp 1y agoWhat is the effective difference between augment and automate? Either way, fewer man hours are needed to produce the same output.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> What is the effective difference between augment and automate? If the field has a future.
- stonemetal12 1y agoIf your job is to swing a hammer, then hammer swinging robot automates your job. If your job is to swing a hammer, then drill robot augments your job (your job is now swing hammer and drill hole). How that is different from drill bot automating human driller's job is an exercise left to the reader.
- HPsquared 1y agoThe total output isn't going to stay the same, though.
- marcosdumay 1y ago> What is the effective difference between augment and automate? The paper says one of those is impacted, and the other isn't. So, yeah, not only that's what the GP is asking, but I'd like to know it too.
- WillPostForFood 1y agoWhen the Stanford paper looked at augment vs automate, they used the data from Anthropic's AI Economic Index. That paper defined the terms like this: We also analyze how AI is being used for tasks, finding 57% of usage suggests augmentation of human capabilities (e.g., learning or iterating on an output) while 43% suggests automation (e.g., fulfilling a request with minimal human involvement). From the data, software engineers are automating their own work, not augmenting. Anthropic's full paper is here: https://arxiv.org/html/2503.04761v1 https://arxiv.org/html/2503.04761v1
- techpineapple 1y agoSounds like a snake eating it's own tail.
- tart-lemonade 1y agoI was also curious about this. Table A1 on page 56 lists examples of positions that are automated vs augmented, and these are the positions the authors think are going to be most augmented (allegedly taken from [0]): - Chief Executives - Maintenance and Repair Workers, General - Registered Nurses - Computer and Information Systems Managers After skimming [0], I can't seem to find a listing of jobs that would be augmented vs automated, just a breakdown of the % of analyzed queries that were augmenting vs automating, so I'm a bit confused where this is coming from. [0]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.04761 https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.04761
- muldvarp 1y agoBrutal that software engineering went from one of the least automatable jobs to a job that is universally agreed to be "most exposed to automation". Was good while it lasted though.
- ddddang 1y ago[dead]
- AndrewKemendo 1y agoToo bad engineers were “too important” to unionize because their/our labor is “too special .” I think you could find 10,000 quotes from HN alone why SDEs were immune to labor market struggles that would need a union Oh well, good luck everyone.
- JumpCrisscross 1y agoThis is, if true, a fundamental shift in the value of labor. There really isn’t a non-Luddite way to save these jobs without destroying American tech’s productivity. That said, I’m still sceptical it isn’t simply a reflection of an overproduction of engineers and a broader economic slowdown.
- jordanb 1y agoYeah I agree that outsourcing and oversupply are the real culprits and AI is a smoke screen. The outcome is the same though.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> outcome is the same though Not really. If it’s overproduction, the solution is tighter standards at universities (and students exercising more discretion around which programmes they enroll in). If it’s overproduction and/or outsourcing, the solutions include labour organisation and, under this administration, immigration curbs and possibly services tariffs. Either way, if it’s not AI the trend isn’t secular—it should eventually revert. This isn’t a story of junior coding roles being fucked, but one of an unlucky (and possibly poorly planning and misinformed) cohort.
- fibers 1y agoThe accounting note is not true in the traditional sense. The field in the US is just getting offshored to India/PH/Eastern Europe for better or for worse. There is even a big push to lower the educational requirements to attain licensure in the US (Big 4 partners want more bodies and are destroying the pipeline for US students). Audit quality will continue to suffer and public filers will issue bunk financials if they aren't properly attested to.
- lazide 1y agoYup, 95% of the AI hype is to apply pressure on the labor market and provide cover for offshoring/downsizing.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- pipes 1y agoWhere is the evidence for this? Who is "applying pressure on the labour market"?
- runako 1y agoEvery executive publicly saying obviously* false things like X job will be done by AI in 18 months is putting downward pressure on the labor market. The pressure is essentially peer pressure among executives: are we stupid for continuing to hire engineers instead of handing our engineering budget to Anthropic? * - Someone should maintain a walkback list to track these. I believe recent additions are Amodei of Anthropic and the CEOs of AWS and Salesforce. (Benioff of Salesforce, in February: "We're not going to hire any new engineers this year." Their careers page shows a pivot from that position.)
- lokrian 1y agoMaybe it's a good time to ask for advice. Which IT job roles and companies are least vulnerable to offshoring? Defense contractors and the like?
- kelp6063 1y agoyet another clickbait "ai is taking jobs" study that doesn't investigate whether or not the employment decrease is directly caused by the ai adoption
- orochimaaru 1y agoThe study is bs. While executives are blaming AI, it is nowhere near levels of replacement. What I bet is happening under the covers is reprioritization of work, offshoring or both.
- smt88 1y ago> What I bet is happening under the covers is reprioritization of work, offshoring or both. AI has been frequently used as an explanation for layoffs. Before AI, layoffs would be a positive signal to investors, but they'd be demoralizing to staff and/or harm the brand. Now, you can say, "Wow, we're so good at technology, we're eliminated ___ jobs!" and try to get the best of both worlds.
- coldpie 1y agoMy company did exactly this earlier in the year. It was a blatant lie and everyone who works here knew it. None of the people laid off were actually replaced with AI, the work they did was just eliminated.
- anthem2025 1y agoYeah, unquestioning “journalists” have allowed them to turn laying off thousands into an ad for their new tech.
- stonemetal12 1y agoWhy bet? In the news recently Australian bank CBA was caught offshoring positions and claiming the jobs had been replaced by AI.
- anthem2025 1y agoIt’s also just natural cost cutting from businesses that were previously massively over hiring, and outside of AI don’t exactly have a ton of areas with huge growing investment. Plus slashing jobs like this keeps the plebs in line. They don’t like software engineers having the money and job security to raise a stink over things. They want drones terrified of losing everything.
- oytis 1y agoLooks like the study pretty arbitrarily picks "exposed industries" and notes that employment rate there has declined.
- elzbardico 1y agoThis is all covert AI advertising. https://esborogardius.substack.com/p/if-ai-doesnt-fire-you-it-cant-pay https://esborogardius.substack.com/p/if-ai-doesnt-fire-you-i...
- zahlman 1y ago> Current AI valuations assume one thing: mass workforce extinction pays the bill. I disagree. My evidence is simple: just look at how the most recent generation of smartphones is being advertised. Look at the platforms like Base44 that are spamming their ads all over YouTube. The bet is diversified quite a bit, into the expectation that end users will (eventually) pay through the nose for AI-powered toys.
- seneca 1y agoThis study feels pretty weak. Software as a occupation is collapsing, but it's not due to AI. Articles and "studies" like this are just a smoke screen to keep your eye off the ball.
- dimgl 1y agoWhy is it collapsing?
- ChrisArchitect 1y ago[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45025978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45025978
- seneca 1y agoAnd a better source article.
- brandon272 1y ago> Some examples of these highly exposed jobs include customer service representatives, accountants and software developers. We seem to be in this illogical (delusional?) era where we are being told that AI is 'replacing' people in certain sectors or types of work (under the guise that AI is better or will soon be better than humans in these roles) yet those same areas seem to be getting worse? - Customer service seems worse than ever as humans are replaced with "AI" that doesn't actually help customers more than 'website chatbots' did 20 years ago. - Accounting was a field that was desperate for qualified humans before AI. My attempts to use AI for pretty much anything accounting related has had abysmal results. - The general consensus around software development seems to be that while AI is lowering the barrier of entry to "producing code", the rate of production of tech debt and code that no one "owns" (understands) has exploded with yet-to-be-seen consequences.
- chrisweekly 1y ago> "The general consensus around software development seems to be that while AI is lowering the barrier of entry to "producing code", the rate of production of tech debt and code that no one "owns" (understands) has exploded with yet-to-be-seen consequences." ^ This. (Tho I'm not sure about it being "general consensus".) Vibe code is the payday loan (or high-interest credit card) of tech debt. Demo-quality code has a way of making it into production. Now "everyone" can produce demos and PoCs. Companies that leverage AI as a powerful tool in the hands of experienced engineers may be able to iterate faster and increase quality, but I expect a sad majority to learn the hard way that there's no free lunch, and shipping something you don't understand is a recipe for disaster.
- ArtTimeInvestor 1y agoEvery day when I am out in the city, I am amazed by how many jobs we have NOT managed to replace with AI yet. For example, cashiers. There are still many people spending their lives dragging items over a scanner, reading a number from a screen, holding out their hand for the customer to put money in, and then sorting the coins into boxes. How hard can it be to automate that?
- Spivak 1y agoYou mean ordering kiosks and self-checkout machines? We have automated it, it's just not everywhere has implemented it. The one I'm desperately waiting for is serverless restaurants—food halls already do it but I want it everywhere. Just let me sit down, put an order into the kitchen, pick it up myself. I promise I can walk 20 feet and fill my own drink cup.
- ArtTimeInvestor 1y agoYou seem to like self-checkout processes. I don't. I avoid any place where I have to interact with a screen. Be it a screen installed on-premise or the screen on my phone. It is not a relaxing experience for me.
- Ekaros 1y agoSeems like perfect option for robots (not humanoid). Bring me my food. You can still keep people in kitchen for a bit, but well servers in many restaurants are not really needed.
- slipperydippery 1y agoSelf check-out machines aren't automation.
- Spivak 1y agoThere used to be two humans standing at the cash register, now because of software, automatic change machines, and cameras there is only one. One of those humans' jobs got automated. Call it what you like but replacing the work of humans one for one is difficult and usually not necessary. Reformulating the problem to one that machines can solve is basically the whole game. You don't need a robot front desk worker to greet you, you just need a tablet to do your check in.
- wslh 1y agoShort-term, discrete numbers like these are interesting to look at, but they don't really tell us much about the long-term trajectory. In parallel: [1]. [1] "Nvidia Forecasts Decelerating Growth After Two-Year AI Boom" <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45053175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45053175>
- farceSpherule 1y agoSensationalist, alarmist, b.s. article. It emphasizes "AI adoption linked to 13% decline," which implies causation. The study itself only claims "evidence consistent with the hypothesis." The article also largely highlights job loss for young workers, while only briefly mentioning cases where AI complements workers. The study's preliminary status -- it is not peer reviewed -- is noted but only once and at end. If the article was more balanced it would have noted this at the beginning. Articles on the same subject by the World Economic Forum, McKinsey, and Goldman Sachs are more balance and less alarmist.
- hugedickfounder 1y ago[flagged]
- throwawayq3423 1y agoA recession could also explain this drop.
- bilsbie 1y agoAI is the popular cover excuse for layoffs. I can’t think of a single job that modern AI could easily replace.
- hillcrestenigma 1y agoI think the initial job loss from AI will come from having individual workers be more productive and eliminate the need to have larger teams to get the same work done.
- cdrini 1y agoThe way I like to describe it is that you can't go from 1 developer to 0 thanks to AI, but you might be able to go from 10 to 9. Although not sure what the exact numbers are.
- GoatInGrey 1y agoFor cost centers, maybe. If your development team or org is a revenue generator with a backlog, I don't see why the team would be trimmed.
- fluoridation 1y agoI'll go further than you. Even if the team is a cost center, it may not make sense to reduce the headcount if there's still more work to do. After all, an internal team that just assists other teams in the company without directly creating value suddenly become more productive could in turn make the other teams more productive. Automatically reducing headcount after a productivity increase is like that effect where people drive more dangerously when wearing seatbelts.
- conductr 1y agoEventually, maybe. Right now I see a lot more people wasting time with AI in search of these promised efficiencies. A lot of companies reducing headcount are simply hiding the fact that they are deprioritizing projects or reducing their overall scope because the economy is shit (I know, I know - but it feels worse than reported IMO) and that's the right business cycle thing to do. If you're dramatic and take the DOGE/MAGA approach to management, just fire everyone and the important issues will become obvious where investment is actually needed. It's a headcount 'zero based budget' played out IRL. The truth is, there is a lot of fat to be cut from most large companies and I feel like it's the current business trend to be ruthless with the blade, especially since you have AI as a rose colored scapegoat.
- beepbooptheory 1y agoThinly veiled economic propaganda aside, I am dealing with a different AI mess everyday. Technical debt is exploding everywhere I turn. There is an ever larger part of me these days that wishes I could just call the bluff all at once and let all the companies in question learn the inevitable lessons here the hard way. The worst thing for me would be just needing to get a job like I had before being a dev, the stakes are so much grander for all the companies. It's only really existential for the side of this that isn't me/us. I've been working since I was 15, I can figure it out. I'll be more happy cutting veggies in a kitchen than every single CEO out there when all is said and done!
- kerblang 1y agoHigh interest rates + tariff terror -> less investment -> less jobs But let's blame AI
- random3 1y agoI'm sorry, have you read the paper, or did you just want to recite those here?
- carabiner 1y ago2 things can be true
- aurareturn 1y agoBut usually one is more true. I'm on the camp of high interests and high tariffs being the cause more.
- an0malous 1y agoIs there some central authority that’s telling people to blame this all on AI, or how is everyone reaching this conclusion and ignoring the other obvious factors you stated?
- ajkjk 1y agoIt is in their interest to find explanations for reductions in labor that don't assign the blame to corporate greed. For example, a call center might use the excuse of AI to fire a bunch of people. They would have liked to just arbitrarily fire people a few years ago, but if they did that people would notice the reduction in quality and perhaps realize it was done out of self-serving greed (executives get bigger bonuses / look better, etc). The AI excuse means that their service might be worse, perhaps inexcusably so, but no one is going to scrutinize it that closely because there is a palatable justification for why it was done. This is certainly the type of effect I feel like underlies every story of AI firing I've heard about.
- 1y ago
- tonymet 1y agoI see a worrisome trend. On one hand, many of my proto-boomer friends are suffering from age-ism , and memes claim that over-50-year-olds are unemployable. Not 100% fidelity, but there's some truth. Then I hear about a lot of youngsters struggling to find work, and see articles like this. Well, who's left? Is there a sweet spot at like 31 that are just cleaning up?
- aksss 1y agobeside the point, but over 50 = proto-boomer? You mean para-boomer, maybe? Gen X is <=60, I believe, so you referring to the cusp boomer/genx I think..
- Ancalagon 1y agogenx is now proto-boomer
- nateglims 1y agoProto as a prefix means it's first or at least before.
- aksss 1y agoI do not think that word means what you think it means. Proto boomer would be pre-boomer or at least the very early boomer, and chronologically that makes zero sense. Understand what you're trying to say though -- Quasi, Para, Pseudo, Demi would each be more appropriate prefixes. A Demiboomer could be in the Monster Manual.
- tonymet 1y agoboomer-adjacent seemed like a mouthful
- downrightmike 1y ago31 would line up with the post house bubble boom recovery
- JCM9 1y agoCEOs citing savings from AI should be able to show higher profits soon. The fact that they’re not means those tall tales are coming home to roost soon.
- downrightmike 1y agoNah, its going to be like when everyone included "bitcoin" in their quarterly reports and the market goes nuts, until it stops
- wtbdbrrr 1y agoAs I see it, it's really the lack of "capitalists" willpower to be actually capitalist. We can't call it incompetence because neither those whom we have come to know as capitalists nor their advisors are incompetent, which means they quite literally do not want to offset any decline in jobs or (job creation) that can be linked to progress. That's not strange. A "capitalist" wants market participation to grow, infinitely, which is possible. Who we came to know as capitalists don't care about the markets, actual market growth or market participation. They only care about the growth of the value of the markets, "however" that happens. I highly recommend that journalists and economists dig a bit more radically honest into the matter. There'd be more value in that, more blog posts, more articles, more discussions on all platforms, and thus more participation. I mean it's a scapegoat vs straw man vs actual culprit kind of situation ... isn't it?
- MangoToupe 1y agoSurely this must be linked to a general slowing of the economy.
- chiefalchemist 1y agoSlow down people. Let's stop jumping to biases and see what we have here. Note upfront: I'm not suggesting AI is not having an impact. That would be foolish. But I will say there's *a lot* less to the conclusion of this study, simply because the data is questionable. It's not that they did anything wrong per se. I won't say that here because it'll end up a HN cluster fuck. Cluster fuck aside, the caveats and associated doubt are enough to say, "Don't bet the farm on this study." Great bander for the bar? Sure. It's an interesting study but I've seen it called "absolute proof" and other type things. Don't be fooled, it's not that. https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Canaries_BrynjolfssonChandarChen.pdf https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/... From the original study: > "This study uses data from ADP, the largest payroll processing firm in America. The company provides payroll services for firms employing over 25 million workers in the US. We use this information to track employment changes for workers in occupations measured as more or less exposed to artificial intelligence" a) I'm calling this out because I've seen posts on LinkedIn saying it was a sample of 25M. Nope! ADP simply does payroll for that many. b) The size of the US workforce is ~165M, making ADP's coverage ~15% of the workforce. https://www.statista.com/statistics/191750/civilian-labor-force-in-the-us-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191750/civilian-labor-fo... c) Do the business ADP server come from particular industries, are of a particular size, in particular geographic locations? etc.? It's not only about the size of the sample - which we'll get to shortly - but the nature of the companies - which we'll also get to shortly. > "We make several sample restrictions for our main analysis sample." d) It's great that they say this, but it should raise an eyebrow. > "We include only workers employed by firms that use ADP’s payroll product to maintain worker earnings records. We also exclude employees classified by firms as part-time from the analysis and subset to people between the age of 18 and 70." e) Translation: we did a slight bit of pruning (read: cherry-picking). > "The set of firms using payroll services changes over time as companies join or leave ADP’s platform. We maintain a consistent set of firms across our main sample period by keeping only companies that have employee earnings records for each month from January 2021 through July 2025." f) Translation: More cherry-picking. > "In addition, ADP observes job titles for about 70% of workers in its system. We exclude workers who do not have a recorded job title." g) Translation: More cherry-picking. > "After these restrictions we have records on between 3.5 and 5 million workers each month for our main analysis sample, though we consider robustness to alternative analyses such as allowing for firms to enter and leave the sample." h) 3.5M to 5.0M feels like a large enough sample... if it wasn't so "restricted." Furthermore, there's no explanation on the 1.5M delta, and how adding or removing that much impacts the analysis. i) And they considered that why? And did what they did why? It's a significant assumpt that gets nothing more than a hand wave? > "While the ADP data include millions of workers in each month, the distribution of firms using ADP services does not exactly match the distribution of firms across the broader US economy." j) Translation: as mentioned above ADP !== a representation of the broader economy. > "Further details on differences in firm composition can be found in Cajner et al. (2018) and ADP Reserch (2025)." j) Great there's a citation, but given the acknowledgement of the delta isn't at least a line or two in order? Something about the nature of the delta, and THEN mention the citation? k) Editorial: You might think this hand-wave is ok, but to me it's usually indicative of a tell and a smell. l) Finally, do understand the nature of academia and null research (which has been mentioned on HN). In short, there is a (career / financial) incentive to find something novel (read: worth publishing). You advance your career by doing not-null research. Again, I'm not suggesting anything nefarious per se. But this study is getting A LOT of attention. All things considered, more than it objectively deserves. __Again: I'm not suggesting AI is not having an impact. That would be foolish.__
- mattmaroon 1y agoYeah, in the same way ice cream is linked to homicides!
- zduoduo 1y agoNow it is getting harder and harder for young people
- nemo44x 1y agoIs it pure AI or a guy in India that can cover the gap using AI to create good enough slop to pass? Everyone is doubling down on hiring IN India right now. H1B isn’t even a thing. It’s offshoring to Indians that are utilizing AI to ship good enough slop. Everyone’s India office is rapidly expanding.
- kypro 1y agoI have a controversial take that the only reason knowledge jobs have been well paid and fairly safe in the West was because for a while they've been difficult to outsource, not because the skills themselves are particularly rare or hard to acquire. A few decades ago there was a focus in several low-cost economies (like China) to build out a manufacturing base and because of cheap global shipping it just made sense to outsource manufacturing. It's not that manufacturing is unskilled or "unproductive" as some claim. Over the last few years hundreds of middles of people from countries like India have gotten online and in many of those countries today education and English is sufficient that with the internet knowledge jobs can be outsourced. And so obviously they will be. This idea that there are jobs that require such high IQ and knowledge that only a Westerner can do them is kinda silly. We should assume a race to the bottom is the rule when it comes to labour. At the end of it the only jobs that will be safe are those which cannot be easily automated or easily outsourced. Those will probably be skilled manual labour jobs that require a physical presence – jobs like roofing or plumbing.
- nemo44x 1y agoThose countries are too disorganized to compete. It’s why we have to onshore the brains via H1B etc. China less so but unbelievably corrupt system. However LLM slop could, at least for awhile, level the field.
- softwaredoug 1y agoFor similar forms of automation, isn’t 13% somewhat inline with what you’d expect? For example, I wonder how many fewer juniors were needed when we had better programming languages and tools? Do certain programming practices lead to fewer new workers? How many new factory workers aren’t hired on the factory floor due to a form of automation?
- Refreeze5224 1y agoHow many weavers were put out of work by textile automation in the 18th century? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
- dijit 1y agoall of them, which not a brilliant argument when you discover where, who and how the majority of our clothes are made today to be fair. I’ll upvote you though because I hadn’t read the whole backstory of the luddites before.
- Refreeze5224 1y agoI think you missed my point. I was trying to point how similar the situation programmers face with AI is to the Luddites. People think of them as anti-technology, but they clearly weren't. HN feels a lot like a forum for weavers discussing the hot new automatic weavers and how excited they are for them, without realizing the true goal and scope.
- Refreeze5224 1y agoOf course it has. That's the entire point of AI. Ostensibly it's to help programmers, or writers, or lawyers, or whomever. But those are just the users of AI. The owners and buyers of AI at a company level are developing and using it to push down payroll expenses. That's it. It's to avoid paying people, and providing them benefits. Even if you fire 50% of your employees, realize it was a terrible mistake, and hire most of them back, it's a net reduction in payroll costs.
- rapind 1y agoI will say though as someone who solo runs their own product business, right now feels like a great time to be building your own thing. No idea if this will last long though.
- ulfw 1y agoFewer and fewer people to buy said thing when layoffs and no-hiring continues
- stock_toaster 1y agoOnce stagflation really starts to set in, things will get rough.
- jandy 1y agoYeah, who’s going to pay for your single person AI-powered vibe coded calendar organiser product when nobody has a job?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dalyons 1y agoI do wonder, will this drive the value of software “things” way down? Once everyone starts solo building their own things…
- lurk2 1y ago
- notepad0x90 1y agoI think this is to be expected, all tech has societal impact like this. This is just happening over a span of few years instead of decades and centuries. Failure in government policy making at it's peak.
- mc32 1y agoWait; what would you look for a gov policy to do here? Stunt growth? Prevent efficiency or something else like what?
- notepad0x90 1y agoTax incentives , labor laws,etc.. Yes, stunt growth if that growth is immediately harmful to the public. Provide adverse incentives that increase the cost of replacing humans. Less or no government subsidies, incentives or tax breaks if you replace humans with LLMs. Even without replacing humans, tax LLM usage like cigarettes. In the short term that is. over time, wind down these artificial costs, so that humans transition to roles that can't be automated by LLMs. Go to school, get training,etc.. in other fields. Instead of having millions of unemployed restless people collapsing your society. But everyone is on the take, they want their short term lobbying money and stock tips so they can take what's theirs and run before the ship sinks. (if I can be a bit over dramatic :) )
- rr808 1y agoIn my division we have 1000 IT workers. I'd guess the number born in the USA is less than 10%, probably less than 5%. Americans just dont work hard enough, I think now they are a minority they probably dont want to stay either.
- jimmont 1y agoOrganizations are choosing to eliminate workers rather than amplify them with AI because they'd rather own 100% of diminished capacity than share proceeds from exponentially increased capacity. That's the rent extraction model consuming its own productive infrastructure. The Stanford study documents organizations systematically choosing inferior economic strategies because their rent-extraction frameworks cannot conceptualize workers as productive assets to amplify. This reveals that these organizations are economic rent-seekers that happen to have productive workers, not production companies that happen to extract rents. When forced to choose between preserving rent extraction structures or maximizing value creation, they preserve extraction even at the cost of destroying productive capacity. So what comes next?
- repeekad 1y agoI hope AI fuels a re-independence of many industries by making business software discovery and integration cheap and easy, every plumber with more than 10 years experience should own their company with low cost software running it, the efficiency gains from consolidating resources a la private equity for marketing and book keeping go away in an AI powered world
- wesapien 1y agoLate Stage Capitalism. The real paper clip maximizers are the Silicon Valley and Wallstreet bros we met along the way.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- _kb 1y ago> So what comes next? Feudalism.
- AtlasBarfed 1y agoThat's optimistic. Ancient egypt (elite in pyramids, slaves otherwise) is more likely.
- garbage_news 1y ago"AI adoption used as excuse for 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers"
- vvpan 1y agoLots of people are sceptical but I cannot imagine a use for entry level positions anymore. At my work everybody got to calling AI "the intern", which is not confusing because we do not have and have no use for interns.
- mlsu 1y agoI think you are misunderstanding the purpose of interns.
- rekenaut 1y agoTraditionally, interns exist as a well-vetted and well-shaped supply of labor (which is very difficult to find through the traditional hiring process). The work they complete is secondary. Are companies going to stop needing good employees? Is nobody going to need to work in 40 years when all the current employees are phased out?
- rimbo789 1y agoIf interns existed like that they haven’t in the 21st century. They are a free disposable short term labour to be ripped through. Also what company do you know of thinks in 40 year terms? The longest budgeting process I’ve been part of has been 3 years and the year 3 numbers were understood to be pure wish fulfilment
- mothballed 1y agoI'm not sure when interns stopped being part of the hiring chain, but I remember almost universally circa 2010 or 2011 in the great recession, almost every single intern and co-op student I knew were told bluntly there would be absolutely no hiring of them into full time roles. Up until the great recession it was pretty normal, almost expected, that a good internship turned into a good job offer. I'm guessing that just never reversed.
- isodev 1y agoBut how do they know it's AI and not, say, other economy-related issues? Just the other day there was a report that companies are not adopting AI because they don't know about it... and now suddenly, so many are using AI that it causes 13% decline in jobs?
- mtoner23 1y agoRead the paper and find out!
- fl4tul4 1y agoAI isn’t replacing people: leaders are. The real disruption is whether we use it to multiply human potential, or to shrink it in the name of control.
- root_axis 1y agoAre people really replacing customer service agents with LLMs? It doesn't seem practical. Customer service handles all the things that customers aren't trusted to manage on their own with a self-service portal - that's the whole point of having a trusted human involved at all. Giving those tasks to LLMs won't work because the customer can just prompt inject their way to whatever toolcalls correspond to their desired outcome.
- sershe 1y agoI think they might be replacing first-tier support, the people who currently answer really stupid questions, handle really common cases, etc. When you need real support and there's no script you go to second-tier support... As a person who aspires to actually read documentation, try common troubleshooting, google it, etc. before calling support I'd really love to go directly to second-tier, but apparently bulk of support calls are low-effort users, and now they'd get the pleasure of LLM, instead of a person, telling them to reset their router, make sure the thingie on a spray bottle is in "on" position, or call the airline.
- tokioyoyo 1y agoI mentioned it before as well — I know first hand companies that have replaced most low level CS with elevenlabs + GPT ticket systems, while tracking the main metrics. Overall, it’s been better and cheaper than operating all the human agents.
- solatic 1y agoI had a home internet outage recently and needed the ISP to send a tech out. Five years ago, you'd wait on-hold to talk to a human being with a script. "Is the light on your modem red?" "Try turning your modem on and off again." "OK let's schedule a technician for you." Today I get a pre-LLM chatbot, with the same script, no waiting on-hold, available 24/7, with pictures and guides. It's somewhat faster because no human has to read the script over the phone, the words just appear instantaneously. Getting through the script tree to the outcome I want is an easy and obvious path. The vast, vast majority of Tier 1 support is not something where the customer service agent has any agency. They have a script. Taking humans out of the loop here is an improvement.
- zoeey 1y agoThis past year, I’ve seen a lot of entry-level jobs quietly disappear. It’s not that people are getting laid off, it’s that no one’s hiring beginners anymore. What’s really missing isn’t just the jobs, it’s the chance to grow. If there’s nowhere to start, how are new people supposed to get in and learn?
- celeryd 1y agoSadly, they will just have to try harder. It is still doable especially for an American, and I'm not a fan of these doomsayers' prophesying. There is still hope because TikTok and video games are putting most young people in a trance.
- blitzar 1y agoTikTok and video games are also a more viable path to making $100,000 a month than any other professional path.
- rs186 1y agoIt is a career path, but it 1) is a path that only works for a small amount of people, most people don't earn anything like that 2) requires a special kind of personality and set of skills 3) is subject to the whim of algorithms 4) requires brand building over time but can be destroyed overnight for many reasons. Most "regular" jobs are much more stable.
- blitzar 1y agoNot so long ago people who played with programming and computers were wasting their time and potential, disappointed their parents and would have been better off getting a "regular" job.
- rs186 1y agoSure but your comment does not address all those facts that I said. So many jobs were unstable and remain unstable over the past 20 years.
- r33b33 1y agoSuffering has begun. Soon the world will be ripe for a bloody revolution.
- kypro 1y agoThis is good though right? There was decline in manufacturing jobs in the West over the last several decades because we could automate and outsource to cut costs. We all agree that cheap iPhones and clothes are good... Right...? Now we get cheap services too! Job losses to automation shouldn't be a sudden concern to people. This has been happening for decades. The only difference is that it's now impacting the more privileged in society as well.
- Havoc 1y agoNot sure what these guys are studying but can tell you in the real world - essentially zero AI rollout in accounting world for anything serious. We've got access to some fancy enterprise copilot version, deep research, MS office integration and all that jazz. I use it diligently every day...to make me a summary of today's global news. When I try to apply it to actual accounting work. It hallucinates left, right & center on stuff that can't be wrong. Millions and millions off. That's how you get the taxman to kick down your door. Even simple "are these two numbers the same" get false positives so often that it's impossible to trust. So now I've got a review tool that I can't trust the output of? It's like a programming language where the equality (==) symbol has a built in 20% random number generator and you're supposed to write mission critical code with it.
- ecshafer 1y agoThere seems to be this dream of Tax AI Software that will just do all of the taxes. But other than using AI as a fancy text search, I don't see it happening for a long long time. LLMs can't do arithmetic or count.
- Havoc 1y agoYeah - classifying an invoice into building rent or say printer ink it'll have some success. So we'll see some of it at the very bottom end. >LLMs can't do arithmetic or count. Yes. The fancy copilot stuff does use pandas/python to look at excel files so stuff like add up a table does work sometimes, but the parameters going into the pandas code need to make sense too in the garbage in garbage out sense. The base LLM doesn't seem to understand the grid nature of Excel so it ends up looking at the wrong cells or misunderstands how headings relate to the numbers etc. It'll get better but there doesn't seem to be the equivalent of "use LLM to write boilerplate code" in this world.
- rwmj 1y agoWe use Concur (SAP? expenses software), and it can scan your paper receipts and fill in the fields for you. I'd say it's about 30% accurate. Occasionally it'll be incredible. But mostly you end up having to manually adjust fields. It even gets categories completely wrong, like classifying a train ticket as a phone bill. All this means you spend a lot of time checking everything. It'd be hard for me to say honestly that it saves any time, and probably it takes a bit more time.
- bArray 1y agoReading the paper [1], I disagree, I think we are actually seeing an economic downturn due to the infinite spending during the COVID-19 pandemic. Borrowing was high, and now the interest on that borrowing is high. > The patterns we observe in the data appear most acutely starting in late 2022, around the time of rapid proliferation of generative AI tools. They also hold for both occupations with a high share of college graduates and ones with a low college share, suggesting deteriorating education outcomes during COVID-19 do not drive our results. The economic downturn was a delayed effect after high spending at low interest rates during COVID 19. In the UK [2], interest rates were as low as 0.1% (19 Mar 20). Whilst interest rates are low, it makes sense to invest heavily – and one of the largest investments most companies make is in employment. In late 2022 we saw interest rates raise above 1%, then 2%, and by mid-2023 they are above 5%. The largest cost to cut when borrowing is high is again, employment. For every employee, the overhead cost (at medium to large businesses) are 1.5x – 2x their wage. If you’re a big tech firm with 5 employees at $100k each, you could save $1mn a year cutting the right staff down. Apparently Microsoft have sacked some 15k employees this year [3], assuming an average of $100k a year wage, they may have just wiped up to $3bn off of their burn rate. As the paper itself concedes: > One possibility is that our results are explained by a general slowdown in technology hiring from 2022 to 2023 as firms recovered from the COVID-19 Pandemic. AI is being trialled as an approach to maintaining growth despite significantly deep cuts. The Microsoft CEO is under the impression that up to 30% of their code is now written “by software” [4] (are we talking about automatically generated files at compilation, or LLMs?), apparently Google’s code is greater than 30%. I do not believe that AI has yet been linked with job losses convincingly. [1] https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Canaries_BrynjolfssonChandarChen.pdf https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/... [2] https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/boeapps/database/Bank-Rate.asp https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/boeapps/database/Bank-Rate.a... [3] https://www.financialexpress.com/trending/microsoft-is-filtering-candidates-laid-off-employee-claims-rehire-promises-are-misleading-says-i-was-told/3956912/ https://www.financialexpress.com/trending/microsoft-is-filte... [4] https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/29/microsoft-ceo-says-up-to-30-of-the-companys-code-was-written-by-ai/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/29/microsoft-ceo-says-up-to-3...
- 0xbadcafebee 1y agoTranslation: "We spent so much on useless AI tools we had to stop hiring grads"
- nevertoolate 1y agoI talked with an AI friend to find patterns in this comment thread. I'd like to comment it back here: Crisis response analysis of these comments reveals three patterns: Denial (24%): "Study is BS" / "It's just offshoring" - dismisses AI impact without examining evidence Fear/Catastrophizing (24%): "Feudalism incoming" / "End of democracy" - accepts premise, jumps to apocalyptic scenarios Analytical (39%): Questions methodology, notes sample bias, considers alternative explanations, asks for clarification Key finding: Nearly half the responses (48%) are emotional rather than evidence-based. The most upvoted and substantive comments come from the analytical category, which actually engages with the study's limitations rather than just reacting to the headline. The Stanford study itself has significant methodological issues (ADP represents only ~15% of workforce, multiple sample restrictions, correlation≠causation), but you'd miss that if you only read the emotional responses. edit: formatting
- insane_dreamer 1y agoEven if we haven't yet seen any serious rollout of AI in the workplace that could replace junior workers, I think that companies have _been told_ that is is coming (by the many companies hoping to be "the one" to provide that service) and while they're not firing people they're also not hiring new junior staff as much since they "will soon be replaced by automated systems".
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- linotype 1y agoWhat’s really happening is companies are using AI as an excuse to fire people and make those that remain work harder. Eventually people are going to mass quit and go into other industries.
- xnx 1y agoOn HN LLM capabilities with code are most often discussed, but it's hard to see how something like Google's Nano Banana model isn't an extinction level event for low-to-middle tier Photoshop and graphic design work.
- SchemaLoad 1y agoFor editing photos it might be, but I still don't see it for graphic design in general. None of the tools today would be sufficient to generate say a box design for a cereal product. Especially when a lot of the elements have pretty strict requirements like "The name must be in this font", "The bar code must be the correct one".