[richwater]

AI is just another disruptive technology like the loom, the steam engine or the airplane. It will take time to adjust and some industries will go away and others will pop up.

I think a lot of people are conflating two ongoing things: the emergence of AI and stagnant (if not recessionary) economies across the globe. It appears as if AI is resulting in so much more negative externalities but in reality if not for AI, we'd 100% be in a recession.

[bogzz]

The loom, the steam engine, or the airplane did not cause "captains of industry" to publicly salivate over anticipating being able to fire their knowledge workers who invested time, money, and effort into becoming qualified for the jobs they're now constantly in fear of losing.

The social contract is being broken. Being broken just on paper, just on the hopes that it can be broken for good.

[thankyoufriend]

> The loom (...) did not cause "captains of industry" to publicly salivate over anticipating being able to fire their knowledge workers who invested time, money, and effort into becoming qualified for the jobs they're now constantly in fear of losing.

It absolutely did. Factory owners used their clout to put workers out of the job and then lobbied for military aid and capital punishment instead of negotiating with the workers. IMO, the only tactic for worker that has EVER had lasting success is solidarity through some form of unionization.

Read "Blood in the Machine" if you want to see what happened to the losers of the industrial revolution. The book does contain some fictional embellishments but that is explained up front, and noted when it comes up.

[antonvs]

Those captains of industry almost certainly salivated over the idea of not needing weavers etc. any more. Is the difference you're seeing just that they're doing that publicly now?

[bogzz]

The weavers had a rough go of it for sure, but at least they did not have to spend 4 years of their early adulthood being intellectually challenged in a higher education institution, often going into debt, in order to become qualified weavers.

[thankyoufriend]

Actually it was 7 years of physical training that deformed their bodies:

"But the work left the body callused, bent, and molded. You could tell a cropper by his enormous forearms and by the “hoof” of callused skin that built up on his wrist. In the spring of 1811, George was in his early twenties, and he’d spent his post-adolescent life learning the trade. Seven years of hard, exacting labor; seven years of paying his dues. That led to pride and attachment to the work, to a brotherhood, to an identity."

Merchant, Brian. Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion against Big Tech. Little Brown & Co. (ADS), 2024.

[bogzz]

Thank you for correcting my misunderstanding! Let me pivot then-- I still argue that it is a fundamentally different case when it comes to LLMs.

1. Threatening young and educated people with not being able to realize the potential that they believed they were building for themselves is toying with social uprising.

2. Weaving is an apt example of redundancy on account of technological innovation but it's a poor comparison to LLMs where the narrative is that they will continue to get better until they approach a general intelligence level which would put a much much higher percentage of the population at risk of losing their jobs. Again, the segment of the population that has invested most into their skills, and will be the most angry and capable of organizing should that come to pass.

Weaving doesn't as aptly represent the core of what we as a species are good at and excel at, as knowledge work does.

[thankyoufriend]

1. This is not enough on it's own for social uprising, but it may be the straw that breaks the camel's back. I feel a lot of the general vibe in the US is summed up in this excerpt from "All Hail" by The Devil Makes Three:

"Laugh if you want to, really is kinda funny

'Cause the world is a car and you're the crash test dummy

Herd's stampeding now, fences gone

Television is always on and it says "Save the children, but drop the bomb

Replace the word 'right' now with the word 'wrong'

Hey, there's a big sale on Tuesday, get it before it's gone

Get a picture with the four horsemen for a nominal sum

Now that they got everything, they'd like to sell you some!

All hail, all hail, to the greatest of sales

Everything in sight's got to be sold

All hail, all hail, 'cause it's to work or to jail

Man, they're closing them doors on the world"

Closing them doors on the world aka pulling the ladder up behind them is exactly what is happening, and has been happening, to young white Americans for decades now, and young Americans of color since forever.

2. Weaving is an ancestor of programming so I feel it's an apt comparison to discussions of modern technology, as much as any historic profession can be. But to more specifically address your point about continuing to get better and putting more of the population at risk of job loss, there were multiple innovations within the textile industry that worked together to automate different portions of the industry. The point is similar to the poem "First They Came" by Martin Niemöller, where it starts somewhere but it will come for all of us. So focusing on whether or not weaving specifically is a good comparison to LLMs misses the point that if we don't band together as workers, we will eventually be overpowered by capital, foregoing any discussion about the morality of capitalism but just looking at eternal struggle of profit incentives vs wages.

[bluefirebrand]

No, the difference is that people used to kick down their doors and boot stomp their heads when they got this greedy about it

[antonvs]

TIL I'm a conservative. I yearn to return to the old ways.

[Throaway199999]

OH but they did. Captains of industry always are on the lookout to drive down labor (its their #1 cost).

[HappyHacker731]

> we'd 100% be in a recession

A little confused as to how exactly a handful of unprofitable companies are keeping us out of a recession? GDP is not the economy. We have been in a "recession" for a while now, not that that word even really means anything anymore.

[SpicyLemonZest]

How old are you? I hate to pull rank on people, but if you're an American who wasn't yet on the job market in 2008, you've never experienced a sustained recession and don't understand the comparison you're drawing. A recession feels much worse than "things cost too much and the world kind of sucks", and workers are affected as much as businesses and CEOs are.

[georgemcbay]

I'm an American who was on the job market in both 2008 and during the dotcom implosion and I'm still working in software development.

IMO we effectively are in a recession already (and have been for a while) as far as the real job market goes, the AI boom is only stopping it from showing up in stock market valuations, which is great if you're heavily invested in the stock market, but pretty meaningless if you're a laborer without assets, with debt, and trying to find a job.

Things can certainly get worse overall than they are now (and due to bad leadership, this seems inevitable), but when they do the delta between now and when we are in an official recession will be far greater felt by people who are currently being propped up by stock and home values than it will for the many people who are already struggling.

[HappyHacker731]

Just because it isn't as bad as 2008 yet doesn't mean we aren't in a recession. I would argue that we were also in a recession before the housing collapse actually hit. Economists will also tell you that the great recession ended in 2009 which I think we both know is bs. My point is that it's a nebulous term and the economy sucks right now despite a few companies keeping GDP artificially inflated.

[SpicyLemonZest]

I guess I'm not terribly interested in debating what exactly the term "recession" means or what the line is where it's fair to say the economy "sucks". If you think that the current state of the economy is as bad as we should expect, and it won't get worse if GDP stops rising, I'm confident you're wrong. But I don't know how to convince you of that unless you've experienced a recession in your working life.

[palmotea]

> AI is just another disruptive technology like the loom, the steam engine or the airplane. It will take time to adjust and some industries will go away and others will pop up.

That's fallacious thinking. Technological developments aren't instances of some kind of repeating phenomena; they're distinct, unique events with their own characteristics. You need to consider those characteristics instead of gesticulating at the past for a prediction of the future.

And even if you're correct, you're missing a lot. I'll explain by analogy: at the beginning of a genocide, as someone's community in the process of being murdered, you could totally say "genocides have happened before, some people will go away, others will survive." But that's cold comfort for someone who's about to be killed with their family. AI likely means economic death (or at least hardship) for a lot of people who don't have the needed combination of psychopathy, luck, and wealth to succeed in the new order.

[throwaway290]

> you could totally go up to someone in the middle of a genocide, as their community in the process of being murdered, and say "genocides have happened before, some people will go away, others will survive."

Yeah. How many times I saw people here say oh yeah it's just the same as job loss during automaton-industrialization. How is that making things better? "Yeah just more mass poverty and more wealth inequality, what are you worried about!"

Also during automation there was a lot of work you could switch to and what about options now? start another vibeslop startup so that you can pay openai for tokens?

the only explanation for people saying this is that they don't understand they will be on the line later just like the people displaced now. but the dream of being the .1% who get to be on top and monetize everybody else is too tempting I guess.

[palmotea]

> the only explanation for people saying this is that they don't understand they will be on the line later just like the people displaced now. but the dream of being the .1% who get to be on top and monetize everybody else is too tempting I guess.

I doubt most people who say things like that "dream of being the .1%". I think it's more typical they're just someone who thoughtlessly repeata propaganda memes, without considering the implications. I think that's something that software engineers are particularly prone to do, despite frequently having a self-image of being "intelligent."

[throwaway290]

> I doubt most people who say things like that "dream of being the .1%".

I doubt people who just address one style choice and carefully not make any actual objections. Their comment adds no value and there is no way we can know if they even really understood what they are replying to.

[gdulli]

> AI is just another disruptive technology like the loom, the steam engine or the airplane.

Or social media, or targeted advertising, or fast food.

[arctic-true]

This is an underappreciated point. The economy would likely be in freefall without AI.

Yes, things look bleak for current college grads. The bitter pill to swallow is that they began college in the boom times of 2021-22, and they saw the college grads of those years walking straight off campus into high-paying jobs which don’t exist anymore. They only existed because of the obscene gobs of money whizzing around the economy post-COVID. Whether the shrinkage is due in part or in whole to AI is in the eye of the beholder. But if we had fallen into a broad-based recession, the numbers would look a lot bleaker. Plenty of companies that could automate away entry level positions with current tech haven’t done so, whether due to organizational inertia or ignorance or whatever. That organizational inertia would’ve been much more easily overcome by a market collapse.