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AI is the popular cover excuse for layoffs. I can’t think of a single job that modern AI could easily replace.

hillcrestenigma 1y ago
I 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 ago
  The 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 ago
  For 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 ago
    I'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 ago
  Eventually, 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.
jameslk 1y ago
Have you taken a Waymo yet?
- beeflet 1y ago
  no
sumedh 1y ago
I used to hire someone who worked part time from home to bookmark some of the key pages in thousands of pdfs just so that I can directly jump to those pages instead of spending time myself on finding those pages. AI can now do it very cheap so no need to give that job to a human anymore.
- nicman23 1y ago
  gnu parallel + pdfgrepper saved my ass too many times
  - sumedh 1y ago
    My use case cannot be solved by just grepping for the keywords because it does return false positives. You do need some intelligence (human or AI) to figure out if its the right page or not to add the bookmark.
- bilsbie 1y ago
  I know I have dozens of tasks like that but I can’t seem to think of them when I’m wondering what to do with AI!
bigfatkitten 1y ago
The jobs aren't being taken by AI. The capital that used to fund those positions is instead being diverted into AI initiatives.
- js8 1y ago
  This is what HasanAbi mentioned the other day. Betting on AI to do a job (especially if it fails to replace it) is a double economic whammy. You get rid of original people who did the job, and then you don't have funding for other things (also includes people) because you need to recover the AI costs. Collective delusion about AI (or similar craze) can be large enough to actually tank the economy.
danans 1y ago
> I can’t think of a single job that modern AI could easily replace. It could replace many workers, perhaps sacrificing quality, but that's considered quite acceptable by those making these decisions because of the huge labor cost savings. It also could raise the quality of work product for those working at a senior level by allowing them to rapidly iterate on ideas and prototypes. This could lower the need for as many junior workers.
d--b 1y ago
There are tons of internship-like positions where the employer just wants someone to prepare powerpoints and stuff of that nature, that they then edit because the intern doesn’t do a very good job at powerpoint.
laughing_man 1y ago
It doesn't have to replace people on a one-for-one basis to cause job losses. Let's say LLMs make your developers 50% more efficient. Doesn't it stand to reason you can lay off the lowest performing 33% and get the same amount (or more) of work?
- dijit 1y ago
  there hasn’t been a single study that concludes any benefits to AI yet. Either it’s a cover for something or people are a bit too overzealous to believe in gains that haven’t materialised yet.
- visarga 1y ago
  No, it does not stand, because you think linearly. Companies can't simply drop 33% of employees because there is competition. If competition uses both humans and AI they will get more value from both. No AI has sufficient autonomy or capability to be held accountable for its mistakes. There is less upswing in reducing costs than in increasing profits. Companies want to increase profits actually, not just reduce costs which will be eaten away by competition. In a world where everyone has the same AIs, human still make the difference.
  - NaomiLehman 1y ago
    Think about Meta. A simple example is Metaverse. Mistakes and competition? Then, look at their market capitalization over the last three years.
  - laughing_man 1y ago
    You're assuming everyone can compete on service alone, and that's just not the case. If the quality of the product is good enough, price becomes the more important metric.
- legulere 1y ago
  It also means that with lower costs your service becomes more attractive and maybe attracts more customers, so might even grow the number of workers. This is known as Jevons Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
TrackerFF 1y ago
Video and graphical designers? I’m not saying this with optimism, but rather as as observation. I know a handful of digital marketers, that work for different marketing firms - and the use of GenAI for those tasks have exploded. Usually tasks which they either had in-house people, or freelancers do the work. Now they just do it themselves.
- Sateeshm 1y ago
  As a graphic designer, no, AI is not even close to making the profession obsolete. Unless you are talking about the folks who create social media cards and stuff, even that is a stretch.
- visarga 1y ago
  No it can't replace graphical designers except in low stakes projects. Companies won't risk their projects on cheap AI with other larger costs on the line.
  - yourusername 1y ago
    >Companies won't risk their projects on cheap AI with other larger costs on the line. Coca Cola's christmas ad had AI slop in it last year. That doesn't seem very cheap or low stakes.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - visarga 1y ago
      Did the cost reduction have more value than the change in ad outcomes?
    - endemic 1y ago
      Yeah and it tanked pretty hard, IIRC
  - matwood 1y ago
    Instead of replace, think reduce. A graphical designer/lead might have farmed out some work to a contractor, with AI they now just do it themselves. It doesn't look like 'cheap AI' because they used the tools to augment their skills - not replace. I don't know what it is about AI that makes people think in absolutes.
Ekaros 1y ago
Poor quality translations is one that actually are impacted. Maybe some graphical artists.
sjw987 1y ago
I can think of a handful of people I work with who could be replaced by LLM. The hallucinations would be less frequent than the screw-ups the current humans make. It could at least consolidate 5 of those people into 1 with increased efficiency.
- blitzar 1y ago
  I could consolidate those 5 with a trained chimp, but it wouldnt mean that chimps are about to overthrow mankind.
  - sjw987 1y ago
    If general government policies adapted to a world with less available jobs, it wouldn't be an issue. As it stands, our governments are continuing on as normal despite the introduction of a technology which has the capability to erase an enormous amount of jobs from the pool (certainly many standard office jobs). A world with less work and no general change in policy (no UBI or similar scheme) is a world with more unemployed people, falling living standards, more crime, and more instability.
    - blitzar 1y ago
      That is assuming that this time it's different (tm) - for the first time in the multiple millennia of human history
KaiserPro 1y ago
> AI is the popular cover excuse for layoffs. That I agree with. The problem with the assertion that AI took all these jobs is that the normalised point from which they took for assessing job losses is right at the peak of epic programmer hiring. > I can’t think of a single job that modern AI could easily replace. That I am less sure of.
spacephysics 1y ago
I agree its a popular excuse, however unlike the blockchain craze there’s legitimate use cases of productivity improvements with AI. And if you can (in some cases) substantially increase productivity, then logically you can reduce team size and be as productive with less. With the right prompting, you can cut a copywriting team in half easily. My business has one copywriter/strategist, who I’ve automated the writing part by collecting transcripts and brand guidelines from client meetings. Now she can focus on much higher quality edits, work with other parts of the strategy pipeline, and ultimately more clients than before. I can easily imagine a corp with 100 junior copywriters quickly reducing headcount
- margorczynski 1y ago
  The problem is people (not sure if it's coping) present an argument that either it can perfectly replace someone 100% or it's an useless fad. Even increasing the average productivity by 10-20% is huge and in some areas (like copywriting as you've mentioned) the gains are much bigger than that. Of course there's also the argument of the infinite demand (i.e. demand will always overshadow any gains in supply caused by AI) but evidence is never provided.

I 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 ago
The 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 ago
For 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 ago
  I'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 ago
Eventually, 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.

jameslk 1y ago

Have you taken a Waymo yet?

beeflet 1y ago
no

sumedh 1y ago

I used to hire someone who worked part time from home to bookmark some of the key pages in thousands of pdfs just so that I can directly jump to those pages instead of spending time myself on finding those pages. AI can now do it very cheap so no need to give that job to a human anymore.

nicman23 1y ago
gnu parallel + pdfgrepper saved my ass too many times
- sumedh 1y ago
  My use case cannot be solved by just grepping for the keywords because it does return false positives. You do need some intelligence (human or AI) to figure out if its the right page or not to add the bookmark.
bilsbie 1y ago
I know I have dozens of tasks like that but I can’t seem to think of them when I’m wondering what to do with AI!

bigfatkitten 1y ago

The jobs aren't being taken by AI. The capital that used to fund those positions is instead being diverted into AI initiatives.

js8 1y ago
This is what HasanAbi mentioned the other day. Betting on AI to do a job (especially if it fails to replace it) is a double economic whammy. You get rid of original people who did the job, and then you don't have funding for other things (also includes people) because you need to recover the AI costs. Collective delusion about AI (or similar craze) can be large enough to actually tank the economy.

danans 1y ago

> I can’t think of a single job that modern AI could easily replace. It could replace many workers, perhaps sacrificing quality, but that's considered quite acceptable by those making these decisions because of the huge labor cost savings. It also could raise the quality of work product for those working at a senior level by allowing them to rapidly iterate on ideas and prototypes. This could lower the need for as many junior workers.

d--b 1y ago

There are tons of internship-like positions where the employer just wants someone to prepare powerpoints and stuff of that nature, that they then edit because the intern doesn’t do a very good job at powerpoint.

laughing_man 1y ago

It doesn't have to replace people on a one-for-one basis to cause job losses. Let's say LLMs make your developers 50% more efficient. Doesn't it stand to reason you can lay off the lowest performing 33% and get the same amount (or more) of work?

dijit 1y ago
there hasn’t been a single study that concludes any benefits to AI yet. Either it’s a cover for something or people are a bit too overzealous to believe in gains that haven’t materialised yet.
visarga 1y ago
No, it does not stand, because you think linearly. Companies can't simply drop 33% of employees because there is competition. If competition uses both humans and AI they will get more value from both. No AI has sufficient autonomy or capability to be held accountable for its mistakes. There is less upswing in reducing costs than in increasing profits. Companies want to increase profits actually, not just reduce costs which will be eaten away by competition. In a world where everyone has the same AIs, human still make the difference.
- NaomiLehman 1y ago
  Think about Meta. A simple example is Metaverse. Mistakes and competition? Then, look at their market capitalization over the last three years.
- laughing_man 1y ago
  You're assuming everyone can compete on service alone, and that's just not the case. If the quality of the product is good enough, price becomes the more important metric.
legulere 1y ago
It also means that with lower costs your service becomes more attractive and maybe attracts more customers, so might even grow the number of workers. This is known as Jevons Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

TrackerFF 1y ago

Video and graphical designers? I’m not saying this with optimism, but rather as as observation. I know a handful of digital marketers, that work for different marketing firms - and the use of GenAI for those tasks have exploded. Usually tasks which they either had in-house people, or freelancers do the work. Now they just do it themselves.

Sateeshm 1y ago
As a graphic designer, no, AI is not even close to making the profession obsolete. Unless you are talking about the folks who create social media cards and stuff, even that is a stretch.
visarga 1y ago
No it can't replace graphical designers except in low stakes projects. Companies won't risk their projects on cheap AI with other larger costs on the line.
- yourusername 1y ago
  >Companies won't risk their projects on cheap AI with other larger costs on the line. Coca Cola's christmas ad had AI slop in it last year. That doesn't seem very cheap or low stakes.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - visarga 1y ago
    Did the cost reduction have more value than the change in ad outcomes?
  - endemic 1y ago
    Yeah and it tanked pretty hard, IIRC
- matwood 1y ago
  Instead of replace, think reduce. A graphical designer/lead might have farmed out some work to a contractor, with AI they now just do it themselves. It doesn't look like 'cheap AI' because they used the tools to augment their skills - not replace. I don't know what it is about AI that makes people think in absolutes.

Ekaros 1y ago

Poor quality translations is one that actually are impacted. Maybe some graphical artists.

sjw987 1y ago

I can think of a handful of people I work with who could be replaced by LLM. The hallucinations would be less frequent than the screw-ups the current humans make. It could at least consolidate 5 of those people into 1 with increased efficiency.

blitzar 1y ago
I could consolidate those 5 with a trained chimp, but it wouldnt mean that chimps are about to overthrow mankind.
- sjw987 1y ago
  If general government policies adapted to a world with less available jobs, it wouldn't be an issue. As it stands, our governments are continuing on as normal despite the introduction of a technology which has the capability to erase an enormous amount of jobs from the pool (certainly many standard office jobs). A world with less work and no general change in policy (no UBI or similar scheme) is a world with more unemployed people, falling living standards, more crime, and more instability.
  - blitzar 1y ago
    That is assuming that this time it's different (tm) - for the first time in the multiple millennia of human history

KaiserPro 1y ago

> AI is the popular cover excuse for layoffs. That I agree with. The problem with the assertion that AI took all these jobs is that the normalised point from which they took for assessing job losses is right at the peak of epic programmer hiring. > I can’t think of a single job that modern AI could easily replace. That I am less sure of.

spacephysics 1y ago

I agree its a popular excuse, however unlike the blockchain craze there’s legitimate use cases of productivity improvements with AI. And if you can (in some cases) substantially increase productivity, then logically you can reduce team size and be as productive with less. With the right prompting, you can cut a copywriting team in half easily. My business has one copywriter/strategist, who I’ve automated the writing part by collecting transcripts and brand guidelines from client meetings. Now she can focus on much higher quality edits, work with other parts of the strategy pipeline, and ultimately more clients than before. I can easily imagine a corp with 100 junior copywriters quickly reducing headcount

margorczynski 1y ago
The problem is people (not sure if it's coping) present an argument that either it can perfectly replace someone 100% or it's an useless fad. Even increasing the average productivity by 10-20% is huge and in some areas (like copywriting as you've mentioned) the gains are much bigger than that. Of course there's also the argument of the infinite demand (i.e. demand will always overshadow any gains in supply caused by AI) but evidence is never provided.