[oblio]

> AI won’t replace knowledge workers, it will just give them different jobs.

Yeah, and those new jobs will be called "long term structural unemployment", like what happened during deindustrialization to Detroit, the US Rust Belt, Scotland, Walloonia, etc.

People like to claim society remodels at will with almost no negative long term consequences but it's actually more like a wrecking ball that destroys houses while people are still inside. Just that a lot of the people caught in those houses are long gone or far away (geographically and socially) from the people writing about those events.

[andy99]

I’m not saying society will remodel, I’m saying the typical white collar job is already mostly unnecessary busywork anyway, so automating part of that doesn’t really affect the reasons that job exists.

[theappsecguy]

How do you determine that a typical job is busy work? While there are certainly jobs like that, I don’t really see them being more than a fraction of the total white collar labour force.

[InfamousRece]

Yeah that kind of thinking is known as “doorman fallacy”. Essentially the job whose full value is not immediately obvious to ignorant observer = “useless busy work”.

[hylaride]

Except people now have an excuse to replace those workers, whereas before management didn't know any better (or worse were not willing to risk their necks).

The funny/scary part is that people are going to try really hard to replace certain jobs with AI because they believe in the hype and not because AI may actually be good at it. The law industry (in the US anyways) spends a massive amount of time combing through case law - this is something AI could be good at (if it's done right and doesn't try and hallucinate responses and cites sources). I'd not want to be a paralegal.

But also, funny things can happen when productivity is enhanced. I'm reminded of a story I was told by an accounting prof. In university, they forced students in our tech program to take a handful of business courses. We of course hated it being techies, but one prof was quite fascinating. He was trying to point out how amazing Microsoft Excel was - and wasn't doing a very good job of it to uncaring technology students. The man was about 60 and was obviously old enough to remember life before computer spreadsheets. The only thing I remember from the whole course is him explaining that when companies had to do their accounting on large paper spreadsheets, teams of accountants would spend weeks imputing and calculating all the business numbers. If a single (even minor) mistake was made, you'd have to throw it all out and start again. Obviously with excel, if you make a mistake you just correct it and excel automatically recalculates everything instantly. Also, year after year you can reuse the same templates and just have to re-enter the data. Accounting departments shrank for awhile, according to him.

BUT they've since grown as new complex accounting laws have come into place and the higher productivity allowed for more complex finance. The idea that new tech causes massive unemployment (especially over the longer term) is a tale that goes back to luddite riots, but society was first kicked off the farm, then manufacturing, and now...

[worik]

AI can't do your job

Your boss hired an AI to do your job

You're fired

[oblio]

Do you assume that the average HN commenter hasn't heard of the Luddites?

Go read what happened to them and their story. They were basically right.

Also, why do you think I mentioned those exact deindustrialization examples?

Your comment is the exact type of comment that I was aiming at.

Champagne/caviar socialist. Or I guess champagne capitalist in this case.