[kortilla]

> That should be uncontroversial, because in our society that's how the harms generally fall.

This is just talking past the conclusion though. Have you considered that the reason people are freaking out is because this is the first technology directly displacing a bunch of white collar work and not blue collar work?

ChatGPT is much sooner going to wipe out a paralegal than a construction worker.

> E.g., if you look at the stats from the the recent economic troubles

Are you referring to the record low unemployment for African Americans?

[wpietri]

> this is the first technology directly displacing a bunch of white collar work

That isn't true at all. IT has been displacing white-collar work since the 1960s. Perhaps the reason you missed it is that a lot of that white-collar work was seen as women's work? E.g., secretarial work, administrative work.

> Are you referring to the record low unemployment for African Americans?

I think we both know I wasn't.

[kortilla]

>secretarial work, administrative work.

That’s not the work I’m referring to. I’m referring to higher paying jobs that required significant training. This is the first foray into threatening people with under grad and graduate degrees.

ChatGPT will mean the admin assistant stays and types stuff into ChatGPT and the paralegal goes.

The very threat of this, realistic or not, is what all of the handwringing is about.

>think we both know I wasn't.

Then what are you referring to, because the economic trouble TODAY is persistent inflation and the high interest rates to combat it, which does not disproportionately hit minorities.

[wpietri]

> This is the first foray into threatening people with under grad and graduate degrees.

That's not true either. Journalism, for example, has been devastated by the internet. It and many of its related professions require degrees. A lot of commercial art has been severely impacted as well. There have been many bumps in publishing too, making those jobs more precarious.

> The very threat of this, realistic or not, is what all of the handwringing is about.

Sure. And I think what has changed here is not that it's coming for white-collar jobs. It's that groups who previously benefited from technological change or were at least insulated from it, now can see themselves as under threat as well. So although I expect the harms will still fall disproportionately on the less privileged groups, what has changed is that some of the previously privileged groups are now under threat.

[mindslight]

Maybe "managerial" is a better criteria than "white collar" ? US culture has long preached that you are a stupid sucker if you perform direct work. The common sense recommendation for being successful is to seek out a meta position - directing poorly paid less skilled/educated/powerful people under yourself, and taking some of their production for yourself.

With information technology as the substrate, the meta-managerial class has continued to grow in size as ever more meta-managerial layers have been created (real world software bloat), allowing this type of success to be seen as a viable path for all.*

The meta-managerial positions and the upper class had a symbiotic relationship, with the upper class needing the meta-bureaucracy to keep everyone in line - some human-simulating-a-computer has to answer the phone to deny you health care. But LLMs simulating humans-simulating-computers would seem to be a direct replacement for many of these meta positions.

* exclusions may apply.

[iinnPP]

> This is just talking past the conclusion though. Have you considered that the reason people are freaking out is because this is the first technology directly displacing a bunch of white collar work and not blue collar work?

I've been looking for a way to explain this and I think you nailed it. Something about this feels different. I'm sure the same feeling struck the people in history, but there's also nothing guaranteeing the outcome here will be the same.

There's also scale.

A very simplistic comparison would be Netflix DVD and Netflix streaming.