[the_duke]

There is nothing new or dystopian about this, a tradeoff between capital expenditure and labour has existed since ... forever.

Do I buy expensive tool X or get buy with cheap ones that make the work take longer or be less precise? Do I buy fancy machine Y or pay 10 people to do it manually?

The only new development with AI is that this was traditionally limited to relatively manual or repetitive processes, but is now expanding to knowledge work as well.

In the medium term the question will be do I just pay for people, or do I spend resources on collecting data and training a model?

[novagameco]

Dystopia is when white collar workers are no longer secure in the labor force. Basic economics is when blue collar workers are no longer secure in the labor force

[kurthr]

There was a time in the 80 and then 00s when this was the case, when big steel/auto was laying off, but it hasn't really seemed like that for decades. That was globalization (Japan then China and the rest of Asia), but now it feels like a trope. What happens to a plumber, electrician, or welder/machinist that loses their job? They get another one. They are in demand. Heck, even truckers are in demand. Does it take time to train, yeah... but it's not $100k for a degree. Are you gonna become a billionaire? Probably not unless that coin/lottery pans out.

Unions are stronger than the last 40 years especially at auto/medical/trucking. Likely, deglobalization is going to bring some production home, but really the question is, why dismiss or even relish worker insecurity and inefficiency?

[ExoticPearTree]

You are never secure in your job. Its just that it happens less often to white collar work.

You know, for other people you are the other people that things happen to.

[novagameco]

Nobody is ever secure in their particular job, but white collar workers used to be secure in the economy. Now, AI threatens to upend a lot of white collar work without creating any new kinds of jobs to replace them. Anybody who says that AI will create more jobs than it replaces is just divining the future based on the impact of totally unrelated technologies (steam engine, electric motors) on the economy hundreds of years ago

[somenameforme]

I'd look at this from a different perspective. Why does one hire a janitor? Is it because you're incapable of cleaning a bathroom, mopping, or sweeping? No, it's because you have different priorities for your own time. Even if software capable of creating software, flawlessly to specification, was created - software developers would still have a job. Creating those specifications (and handling ambiguities), integrating the resultant product, dealing with ever-changing specifications, and a zillion other things will still be around, and probably always will be.

If anything, software based solutions (LLMs or perhaps something more domain specific and accurate, eventually) will just broaden the labor pool for software. So you'll see more people enter the field which will depress wages, but there will also probably consequently be more jobs.

[shortrounddev2]

I can't see how this creates more jobs

[somenameforme]

With lower wages, companies become able to hire more people for the same cost, it reduces the cost of startups, and so on. If janitors cost $100k+/year, you'd be seeing far fewer of them around!

[moritzwarhier]

> I'd look at this from a different perspective. Why does one hire a janitor? Is it because you're incapable of cleaning a bathroom, mopping, or sweeping? No, it's because you have different priorities for your own time.

I'm not sure if you are talking about a company or a person or what kind of entity really here.

I'll assume a private person.

So you think people who clean bathrooms do it because they don't have "different priorities for their time"?

That sounds backwards to me.

Edit: and it is, of course, logically.

What I mean is: to have different priorities for your time, you either need to be able to earn more money in the same time, or not need to earn money.

That brings to mind for me another fact: much of art, literature, philosophy, science and other things that we historically have built on was done by people who could afford other priorities in their life than cleaning their bathroom, preparing food, earning money to obtain food...

Of course this will stir up the question of meritocracy and how capitalistic society really functions for some.

But the way you put this question seems naive to me.

I don't think that most people who clean bathrooms for a living do that because they set this priority for their (life-)time.

That doesn't preclude being a janitor from being a potentially satisfying and certainly valuable job.

I know I'm mixing up the terms janitor and cleaning bathrooms here, but I felt that it was already unclear from your comment what kind of job you are talking about. Might be the language barrier.

A janitor hase more responsibility of course than just cleaning bathrooms.

[ExoticPearTree]

Used to, just as I imagine some other jobs were secure in the economy 100 years ago.

I personally don’t know what impact AI will have on the job market, but is is not going to be an overnight revolution.

[cqqxo4zV46cp]

Yeah, it threatens the livelihoods of the people who are moreso ‘in charge’ of what is classified dystopian vs basic economics. Go figure.