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AI will reduce workforce, say 41% of execs in a survey (www.theregister.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 135 points 2 years ago (28 children)

I predict a huge demand of workforce in five years, when they finally realized AI doesn't drive innovation, but recycles old ideas over and over.

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  • [–] 30 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    I predict execs will never see this despite you being correct. We replaced most of our HR department with enterprise GPT-4 and now almost all HR inquiries where I work is handled through a bot. It daydreams HR policies and sometimes deletes your PTO days.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    But can you convince it to report itself for its violations if you phrase it like it's a person?

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  • [–] 25 points 2 years ago (17 children)

    "Workforce" doesn't produce innovation, either. It does the labor. AI is great at doing the labor. It excels in mindless, repetitive tasks. AI won't be replacing the innovators, it will be replacing the desk jockeys that do nothing but update spreadsheets or write code. What I predict we'll see is the floor dropping out of technical schools that teach the things that AI will be replacing. We are looking at the last generation of code monkeys. People joke about how bad AI is at writing code, but give it the same length of time as a graduate program and see where it is. Hell, ChatGPT has only been around since June of 2020 and that was the beta (just 13 years after the first iPhone, and look how far smartphones have come). There won't be a huge demand for workforce in 5 years, there will be a huge portion of the population that suddenly won't have a job. It won't be like the agricultural or industrial revolution where it takes time to make it's way around the world, or where this is some demand for artisanal goods. No one wants artisanal spreadsheets, and we are too global now to not outsource our work to the lowest bidder with the highest thread count. It will happen nearly overnight, and if the world's governments aren't prepared, we'll see an unemployment crisis like never before. We're still in "Fuck around." "Find out" is just around the corner, though.

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  • [–] 41 points 2 years ago (9 children)

    Even mindless and repetitive tasks require instances of problem solving far beyond what a.i is capable of. In order to replace 41% of the work force you’ll need a.g.i and we don’t know if thats even possible.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Let's also not forget that execs are horrible at estimating work.

    "Oh this'll just be a copy paste job right?" No you idiot this is a completely different system and because of xyz we can't just copy everything we did on a different project.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Or salesmen. "Oh, you have that another system to integrate with? No, no change in estimates, everything is OK."

    Then they have a deal concluded etc, and then suddenly that information reaches the people who'll be actually doing it.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Its not replacing people outright its meaning each person is capable of doing more work each thus we only need 41% the people to achieve the same task. It will crash the job market. Global productivity and production will improve then ai will be updated repeat. Its just a matter of if we can scale industry to match the total production capacity of people with ai assistance fast enough to keep up. Both these things are currently exponential but the lag may cause a huge unemployment crisis in the meantime.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    In this potential scenario, instead of axing 41% of people from the workforce, we should all get 41% of our lives back. Productivity and pay stay the same while the benefits go to the people instead of the corporations for a change. I know that’s not how it ever works, but we can keep pushing the discussion in that direction.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    You and I know damn well that a revolution is the only way that's gonna happen, and there aren't any on the horizon.

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  • [–] -2 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    What do u replace it with after a revolution? Communism doesnt work capitalism is flawed democracy is flawed but seems to at least promote our freedoms. I think we defiantly need a fluid democracy before we can start thinking about how we solve the economic problems (well other than raising minimum wage that's a no brainer) without undermining exponential growth.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Capitalism isn't just flawed, it's broken. For every prosperous nation like the UK or Germany, there's half a dozen Haitis and Panamas.

    By "communism", I presume you mean Marxist-Leninist state socialism, which indeed fails miserably. However, it isn't the only alternative to capitalism. Historically, there have been several communes during the Spanish and Russian civil wars that worked fine and didn't have a central leader, let alone a dictatorship. Although they died because of military blunders, this model is currently being followed more or less in Chiapas by the Zapatistas.

    In these places, workers' councils ruled. Direct face-to-face democracy by neighbours were how most things were done. I recon that this is a fairly nice arrangement.

    Democracy's flaws come from subversion by the wealthy and the fact that republics don't let people really participate, but rather choose people who participate in their place.

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  • [–] 29 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I’ve worked with humans, who have computer science degrees and 20 years of experience, and some of them have trouble writing good code and debugging issues, communicating properly, integrating with other teams / components.

    I don’t see “AI” doing this. At least not these LLM models everyone is calling AI today.

    Once we get to Data from Star Trek levels, then I can see it. But this is not that. This is not even close to that.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    People are always enthusiastic about automating others' jobs. Just like they are about having opinions on areas of knowledge utterly alien to them.

    Say, how most see the work of medics.

    And the fact that a few times in known history revolutions happened makes them confident that another one is just behind the corner, and of course it'll affect others and not them.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    You know what I like about Pareto law and all the "divide and conquer" algorithms? You should still know where the division is and which 10% are more important than the other 90%.

    Anyway, my job is in learning new stuff quickly and fixing that. Like of many-many people, even some non-technical types really.

    People who can be replaced with machines have already been for the most part, and where they can't, it's also a matter of social pressure. Mercantilism and protectionism and guilds historically were defending the interests of certain parties, with force too.

    No, I don't think there'll be a sudden "find out" different from any other period of history.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    just 13 years after the first iPhone, and look how far smartphones have come

    I disagree.

    As someone who has the first iPhone, it was amazing and basically did everything that a new one does. It went on all websites, had banking apps and everything.

    I would actually argue phones have become worse, they are very bloated and spy on you, at first they actually made your life better and there was no social media apps super charged for addiction.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    these are the same people who continue to use monetary incentives despite hard scientific evidence that it has the opposite effect from what is desired. they're not gonna realise shit.

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