[thegrim000]

"This automation wave will kick millions of white-collar workers to the curb in the next 12 - 18 months"

Ok cool, so in a single year when this hasn't happened, we know never to listen to any grand claims he makes ever again.

[pjmlp]

I have seen CMS systems and asset management products, whose translation and designer teams are now mostly gone, thanks to AI taking care of their work.

How many translation jobs, or asset creation jobs are still available?

I also have witness backend teams being reduced, thanks to SaaS and iPaaS cloud products that remove the need of backend development, now one only needs to plug a couple of products, do some AI based integrations in Boomi, Workato, n8n,... create a frontend with Vercel's v0 and be done with it.

I am in no ilusion that it will come for me as well, and better slide into some other alternative skill set, at least I am closer to retirement, than hunting for my first job.

[happymellon]

We also have IBM tripling job opening because they followed the promise of AI that hasn't fully been realised for them.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47009327

[pjmlp]

Kind of, have you actually fully read the article?

Buried there down to the bottom of the Fortune article,

> Just a week after his comments, however, IBM announced it would cut thousands of workers by the end of the year as it shifts focus to high-growth software and AI areas. A company spokesperson told Fortune at the time that the round of layoffs would impact a relatively low single-digit percentage of the company’s global workforce, and when combined with new hiring, would leave IBM’s U.S. headcount roughly flat.

[sgdfg2]

I never understood why his stuff is well-regarded here lmao.

I took one look and was like - meh. Finally he put out a piece that makes this glaringly obvious.

A man with a way of talking/writing but underneath it all, not much.

[elevation]

> never understood why his stuff is well-regarded here.

He appealed to proponents of basic income.

Years ago, forward thinking identified the trend of decreasing ipv4 availability. Pundits built html clocks to countdown to the depletion of ARINs IPV4 pool, prominently warning of an epoch after which no business could function without fully implementing ipv6. The countdown clocks looked scary and the situation sounded believable, inevitable even, we all wanted to hear, but something would finally force the boss to upgrade.

But hubris blinded these pundits to the possibility that a few large businesses implementing IPv6 and reselling their v4 allotments would indefinitely sustain ipv4 as the internet’s source of truth. With a simple workaround, the old model held.

Like the IPv6 pundits of old, Andrew Wang has correctly identified a trend in AI, but he projects it will erase all jobs and require redefinition of social contract. This is a wild claim, yet proponents of “basic income” are excited to hear anything that bolsters the ideas they prefer to believe.

But I suspect in this case too that the old model will adapt, just as it did with every other increase in human office productivity.

[pinewurst]

He had a taste of public visibility and now is looking desperately for the next passing bandwagon to climb onto.