4 ms·

Also, it's not necessarily true that there will be other great careers available. This seems to just be an assumption people are making. Of course, there are j

by kypro 5mo ago

Also, it's not necessarily true that there will be other great careers available. This seems to just be an assumption people are making. Of course, there are jobs that will still require human labour for some time yet, but in reality a lot jobs that require physical human labour are now done in other parts of the world where labour is cheaper. Those which cannot be exported like plumbing or waitressing only have limited demand. You can't take 50% of the current white-collar workforce and dump them in these careers and expect them to easily find work or receive a decent wage. The demand simply does not exist. Additionally, at the same time as white-collar jobs are being lost an increasing number of "low-skill" manual labour jobs are also being automated. Self-checkout machines mean it's harder to get work in retail, robotaxis and drone delivery will make it harder harder to find work in delivery and logistics, robots in warehouses will make it harder to find warehouse jobs. It seems to me there is an implicate assumption that AI will either create a bunch of new well-paid jobs that employers need humans for (which means AI cannot do them) and jobs which cannot be exported abroad for cheaper. What well-paid jobs would even fit the category of being immune to AI and immune to outsourcing? Are we all going to be really well paid cleaners or something? It makes no sense. A lot of the advice we're seeing today about retraining in construction worker or plumber seems to assume that there's an unlimited demand for this labour which there simply is not. And even if hypothetically there was about to be a huge increase in demand for construction workers, it would take years to even have the machinery, supply chain and infrastructure in place to support the millions of people entering construction. The most likely scenario is that people will lose their jobs and will be stuck in an endless race to the bottom fighting for the limited number of jobs that are left in the domestic economy while everything else is either outsourced or done by robots and AI. The better advice is to start preparing for this reality. Do not assume the government will or can protect you. When wealth concentrates corruption because almost inevitable and politicians have families to look after too. Please take this seriously. Even if I'm wrong it's better to prepare for the worse rather than to assume everything will be find and you'll be able to retrain into a new well-paid career.

whodidntante 5mo ago
+1 50% of the workforce was in farming near the end of the 1800's. Today, 2% 40% of the workforce was in manufacturing early to mid 1900's. Today 8% 60+% of the current workforce is white collar. What will it be in 20 years ? LLM's are only a couple of years old, we have no idea where this will go. Maybe it will be a big hallucination, maybe we are looking at the very early version of farm and manufacturing machines. The ENIAC was larger than a person, we now have watches that are significantly more powerful. Maybe in the future, your Apple watch will have more compute than several racks of H100's. When they came for the farmers, no one else cared - everyone got cheap and bountiful food. When they came for the manufacturers, no one else cared - everyone got cheap and bountiful products. Now they are coming for the white collar workers, and their highly paid laptop lifestyles. Who is left to care ? The billionaires ?
- keybored 5mo ago
  There’s over a century of history of workers “caring” and fighting back.
  - whodidntante 5mo ago
    Yes, that is true. However, each time this happens, those people are eventually labelled as getting in the way of progress, luddites, etc, and it is easy for those that benefit (cheap food, cheap products) to simply go on with their "better" lives. I don't think there was a lot of support, outside the farming industry, to prevent machines from taking over peoples jobs even though 1/2 of the workforce were farmers. Similar for manufacturing. And I do not believe the answer to those changes was to do farming or manufacturing by "hand". I also do not believe that the answer to AI is to not use it. But, in the same way, I also do not believe that people will really care that call center workers will be replaced, that designers will be replaced, that many programmers will be replaced, that most admins and middle managers (anyone who pushes paperwork, creates reports, that just communicate and report on work "progress") will be replaced. I also believe that these workers will get retrained and find better jobs is a fallacy - because it has not happened in the past. Farmers may have done this, but those who lost their well paid manufacturing, most lost their place in society. Blue collar workers in Detroit are not today's laptop warriors. We will be undergoing a fundamental change in how society functions. It is quite possible the end result will be good, or at least looked at as good. But there was a lot of pain in the previous transitions, and the distribution of "winners" and "losers" will undergo significant change.
    - keybored 5mo ago
      > Yes, that is true. However, each time this happens, those people are eventually labelled as getting in the way of progress, luddites, etc, and it is easy for those that benefit (cheap food, cheap products) to simply go on with their "better" lives. Is that a historical fact? > I don't think there was a lot of support, outside the farming industry, to prevent machines from taking over peoples jobs even though 1/2 of the workforce were farmers. Similar for manufacturing. Is that a historical fact?
jhrmnn 5mo ago
When no work is safe from mechanization, surely the value of labor wrt capital must fall, and the societal pressure on redistribution will rise. The ultimate outcome of technological progress is either extreme inequality or massive redistribution
- tavavex 5mo ago
  I feel like by the time the societal pressure starts rising in any major way, it won't matter anymore. By that point, the people who will profit will become gods with a prepared response for every action the lower classes could take.
  - keybored 5mo ago
    I feel like this subthread is full of passive acceptance of defeat. How many years did it take for HN to go from “worker unions bad because I make a lot of money” to “Of course there is a capitalist/worker war going on and in fact the capitalists might become technology-assisted gods”? I guess we’re all vulgar marxists when we think it’s too late to fight back. Where did the can-do hustler attitude go? Only applicable for looking out for number one? But now that we are all, at least the non-millionaires here, in the same boat? Curious sudden onset of catatonia ----- To countermand the insane negativity for a second: LLMs are brains in a vat and therefore cannot by themselves do any tasks that goes beyond simulating keyboard & mouse in front of a computer screen.
    - tavavex 5mo ago
      Sometimes it almost feels like there's more than one person on HN holding more than one opinion. I'm from the younger, lower end of the job market, far from the average HN user. You could accuse me of being excessively cynical. That's what happens when the systems you assumed would be there tell you to get bent the moment it's your turn to enter the job market. There's very few people my age I know who aren't angry at something. What you can't accuse me of is hypocrisy. I was never in the ranks of the SV money-above-all billionaire-loving population that's so common here, and I never wanted to join them. All I wanted was a career in something I enjoyed doing and an ability to sustain myself. I really don't understand why I am the one person you decided to turn your snarky, enraged tirade towards. And it doesn't matter that LLMs can't act on their own. You don't need to literally replace every worker to the last one to get to the place I was talking about. A productivity boost that leads to 20-30% of all white collar workers losing their job would be horrific, and it would only get worse from there. That seems entirely possible to me. Nothing I'm talking about is particularly insane, it's all just a continuation of what's already been happening, with the same people ruling over it.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
Mezzie 5mo ago
> Are we all going to be really well paid cleaners or something? I work for a corporation that includes cleaning brands and I've got bad news...
tavavex 5mo ago
> A lot of the advice we're seeing today about retraining in construction worker or plumber seems to assume that there's an unlimited demand for this labour which there simply is not. I think that most advice like this is individual - not systemic. We all won't fit into the remaining fields when white collar work gets less demand, but someone who's just pivoting now still could. There's no systemic solution that will actually be implemented. The only advice left to give to people is to not be too late. There's only so many people that can be trained to do this range of work (has a physical component that is difficult to automate + can only be done here + has an education/certification moat) just based on spots in educational programs, and they'd probably be better off getting on that sooner than later if they think that their current job is going to be in the crosshairs soon.
srj 5mo ago
One way it seems different today is that wealth inequality is already quite high in the US. Even if AI delivers massive productivity gains the windfall is only likely to be more concentrated. When manufacturing was outsourced at least median housing wasn't 7x median income. I'm curious what you mean by prepare, to have savings?

by kypro 5mo ago

whodidntante 5mo ago

+1 50% of the workforce was in farming near the end of the 1800's. Today, 2% 40% of the workforce was in manufacturing early to mid 1900's. Today 8% 60+% of the current workforce is white collar. What will it be in 20 years ? LLM's are only a couple of years old, we have no idea where this will go. Maybe it will be a big hallucination, maybe we are looking at the very early version of farm and manufacturing machines. The ENIAC was larger than a person, we now have watches that are significantly more powerful. Maybe in the future, your Apple watch will have more compute than several racks of H100's. When they came for the farmers, no one else cared - everyone got cheap and bountiful food. When they came for the manufacturers, no one else cared - everyone got cheap and bountiful products. Now they are coming for the white collar workers, and their highly paid laptop lifestyles. Who is left to care ? The billionaires ?

keybored 5mo ago
There’s over a century of history of workers “caring” and fighting back.
- whodidntante 5mo ago
  Yes, that is true. However, each time this happens, those people are eventually labelled as getting in the way of progress, luddites, etc, and it is easy for those that benefit (cheap food, cheap products) to simply go on with their "better" lives. I don't think there was a lot of support, outside the farming industry, to prevent machines from taking over peoples jobs even though 1/2 of the workforce were farmers. Similar for manufacturing. And I do not believe the answer to those changes was to do farming or manufacturing by "hand". I also do not believe that the answer to AI is to not use it. But, in the same way, I also do not believe that people will really care that call center workers will be replaced, that designers will be replaced, that many programmers will be replaced, that most admins and middle managers (anyone who pushes paperwork, creates reports, that just communicate and report on work "progress") will be replaced. I also believe that these workers will get retrained and find better jobs is a fallacy - because it has not happened in the past. Farmers may have done this, but those who lost their well paid manufacturing, most lost their place in society. Blue collar workers in Detroit are not today's laptop warriors. We will be undergoing a fundamental change in how society functions. It is quite possible the end result will be good, or at least looked at as good. But there was a lot of pain in the previous transitions, and the distribution of "winners" and "losers" will undergo significant change.
  - keybored 5mo ago
    > Yes, that is true. However, each time this happens, those people are eventually labelled as getting in the way of progress, luddites, etc, and it is easy for those that benefit (cheap food, cheap products) to simply go on with their "better" lives. Is that a historical fact? > I don't think there was a lot of support, outside the farming industry, to prevent machines from taking over peoples jobs even though 1/2 of the workforce were farmers. Similar for manufacturing. Is that a historical fact?

jhrmnn 5mo ago

When no work is safe from mechanization, surely the value of labor wrt capital must fall, and the societal pressure on redistribution will rise. The ultimate outcome of technological progress is either extreme inequality or massive redistribution

tavavex 5mo ago
I feel like by the time the societal pressure starts rising in any major way, it won't matter anymore. By that point, the people who will profit will become gods with a prepared response for every action the lower classes could take.
- keybored 5mo ago
  I feel like this subthread is full of passive acceptance of defeat. How many years did it take for HN to go from “worker unions bad because I make a lot of money” to “Of course there is a capitalist/worker war going on and in fact the capitalists might become technology-assisted gods”? I guess we’re all vulgar marxists when we think it’s too late to fight back. Where did the can-do hustler attitude go? Only applicable for looking out for number one? But now that we are all, at least the non-millionaires here, in the same boat? Curious sudden onset of catatonia ----- To countermand the insane negativity for a second: LLMs are brains in a vat and therefore cannot by themselves do any tasks that goes beyond simulating keyboard & mouse in front of a computer screen.
  - tavavex 5mo ago
    Sometimes it almost feels like there's more than one person on HN holding more than one opinion. I'm from the younger, lower end of the job market, far from the average HN user. You could accuse me of being excessively cynical. That's what happens when the systems you assumed would be there tell you to get bent the moment it's your turn to enter the job market. There's very few people my age I know who aren't angry at something. What you can't accuse me of is hypocrisy. I was never in the ranks of the SV money-above-all billionaire-loving population that's so common here, and I never wanted to join them. All I wanted was a career in something I enjoyed doing and an ability to sustain myself. I really don't understand why I am the one person you decided to turn your snarky, enraged tirade towards. And it doesn't matter that LLMs can't act on their own. You don't need to literally replace every worker to the last one to get to the place I was talking about. A productivity boost that leads to 20-30% of all white collar workers losing their job would be horrific, and it would only get worse from there. That seems entirely possible to me. Nothing I'm talking about is particularly insane, it's all just a continuation of what's already been happening, with the same people ruling over it.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

Mezzie 5mo ago

> Are we all going to be really well paid cleaners or something? I work for a corporation that includes cleaning brands and I've got bad news...

tavavex 5mo ago

> A lot of the advice we're seeing today about retraining in construction worker or plumber seems to assume that there's an unlimited demand for this labour which there simply is not. I think that most advice like this is individual - not systemic. We all won't fit into the remaining fields when white collar work gets less demand, but someone who's just pivoting now still could. There's no systemic solution that will actually be implemented. The only advice left to give to people is to not be too late. There's only so many people that can be trained to do this range of work (has a physical component that is difficult to automate + can only be done here + has an education/certification moat) just based on spots in educational programs, and they'd probably be better off getting on that sooner than later if they think that their current job is going to be in the crosshairs soon.

srj 5mo ago

One way it seems different today is that wealth inequality is already quite high in the US. Even if AI delivers massive productivity gains the windfall is only likely to be more concentrated. When manufacturing was outsourced at least median housing wasn't 7x median income. I'm curious what you mean by prepare, to have savings?