DiogenesTheGreatShould I start worrying about my job?
Microsoft argues that its AI automation will remove the boring bits of jobs instead of replacing jobs entirely.
Simple question: does the Microsoft HR department agree?
đ° đ đ± đŠ đł đŠ đ° đź đHR has been replaced by AI and it agrees that AI is great.
KOLANAAAK!
No. But expect to do more work for the same pay since things are slightly easier now with AI.
Short answer: short term yes; long term probably not. All the dipshit c-suites pushing the âAIâ worker replacement initiatives are going to destroy their workforces and then realize that LLMs canât actually reliably replace any of the workers they fired. And I love that for management.
Theyâre gonna realize the two jobs it can actually replace is HR and the C suite.
And neither of those two groups will allow themselves to be replaced.
Yeah, HR gets by because of legal compliance, and execs get by through convincing the board to give them X years, and then jump to the next one.
Lol AI cannot replace either of those jobs. âIâm sorry I canât help with your time off request but here is a gluten free recipe for a pie that feeds 30 people.â
âHelpâ with a time-off request?
Hereâs the help:
Sure!
r00tyYou're right, that sounds better than the average HR rep.
Steal WoolAnd better than the average pie đ
It wonât replace any jobs entirely, it will just reduce the number of people needed for each job.
Well at least youâd get a recipe
I bet project managers could be replaced with AI super easily, I mean all they have to do is respond to all messages with đ
mriormroThen you donât have good project managers.
At least then the project plan would get updated and takes opened on timeâŠ
Iâd unironically like that recipe, please
Ingredients: 1 potato
Steps:
Cut into 30 prices and serve
MxM111Thatâs not what is going to happen. Copilot will simply increase productivity over, and where before they needed 10 people, gradually, through attrition they will need only 9, then 8, and so on. That does not mean higher unemployment though, it means more product.
just another dev-
âAI means there will be fewer people required to do the same amount of workâ
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âthis does not mean higher unemploymentâ
I think you left out a steep off reasoning there. At least, I donât follow.
When productivity increases (as it has been doing for ages) the manufacturing output increases. Thatâs what normally happens.
Thatâs only the case if demand grows at the same rate as the production output.
Well, the price goes down, or/end the salaries go up, or resources are freed for new investmentsâŠ
Only in the last case_ there is a chance_ that the amount of jobs will remain the same, the other cases will lead to lost jobs.
Prices going down leads to increased demand and expansion. Salaries (everywhere) going up lead to increased demand and expansion.
Business want to grow, not keep stable. They might fire a few ppl in the short term, but in the long term itâs more likely the group of 10 would just do now the work of a 12-13 group with AI, producing hugher outputs for the same money they were getting before, meaning extra profit for the shareholders.
Thatâs exactly what I meant by
That does not mean higher unemployment though, it means more product.
Youâre referring to something that is changing and getting better constantly. In the long term LLMs are going to be even better than they are now. Itâs ridiculous to think that it wonât be able to replace any of the workers that were fired. LLMs are going to allow 1 person to do the job of multiple people. Will it replace all people? No. But even if it allows 1 person to do the job of 2 people, thatâs 50% of the workforce unemployed. This isnât even mentioning how good robotics have gotten over the past 10 years.
You must have one person constantly checking for hallucinations in everything that is generated: how is that going to be faster?
Sure you need that at the moment, but you seem to be working under the assumption that LLMâs are not going to improve beyond what they are now. It is stiol bery much in the infancy, and as the tech matures this will be less and less until it only requires few people can manage LLMs that solves the tasks of a much larger work force.
Itâs hard to improve when the data in is human and the data out cannot be error checked back against its own data in. Itâs like trying to solve a math problem with two calculators that both think 2+2 = 6 because the data they were given said that itâs true.
(not actually everything, but I get your hyperbole)
How is it hyperbole? All artificial neural networks have âhallucinationsâ, no matter their size. Whatâs your magic way of knowing when that happens?
LLMs now are trained on data generated by other LLMs. If you look at the âwriting promptâ stuff 90% is machine generated (or so bad that I assume itâs machine generated) and thatâs the data that is being bought right now.
MeanEYEThere is a plateau to be hit at some point. How close it is, depends who you ask. Some say we are close, others say we are not but it definitely exists. LLMs suffer, just like other forms of machine learning, from data overload. You simply canât be infinitely feeding it data and keep getting better and better results. ChatGPTâs models got famous because value function for learning had humans involved who helped curate quality of responses.
It can potentially allow 1 worker to do the job of 10. For 9 of those workers, they have been replaced. I donât think they will care that much for the nuance that they technically werenât replaced by AI, but by 1 co-worker who is using AI to be more efficient.
That doesnât necessarily mean that we wonât have enough jobs any more, because when in human history have we ever become more efficient and said âok, good enough, letâs just coast nowâ? We will just increase the ambition and scope of what we will build, which will require more workers working more efficiently.
But that still really sucks because itâs not going to be the same exact jobs and it will require re-training. These disruptions are becoming more frequent in human history and it is exhausting.
We still need to spread these gains so we can all do less and also help those whose lives have been disrupted. Unfortunately that doesnât come for free. When workers got the 40 hour work week it was taken by force.
My colleagues are starting to use AI, it just makes their code worse and harder to review. I honestly canât imagine that changing, AI doesnât actually understand anything.
This comment has similar vibes to a boomer in the 80s saying that the Internet is useless and full of nothing but nerds arguing on forums, and he doesnât see that changing.
Probably. Iâm just not seeing it actually doing any logic or problem solving. Itâs a pattern matching machine today. A new technology could certainly happen.
Do you know what pattern matching is great for? Finding commonly cited patterns in long debug log messages. LLMs are great for brainstorming problem solving. Theyâre basically word granularity search engines, so theyâre great for looking things up are more niche knowledge that document search engines fail on. If the thing youâre trying to look up doesnât exist, it will make shit up so you need to cross reference everything, but itâs still incredibly helpful. Pattern matching is also great for boilerplate. I use the codium extension and it comes up with auto complete suggestions that donât have much logic, but save a good amount of key strokes.
I didnât think the foundational tech of LLMs are going to get substantially better, but we will develop programming patterns that make them more robust and reliable.
helenslunchand then realize that LLMs canât actually reliably replace any of the workers they fired.
Depends on the job. Reliability is not really important to these companies. They can be imperfect and cost them money, but nowhere near as much as a human will cost them, and theyâll probably do the job better than the majority of them.
Short term? Sure.
Long term? Not a chance that equation works out favorably.
But then again, c-suites these days only seem to give a shit about short-term implications.
jordanlundOur jobs have always been at risk from outsourcing.
Fortunately, they donât (currently) appear to be good at it.
bbc.com/âŠ/20240222-air-canada-chatbot-misinformatâŠ
As long as thereâs risk and liability, firable employees will be better.
Depends. Are you this guy?
You physically take the specs from the customer to the engineers? Well⊠No.
Thereâs actually a someone I work with thatâs basically that. Essentially, their job is to communicate across teams to coordinate product releases. Theyâre not involved in deciding whatâs in those releases, they just needs to know whatâs going in each one and when itâs happening. They also do something with budget approvals.
Basically, they just look at Jira and spreadsheets, and I didnât think they really make changes to either. We could 100% do without that role, at least from my perspective.
Then again, weâre not worried about job security here. We have good funding, weâre expanding our team, and my boss is generally against AI. But if I had to suggest someone to let go, it would be that person. Itâs a really weird role and they donât really have any unique skills, but whatever.
Meanwhile, Iâm at my job trying to get an instance of a machine that can automatically SFTP somewhere as part of a script like itâs 1998 and I need a shell account from my dialup connection.
Working on legacy systems is nice sometimes. So far removed from the techbro bullshit
HR will transition to HAIR then finally AIR.
Incoming data stream! This one is from a scientist! Ok Chat-GPT, get ready to learn how to be a scientist!
Incoming data stream! From a momâŠoh shit Chat-GPT⊠run! Itâs a single mom! Oh hold on! She found someone to love again! Nope, he was just using her for her beauty again. Well maybe just learn to do all chores, feed the kids, go to work, get sexually abused, fall a sleep, do all chores and make-up! And figure out if only fans really does work! And more chores.
Microsoft argues that its AI automation will remove the boring bits of jobs instead of replacing jobs entirely.
This argument is such bullshit. As if Microsoft doesnât know there exist jobs that are entirely âthe boring bitsâ.
live customer service over the phone will disappear but thatâs about it
That is very true, especially when it comes to any administrative task.
However Iâd argue that these jobs are less likely to be replaced, as these jobs are born out of a system that is favoring bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy over efficiency.
Challenging that system would result in a shift in the power dynamics, often towards subordinates, which, of course, wouldnât really be accepted by leading positions.