4 ms·

The preceding clause is just as bad: >> the belief that AI can — and will — displace white-collar jobs is a lie that’s been accepted by the masses I see no ar

The preceding clause is just as bad: >> the belief that AI can — and will — displace white-collar jobs is a lie that’s been accepted by the masses I see no argument whatsoever in the piece as to why this is the case, just an emphatic declaration. Anyway. The belief that the author isn’t talking out of their ass is an insidious lie spread by dark forces. QED.

atleastoptimal 4mo ago
I think in the short term much of the concern for AI replacing jobs was overblown, largely due to two factors 1. Benchmark performance of LLM's and AI models did not fully represent skill in real-world domains 2. Most jobs span far more requirements than their specific job descriptions, many of which lie, even in simple jobs, in the realm of highly adaptive, context rich multi-modal information processing that most humans do still better than AI However, there is nothing fundamental that prevents LLM's from scaling and improving, aided by better scaffolding, to the point of replacing many white-collar jobs, especially ones which have limited, specific requirements and output parameters. This is an enormous chunk of the white collar work force, and displacement is already happening in limited sections, and will surely continue as AI capabilities diffuse. It seems however deeply entrenched in many people's identity to deny this fact, because to accept it requires accepting that many of the essential claims of AI CEO's are somewhat true to a degree, and that LLM's are a genuinely useful technology.
JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
> see no argument whatsoever in the piece as to why this is the case It hasn’t happened. We have AI rolling out and the jobs data aren’t showing this effect.
- fc417fc802 4mo ago
  We're what, 2 years in? Or 6 months since the coding models became reasonably proficient. No one knows what AI will look like 6 months from now let alone 5 years so the present jobs data can't tell you anything other than that nothing catastrophic has happened yet.
  - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
    > No one knows what AI will look like 6 months No, but we know what it’s looked like over the past 6 months. We also have two years of Altman preening about imminent, massive job losses. Per his own timelines, those haven’t manifested. Predicting indeterminate catastrophe isn’t a prediction, it’s a scam.
    - torginus 4mo ago
      And its a quite insane thing to push, even if true - AI spend has outgrown wages (even in software) to such a degree, that basically if AI allowed companies to fire every human employee, they wouldn't be saving that much.
      - fragmede 4mo ago
        "Basically" is doing a lot of work there. What are the profit margins at FooCorp, and how much time and money is spent on messy human drama? If you could replace every human employee with AI, then you could fire the entire HR department and replace it with one AI "HR" that just spins up new AI employees like we do EC2 instances today. Since there are no more messy human resources to manage, anyway. Shutting down the entire department should boost profits by quite a bit!
      - fc417fc802 4mo ago
        Are you perhaps confounding inference purchased by clients with R&D and capex invested by frontier providers?
    - fc417fc802 4mo ago
      Agreed but the converse is also true. Predicting that everything will be sunshine and rainbows merely because the sky hasn't fallen yet doesn't pass the sniff test. > we know what it’s looked like over the past 6 months. Oddly I seem to interpret that in the opposite manner that you do. The output became noticeably more cohesive sometime around the new year although it certainly still has plenty of shortcomings.
wiseowise 4mo ago
> I see no argument whatsoever in the piece as to why this is the case, just an emphatic declaration. We’ve heard Claude is good enough now that you no longer need SE and founders will just do their coding for a year already. It hasn’t happened. And guess who develops CC and other Anthropic/OpenAI products?
- satvikpendem 4mo ago
  The false part is that the masses do not accept the lie, as most don't actually believe those companies.
  - keybored 4mo ago
    People who talk about the masses are at the same time completely distanced from them but also completely tuned in to their mass psyche, or so they claim.
    - satvikpendem 4mo ago
      Maybe, not always, but doesn't make them incorrect.
      - keybored 4mo ago
        Of course not. We have no proof that their hot takes are completely useless.

atleastoptimal 4mo ago

I think in the short term much of the concern for AI replacing jobs was overblown, largely due to two factors 1. Benchmark performance of LLM's and AI models did not fully represent skill in real-world domains 2. Most jobs span far more requirements than their specific job descriptions, many of which lie, even in simple jobs, in the realm of highly adaptive, context rich multi-modal information processing that most humans do still better than AI However, there is nothing fundamental that prevents LLM's from scaling and improving, aided by better scaffolding, to the point of replacing many white-collar jobs, especially ones which have limited, specific requirements and output parameters. This is an enormous chunk of the white collar work force, and displacement is already happening in limited sections, and will surely continue as AI capabilities diffuse. It seems however deeply entrenched in many people's identity to deny this fact, because to accept it requires accepting that many of the essential claims of AI CEO's are somewhat true to a degree, and that LLM's are a genuinely useful technology.

JumpCrisscross 4mo ago

> see no argument whatsoever in the piece as to why this is the case It hasn’t happened. We have AI rolling out and the jobs data aren’t showing this effect.

fc417fc802 4mo ago
We're what, 2 years in? Or 6 months since the coding models became reasonably proficient. No one knows what AI will look like 6 months from now let alone 5 years so the present jobs data can't tell you anything other than that nothing catastrophic has happened yet.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
  > No one knows what AI will look like 6 months No, but we know what it’s looked like over the past 6 months. We also have two years of Altman preening about imminent, massive job losses. Per his own timelines, those haven’t manifested. Predicting indeterminate catastrophe isn’t a prediction, it’s a scam.
  - torginus 4mo ago
    And its a quite insane thing to push, even if true - AI spend has outgrown wages (even in software) to such a degree, that basically if AI allowed companies to fire every human employee, they wouldn't be saving that much.
    - fragmede 4mo ago
      "Basically" is doing a lot of work there. What are the profit margins at FooCorp, and how much time and money is spent on messy human drama? If you could replace every human employee with AI, then you could fire the entire HR department and replace it with one AI "HR" that just spins up new AI employees like we do EC2 instances today. Since there are no more messy human resources to manage, anyway. Shutting down the entire department should boost profits by quite a bit!
    - fc417fc802 4mo ago
      Are you perhaps confounding inference purchased by clients with R&D and capex invested by frontier providers?
  - fc417fc802 4mo ago
    Agreed but the converse is also true. Predicting that everything will be sunshine and rainbows merely because the sky hasn't fallen yet doesn't pass the sniff test. > we know what it’s looked like over the past 6 months. Oddly I seem to interpret that in the opposite manner that you do. The output became noticeably more cohesive sometime around the new year although it certainly still has plenty of shortcomings.

wiseowise 4mo ago

> I see no argument whatsoever in the piece as to why this is the case, just an emphatic declaration. We’ve heard Claude is good enough now that you no longer need SE and founders will just do their coding for a year already. It hasn’t happened. And guess who develops CC and other Anthropic/OpenAI products?

satvikpendem 4mo ago
The false part is that the masses do not accept the lie, as most don't actually believe those companies.
- keybored 4mo ago
  People who talk about the masses are at the same time completely distanced from them but also completely tuned in to their mass psyche, or so they claim.
  - satvikpendem 4mo ago
    Maybe, not always, but doesn't make them incorrect.
    - keybored 4mo ago
      Of course not. We have no proof that their hot takes are completely useless.