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200 sats \ 11 replies \ @kepford OP 22h \ parent \ on: 7 months into 6 months away from AI stealing your jobs AI

Indeed.

My favorite relevant quote from Milton Friedman.

While traveling by car during one of his many overseas travels, Professor Milton Friedman spotted scores of road builders moving earth with shovels instead of modern machinery. When he asked why powerful equipment wasn't used instead of so many laborers, his host told him it was to keep employment high in the construction industry. If they used tractors or modern road building equipment, fewer people would have jobs was his host’s logic. "Then instead of shovels, why don’t you give them spoons and create even more jobs?" Friedman inquired.

Does technology affect the job market? Yeah, of course. Is it gonna eliminate all work? Nope. We find new stuff.

Fear is the mind killer.

167 sats \ 5 replies \ @Signal312 17h

I was traveling overseas in Burma, many years ago. At a cheap hotel, there was a patch of grass. A couple of the workers there were cutting the grass, with scissors, while crouched on the ground.

I told a Burmese guide about it, and talked about how inefficient it was. He said that it was a good thing, because at least that way they have jobs.

Fear is definitely the mind killer. But I can see the fear of not having a job as being a very immediate, powerful thing, as opposed to the much more vague and abstract "it's more efficient and will lead to greater wealth".

72 sats \ 2 replies \ @optimism 17h

I was in Yalta back when that still was Ukraine. My companion threw their candy wrappers on the street because that was good for employment.

Broken window fallacy.

111 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford OP 17h

The aftereffects of socialism.

111 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford OP 17h

Wow.

You should drop Economics in 1 Lesson. Then they would learn something.

111 sats \ 1 reply \ @kepford OP 17h

Oh, don't misunderstand. I'm not proposing apathy. I think about losing my marketable edge often. It's one thing that keeps me working to improve my skills. Expecting the world to be static is just foolish. 20 years ago I was thinking about avoiding being made unnecessary. I have long worked to make myself indispensable. Not just with hard skills but with interpersonal skills.

Focusing on an externality like AI is not helpful as a fear. It is if you want to learn how to use it as a tool.

You catch what I'm saying. We survive and thrive by adapting.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 17h

162 sats \ 0 replies \ @OT 17h

"Then instead of shovels, why don’t you give them spoons and create even more jobs?" Friedman inquired.

Didn't know Friedman could dunk like that!

180 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 22h

Great quote.

When people ask me about what AI will do to jobs, my reply is,

"Yes, AI may hurt some jobs. But instead of thinking about jobs as they exist now, you should ask yourself: What will people do that provides value to each other in the future?"

111 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford OP 21h

Exactly. I mean, I remember the first time I realized that the idea of a "job" is a relatively new thing. Its probably gonna evolve over time. I'm not shilling for the "gig economy" but rather the reality that things change and that's not really a choice. Its a reality and those that want to survive will evolve. The false idea that the state can stop it or even control it still hasn't died. What usually happens is that smart politicians see a trend and try to ride it and take some credit for it. You can see this with AI and Bitcoin in relation to Trump and his crew.

58 sats \ 1 reply \ @optimism 22h

Nice quote!

I think that the promise of AGI makes many businesses act prematurely. But since Big Tech keeps underdelivering ¹ this may very well dampen soon.

gpt-5 wasn't AGI, in fact, there were some regressions in instruction-following (i.e. impact of RL directives) vs some of their earlier models from the previous generation, they admitted this in their system card (latest version, still has the notes: https://cdn.openai.com/gpt-5-system-card.pdf) ↩

112 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford OP 21h

Yeah, I'm not an old timer but I've been around long enough to have bags of salt that I keep around for when these scammers start shilling their latest amazing product.

Sometimes there's actual value but its almost never what they promise. Its just how the VC world's incentives work. Fiat money fuels it. VC could be better with hard money. More real. More sustainable. More prosperous.

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