[madaxe_again]

The preceding clause is just as bad:

>> the belief that AI can — and will — displace white-collar jobs is a lie that’s been accepted by the masses

I see no argument whatsoever in the piece as to why this is the case, just an emphatic declaration.

Anyway. The belief that the author isn’t talking out of their ass is an insidious lie spread by dark forces. QED.

[atleastoptimal]

I think in the short term much of the concern for AI replacing jobs was overblown, largely due to two factors

1. Benchmark performance of LLM's and AI models did not fully represent skill in real-world domains

2. Most jobs span far more requirements than their specific job descriptions, many of which lie, even in simple jobs, in the realm of highly adaptive, context rich multi-modal information processing that most humans do still better than AI

However, there is nothing fundamental that prevents LLM's from scaling and improving, aided by better scaffolding, to the point of replacing many white-collar jobs, especially ones which have limited, specific requirements and output parameters. This is an enormous chunk of the white collar work force, and displacement is already happening in limited sections, and will surely continue as AI capabilities diffuse.

It seems however deeply entrenched in many people's identity to deny this fact, because to accept it requires accepting that many of the essential claims of AI CEO's are somewhat true to a degree, and that LLM's are a genuinely useful technology.

[JumpCrisscross]

> see no argument whatsoever in the piece as to why this is the case

It hasn’t happened. We have AI rolling out and the jobs data aren’t showing this effect.

[fc417fc802]

We're what, 2 years in? Or 6 months since the coding models became reasonably proficient. No one knows what AI will look like 6 months from now let alone 5 years so the present jobs data can't tell you anything other than that nothing catastrophic has happened yet.

[JumpCrisscross]

> No one knows what AI will look like 6 months

No, but we know what it’s looked like over the past 6 months. We also have two years of Altman preening about imminent, massive job losses. Per his own timelines, those haven’t manifested.

Predicting indeterminate catastrophe isn’t a prediction, it’s a scam.

[torginus]

And its a quite insane thing to push, even if true - AI spend has outgrown wages (even in software) to such a degree, that basically if AI allowed companies to fire every human employee, they wouldn't be saving that much.

[fc417fc802]

Are you perhaps confounding inference purchased by clients with R&D and capex invested by frontier providers?

[fragmede]

"Basically" is doing a lot of work there. What are the profit margins at FooCorp, and how much time and money is spent on messy human drama? If you could replace every human employee with AI, then you could fire the entire HR department and replace it with one AI "HR" that just spins up new AI employees like we do EC2 instances today. Since there are no more messy human resources to manage, anyway. Shutting down the entire department should boost profits by quite a bit!

[fc417fc802]

Agreed but the converse is also true. Predicting that everything will be sunshine and rainbows merely because the sky hasn't fallen yet doesn't pass the sniff test.

> we know what it’s looked like over the past 6 months.

Oddly I seem to interpret that in the opposite manner that you do. The output became noticeably more cohesive sometime around the new year although it certainly still has plenty of shortcomings.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Predicting that everything will be sunshine and rainbows merely because the sky hasn't fallen yet doesn't pass the sniff test

I’m not predicting it will be fine. I’m saying we have enough evidence to cast the opposite prediction, made on specific timescales in the past, as BS.

[zoogeny]

I'm not following your logic here. Are you basing your predictions on the predictions of CEOs?

If I understand you correctly you are saying, CEOs predicted X and they were wrong. Now CEOs are predicting Y, and since they were wrong about X you predict they are also wrong about Y.

But Y's success seems independent of other people's ability to predict X?

[byzantinegene]

most ai use and spend is still by humans. laying off humans would (ironically) reduce ai spend and use.

[keybored]

> No one knows what AI will look like 6 months

Which means that they were lying.

Or they were wrong. But best to assume malice given their incentives. (No, that certain saying is just stupid.)

[wiseowise]

> I see no argument whatsoever in the piece as to why this is the case, just an emphatic declaration.

We’ve heard Claude is good enough now that you no longer need SE and founders will just do their coding for a year already. It hasn’t happened. And guess who develops CC and other Anthropic/OpenAI products?

[satvikpendem]

The false part is that the masses do not accept the lie, as most don't actually believe those companies.

[keybored]

People who talk about the masses are at the same time completely distanced from them but also completely tuned in to their mass psyche, or so they claim.

[satvikpendem]

Maybe, not always, but doesn't make them incorrect.