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What's your backup plan if AI takes your job? (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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[–] 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I don't think AI will take a lot of jobs. It could happen but I don't see it.

Even before AI these things could happen. I just watched a documentary on lighthouse keepers and the disappearance of their job because of automation and LED lights. When I was a kid, well before "AI", they were telling us that computers amd automation would take most of the jobs.

Translators would be a thing of the past! Yet, machine translation still sucks. Sure it reduced the amount of translators needed, but they're still needed. AI translation can't even make the difference between a common and proper noun. It's making slop.

I work in tech support and customer support. I've been told many times that automation and AI would take my job, but so far computers are bad at that. I have scripted myself out of certain tasks at work much before any AI could do it, and it just freed me and my coworkers for other tasks. A big part of my work is understanding what people want and what went wrong, and AI is absolutely not there yet.

Although I can see the effect it has on the industry and job market as enthusiasts are trying to push it everywhere they can, I doubt it will replace lots of work. AI can be a good assistant and help on some tasks, but it still can't read a piece of paper properly. It's not even good for data entry.

All those "AI will replace a lot of jobs" claims are exaggerating. Sure, it will happen for a few people in small numbers, slowly. But not like what tech bros are predicting.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago*

    AI is an excuse to reduce costs.

    What has been happening is they use AI to fire 2000 people, but then they want to re-hire 1500 of them as contractors at a higher pay rate... but w/o benefits which greatly reduces costs for the company.

    It's really just being used as leverage to dis-empower labor, esp in sectors where labor is paid 'too much'. The tech sector massively over-hired and is still over-employed, hence why most of the news you hear is about tech company layoffs, as all their projections on pandemic-level growth ground to a halt once the pandemic was over in 23/24.

    And yeah, most of it is media hype, because it freaks people out and gets them anxious and talking and eyes glued to screens and listening to talking heads endlessly bullshit about AI when they know next to nothing about it. For most people AI is a form of magic, like any technology.

    And then you have the evangelists and the luddites on either side fanning the flames in their own ways, who claim AI will be mankind's salvation, or it's destruction...

    Reality is it's just the next 'big thing'. it will fade into the background like all the 'big things' before it. We'll have all these data centers doing lots of computing and all it will functionally end up being is just a major upgrade of a computing capacity. The question really is what will we do with it, will it be used productively, or will it just be used to flood the internet with endless bullshit. As if people themselves don't already produce enough bullshit.

    Then again, people's capacity for consuming bullshit... is pretty infinite as we have seen from the rise of social media, influences, and podcasting. If you told anyone 15 years ago people would spend 8 hours a day listening to weirdos bullshit on the internet, they'd have thought you were nuts.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago

    Slop generators cannot truly replace very many jobs. They can however give your boss an excuse to fire you and enshittify their own company. And most bosses will take that trade if offered. When people say AI is stealing their job, they mean it gave their boss an excuse to fire them. Not that they've truly been made redundant.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    When people tell you that AI will (or already does) take a lot of jobs, it's not necessarily implied that it's good enough to replace humans. Just that it is sold well enough to the people who make those decisions.

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