keepthepace t1_jdzvbww wrote on March 28, 2023 at 12:27 PM

Reply to comment by ObiWanCanShowMe in [D] FOMO on the rapid pace of LLMs by 00001746

> You won't get replaced by AI, you will get replaced by someone who knows how to use the AI.

I wonder why this is any comfort. This is just a rephrasing of "your skillset is obsolete, your profession that used to pay you a salary is now worth a 15 USD/month subscription service"

The person "who knows how to use AI" is not necessarily a skilled Ai specialist. It could simply be your typical client.

The current AI wave should be the trigger to reconsider the place we give to work in our lives. Many works are being automated and no, this is not like the previous industrialization waves.

Workers used to be replaced by expensive machines. It took time to install things, prepare the infrastructure for the transition, it required other workers to do maintenance.

This wave replaces people instantly with an online service that requires zero infrastructure (for the user), costs a fraction of a wage and gives almost instant results.

Yes, progress that suppress jobs tend to create new jobs as well, but there is no mechanism through which there is any guarantee of symmetry between these two quantities and when you think about the AI wave, it is clear that the jobs will be removed faster than they are created and that the skillsets from the jobs removed do not translate well to the hypothetical jobs created.

lqstuart t1_je0jvt7 wrote on March 28, 2023 at 3:25 PM

100%, I think the US really REALLY needs to figure out a universal basic income soon, and they aren't going to do it and life is going to suck

keepthepace t1_je0u1de wrote on March 28, 2023 at 4:30 PM

US is not the only country in the world, maybe they wont be the first one on this thing.

Necessary-Meringue-1 t1_je2r12k wrote on March 28, 2023 at 11:58 PM

Large scale automation has been happening for over 200 years (and beyond) and so far it hasn't translated to productivity gains being handed down to workers, so I'm not holding my breath.

slaweks t1_je8220m wrote on March 30, 2023 at 2:09 AM

Really? Average worker life has not imporoved over last 200 years?

Necessary-Meringue-1 t1_je84su5 wrote on March 30, 2023 at 2:30 AM

Of course it has, but those are hard fought gains that are primarily results of WWI, WWII, and the early phases of the Cold War, not productivity gains.

There is no natural law that productivity gains get handed down. Just compare the years 1950-1970 in the US, where life for the average worker improved greatly, to the 1980s onward, since when we've been in a downward trend. There's steady productivity gains over all that.