Many people now think that AI is a mortal threat to jobs - are they right? \ stacker news ~econ

pull down to refresh

Many people now think that AI is a mortal threat to jobs - are they right?

1385 sats \ 9 comments \ @Signal312 10h econ

I often spend a couple hours looking at Substack.com, trying to get a sense of what's happening in the (non mainstream) world.

I just did that again last night, and wow, my feed was absolutely stuffed with all kinds of fearful "AI will take all our jobs" articles. I don't know if it's the algorithm, or there's just a lot of this going around. I do know that the tech job market is crummy now.

Don't get me wrong - AI will, of course, take a lot of jobs. But is it really this bad, already? And what other jobs will open up? Here's another recent post by @stack_harder on the topic #975640.

And here's some of the articles that I came across, just in my last Substack session.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-162828620?selection=0840c2de-f615-40e9-a914-ec19e91429f5 The Great Displacement Is Already Well Underway - It's Not a Hypothetical, I've Already Lost My Job to AI For The Last Year

https://substack.com/home/post/p-160917692?selection=0056dac6-e190-4c80-b360-c991752a5198 The many fallacies of 'AI won't take your job, but someone using AI will'

https://substack.com/home/post/p-161486972 Yes, you will lose your job to AI -My best advice for preserving your value

https://femcel1836.substack.com/p/why-are-there-no-fucking-jobs WHY ARE THERE NO FUCKING JOBS? - The current job market makes me understand wanting to become a tradwife and I do not want to understand that. Below are my thoughts and analysis as a recent, unemployed college graduate.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-161370460 Everyone I know is worried about work

view all related items

122 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury 9h

My brief thought is that yes, AI is going to take a fuck-ton of jobs, it's going to re-architect the modern world. It's like the central thing at my startup and I assume the rest of the world will be a few years behind, especially when you add in whatever economic apocalypse is forthcoming and people want a way to slash jobs without having to really think about wtf they're actually doing.

The bigger thing I wanted to say was that the second-to-last link was really something. I have a lot of thoughts knocking around in my head. It's worth a read.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 5h

I think maybe that second to last person can't get a job because of their personality.

174 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined 10h

I don't know the specifics of tech jobs, but normal attrition can often be in the single percents. So, even if AI only eliminated a few tenths of a percent of positions, that would make the job market much tighter.

For the sake of argument let's say 2% of workers in tech are normally leaving their job during the year and there are normally enough open positions for them to take. If 0.1% of positions are cut, then there will now be 2.1% of unemployed chasing 1.9% of positions.

Not only is that a 5% increase in unemployed tech workers, but now almost 10% of unemployed tech workers have no available position to take.

21 sats \ 2 replies \ @Signal312 OP 9h

I imagine that 2% will think a lot harder about leaving their job!

You're an econ guy...what do you think about all this?

Right now it feels like AI is doing a "shock and awe" type campaign. I use it all the time, and it can just do SO MUCH. It's a little unnerving.

I was doing some work recently in Gumroad.com, and their tech support AI was absolutely outstanding. It was extremely helpful, with an easy link at the bottom to "contact a human" if you needed to (which I did once). I started my tech career in customer support - wonder if that opportunity will still exist in a few years.

(BTW Gumroad open sourced it - it's Helper, on github - https://github.com/antiwork)

26 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 9h

I'm reasonably confident in my short-term and long-term projections, but I have no confidence at all in any particular medium-term predictions.

Short-term: lots of change, which is very painful and messy

Long-term: enormously enhanced productivity will greatly improve standards of living

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 4h

I think it's going to take longer for young people to launch out of subsistence living, unless they're willing to get out of the knowledge-producing industry and go back to physical labor.

I just don't see what value a young person with no domain-expertise brings to a knowledge industry anymore. I'd venture to guess that AI will outperform 99% of undergraduates on knowledge tasks in their first 1 or 2 years on the job. So why bother?

So it'll be harder for young folks to get a foot in the door. They may have to work longer at subsistence wages to build up a portfolio to show that they can do self-directed work, including orchestrating AI outputs to align with a business use case, before they'd get hired by a company. Or they might have to go the entrepreneurial route, which is probably a good scenario if more people were to do that.

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @LowK3y19 40m

I’m a photographer and I already here the older guys saying AI is gonna do our jobs soon

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @aPolitical 3h

AI shouldn't be a threat a anyone, instead we should start making optimum use of AI

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryotosensei 7h

I think AI is an innovation just like other modern advancements, such as the Internet and WiFi. It serves to disrupt our lives, but if we learn to work with it and master it, we can still provide value and preserve our jobs. Admittedly, those who are slower to adapt will be ousted out of their jobs.

Personally, AI has been infused into my nation’s online learning system, and I have been tasked to conduct workshops on the AI-enabled features. I think we have to ensure that we move ahead with the times