[misano]

A common misconception about AI is that it is intended to fully replace humans, which is incorrect. The purpose of AI is to reduce the need for human labor, and it has already been doing so. For example—though this is not an exact figure—a task that previously required 15 people might now only need 10. In no instance has the human element been completely replaced; rather, the reliance on manual labor has simply been reduced.

[nitwit005]

It's not exactly a misconception, when companies are pitching AI as a full and complete replacement for human employees. People are just reading the billboards on the side of the road.

[armada651]

I always found advertisements for AI to be so strange, why would you advertise your AI to the public as a danger for humanity that will also put everyone out of work? Such advertising would only appeal to sociopaths, but of course that's because it's intended to appeal to CEOs.

[Nasrudith]

It is just some chuunibyou bullshit to say "Look at how powerful my LLM is!". It is a dumbass publicity stunt, you're just reading into your preconceptions hard.

[pavel_lishin]

> though this is not an exact figure

You mean, this is an entirely made-up figure.

[sbarre]

So what if it is? The example still stands.

A "unit of work" that required X people to complete in Y time can now be done by X/Z people in Y time, where Z is whatever efficiency you are able to get out of applying AI tooling to your business.

For some companies, Z might be less than 1 though. ;-)

So you still need skilled people, just not the same amount as before, because you have different tools available to you.

This has happened before with other advancements in industrial/technological automation. It's not a new concept.

[iLoveOncall]

That supposes that AI has a positive impact to efficiency. So far I see the exact contrary, at least for software engineering.

[sbarre]

I see tons of evidence of positive impact, but I suppose everyone has their own perspective.

I did try to account for that with this line:

> For some companies, Z might be less than 1 though. ;-)

[misano]

exactly

[yCombLinks]

That sounds like 5 humans got replaced by AI. I don't think most people worry about whether all humans will be replaced, simply whether or not they will be replaced, or people they care about.

[jjk166]

Or all 15 people are still employed doing the work of 22.5. Or even more people have been hired now that each person can generate 50% more value than they previously could. Or people are reallocated from the AI assisted task to another. Or some combination thereof.

[misano]

I had thought about this and this is an accounting issue. It's not always the case that if one worker can build one meter of rail per hour, then with a thousand workers we can finish one kilometer of rail in an hour. Maybe more efficiency is not needed and we need to produce a cheaper product, so we make layoffs.

[trio8453]

Which is very short sighted. You or anyone close to you might not be replaced but it should be clear that you don't want to live in a society with 20% unemployment.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I think Spain had unemployment in that range for many years.

[trio8453]

Do they look back on those years fondly?

[figers]

You'd think we would see a large spike in unemployment if AI was reducing the number of employees needed for jobs the way these CEO talk about AI replacing people...

[misano]

In a free market, there are many competitors, new startups, companies and teams may be created, but the general trend is that fewer people are needed to produce a product as productivity increases. A few years ago, a programmer would look for a front-end programmer and vice versa, but now it is not an obvious issue because they can almost work full stack for their small projects.

[figers]

Yes I was referring to the scale of replacement these CEOs are talking about because of AI.

What you describe makes sense and has always been the case with new technology overall