re: AI-related job news / layoffs

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If it's going to replace all white collar industry, it needs to do more than that,

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1. I never said it would replace all white collar industry

2. It can do a helluva lot more than one-off tasks.

This is an earlier response that I had on this topic:

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AI is such a big unknown I don't know if anybody truly KNOWS what's going to happen, but so far the most obvious rule of thumb looks to be true: if your work can be done on a keyboard, you should be concerned.

A good friend of mine is an investment banker, doing very well for himself and nearing retirement. His grind years were all analysis, using financial tools to curate and collate to figure out the right path. He's been using AI for various tasks now for some time now and was always amazed.

At the suggest of another friend of ours that's in the AI world he fed in his job description. Not "find me all the companies with X P/E ratio", which is how he'd been using it, it was more "this is what I'm expected to accomplish in my position". He said no question it can do damn near all of his job outside of certain communications with his clients. And when AI is doing all the heavy lifting you don't need NEARLY as many people to schmooze customers.

He now expects to retire in a couple of years if not sooner because he knows what the banking industry will do to save a buck.

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There is such conflicting information about the competency of LLMs and their ability to replace humans.

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In our in-progress research, we discovered that AI tools didn’t reduce work, they consistently intensified it. In an eight-month study of how generative AI changed work habits at a U.S.-based technology company with about 200 employees, we found that employees worked at a faster pace, took on a broader scope of tasks, and extended work into more hours of the day, often without being asked to do so. Importantly, the company did not mandate AI use (though it did offer enterprise subscriptions to commercially available AI tools). On their own initiative workers did more because AI made “doing more” feel possible, accessible, and in many cases intrinsically rewarding.

While this may sound like a dream come true for leaders, the changes brought about by enthusiastic AI adoption can be unsustainable, causing problems down the line. Once the excitement of experimenting fades, workers can find that their workload has quietly grown and feel stretched from juggling everything that’s suddenly on their plate. That workload creep can in turn lead to cognitive fatigue, burnout, and weakened decision-making. The productivity surge enjoyed at the beginning can give way to lower quality work, turnover, and other problems.

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AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It

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Despite 96% of C-suite executives expecting AI to boost productivity, the study reveals that, 77% of employees using AI say it has added to their workload and created challenges in achieving the expected productivity gains. Not only is AI increasing the workloads of full-time employees, it’s hampering productivity and contributing to employee burnout.

To add insult to injury, nearly half (47%) of employees using AI say they don’t know how to achieve the expected productivity gains their employers expect, and 40% feel their company is asking too much of them when it comes to AI. Workers are feeling the strain from rising productivity demands, with one in three full-time employees saying they will likely quit their jobs in the next six months due to feeling overworked and burnt out. The majority of global C-suite leaders (81%) acknowledge they have increased demands on their workers in the past year. Consequently, 71% of full-time employees are burned out, and 65% report struggling with their employer’s demands on their productivity.

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77% Of Employees Report AI Has Increased Workloads And Hampered Productivity, Study Finds

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More to come…

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I was listening to this investment banker yesterday and his point was these are typically announcements of what a company intends to do. Something like 36% never follow through, so the statements are "performative". Other companies are under pressure to cut costs from investors and use "AI" as a buzzword because it sounds like what they should say.

There are already fully automated funds out there. People will need to adapt but you can still have sympathy for them, AI is a bigger disrupter than the car was. There are going to be a lot of people unable to work in the field they trained/studied for while carrying a boatload of debt

I have a very hard time believing that.


ETA: I believe the potential for that may exist, but we're not there yet.

We will have problems affording UBI for citizens, much less illegals.

The plan to give amnesty to illegals could not come at a worse time.

We need all the illegals out if were going to have a chance.

Learn a trade!

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Learn to weld.

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Trades are a good career path, but they wont be able to absorb the number of white collar workers that will be hitting the employment pool

In a decade or two there will also be robots to do that. Warehouse workers will be the first to be replaced, Musk is betting Tesla's future on that

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There is such conflicting information about the competency of LLMs and their ability to replace humans.

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LLMs will severally reduce "engineering" jobs that do not interface with Mother Nature, e.g. coders.

LLMs will help engineers but not reduce or eliminate engineering jobs that interface directly with Mother Nature.

What will be interesting is how AI impacts the transportation industry in term of self driving big rigs, taxis, etc.

Mike Rowe, one of our national treasures, said it best.

"They've been telling everyone for years, to 'learn to code'. Well, guess what jobs AI is coming for? AI isn't coming to replace welders or steam fitters or pipe fitters or plumbers."

If nothing else, AI will spare you after it becomes Skynet. Humans that can only do 0.000000001% of the intellectual work that a computer can do, will be deemed essentially useless. AI is still going to need people who can repair it and maintain infrastructure and facilities.

There was a point in my early adult life where the path bifurcated and I had a very clear choice to make between blue collar and white collar. I chose blue collar, and though it took me longer to become successful and make decent money (20+ years), my loyalty and perseverance paid off.