The full interview this comes from is off the rails. Gawdat says we'll have AGI by 2026 at the absolute latest, and that we will have artificial super intelligence in the immediate future. He guarantees that after destroying jobs, within 15 years we will be in a "utopia" controlled by AI. It's an absurd level of confidence for an extremely bold prediction.
In his last interview from this series in 2023, Gawdat said that LLMs are "alive in every possible way," have a "very deep consciousness," are "definitely aware," and "feel emotions."
His current endeavors involve an unlaunched combination LLM relationship coach and dating site (matchmaking humans with humans, not with LLMs, as far as I can tell).
The future is looking more and more like Elysium every day. Probably with well-defended walled/gated communities for the elite instead of a space station, but we're on the same societal path...
> He guarantees that after destroying jobs, within 15 years we will be in a "utopia" controlled by AI.
Given the Holocaust took ~12 years (including all the legal/political groundwork) and the Holodomor a year, the "between" doesn't fill me with confidence...
Think about what happened when we got advances in agriculture.
We have gone from something like 90% of people employed growing food to something in the single digits (I'm too lazy at the moment to get exact figures, but this is close enough for my point).
Did all those advances in agriculture create jobs? I would say yes and no.
For the specific industry the advances happened in? No, definitely not. There are way fewer jobs in agriculture now.
But what did happen is that people were freed up to do different things. Those jobs were indirectly created by the fact that people did not need to spend so much time growing food. That allowed people to do other things to create value and improve our lives. Without those agriculture advances, we wouldn't have AI right now.
I suspect AI will be similar. We aren't going to have more jobs in the technology section because of AI. But that guy who hears "Code Monkey" for the first time and marvels that someone wrote a song about his life? He won't be a code monkey anymore he will be doing something else. If he's lucky something more personally fulfilling.
Funny thing is, it wasn't agricultural advances, at least initially. It was chemistry and mechanics. Haber-Bosch process of ammonia synthesis created cheap fertilizer, mechanization dramatically increased productivity. New plant varieties with higher yields came later.
Synthetic fertilizer and mechanization are commonly seen as agricultural advances in the same way that quantum computing is an advance in the field of computer science even though much of the implementation is physics.
Yeah, it's not the ag-tech that created new jobs, it's that human's like to be useful and get paid so they'll come up with new things like web dev or instagram influencer. Come AGI people will still probably come up with things to do. The wages and payment bit will likely need to be modified along the UBI or to each according to their needs lines.
I keep thinking of that investment disclaimer whenever people cite the - 100 year old - example of mechanization of agriculture: "Past performance is no guarantee of future results"
The next generation of children is already being conditioned for women leaving the workplace and society reverting to a pre-WW2 social structure. That's a solution. Jobs are lost forever, women are out of the workforce and the number of workers is halved. We all live in a trad-conservative paradise.
We know humans have needs, and most jobs exist to meet them. The agricultural revolution mainly met one need — cheaper food with less labor.
A superintelligent AI could meet all human needs. The only remaining jobs might be those where people prefer a human touch like therapy or sex work, but such roles would be rare.
Past revolutions either made work more efficient or created new ways for humans to serve each other. Superintelligence would replace every form of work that meets human needs, so historical analogies don’t apply.
Using (or controlling) machines, that it will design? Then humans only need to bootstrap the first factory of humanoid like robots, and after that, humans are no longer needed.
Even with current technology, there are already almost fully automated POCs of farms and so called “dark" factories and we are talking about superintelligence, not LLMs.
>> But what did happen is that people were freed up to do different things. Those jobs were indirectly created by the fact that people did not need to spend so much time growing food. That allowed people to do other things to create value and improve our lives.
The key point here is that "create value" -- new jobs are created if there are new human jobs that create value.
The bifurcation of incomes pre-AI should be a warning that we're reaching a point where the average human (in physical ability and knowledge) can no longer efficiently create value.
Imagine we have robots that can physically lift and manipulate as well as the average human. And AGI that can think as well as the average human (arguably LLMs might already pass that low bar).
Should an AGI future eventuate, the distribution of that abundance is not pre-ordained. Retooling government and society into a post-capitalist system, and deciding a fair distribution to people who have little power to demand it, is going to be a mess.
Or to put it another way, how many times in history have the rich en masse voluntarily given to the poor?
> The bifurcation of incomes pre-AI should be a warning that we're reaching a point where the average human (in physical ability and knowledge) can no longer efficiently create value.
IMHO, the value will be in creating f2f human interactions — stuff that AI and robots will only be able to simulate but never replicate.
That may sound flippant, but real human interactions are already being sought after (relatively) widely, and I think that this trend will continue.
The masses will always be the masses, the elite will always be the elite, and there was a small anomalous blip in this trend in the mid- to late-20th century that has dribbled over into the early 21st century.
The vibe in the movie Titanic for how the upper decks and lower decks lived pre-collision (and to some extent post-collusion) is pretty much how I imagine life will be in an AI/robot-powered future.
[Note that the Titanic example can be nitpicked, but the upper deck people were shown to be having stuffy fun in a relatively posh setting, while the lower deck people were letting loose in a very relaxed and social way. That is my point in mentioning it.]
the sun "rising" tomorrow is backed by scientific knowledge about the solar system - more jobs by AI - so far - not more than wishful thinking, like many other AI promises (such as saving is from climate change).
A simple top level explanation is that unemployed people are an unused resource, and free market capitalism is very good at finding ways to make money from that.
Maybe one day unemployed people will be truly useless to other people, but for the last 250 years, new professions have always emerged.
> Maybe one day unemployed people will be truly useless to other people, but for the last 250 years, new professions have always emerged.
Free market capitalism lacks anything approaching a clear and exhaustive definition and the term is used for many arrangements - from market oligarchy to market anarchy but there is one thing that is absolutely certain about it:
"Past performance is no guarantee of future results"
In effect, the most enduring tenet of free market capitalism negates your argument. You need to provide material evidence, not glorious promises of some unknowable bright future, North Korean style.
"Intel will always be the number one chip maker. Even if things come up, they will figure it out. The strong trend of Intel's success will continue forever"
Interestingly, even in western countries there is basically unlimited demand for agricultural work, and it pays well. The issue is that it's hard work and to get into the higher payment tiers you must take on some risks.
Even in small rural areas the demand for locally produced sustainable and consciously produced agricultural products is largely unmet.
I think the current capabilities of AI are basically trash. But at the same time, just because something has not happened, does not mean that it cannot happen. I think AI becomes salable as a replacement for people not because it's amazing, but because there are things outsourced labor is truly bad at. So in the work units where execs have already proven they are happy to destroy jobs to gain incremental revenue, they will do so again. At the same ttime, CEOs will not replace themselves with AI simply because they will make the business decision not to.
Detroit's decline wasn't really caused by tech. More that unions jacked the wages and other costs for car production there so the production moved elsewhere.
the rustbelt was caused by the rest of the world catching up after being bombed back to the stone age during WW2.
unions kept wages high and led to offshoring, but inefficient garbage tier cars from Detroit lost ground to better engineering and no planned obsolesce coming from European and Japanese models. A lot of that came from a decline in steel, coal, and acute pain points related to the oil crises in the 70s.
Are you saying that we can't tell people whose jobs were created by technology (cars destroying the jobs of carriage makers elsewhere) that they jobs were affected by technology?
Agree. Being enough for these people isn't enough, they also think we should care what they have to say.
I would not include simonw with the other 3 at all. His opinions are informed by use instead of just other thoughts. Simon also releases a lot of utility tools.
These are sales speeches. They are over hyping it. AI has its niche but they are trying to plug it everywhere.
Maybe they have a point. Maybe hooking people up on software tools so they are incompetent without will pay off.
Hinton talks are hilarious. He goes from explaining perceptrons to huge claims like "this is what understanding is", "that's how our brain works", "linguists are cranks if they don't agree", and "this proves there is no god" but the last one as some weird little anecdote involving some religious migrant worker, and implies heavily that disagreeing with him is equivalent with having religious beliefs.
In general, the idea with technology is it's cheaper to do things.
It's easier to start the next widget company because building widgets with the technology is cheaper.
It's easier to consume other things because goods are cheaper to make with the tech.
A third option is that the tech enables something all together new, eg television, that starts a new industry.
As far as direct job creation, the third way is the most obvious but probably not the case at the moment. So I guess we're stuck waiting for goods and services made with AI to get cheaper.
It's just basic economics; when something makes the economy more efficient, it doesn't destroy jobs forever, people get new, better jobs in a more efficient economy.
Perhaps AI will finally raise the bar so high lower-IQ individuals won't be able to find any meaningful employment, but this has never happened in before and I doubt it'll happen again. I don't think I've seen a respected economist go on a news broadcast and say AI will lead to mass unemployment.
How does "ai" make "the economy" more efficient exactly ?
> people get new, better jobs
Which law dictate that these jobs are better ?
I don't see people getting better jobs personally, I see a shit load of people pushed into more and more precarious jobs, with less and less workers rights and job security, with stagnating wages despite rise in productivity, &c.
Yes, if you look up any video of an economist talking about AI, they'll bring up the industrial revolution and point out how people thought it would bring the end of employment and instead created more and better jobs. The generally accepted viewpoint is AI will make things more efficient, and thus people will be freed to do other, more important work.
How big is the pool of legit economists who post videos AND know enough about "ai" to talk with any kind of authority ?
99% of economists couldn't see any of the big downturns up to 1hr before shit hit the fan. Yet they all retrospectively can upload 12 hours long video on youtube to explain you how the dot com or 2008 crisis were so obvious you'd have to be blind to not have seen them coming...
> and thus people will be freed to do other, more important work.
"freed" is a weird word to employ, given the century+ long race to automation shouldn't we all have been freed by now ? Why do so many people work min wage or other type of precarious jobs ? Why will I retire later than my parents and grand parents ?
And what do you mean by "more important" ? Most jobs are bullshit and workers know it, they don't want important jobs, they want stables jobs that pay enough to live life, and "ai" is going to do anything but improve that
> and thus people will be freed to do other, more important work
In a post-labor-scarcity world, there is no longer any "other, more important work."
Which means there's no basis for paying labor currency, which means there's no way for labor to buy things, which means we need a new method to ensure people can get things.
Seeing as there's no precedent for a post-scarcity world, and no reason to think such a thing is possible or desirable, I'm not sure how to discuss the topic in a serious fashion. As long as people want to keep improving society, it will require resources, which will produce scarcity.
If you commoditize both thinking and action, even at an average human capability level, then I'd argue that would be a post-scarcity world. At least as far as working humans are concerned.
Yeah, lower IQ people can use AI too...it might even close the gap to the high IQ people depending on their talents, what they learn, what they apply it to, and so on.
So you're saying that members of Congress can finally catch up to the rest of America with technological help? Although that might be true, they're scared of computers. They only recently mastered the fax machine, but can't figure out how to stop the blinking time on their microwave.
> high lower-IQ individuals won't be able to find any meaningful employment, but this has never happened in before and I doubt it'll happen again
"Meaningful" is a bit weasely here. If a skilled factory worker had their job offshored in the past and wound up employed at Walmart after, they did not find "meaningful" work
> it doesn't destroy jobs forever, people get new, better jobs in a more efficient economy.
Still doesn’t explain how new jobs are created. Efficient economy doesn’t mean more jobs. You could displace a thousand workers and create a single new better job, but that means nothing.
For a simple model, let's say you hire programmers for three reasons:
1. Because you have (X) work to get done to run your business. Once that work is done, there is no more work to do.
2. Because they get work done that makes more money than you pay them, but with diminishing marginal returns. So the first programmer is worth 20x their salary, the 20th is worth 1.01x their salary.
3. Because you have some new idea to build, and have enough capital to gamble on it. If it succeeds before you run out of money, you'll revert to (1) or (2).
Let's assume AI comes along that means a programmer can do 4x the work. If most programmers are in the first bucket, then you only need 1/4 as many programmers and most will be fired.
If most programmers are in the second bucket, then suddenly there's _much_ more stuff that can be built (and money made) per-programmer. So businesses will be incentivized to hire many more programmers.
For programmers in the third bucket, our AI makes more likely to get built in time, thus ups the odds of success a little.
How you think the market is structured decides how you think AI will effect job creation and destruction.
> So the first programmer is worth 20x their salary, the 20th is worth 1.01x their salary.
> If most programmers are in the second bucket, then suddenly there's _much_ more stuff that can be built (and money made) per-programmer. So businesses will be incentivized to hire many more programmers.
How do these two reconcile? If hiring more programmers is diminishing returns, why would a business hire more?
Because you've moved the frontier of who's making you money out. Now the 20th programmer is still worth 5x their salary, and you hire up to the 30th programmer to hit 1.01.
I'm not sure if you're being serious but it was just poor phrasing. It really should have read "AI may raise the bar higher, such that low-IQ individuals ...".
That said, I'm sort of assuming simple tasks will get done with AI, which isn't a given and is something I could easily be wrong about. AI could easily just benefit everyone, as has been the case for every prior technological advancement in human history
Probably if the capital owners who have automated away the need for intellectual labor want to take advantage of their increased income and the increasingly cheap/desperate labor, they might hire back some of the fired white-collar AI-replaced folks to give them Roman villa treatment (hand-feeding grapes, performing plays and theater at their homes, ever more elaborate massage/grooming/pampering or the more illicit variety).
One team to re-do the work to double check the right answer.
The second team to reconcile the right answer with the AI result.
I'm not even joking ... I've professionally been extremely embarrassed once by an AI result. Now I check it so often that I might as well just do the work I asked it to do.
No doubt, quick questions and rough ideas, LLM is the bomb.
Seriously, carpenters and plumbers and maybe more electricians. All those copy writers, graphic designers and junior coders are going to have to do something else.
I'm joking, but not. I think a lot of fat is going to get trimmed of the bone of most industries. That may include myself which is a worry.
With this much shoddy code out there, I'm expecting a LOT more testers are going to be needed. This is job creation but not the good kind.
Think Tesla Optimus robot grabbing popcorn. Instead of one cashier filling bags of popcorn, you now have a dedicated teleoperator + sweeper to pickup all the popcorn that's spilled. One job turned into two jobs.
In the macro sense, jobs are jobs, we're just going to see labor move to different places. And AI will hit a limit for usefulness. We're still early in this adventure. guard rails are coming, but we're going to see some big crashes yet.
Anything that contains drudgery that nobody wants to do. AI is automating away all the cool creative jobs, leaving only the garbage ones. Once robotics is up there, those garbage jobs will be gone as well. Then the humanity implodes within 2 generations.
I wouldn't worry about it. Within two generations, the remaining humans will be mainly concerned with surviving in a wrecked ecosystem as best they can.
I don't understand such statement. Automation has already created more job opportunities, why should this be any different? Jobs don't go away, they just transform. And since this AI (whatever that means, nobody really knows) isn't a human-like AGI, it will most certainly not replace humans, but it will automate processes and speed things up.
If you're a business that offers 3 services to the public and "AI" could automate one person's salary out of your payroll, why would do that as opposed to keeping your headcount and instead offer 9 services to the public generating more streams of revenue?
Especially when companies lay off the workers that would normally consume license seats or purchase consumer goods with job wages.
Funny how all these boosters bragging about automating the economy seem to conveniently forget how much of the economy, in some way, is based around headcount and consumption - both of which are going down due to AI with no replacement being pitched, almost as if that were the plan all along.
That's at least more of an argument than "it never happened before so it cannot happen in the future".
Money cannot disappear, but circulation can be confined to ever-smaller segments of the economy. Let's assume a world in which AI is good enough to do 90% if all white-collar jobs and companies have replaced positions with AI accordingly. Then the amount of money that entered the wider economy through salaries will now stay locked up in B2B transactions between AI companies, their corporate customers and their contractors. How will all the laid-off people get money? Some would probably get into blue-collar work, others will try their hand starting a business (that will also compete with AI), but all of them? What will happen to the businesses that were relying on those employees as customers?
> Some would probably get into blue-collar work, others will try their hand starting a business (that will also compete with AI), but all of them?
Yes, that's exactly what will happen and you can even now see examples of unemployed software engineer building successful one-man gigs with the help of AI(not competing).
I think the concept of stable long term jobs as we knew is gone. Which might not be a bad thing.
What you're saying is that no matter the level of automation we have to keep working as much, and we have to consume as much as the system asks us to consume, because now we need a sucker to pay for these 6 new extra "services"
Maybe, just maybe, we could slow things down, profit from the time saved instead of trying to squeeze more out of every fucking thing we put our hands on.
Much of what was automated is physical labor which allowed workers to move into "service/intellectual" jobs. When tractors and dump trucks removed the need for masses of people to move dirt, it didn't create more jobs of moving dirt around since those jobs could also be tackled by more tractors and dump trucks. If AI is what all these "AI evangelicals" claim, then most intellectual jobs would be gone. And it won't create more service/intellectual jobs for humans because whatever new jobs are created would be tackled by AI.
> If you're a business that offers 3 services to the public and "AI" could automate one person's salary out of your payroll, why would do that as opposed to keeping your headcount and instead offer 9 services to the public generating more streams of revenue?
If AI could automate one person's job, why would you keep him? You can offer 9 services with one less person.
Moving dirt around is an input into many other things. Because moving dirt around is now cheap, we now build a lot more and a lot better roads than we did when moving dirt had to be done with human / animal labor. That road system directly and indirectly created millions of jobs.
Similarly, software is a crucial input to pretty much everything in modern society. More / better software would create tons of new jobs.
I'm not so sure that more worse software will create those jobs though, and that seems to be the direction we're moving with AI.
> we now build a lot more and a lot better roads than we did when moving dirt had to be done with human / animal labor.
Sure, with far less human labor. That's my point.
> That road system directly and indirectly created millions of jobs.
Yes. That's my point. It created millions of service/intellectual jobs. Or are you saying the highway system created more jobs for those who own shovels?
If people moved from physical to intellectual labor in the past century. What will people move into if intellectual work is mostly done by AI. Assuming that the AI the evangelicals promise comes to fruition.
> When tractors and dump trucks removed the need for masses of people to move dirt, it didn't create more jobs of moving dirt around since those jobs could also be tackled by more tractors and dump trucks
It created dump truck driver / maintenance / engineer / safety / fuel supply / parts factoring / etc jobs. I wouldn't say that's an example of creating zero jobs.
>If you're a business that offers 3 services to the public and "AI" could automate one person's salary out of your payroll, why would do that as opposed to keeping your headcount and instead offer 9 services to the public generating more streams of revenue?
Because cost cutting increases share-holder value. See Jack Welch at GE. Over time he destroyed the company but also raised the share price tremendously.
And lo, new companies were created to fill the void. AI will cause quite a shakeup but short term stock manipulation eventually needs to be paid off (let's call it "management debt" like "tech debt").
The simpler way to view this is that AI creates value. We can argue how much and what kind, but our economy is reliant on ever-increasing value and is pretty good at utilizing it.
Microsoft didn't get smaller when computers got better, their market got much bigger.
The idea that LLMs will replace us all just seems untethered from reality. Yes, they are extremely powerful and useful, with incredible potential, but I am not convinced that the cost/benefit ratio scales to the size of the entire economy.
As amazing as LLMs are, the statistical unreliability of the SOTA models means human intervention is always necessary. That's based on today's SOTA models which are already so absurdly gigantic that the DCs are disrupting civic infrastructure due to their water and power demands, and these companies still have to rate limit aggressively just to keep the service up.
Everyone knows quadratic growth doesn't scale, so I don't see how these models continue to grow in capability, while also growing in capacity to meet the demand of an "agentic economy", while still ultimately needing to pay human SMEs to verify correctness and fix mistakes. It doesn't add up.
My prediction is that we'll see increased efficiency in knowledge workers and reshaping/consolidation of certain job functions, but the structure of the economy over the next two decades won't be upended due to LLMs.
Software industry needs a healthy shake out anyway. Too many people came in for the money. The current shake out involves either stunting people inside vibe coding such that they are functionally retarded, or straight up leave them long-term unemployed. Honestly, the only reason anyone would stick around is because this is all they know or like. I would not fuck around with this career if you ain’t about that life.
But this goes for all, so all the project managers, and basically anyone that acted as middle-men between text editor and production, they all need to go. It’s going to be a nice trim job, better for everyone.
Historically, jobs lost to technology are eventually replaced with other jobs, though not necessarily for the displaced workers.
There's always the chance that "this time it's different". What's left after machines can think better than people? Dexterous manual work that mechanical arms can't perform?
The ideal situation would be that we reap the benefits of technological abundance and work less.
By historically you mean the one time. We went from a world where nearly everything was made by hand to one built on efficiency of scale, which turbocharged growth across the board. Moving from home made clothes to mass produced, etc. There isn't a new next level to take making clothes, nor everything else. There was a lot of low hanging fruit between 1880-today.
What happened in the past wasn't magic. It was logical progression from a very basic civilization to an optimized one. But AI advocates push the past as 'everything changed but magic made it work out so that will happen again'. The past’s transformation was a one-off fueled by obvious, unexploited gains. There is no “next level” waiting in clothes, shipping, energy, or most other mature systems.
I think he is wrong, in a short run AI will create more jobs. We need more things to run AI and to make more things like power generation, connectivity, sensors, silicone, datacenters, monitoring, security, construction and so on. All of these things and more require massive workforce skilled or not skilled.
It’s what us doomers have been saying all along: Even if we’re wrong and these LLMs can replace all or most professional jobs, it won’t create new jobs to replace the lost ones because the AI can replace most labor. For a global economy built on consumers spending money on goods and services, this is a death spiral where fewer jobs mean fewer consumers, which weakens demand, which lowers revenues (corporate and tax alike), which inflates asset prices (the sole things appreciating in value that can’t be fabricated by AI), which displaces more workers, which further decreases revenues…
You get the idea. This is bad, it’s always going to be bad, and the only fix is a fundamental reorientation of global civilization away from “profit at all costs” and towards better metrics that reflect the health and wealth of a populace than GDP. Doing that would require existing power barons cede their control and cooperate on building such a new system, which they emphatically do not want to do.
We’re fucked, basically, has been our position all along. Either AI via LLMs is the real deal and the economy collapses because corporate and political leaders are too stupid to understand macroeconomics and labor issues, or AI via LLMs is bullshit and the economy collapses because we let the rich and powerful light money on fire for years in pursuit of a boondoggle.
There is no good ending here under current incentives and motives, and not one AI company has actually bothered to challenge or change those so that AI becomes a positive force.
This is exactly how I feel as well and doing so for a while now. I lost all motivation to work, or life in general. I just don't see a good outcome, why care at all.
Build communities. Build social connections. It’s totally valid to pull back from work given everything going on (stagnant wages, longer hours, frequent layoffs, AI threats, surveillance, etc), but you gotta put that energy somewhere else.
Make friends. Start a game night or hackathon with friends. Pick up new skills you’ve been putting off. Finding personal meaning outside of work is the key to surviving times like these.
Luckily replacement is not happening in real life scenarios. AI makes us faster, sure, replaces us? I don't see that happening any time soon. This is a pipe dream for Silicon Valley.
I can tell some companies are already done with digital agencies for asset creation and translations, now that CMS are adding AI based content generation.
I mean, I agree with you 100%, but we should still consider the consequences if we’re wrong. That’s something I don’t see from most folks (the concept they might be wrong, and what that looks like if they are). That’s what I was mainly getting at: whether we’re right or wrong, the outcome is still bad because the problem lies with the current systems (motivations, incentives, etc) and not technology itself.
> He used his AI startup, Emma.love, to further drive the point home. He indicated that he was able to build the app with the help of two other software developers, a task that would have otherwise required the manpower of "over 350 developers in the past."
Looking at the product, the idea that this would take 350 developers is likely complete nonsense. It also indicates that the recent big tech layoffs and hiring reductions are simply removing bloat, not AI driven.
Yeah this app seems like a simple wrapper around an LLM.
Seems like something a senior could build a prototype in a week and a product in a month.
Perhaps the "AI matchmaking" feature would take a lot of resources not done with AI, but that goes toward the point of AI creating things not possible before, not replacing existing development
Of course it’ll create new jobs. Already has - see teams of people doing training runs and a whole bunch of AI SaaS and consulting services etc
The risk is more that the quantity is less than what is removed. And that the people losing jobs aren’t suitable to retrain. Retraining say truck drivers as data scientists is an uphill battle.
ie substantial risk of specific people getting left behind
It's important to note that the lens for a silicon valley ex-google exec is whether AI will create new jobs which remind him of Google.
There's almost no question that tech giants will have negative headcount over the next 15 years but the changes coming from AI haven't even really started to percolate into the broader economy.
Well I came here to say "...We'll need a universal basic income (UBI) in an AI-driven world".
Eventually, at some point. Most industry would have been disrupted.
There should be a working group of the major players/stake holders in the space to figure out how this is implemented.
I work in tech and I don't see that happening for another decade and half or so.
There are thousands of former Google execs and their mean intelligence is only slightly different than the population, with plenty of tail morons. There isn't any credibility innate to being an Ex-Google exec.
The full interview this comes from is off the rails. Gawdat says we'll have AGI by 2026 at the absolute latest, and that we will have artificial super intelligence in the immediate future. He guarantees that after destroying jobs, within 15 years we will be in a "utopia" controlled by AI. It's an absurd level of confidence for an extremely bold prediction.
In his last interview from this series in 2023, Gawdat said that LLMs are "alive in every possible way," have a "very deep consciousness," are "definitely aware," and "feel emotions."
His current endeavors involve an unlaunched combination LLM relationship coach and dating site (matchmaking humans with humans, not with LLMs, as far as I can tell).
Thank you for saving me from even the slightest temptation to read anything from this guy.
> Gawdat says we'll have AGI by 2026 at the absolute latest
...has he looked at a calendar lately? I just did, and it turns out that 2026 is less than five months away.
I'm not even going to touch the "alive in every possible way" bullshit.
Did he specify the calendar? It's now a year of 1447 according to one.
He did not, and for that matter, he never said if he was counting in base 10.
If there is a utopia, it will be for the few who can afford it and the rest of us will suffer greatly for their pleasure.
The future is looking more and more like Elysium every day. Probably with well-defended walled/gated communities for the elite instead of a space station, but we're on the same societal path...
> He guarantees that after destroying jobs, within 15 years we will be in a "utopia" controlled by AI.
Given the Holocaust took ~12 years (including all the legal/political groundwork) and the Holodomor a year, the "between" doesn't fill me with confidence...
the Rwandan genocide took place between 7 April to 19 July 1994
it's been only ~6 months or so since Trump took office and he's already annihilated the US Fed Gov and is now declaring martial law.
and he's concerned with appearances, sorta. AI won't be.
shoutout to Paul Virilio and how technology drives speed which drives war and destruction
Jeebezus. He's either delusional or a scammer. Can't tell atm
Think about what happened when we got advances in agriculture.
We have gone from something like 90% of people employed growing food to something in the single digits (I'm too lazy at the moment to get exact figures, but this is close enough for my point).
Did all those advances in agriculture create jobs? I would say yes and no.
For the specific industry the advances happened in? No, definitely not. There are way fewer jobs in agriculture now.
But what did happen is that people were freed up to do different things. Those jobs were indirectly created by the fact that people did not need to spend so much time growing food. That allowed people to do other things to create value and improve our lives. Without those agriculture advances, we wouldn't have AI right now.
I suspect AI will be similar. We aren't going to have more jobs in the technology section because of AI. But that guy who hears "Code Monkey" for the first time and marvels that someone wrote a song about his life? He won't be a code monkey anymore he will be doing something else. If he's lucky something more personally fulfilling.
>> Without those agriculture advances
Funny thing is, it wasn't agricultural advances, at least initially. It was chemistry and mechanics. Haber-Bosch process of ammonia synthesis created cheap fertilizer, mechanization dramatically increased productivity. New plant varieties with higher yields came later.
Synthetic fertilizer and mechanization are commonly seen as agricultural advances in the same way that quantum computing is an advance in the field of computer science even though much of the implementation is physics.
Yeah, it's not the ag-tech that created new jobs, it's that human's like to be useful and get paid so they'll come up with new things like web dev or instagram influencer. Come AGI people will still probably come up with things to do. The wages and payment bit will likely need to be modified along the UBI or to each according to their needs lines.
what is this "something else" in this case?
I keep thinking of that investment disclaimer whenever people cite the - 100 year old - example of mechanization of agriculture: "Past performance is no guarantee of future results"
Anyways, if I put my cynnical hat on after looking at this: https://blog.waldrn.com/p/american-boys-have-become-less-sup...
The next generation of children is already being conditioned for women leaving the workplace and society reverting to a pre-WW2 social structure. That's a solution. Jobs are lost forever, women are out of the workforce and the number of workers is halved. We all live in a trad-conservative paradise.
You never know beforehand.
Before they existed, few would have believed the disappearing jobs would be replaced by web designers, uber drivers, youtubers, drone pilots etc.
We know humans have needs, and most jobs exist to meet them. The agricultural revolution mainly met one need — cheaper food with less labor.
A superintelligent AI could meet all human needs. The only remaining jobs might be those where people prefer a human touch like therapy or sex work, but such roles would be rare.
Past revolutions either made work more efficient or created new ways for humans to serve each other. Superintelligence would replace every form of work that meets human needs, so historical analogies don’t apply.
How does a superintelligent AI build cars of grow crops?
Using (or controlling) machines, that it will design? Then humans only need to bootstrap the first factory of humanoid like robots, and after that, humans are no longer needed.
Even with current technology, there are already almost fully automated POCs of farms and so called “dark" factories and we are talking about superintelligence, not LLMs.
>> But what did happen is that people were freed up to do different things. Those jobs were indirectly created by the fact that people did not need to spend so much time growing food. That allowed people to do other things to create value and improve our lives.
The key point here is that "create value" -- new jobs are created if there are new human jobs that create value.
The bifurcation of incomes pre-AI should be a warning that we're reaching a point where the average human (in physical ability and knowledge) can no longer efficiently create value.
Imagine we have robots that can physically lift and manipulate as well as the average human. And AGI that can think as well as the average human (arguably LLMs might already pass that low bar).
Should an AGI future eventuate, the distribution of that abundance is not pre-ordained. Retooling government and society into a post-capitalist system, and deciding a fair distribution to people who have little power to demand it, is going to be a mess.
Or to put it another way, how many times in history have the rich en masse voluntarily given to the poor?
> The bifurcation of incomes pre-AI should be a warning that we're reaching a point where the average human (in physical ability and knowledge) can no longer efficiently create value.
IMHO, the value will be in creating f2f human interactions — stuff that AI and robots will only be able to simulate but never replicate.
That may sound flippant, but real human interactions are already being sought after (relatively) widely, and I think that this trend will continue.
The masses will always be the masses, the elite will always be the elite, and there was a small anomalous blip in this trend in the mid- to late-20th century that has dribbled over into the early 21st century.
The vibe in the movie Titanic for how the upper decks and lower decks lived pre-collision (and to some extent post-collusion) is pretty much how I imagine life will be in an AI/robot-powered future.
[Note that the Titanic example can be nitpicked, but the upper deck people were shown to be having stuffy fun in a relatively posh setting, while the lower deck people were letting loose in a very relaxed and social way. That is my point in mentioning it.]
so if you don't know beforehand, can you even be sure that "something else" exists?
Strictly speaking, you can't be sure the sun will rise tomorrow, and you should be even less sure about this.
But the sensible thing is to expect strong trends to continue.
the sun "rising" tomorrow is backed by scientific knowledge about the solar system - more jobs by AI - so far - not more than wishful thinking, like many other AI promises (such as saving is from climate change).
The science of Economics has good, empirically based explanations for how new jobs get created when technology makes older jobs unnecessary.
And yes, it is a real science!
just explanations, i.e. with hindsight? astrology can do this as well ;)
what about rules/laws which allow predictions?
A simple top level explanation is that unemployed people are an unused resource, and free market capitalism is very good at finding ways to make money from that.
Maybe one day unemployed people will be truly useless to other people, but for the last 250 years, new professions have always emerged.
> Maybe one day unemployed people will be truly useless to other people, but for the last 250 years, new professions have always emerged.
Free market capitalism lacks anything approaching a clear and exhaustive definition and the term is used for many arrangements - from market oligarchy to market anarchy but there is one thing that is absolutely certain about it:
"Past performance is no guarantee of future results"
In effect, the most enduring tenet of free market capitalism negates your argument. You need to provide material evidence, not glorious promises of some unknowable bright future, North Korean style.
Someone will have to clean up the mess that AI usage leaves in its wake.
saving is -> saving us
"Intel will always be the number one chip maker. Even if things come up, they will figure it out. The strong trend of Intel's success will continue forever"
Interestingly, even in western countries there is basically unlimited demand for agricultural work, and it pays well. The issue is that it's hard work and to get into the higher payment tiers you must take on some risks.
Even in small rural areas the demand for locally produced sustainable and consciously produced agricultural products is largely unmet.
As a Software Engineer, Gawdat has no expertise in job creation. If an Economist said the same, I'd pay more attention.
It's very counterintuitive, but for 250 years tech has constantly eliminated jobs, while unemployment rates have stayed the same.
People have always predicted this would lead to mass unemployment, they've always been wrong, and yet they've kept predicting it.
One way to explain it is that unemployed people are an unused resource, and free market economies are very good at finding uses for those.
I think the current capabilities of AI are basically trash. But at the same time, just because something has not happened, does not mean that it cannot happen. I think AI becomes salable as a replacement for people not because it's amazing, but because there are things outsourced labor is truly bad at. So in the work units where execs have already proven they are happy to destroy jobs to gain incremental revenue, they will do so again. At the same ttime, CEOs will not replace themselves with AI simply because they will make the business decision not to.
Like in Detroit, and Germany's Ruhrgebiet?
Two examples out of plenty others, where people had to move out as means of survival.
Detroit's decline wasn't really caused by tech. More that unions jacked the wages and other costs for car production there so the production moved elsewhere.
the rustbelt was caused by the rest of the world catching up after being bombed back to the stone age during WW2.
unions kept wages high and led to offshoring, but inefficient garbage tier cars from Detroit lost ground to better engineering and no planned obsolesce coming from European and Japanese models. A lot of that came from a decline in steel, coal, and acute pain points related to the oil crises in the 70s.
Ah the unions, thankfully a problem that US software engineers do not have to worry about, between offshoring and AI based automations.
Are you saying that we can't tell people whose jobs were created by technology (cars destroying the jobs of carriage makers elsewhere) that they jobs were affected by technology?
I am saying people often overlook the destiny of those affected by technology changes, in name of capitalism.
Can someone, more informed than me, about the job landscape, name these jobs people keep claiming AI is creating? Thank you in advance.
There are a profound number of people who now seem to just spend all day giving interviews and yapping about their AI takes.
Geoffrey Hinton seems to be in the headlines constantly going "godfather of AI" and giving some random obtuse warning or call for action.
Eric Schmidt also spends a lot of time yapping.
And of course people like Gary Marcus.
Simon Willison also does a lot of writing but at least his blog is actually useful information of actual tests and news.
Agree. Being enough for these people isn't enough, they also think we should care what they have to say.
I would not include simonw with the other 3 at all. His opinions are informed by use instead of just other thoughts. Simon also releases a lot of utility tools.
These are sales speeches. They are over hyping it. AI has its niche but they are trying to plug it everywhere. Maybe they have a point. Maybe hooking people up on software tools so they are incompetent without will pay off.
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Hinton talks are hilarious. He goes from explaining perceptrons to huge claims like "this is what understanding is", "that's how our brain works", "linguists are cranks if they don't agree", and "this proves there is no god" but the last one as some weird little anecdote involving some religious migrant worker, and implies heavily that disagreeing with him is equivalent with having religious beliefs.
It's pretty wild.
In general, the idea with technology is it's cheaper to do things.
It's easier to start the next widget company because building widgets with the technology is cheaper.
It's easier to consume other things because goods are cheaper to make with the tech.
A third option is that the tech enables something all together new, eg television, that starts a new industry.
As far as direct job creation, the third way is the most obvious but probably not the case at the moment. So I guess we're stuck waiting for goods and services made with AI to get cheaper.
It's just basic economics; when something makes the economy more efficient, it doesn't destroy jobs forever, people get new, better jobs in a more efficient economy.
Perhaps AI will finally raise the bar so high lower-IQ individuals won't be able to find any meaningful employment, but this has never happened in before and I doubt it'll happen again. I don't think I've seen a respected economist go on a news broadcast and say AI will lead to mass unemployment.
> It's just basic economics
Is it ?
> when something makes the economy more efficient
How does "ai" make "the economy" more efficient exactly ?
> people get new, better jobs
Which law dictate that these jobs are better ?
I don't see people getting better jobs personally, I see a shit load of people pushed into more and more precarious jobs, with less and less workers rights and job security, with stagnating wages despite rise in productivity, &c.
> It's just basic economics
Yes, if you look up any video of an economist talking about AI, they'll bring up the industrial revolution and point out how people thought it would bring the end of employment and instead created more and better jobs. The generally accepted viewpoint is AI will make things more efficient, and thus people will be freed to do other, more important work.
How big is the pool of legit economists who post videos AND know enough about "ai" to talk with any kind of authority ?
99% of economists couldn't see any of the big downturns up to 1hr before shit hit the fan. Yet they all retrospectively can upload 12 hours long video on youtube to explain you how the dot com or 2008 crisis were so obvious you'd have to be blind to not have seen them coming...
> and thus people will be freed to do other, more important work.
"freed" is a weird word to employ, given the century+ long race to automation shouldn't we all have been freed by now ? Why do so many people work min wage or other type of precarious jobs ? Why will I retire later than my parents and grand parents ?
And what do you mean by "more important" ? Most jobs are bullshit and workers know it, they don't want important jobs, they want stables jobs that pay enough to live life, and "ai" is going to do anything but improve that
> and thus people will be freed to do other, more important work
In a post-labor-scarcity world, there is no longer any "other, more important work."
Which means there's no basis for paying labor currency, which means there's no way for labor to buy things, which means we need a new method to ensure people can get things.
Seeing as there's no precedent for a post-scarcity world, and no reason to think such a thing is possible or desirable, I'm not sure how to discuss the topic in a serious fashion. As long as people want to keep improving society, it will require resources, which will produce scarcity.
If you commoditize both thinking and action, even at an average human capability level, then I'd argue that would be a post-scarcity world. At least as far as working humans are concerned.
Yeah, lower IQ people can use AI too...it might even close the gap to the high IQ people depending on their talents, what they learn, what they apply it to, and so on.
So you're saying that members of Congress can finally catch up to the rest of America with technological help? Although that might be true, they're scared of computers. They only recently mastered the fax machine, but can't figure out how to stop the blinking time on their microwave.
Baby steps, I guess.
who would pay lower IQ people when AI can do it itself - 24/7?
> high lower-IQ individuals won't be able to find any meaningful employment, but this has never happened in before and I doubt it'll happen again
"Meaningful" is a bit weasely here. If a skilled factory worker had their job offshored in the past and wound up employed at Walmart after, they did not find "meaningful" work
It has happened plenty of times
> it doesn't destroy jobs forever, people get new, better jobs in a more efficient economy.
Still doesn’t explain how new jobs are created. Efficient economy doesn’t mean more jobs. You could displace a thousand workers and create a single new better job, but that means nothing.
I think programming is a good example profession.
For a simple model, let's say you hire programmers for three reasons:
1. Because you have (X) work to get done to run your business. Once that work is done, there is no more work to do.
2. Because they get work done that makes more money than you pay them, but with diminishing marginal returns. So the first programmer is worth 20x their salary, the 20th is worth 1.01x their salary.
3. Because you have some new idea to build, and have enough capital to gamble on it. If it succeeds before you run out of money, you'll revert to (1) or (2).
Let's assume AI comes along that means a programmer can do 4x the work. If most programmers are in the first bucket, then you only need 1/4 as many programmers and most will be fired.
If most programmers are in the second bucket, then suddenly there's _much_ more stuff that can be built (and money made) per-programmer. So businesses will be incentivized to hire many more programmers.
For programmers in the third bucket, our AI makes more likely to get built in time, thus ups the odds of success a little.
How you think the market is structured decides how you think AI will effect job creation and destruction.
> So the first programmer is worth 20x their salary, the 20th is worth 1.01x their salary.
> If most programmers are in the second bucket, then suddenly there's _much_ more stuff that can be built (and money made) per-programmer. So businesses will be incentivized to hire many more programmers.
How do these two reconcile? If hiring more programmers is diminishing returns, why would a business hire more?
Because you've moved the frontier of who's making you money out. Now the 20th programmer is still worth 5x their salary, and you hire up to the 30th programmer to hit 1.01.
Why are the lower-IQ individuals high?
I'm not sure if you're being serious but it was just poor phrasing. It really should have read "AI may raise the bar higher, such that low-IQ individuals ...".
That said, I'm sort of assuming simple tasks will get done with AI, which isn't a given and is something I could easily be wrong about. AI could easily just benefit everyone, as has been the case for every prior technological advancement in human history
Probably if the capital owners who have automated away the need for intellectual labor want to take advantage of their increased income and the increasingly cheap/desperate labor, they might hire back some of the fired white-collar AI-replaced folks to give them Roman villa treatment (hand-feeding grapes, performing plays and theater at their homes, ever more elaborate massage/grooming/pampering or the more illicit variety).
AI Fact Verification and Replication Teams.
One team to re-do the work to double check the right answer. The second team to reconcile the right answer with the AI result.
I'm not even joking ... I've professionally been extremely embarrassed once by an AI result. Now I check it so often that I might as well just do the work I asked it to do.
No doubt, quick questions and rough ideas, LLM is the bomb.
Professionally? Nah. Not yet.
Seriously, carpenters and plumbers and maybe more electricians. All those copy writers, graphic designers and junior coders are going to have to do something else.
I'm joking, but not. I think a lot of fat is going to get trimmed of the bone of most industries. That may include myself which is a worry.
That's not job creation. That's job destruction.
With this much shoddy code out there, I'm expecting a LOT more testers are going to be needed. This is job creation but not the good kind.
Think Tesla Optimus robot grabbing popcorn. Instead of one cashier filling bags of popcorn, you now have a dedicated teleoperator + sweeper to pickup all the popcorn that's spilled. One job turned into two jobs.
In the macro sense, jobs are jobs, we're just going to see labor move to different places. And AI will hit a limit for usefulness. We're still early in this adventure. guard rails are coming, but we're going to see some big crashes yet.
Anything that contains drudgery that nobody wants to do. AI is automating away all the cool creative jobs, leaving only the garbage ones. Once robotics is up there, those garbage jobs will be gone as well. Then the humanity implodes within 2 generations.
I wouldn't worry about it. Within two generations, the remaining humans will be mainly concerned with surviving in a wrecked ecosystem as best they can.
uber eats delivery drivers
The big new job is "AI slop shit sorter" but we'll find inventive names for it.
Macrodata refinement
programmer with zero experience
AI researcher
My guess? Basically even more bullshit jobs in advertising.
_tumbleweeds roll past_
I don't understand such statement. Automation has already created more job opportunities, why should this be any different? Jobs don't go away, they just transform. And since this AI (whatever that means, nobody really knows) isn't a human-like AGI, it will most certainly not replace humans, but it will automate processes and speed things up.
If you're a business that offers 3 services to the public and "AI" could automate one person's salary out of your payroll, why would do that as opposed to keeping your headcount and instead offer 9 services to the public generating more streams of revenue?
> Automation has already created more job opportunities, why should this be any different?
This is the "the climate has changed before" argument for economics.
> why would do that as opposed to keeping your headcount and instead offer 9 services to the public generating more streams of revenue?
Because there might not be enough demand for those 9 services.
Especially when companies lay off the workers that would normally consume license seats or purchase consumer goods with job wages.
Funny how all these boosters bragging about automating the economy seem to conveniently forget how much of the economy, in some way, is based around headcount and consumption - both of which are going down due to AI with no replacement being pitched, almost as if that were the plan all along.
Total demand is a different department, no?
I think it's a very different question to ask "how would this create jobs" and "will this create jobs...in today's market."
> This is the "the climate has changed before" argument for economics
It's really not, you cannot cause a recession by increasing productivity, money doesn't disappear.
That's at least more of an argument than "it never happened before so it cannot happen in the future".
Money cannot disappear, but circulation can be confined to ever-smaller segments of the economy. Let's assume a world in which AI is good enough to do 90% if all white-collar jobs and companies have replaced positions with AI accordingly. Then the amount of money that entered the wider economy through salaries will now stay locked up in B2B transactions between AI companies, their corporate customers and their contractors. How will all the laid-off people get money? Some would probably get into blue-collar work, others will try their hand starting a business (that will also compete with AI), but all of them? What will happen to the businesses that were relying on those employees as customers?
> Some would probably get into blue-collar work, others will try their hand starting a business (that will also compete with AI), but all of them?
Yes, that's exactly what will happen and you can even now see examples of unemployed software engineer building successful one-man gigs with the help of AI(not competing).
I think the concept of stable long term jobs as we knew is gone. Which might not be a bad thing.
What you're saying is that no matter the level of automation we have to keep working as much, and we have to consume as much as the system asks us to consume, because now we need a sucker to pay for these 6 new extra "services"
Maybe, just maybe, we could slow things down, profit from the time saved instead of trying to squeeze more out of every fucking thing we put our hands on.
Much of what was automated is physical labor which allowed workers to move into "service/intellectual" jobs. When tractors and dump trucks removed the need for masses of people to move dirt, it didn't create more jobs of moving dirt around since those jobs could also be tackled by more tractors and dump trucks. If AI is what all these "AI evangelicals" claim, then most intellectual jobs would be gone. And it won't create more service/intellectual jobs for humans because whatever new jobs are created would be tackled by AI.
> If you're a business that offers 3 services to the public and "AI" could automate one person's salary out of your payroll, why would do that as opposed to keeping your headcount and instead offer 9 services to the public generating more streams of revenue?
If AI could automate one person's job, why would you keep him? You can offer 9 services with one less person.
Moving dirt around is an input into many other things. Because moving dirt around is now cheap, we now build a lot more and a lot better roads than we did when moving dirt had to be done with human / animal labor. That road system directly and indirectly created millions of jobs.
Similarly, software is a crucial input to pretty much everything in modern society. More / better software would create tons of new jobs.
I'm not so sure that more worse software will create those jobs though, and that seems to be the direction we're moving with AI.
> we now build a lot more and a lot better roads than we did when moving dirt had to be done with human / animal labor.
Sure, with far less human labor. That's my point.
> That road system directly and indirectly created millions of jobs.
Yes. That's my point. It created millions of service/intellectual jobs. Or are you saying the highway system created more jobs for those who own shovels?
If people moved from physical to intellectual labor in the past century. What will people move into if intellectual work is mostly done by AI. Assuming that the AI the evangelicals promise comes to fruition.
> When tractors and dump trucks removed the need for masses of people to move dirt, it didn't create more jobs of moving dirt around since those jobs could also be tackled by more tractors and dump trucks
It created dump truck driver / maintenance / engineer / safety / fuel supply / parts factoring / etc jobs. I wouldn't say that's an example of creating zero jobs.
> It created dump truck driver / maintenance / engineer / safety / fuel supply / parts factoring / etc jobs.
Those are primarily intellectual/service jobs.
> I wouldn't say that's an example of creating zero jobs.
I never said it didn't create zero jobs. Reread my comment. I said it created more intellectual/service jobs. It's the first line of my comment.
True, but it's confusing. The comment you were replying to said this:
> Automation has already created more job opportunities, why should this be any different? Jobs don't go away, they just transform
Which seemed to be what you're arguing against at the same time.
>If you're a business that offers 3 services to the public and "AI" could automate one person's salary out of your payroll, why would do that as opposed to keeping your headcount and instead offer 9 services to the public generating more streams of revenue?
Because cost cutting increases share-holder value. See Jack Welch at GE. Over time he destroyed the company but also raised the share price tremendously.
And lo, new companies were created to fill the void. AI will cause quite a shakeup but short term stock manipulation eventually needs to be paid off (let's call it "management debt" like "tech debt").
The simpler way to view this is that AI creates value. We can argue how much and what kind, but our economy is reliant on ever-increasing value and is pretty good at utilizing it.
Microsoft didn't get smaller when computers got better, their market got much bigger.
“The Idea That AI Will Create New Jobs Is 100% Crap”
Seems like a current trend.
The idea that a massive tax increase (aka "tariffs") will create jobs is also 100% crap.
There are two sure-fire ways to peddle bad policy:
1. Say it will protect children
2. Say it will create jobs
Mm, "more safety" and "more wealth" are two of the strongest drivers of human nature.
But now I put it like that, it's a little strange I've not heard of any politicians even implying that their policies will get people more sex…
That's covered in "more wealth", fyi.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-administration-5000-ba...
Mm, perhaps.
(Especially as I did say "even implying")
Don't forget "building up fear of the unknown or the other" which the linked Youtube video seems to do.
The idea that LLMs will replace us all just seems untethered from reality. Yes, they are extremely powerful and useful, with incredible potential, but I am not convinced that the cost/benefit ratio scales to the size of the entire economy.
As amazing as LLMs are, the statistical unreliability of the SOTA models means human intervention is always necessary. That's based on today's SOTA models which are already so absurdly gigantic that the DCs are disrupting civic infrastructure due to their water and power demands, and these companies still have to rate limit aggressively just to keep the service up.
Everyone knows quadratic growth doesn't scale, so I don't see how these models continue to grow in capability, while also growing in capacity to meet the demand of an "agentic economy", while still ultimately needing to pay human SMEs to verify correctness and fix mistakes. It doesn't add up.
My prediction is that we'll see increased efficiency in knowledge workers and reshaping/consolidation of certain job functions, but the structure of the economy over the next two decades won't be upended due to LLMs.
Software industry needs a healthy shake out anyway. Too many people came in for the money. The current shake out involves either stunting people inside vibe coding such that they are functionally retarded, or straight up leave them long-term unemployed. Honestly, the only reason anyone would stick around is because this is all they know or like. I would not fuck around with this career if you ain’t about that life. But this goes for all, so all the project managers, and basically anyone that acted as middle-men between text editor and production, they all need to go. It’s going to be a nice trim job, better for everyone.
developers hate project managers because they force them to deliver instead of forever being nerd sniped
Well yes, because getting nerd sniped is fun, and 99.99% of ideas for software are boring bullshit.
Historically, jobs lost to technology are eventually replaced with other jobs, though not necessarily for the displaced workers.
There's always the chance that "this time it's different". What's left after machines can think better than people? Dexterous manual work that mechanical arms can't perform?
The ideal situation would be that we reap the benefits of technological abundance and work less.
By historically you mean the one time. We went from a world where nearly everything was made by hand to one built on efficiency of scale, which turbocharged growth across the board. Moving from home made clothes to mass produced, etc. There isn't a new next level to take making clothes, nor everything else. There was a lot of low hanging fruit between 1880-today.
What happened in the past wasn't magic. It was logical progression from a very basic civilization to an optimized one. But AI advocates push the past as 'everything changed but magic made it work out so that will happen again'. The past’s transformation was a one-off fueled by obvious, unexploited gains. There is no “next level” waiting in clothes, shipping, energy, or most other mature systems.
I think he is wrong, in a short run AI will create more jobs. We need more things to run AI and to make more things like power generation, connectivity, sensors, silicone, datacenters, monitoring, security, construction and so on. All of these things and more require massive workforce skilled or not skilled.
It’s what us doomers have been saying all along: Even if we’re wrong and these LLMs can replace all or most professional jobs, it won’t create new jobs to replace the lost ones because the AI can replace most labor. For a global economy built on consumers spending money on goods and services, this is a death spiral where fewer jobs mean fewer consumers, which weakens demand, which lowers revenues (corporate and tax alike), which inflates asset prices (the sole things appreciating in value that can’t be fabricated by AI), which displaces more workers, which further decreases revenues…
You get the idea. This is bad, it’s always going to be bad, and the only fix is a fundamental reorientation of global civilization away from “profit at all costs” and towards better metrics that reflect the health and wealth of a populace than GDP. Doing that would require existing power barons cede their control and cooperate on building such a new system, which they emphatically do not want to do.
We’re fucked, basically, has been our position all along. Either AI via LLMs is the real deal and the economy collapses because corporate and political leaders are too stupid to understand macroeconomics and labor issues, or AI via LLMs is bullshit and the economy collapses because we let the rich and powerful light money on fire for years in pursuit of a boondoggle.
There is no good ending here under current incentives and motives, and not one AI company has actually bothered to challenge or change those so that AI becomes a positive force.
This is exactly how I feel as well and doing so for a while now. I lost all motivation to work, or life in general. I just don't see a good outcome, why care at all.
Build communities. Build social connections. It’s totally valid to pull back from work given everything going on (stagnant wages, longer hours, frequent layoffs, AI threats, surveillance, etc), but you gotta put that energy somewhere else.
Make friends. Start a game night or hackathon with friends. Pick up new skills you’ve been putting off. Finding personal meaning outside of work is the key to surviving times like these.
Luckily replacement is not happening in real life scenarios. AI makes us faster, sure, replaces us? I don't see that happening any time soon. This is a pipe dream for Silicon Valley.
I can tell some companies are already done with digital agencies for asset creation and translations, now that CMS are adding AI based content generation.
I mean, I agree with you 100%, but we should still consider the consequences if we’re wrong. That’s something I don’t see from most folks (the concept they might be wrong, and what that looks like if they are). That’s what I was mainly getting at: whether we’re right or wrong, the outcome is still bad because the problem lies with the current systems (motivations, incentives, etc) and not technology itself.
The fact is that it doesn't reaaally matter if AI can actually replace us as long as VCs and Investors are convinced it can
They can stay irrational longer than we can stay above water
> He used his AI startup, Emma.love, to further drive the point home. He indicated that he was able to build the app with the help of two other software developers, a task that would have otherwise required the manpower of "over 350 developers in the past."
Looking at the product, the idea that this would take 350 developers is likely complete nonsense. It also indicates that the recent big tech layoffs and hiring reductions are simply removing bloat, not AI driven.
Yeah this app seems like a simple wrapper around an LLM.
Seems like something a senior could build a prototype in a week and a product in a month.
Perhaps the "AI matchmaking" feature would take a lot of resources not done with AI, but that goes toward the point of AI creating things not possible before, not replacing existing development
Of course it’ll create new jobs. Already has - see teams of people doing training runs and a whole bunch of AI SaaS and consulting services etc
The risk is more that the quantity is less than what is removed. And that the people losing jobs aren’t suitable to retrain. Retraining say truck drivers as data scientists is an uphill battle.
ie substantial risk of specific people getting left behind
I see. And when everybody's fired, what will people be doing then?
History suggests that when this happens, people will be building guillotines
That's why I'm thinking about my new SAAS, revolution as a service! (Because this is HN I have to shill a product)
social slaves of the rich
Does this Ex Google Exec have an interest in an AI company of his own?
Yes, Emma.love, I think I will stick to traditional love potions.
Oh dear that's a sad premise of a website
I'm not sure he would say this if he did
he does, emma dot love, I swear some of this is FOMO marketing. get on the AI train now!!!
It's important to note that the lens for a silicon valley ex-google exec is whether AI will create new jobs which remind him of Google.
There's almost no question that tech giants will have negative headcount over the next 15 years but the changes coming from AI haven't even really started to percolate into the broader economy.
Well I came here to say "...We'll need a universal basic income (UBI) in an AI-driven world".
Eventually, at some point. Most industry would have been disrupted. There should be a working group of the major players/stake holders in the space to figure out how this is implemented.
I work in tech and I don't see that happening for another decade and half or so.
Where is this discussion thread?
└── Dey well
There are thousands of former Google execs and their mean intelligence is only slightly different than the population, with plenty of tail morons. There isn't any credibility innate to being an Ex-Google exec.
Cool. Now do the idea that says AI will somehow fix the climate, while simultaneously doubling or tripling humanity's energy use.
Solve for Crap :)
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