_fat_santa
3 hours ago
I don't find the "AI will cause mass unemployment" argument compelling, in fact I see the opposite as being true.
The reason we are talking so much about that now is that at the current level of productivity, we just don't need as many humans to do the work, as companies can use AI as leverage to not hire as many people.
This i feel will be a short lived period where not everyone has adopted AI to the fullest and thus simply having AI gives you leverage to not hire as many people and still stay competitive. The same thing happened with computers writ large, during the early days the folks that used computers had massive leverage over those that did not.
But what happens in 5-10 years once most orgs standardize on that leverage and everyone has it. All of a sudden that advantage AI gave you over others evaporates and you're right back to how things have always been, that is more humans give you more leverage.
I think once AI is broadly adopted and standardized, there will be an insane boom period for workers.
amykhar
3 hours ago
Even before AI, there was a serious hiring problem in the United States. Companies seem hell bent on not hiring full time employees at a livable wage. I don't blame the technology, but I do blame the greed of business owners and investors.
While its easy to look at the big picture and long term and say everything will all work out, there are so many individuals who are being hurt because of layoffs, reduced hiring, etc. My team is stressed out because they feel an axe hanging over their heads because private equity has declared no more hiring US developers. It's either AI or outsourcing. We should try to be empathetic because real people are losing their livelihoods and the long term isn't going to help them one bit.
mrdependable
2 hours ago
It's a globalization problem that countries have a hard time creating policy against. Countries don't have the enforcement power that they used to. The best we have come up with is using our own markets as leverage. In a hundred years I imagine wealth and income will look much more uniform across the world. Unfortunately, right now, we are stuck competing with people who can earn much less than people in the US. Now we have to worry about this AI disaster waiting to happen because countries have no real power to stop it. They say it looks like AI won't destroy jobs, but I think really we are just watching the various legs on a table be kicked out. It will still stand until it doesn't.
Espressosaurus
3 hours ago
In the long term the sun will go red giant and all life on earth will die.
In the short term I still need to eat, and tech integration that takes 20 years in the economy might leave me totally fucked!
freeplay
3 hours ago
This makes the assumption that humans are needed to drive these AI assisted workflows. I don't think that's going to be the case at all.
The majority of office jobs are comprised of many simple tasks that current and, to an even greater extent, future, models can handle with ease.
Not all companies are looking for 10x productivity gains. I assume most of them probably just want to do exactly what they are doing now but with lower costs.
tobbe2064
3 hours ago
5 to 10 years of 20% unemployment could be verydangerous in places like the us
marcuskaz
3 hours ago
You think? Here's the U.S. unemployment rate during the great depression
1929: 3.2%
1930: 8.7%
1931: 15.9%
1932: 23.6%
1933: 24.9% (Peak of the Great Depression)
1934: 21.7%
1935: 20.1%
1936: 16.9%
1937: 14.3%
1938: 19.0% (Economic recession during the Depression)
1939: 17.2%
1940: 14.6%kurthr
3 hours ago
It's only a fraction of the effect (and of course there was also over financialization), but 20% of the US population was farm labor in the 20s, that fell substantially (and there was the dust bowl) up through the 40s as tractors replaced a significant fraction of all farm labor (perhaps 1% per year). Efficiency does not always drive consumption.
Sure seems to rhyme. Call it Jevon's Tractor Paradox.
Something else certainly happened in the rest of the world about that time too!
Arainach
3 hours ago
Who's going to buy the results of that extra output while most people are laid off? Where is the growth going to actually come from?
Even before LLMs, the cost of living and finding a job that left any disposal income were major societal issues.
throwfaraway4
3 hours ago
Using AI as leverage for labor is myopic. The businesses that thrive will be the ones that use it to automate and allow its employees to go deeper and innovate. The fish can rot from the head or not.
add-sub-mul-div
3 hours ago
The economics of AI investment don't make sense without the promise of vast displacement of labor. There's a ceiling on how much value can be created for a company simply by them using AI to crank out a higher throughput of TPS reports.
apercu
2 hours ago
I've been saying "The economics of AI investment don't make sense" for 2 years but this audience in particular doesn't (on the whole) agree.
sublinear
3 hours ago
Yes, the value of TPS reports diminishes with throughput.
That's why Jevon's Paradox is the dumbest meme we've had this year. The parent concept of marginal utility describes why AI isn't that useful.
mythrwy
3 hours ago
I don't broadly disagree and see AI opening up opportunities that didn't exist before but with respect to companies hiring large numbers of people I wonder what the people will be doing?
Come to think of it, I sort of wonder what many people with office jobs now are doing.
0gs
3 hours ago
trying to reify the proposed efficiency gains they have been told are just out of reach
Ekaros
3 hours ago
One sickening idea I had is even more bureaucracy. You know how any big infra project now has tens of thousand of pages of impact reports, studies and so on. With AI it can be easily scaled to millions if not more. Lots of words that then will be ingested by other AIs. All happily burning electricity in the process.
So more documentation that no one will ever read... Both generated and summarised multiple times by AI...
win311fwg
3 hours ago
The same thing they are already doing? Being a companion for someone who doesn't want to be alone.
The human touch, if you will, is hard to replicate. Even where AI can convincingly act human, that often isn't enough to satisfy what people feel. Just look at the HN guidelines as a perfect example. "HN is for conversation between humans." If it were about the content then any suitable content would be welcome, regardless of the origin, but people are here under the belief that they are making a connection with other people.
Maybe someday AI will replace the business owners and managers too, but so as long as humans control the resources, they will choose to surround themselves with other humans by expending some of those resources towards those other humans.
mythrwy
3 hours ago
So the tendency to hire friends and "cool looking" people instead of smart talented people will get even worse?
win311fwg
2 hours ago
Maybe, but the friend list is already exhausted and "cool looking" people tend to not like the idea of you hiring them just because they look cool. Hence diversity hiring: It became understood that attractive women would get the "ick" if you told them that you were hiring them only because they were attractive women, so there had to be cover for as to why they were suddenly getting hired where they previously weren't as we transitioned into a companion-based economy. Its hard to say if that can be replicated again now that we're all in on the ruse. Possible, but no guarantee. We may have already reached the peak.