[Wilder7977]

This assumes every decision-maker is a rational actor. Just today an executive was rambling about "quantum-empowered AI". These are the people who take decisions about firing workers. It is entirely possible that AI will replace many jobs while being useless (at achieving what those workers do). At least in the short-medium period.

We would live in a post-scarcity utopia if big economic decisions were taken based on long-term optimal effects.

[tptacek]

I'm interested in how you can tell an industry-wide job displacement story about AI, where AI isn't actually doing the job, that isn't a just-so story.

[hyperadvanced]

If you wanted to tell such a story, you’d have to find examples of companies spending bazillions on new AI tooling, but failing to hit their top level OKRs. I suspect there will be at least a few of these by the end of 2026 - even a great technology can seem like an abacus in the hands of a disorganized and slow moving org.

[tptacek]

The story only matters if it produces an industry-wide displacement in jobs. Failed billion-dollar IT projects are not a new thing, and don't disrupt the entire labor market.

To be clear: I'm not claiming that AI rollouts won't be billion-dollar failed IT projects! They very well could be. But if that's the case, they aren't going to disrupt the labor market.

Again: you have to pick a lane with the pessimism. Both lanes are valid. I buy neither of them. But recognize a coherent argument when I see one. This, however, isn't one.

[scarmig]

There's a coherent story that straddles both lanes, by assuming that the human economy is in some weird place where the vast majority of humans don't create real economic value and mostly get employment through inertia and custom, and that AI, despite being worthless, provides an excuse for employers to break through taboos and traditions and eliminate all those jobs. Quite a stretch, but it's coherent at least.

[hyperadvanced]

I agree. There will be some companies that cannot effectively use AI to slash headcount and become more efficient. There will be those who cut too deep and are burned by it. There will be those who spend millions on AI consultants who don’t move the needle, custom LLM pet projects that get pursued, companies that crash and burn due to vibe coding, companies with 5 employees that are only possible because of vibe coding, etc.

Expecting there to be one result from a new technology is incredibly naïve. There are scores of still existing companies today who fumbled the internet, cloud computing, social media, smartphones, etc. even though all of those technologies have proven to be transformative in the aggregate.

[marginalia_nu]

Seems to be what is happening in a lot of the places it's encroaching.

AI journalism is strictly worse than having a human research and write the text, but it's also orders of magnitude much cheaper. You see prompt fragments and other blatant AI artifacts in news articles almost every day. So we get newspapers that have the same shape as they used to, but that don't fulfill their purpose. That's a development that was already going on before AI, but now it's even worse.

Walked past a billboard the other day with advertisement that was blatantly AI-generated. Had a logo with visible JPEG artifacts plastered on top of it. Real amateur hour stuff. It probably was as cheap as it looked.

You see the trend in software too. Microsoft's recent track record is a good example of this. They can barely ship a working notepad.exe anymore.

Supposedly some birds will eat cigarette butts thinking they're bugs, and then starve to death with a belly full of indigestible cigarette filters. Feels a lot like what is happening to a lot of industries lately.

[Wilder7977]

The journalism one is really a great example I did not think about.

I understand there is an argument to be made about what is the "value" of things, but for me it's quite clear that journalism has the inherent value of providing information, similar to how many other activities have values beyond "generating money for their owners". AI allows to "mock" many activities resulting in the social value of that activity being lost, while possibly maintaining the economic value. A trajectory that is not new but also not good to accelerate on.

[hyperadvanced]

In retrospect, it was crazy hearing stories about how SF UX designers would be paid $250 to essentially do what Figma does now.