I thought this tweet made a pretty good point. You might see a lot of charts that make this dramatic point:
But there's also this chart:
Which do you think is responsible for the rather wild divergence between public equities and job openings?
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105 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 3 Nov
@k00b had a post a long time ago about the end of ZIRP and what kinds of things might end with it.
When there's no risk-free return available to businesses, they'll continue employing marginally productive workers. When there is a risk-free return available, they shed their marginally productive workers.
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158 sats \ 2 replies \ @fourrules 2 Nov
Its absolutely the latter. Companies have been trying to get lean without demotivating the staff that remain. They strategically lay off a bunch of people just to see who was making a difference, who the remaining staff fight to get back, then they re-hire discriminately. They were doing it way before OpenAI entered the popular consciousness.
But that doesn't preclude the long-term trend that LLMs have accelerated, that automation is replacing jobs. If interest rates were lower it would mean companies would be hiring to create new projects that leverage AI, increasing head count and bloat, the narrative would be totally different, shaped around opportunities and new paradigms. But because there is motivation to shave some pounds off the AI boom is manifesting in brutal job cuts and hiring freezes.
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190 sats \ 1 reply \ @freetx 2 Nov
I completely agree that interest rates are the driving factor, but the overall trend to "self service" (ie. self checkout lanes in supermarkets) is all part of the 50-yr story of inflation.
One of the results of WTF-happened-in-1971 is that it drives the economy towards endless automation.
The outsourcing wave was successful in moving manufacturing to china to temporarily escape inflation, but retail workers needed to be automated away.
Now its all come to a head: labor rates in china are no longer as cheap as they once were, transportation rates have climbed, the lack of domestic manufacturing jobs means less eroding of middle-class, combined now with hardcore push to automate the white collar jobs.
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8 sats \ 0 replies \ @fourrules 2 Nov
I agree with that over the 50-year horizon, but LLMs aren't yet having the degree of impact that white collar workflows. You talk to your average Salesforce employee and they're barely using LLMs at all. The job cuts and hiring freezes are being done:
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because interest rates make companies motivated to reduce headcount to head off anticipated tighter margins in a stagflation environment
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in anticipation of potential automation opportunities and increases in productivity that may allow them to increase output and throughout with a lower headcount
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because LLMs are a convenient means of encouraging current employees to watch their backs and up skill rather than complaining about increases in workload due to reduced headcount. In other words "if you're demotivated by the layoffs you're just not hyped enough about the productivity gains provided by LLMs, and you're not a good culture for anymore"
I use LLMs every day, but they're not yet penetrating the workflows of an average white collar worker enough to justify the conclusion that they have such an outsized impact on job openings on their own.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 3 Nov
AI is the last hope for US empire to find a way to stay ahead of the Chnese mixed economy.
US has lost on every other major front.
The massive gamble on AI has pumped up the stock market but it has not yet delivered any economic advantage...just the hope that it might...
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