I predict a huge demand of workforce in five years, when they finally realized AI doesn’t drive innovation, but recycles old ideas over and over.
“Workforce” doesn’t produce innovation, either. It does the labor. AI is great at doing the labor. It excels in mindless, repetitive tasks. AI won’t be replacing the innovators, it will be replacing the desk jockeys that do nothing but update spreadsheets or write code. What I predict we’ll see is the floor dropping out of technical schools that teach the things that AI will be replacing. We are looking at the last generation of code monkeys. People joke about how bad AI is at writing code, but give it the same length of time as a graduate program and see where it is. Hell, ChatGPT has only been around since June of 2020 and that was the beta (just 13 years after the first iPhone, and look how far smartphones have come). There won’t be a huge demand for workforce in 5 years, there will be a huge portion of the population that suddenly won’t have a job. It won’t be like the agricultural or industrial revolution where it takes time to make it’s way around the world, or where this is some demand for artisanal goods. No one wants artisanal spreadsheets, and we are too global now to not outsource our work to the lowest bidder with the highest thread count. It will happen nearly overnight, and if the world’s governments aren’t prepared, we’ll see an unemployment crisis like never before. We’re still in “Fuck around.” “Find out” is just around the corner, though.
Even mindless and repetitive tasks require instances of problem solving far beyond what a.i is capable of. In order to replace 41% of the work force you’ll need a.g.i and we don’t know if thats even possible.
Let’s also not forget that execs are horrible at estimating work.
“Oh this’ll just be a copy paste job right?” No you idiot this is a completely different system and because of xyz we can’t just copy everything we did on a different project.
Or salesmen. “Oh, you have that another system to integrate with? No, no change in estimates, everything is OK.”
Then they have a deal concluded etc, and then suddenly that information reaches the people who’ll be actually doing it.
It was 41% of execs saying workforce will be replaced, not 41% of workforce will be replaced
Its not replacing people outright its meaning each person is capable of doing more work each thus we only need 41% the people to achieve the same task. It will crash the job market. Global productivity and production will improve then ai will be updated repeat. Its just a matter of if we can scale industry to match the total production capacity of people with ai assistance fast enough to keep up. Both these things are currently exponential but the lag may cause a huge unemployment crisis in the meantime.
In this potential scenario, instead of axing 41% of people from the workforce, we should all get 41% of our lives back. Productivity and pay stay the same while the benefits go to the people instead of the corporations for a change. I know that’s not how it ever works, but we can keep pushing the discussion in that direction.
We are walking talking general intelligence so we know it’s possible for them to exist, the question is more if we can implement one using existing computational technology.
I’ve worked with humans, who have computer science degrees and 20 years of experience, and some of them have trouble writing good code and debugging issues, communicating properly, integrating with other teams / components.
I don’t see “AI” doing this. At least not these LLM models everyone is calling AI today.
Once we get to Data from Star Trek levels, then I can see it. But this is not that. This is not even close to that.
People are always enthusiastic about automating others’ jobs. Just like they are about having opinions on areas of knowledge utterly alien to them.
Say, how most see the work of medics.
And the fact that a few times in known history revolutions happened makes them confident that another one is just behind the corner, and of course it’ll affect others and not them.
You know what I like about Pareto law and all the “divide and conquer” algorithms? You should still know where the division is and which 10% are more important than the other 90%.
Anyway, my job is in learning new stuff quickly and fixing that. Like of many-many people, even some non-technical types really.
People who can be replaced with machines have already been for the most part, and where they can’t, it’s also a matter of social pressure. Mercantilism and protectionism and guilds historically were defending the interests of certain parties, with force too.
No, I don’t think there’ll be a sudden “find out” different from any other period of history.
Hype hype hype hype hype.
Hilarious L take
You know what I love about blocking people?
but recycles old ideas over and over.
I am so glad us humans don’t do that. It’s so nice going to a movie theater and seeing a truly original plot.
Seems to be working in Hollywood films for the last 20 years
Yeah the 59% in this survey are going to end up pretty successful and buy out the 41%
In my experience, 100% of executives don’t actually know what their workforce does day-to-day, so it doesn’t really surprise me that they think they can lay people off because they started using ChatGPT to write their emails.
This was my immediate thought too. Even people 2-3 levels of management above me struggle to understand our job let alone the person 5-6 levels up in the executive suite.
At my last job my direct manager had to explain to upper management multiple times that X role and Y role could not be combined because it would require someone to physically be in multiple places simultaneously. I think about that a lot when I hear about these corporate plans to automate the workforce.
However, people saying that C-suite can be replaced with GPTs don’t understand that plenty of people not in C-suite could be replaced or not replaced just as well. Lots of office plankton around with such reasoning skills that I just don’t know how their work can bring profit.
I can’t decide whether those people are really needed or they are employed so that they wouldn’t collectively lynch those of us who’d keep relevance, but wouldn’t be social enough to defend from that doom.
The problem with building hierarchies of humans is with humans politicking and lying and scheming with each other, not even talking about usual stuff like friendship and sympathy and their opposites. It’s just impossible to see what’s really happening behind all that.
The Oncology pharma companies would love that! Every time I google symptoms I swear…
Well it’s good to know 59% of execs are aware that AI isn’t gonna change shit
Some of that 59% might, but I guarantee at least some very strongly think it will change things, but think the change it brings will require as many people as before (if not more), but that they will be doing exponentially more with the people they have.
The problem with that headline is that it doesn’t feed the hype cycle.
Can AI replace executives too?
Yes. And it will.
As soon as we’ve managed to make a computer that can simulate an entire brain in real time. Who knows how many decades or even centuries will that take.
No. Middle management is a lot of repeating tasks that an AI could do. The thing is that were not talking about replacing all middle management, we’re talking about giving 10% of the managers the tools to run 90% of the repetitive, tedious and boring tasks.
To replace a corporate executive? No, I don’t think so. We already have algorithms more than capable of replacing CEOs. There is nothing that challenging in what they do…
The challenge is to not do whatever the optimal algorithm says. If they simply did what an algorithm says, it would be very easy for competitors to predict.
The challenge comes in being a scapegoat for when things go wrong (albeit a goat with a golden parachute) and a hype man for when things go right.
But as others have said AI won’t replace executives because it’s executives making the decisions to use AI, and no one with power will ever choose an option that reduces their own money.
Oh, but the board directors might want to replace the CEO anyway.
You make it sound like corporations invent a new revolutionary wheel each quarter. They don’t.
What fantastic new beverage have Coca Cola launched the last couple of years? What astonishing new car technology has GM or Volkswagen released lately?
Most companies are doing what they’ve always have done and guarding their market share. Now and then some small competitor with something revolutionizing pops up and either starts eating market share it gets aquired by one the bigger ones.
So between a competition popping up or one of your engineers coming up with a lucky accident, all you do is to manage the business as you always do.
It’s amazing how this delusion gets repeated so much in here. Absolute unhinged shit.
Yes.
The biggest factor in terms of job satisfaction is your boss.
There’s a lot of bad bosses.
AI will be an above average boss before the decade is out.
You do the math.
If Gartner comes out with a decent AI model, you could replace over half of your CIOs, CISOs, CTOs, etc. Most of them lack any real leadership qualities and simply parrot what they’re told/what they’ve read. They’re their through nepotism.
Also, most of them use AI as a crutch, so that’s all they know. Meanwhile, the rest of us use it as a tool (what it’s meant to be).
Christ, if you think a CTO is hard to deal with, wait until you have to interface with the AI CTO.
simply parrot what they’re told/what they’ve read.
That’s exactly what an LLM is
But the AI can do it cheaper
But their job is to be the fall guy.
Yup. The owners can save a lot of money on those paychecks.
Won’t tho.
Can’t wait for AI to replace all those useless execs and CEOs. It’s not like they even do much anyways, except fondling their stocks. They could probably be automated by a markov chain
If they could replace project managers that would be nice. In theory it is an important job, but in practice it’s just done by someone’s mate who was most productive when they don’t actually turn up.
The Paranoia RPG has a very realistic way of determining who gets to be the leader of a group. First, you pick who’ll do what kind of job (electronics, brute force, etc). Whoever didn’t get picked becomes the leader, as that person is too dumb to do anything useful.
Yes that’s quite a funny and satirical way of doing it but it’s probably not actually the best way in real life.
I think Boeing have proven this quite nicely for everyone, the company was much better off when they had actual engineers in charge. When they got corporate paper pushes everything went downhill.
I have been on enough projects where engineers were in charge that went to hell to know that isnt always a solution. And yes I am an engineer.
One of the projects I am on now the main lead is full PE civil and its a manmade clusterfuck well behind schedule, overbudget, and several corporate bridges burned. Haven’t even started digging yet.
By far the very biggest cluster fuck I was ever on was run by a Chemical Engineer. A 40 million dollar disaster that never should have been even considered.
Being good at technical problems (which frankly most of us aren’t) doesn’t mean you know how to do anything else.
I have had good ones and not so good ones.
I swear people don’t know the difference between a good project manager and a bad one, or no one.
Everyone on here is on about how the.board has no idea what the bottom rungs of the ladder do and are all “haha they are so stupid they think we do nothing”. Then in the next sentence say they don’t know what the board does and that they just do nothing.
Project managers on board members what the hell you want about
People slagging off jobs they don’t understand.
Both project managers that they probably have experience with dealing with but don’t understand and board members they probably don’t have any experience with and also don’t understand.
Board members don’t do shit
I see.
What is this judgment based on?
First hand experience
Don’t get a job in government contracting. Pretty much I do the work and around 5 people have suggestions. None of whom I can tell to fuck off directly.
Submit the drawing. Get asked to make a change to align with a spec. Point out that we took exception to the spec during bid. Get asked to make the change anyway. Make the change. Get asked to make another change by someone higher up the chain of five. Point out change will add delays and cost. Told to do it anyway. Make the next change…
Meanwhile every social scientist “we don’t know what is causing cost disease”
AI will (be a great excuse to) reduce workforce, say 41% of people who get bonuses if they do.
Game’s changed. Now we fire people, try to rehire them for less money and if that doesn’t work we demand policy changes and less labour protection to counter the “labour shortage”.
Labor shortage is such a funny term. It’s like coming to a store and looking for 1kg of meat for 1$, not finding it and saying there’s meat shortage. Or coming to a vegetarian store and looking for 1kg of any meat and saying the same.
When everybody is employed, but the economy needs more people - that’s labor shortage. When there are people looking for jobs, but not satisfied with particular offerings - that’s something else.
Thankfully I don’t even wanna work. I just wanna live and if that’s not possible, exist.
Not allowed. Work or die, im afraid.
Same. I welcome our AI overlords as long as that means I can just stay at home and fully embrace my autism by not giving a fuck about the workforce while studying all of the thousands of subjects I enjoy learning about.
Not a thing til the revolution, dear.
I say AI overlords might be an improvement over the human overlords that have persisted throughout human history.
The AI overlords will be trained on data based on human overlords decisions and justifications. We are fucked, my man.
They won’t be though because the managers don’t know anything about AI. People who actually train the AI will be some poor sap in IT who’s been lumbered with a job they don’t want, because AI is computers right.
So I’m going to train it on good stuff written by professionals, Star Trek episodes, and make it watch War Games.
The managers don’t even have any data sets the AI could absorb anyway because most of their BS is in person, and so not recorded for analysis.
Oh my. I see you don’t know mich about the hell called key performance indicators…
Key performance indicators will be what will turn our AI overlords into AI tyrants. And there is so so much data available for training the AIs.
The autism is not required. No one cares about their jobs, especially people who work in jobs where “everyone is a family”. People care about those jobs the least.
I will never care if AI takes mandatory work from me, but I want income replacement lol. Seriously though I hate working so much every job I’ve ever had has made me suicidal at some point. I’m glad there’s a chance at least I won’t have nothing but work and death ahead of me. If that’s all that’s left it’s okay, a little disappointing but it is what it is.
Execs? The same people who make short sighted decisions and don’t understand basic psychology? Let me go get a pen so I won’t…give two fucks what this bogus survey says. Let AI run your business so I can have some excitement in my life
They don’t care. Jack Welch’s ghost must be fed by destroying more companies for short term gain.
As someone scripting a lot for my department in the tech industry, yea AI and scripts have a lot of potential to reduce labor. However, given how chaotic this industry is, there will still need to be humans to take into account the variables that scripts and AI haven’t been trained on (or are otherwise hard to predict). I know the managers don’t wanna spend their time on these issues, as there’s plenty more for them to deal with. When there’s true AGI, that may be a different scenario, but time will tell.
Currently, we need to have some people in each department overseeing the automations of their area. This stuff mostly kills the super redundant data entry tasks that make me feel cross eyed by the end of my shift. I don’t wanna be the embodiment of vlookup between pdfs and type the same number 4+ times.
Scripting is one thing and unpredictable plagiarism generator is another.
If you mean ML text recognition, ML classification etc - then yeah, why not.
And that means lower prices for consumers. Right? Guys… r… right?
AI will remove 41% of execs, say 100% of people who know what AI is.
I never had the impression that there were enough people for the amount of work anyways. I don’t see jobs go, but shift. Most developers will be fine, because of never ending work, AI is just a tool speeding things up. But not that much, as someone who is good with Google and git, is just a bit slower to find the same answers. And AI needs verification too, even if it links you directly to the issue at hand, via source url.
AI will create new issues. Some of the low level requirement jobs will go, like working in first level support, but only if you learn the AI yourself, else it’s too generic. We’re not there yet, where companies learn their own LLM yet. some outlier try.
We got to understand that there’s still a human layer and a lot of people might prefer calling a human, even if the result is worse, simply because we’re social beings. This can cost a lot of customers, if companies believe they can just shove an AI in front.
No one really knows how good AI will get. As the technology advances, we find more and more hard to solve issues, for instance that AI will make things up or gives wrong answers, despite knowing the real answer, if you pressure hard enough.
Also for security reasons you can’t add AI everywhere, unless you want to send all secrets directly to Microsoft, Google or Facebook.
My 5 cents.
Missing the point.
AI won’t so much replace labor as make it more fungible, and thus exploitable/abusable.
Except where its used as an excuse to just… Not. “Yes we have customer service; its just all chatgpt with no permissions” so nobody can ever return shit that was delivered broken.
What’s really interesting this time around is AI will cut middle management and paper pushers. Those are typically very good middle class jobs.
Unlike manufacturing, those people really don’t have transferable skills. They can’t go become mechanics or plumbers.
AI is going to hurt.
The jobs AI would be best at eliminating are HR and management. Instead, corpos give these shitters the power to eliminate other positions and then they still act like HR and management are the people producing value.
This is the risk and it has happened before.
The AI won’t do my job exactly, but managers mostly manage, i.e. deal with organisational overhead. That Excel you’ve been maintaining for the past decade was never as crucial to the business’ success as you made it appear. It was something the higher ups liked to talk about with pretty charts. An UI can generate other things to talk about from the same data.
I don’t agree that those people don’t have transferable skills, but I agree that’s going to hurt. Like flattening hierachies, self-organised teams and outsourcing, previously cushy jobs will be replaced with more stressful ones.
You used to have a secretary to make calls for you and organise your calender. Now you have copilot and customers call you directly.
You don’t need powerful AI or anything for this to happen. They just stopped hiring secretarial staff when managers learned how to use a computer.
