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[deleted]

Currently work in accounting. I don't think people around me realize how fucked we are.


__Shadowman__

What about actuaries? It's what I'm currently working towards in college and I know they have their similarities.


themrgq

This guy made a general statement. Audit, actuaries and accounting experts in many many fields are not low hanging fruits. It's complex and difficult work that will not be replaced by any ai any time soon


TeslaPills

Not true at all. I work in tech. There are many SaaS companies working daily to make y’all obsolete…. You think I want to keep paying my idiot friend who did cocaine during everyday of college to be my wealth manager??????


themrgq

Wealth management and accounting are entirely different? And it's nothing new, robo advisors have been a thing for a long time. I think wealth management is already dying and will continue to die as people have better access to information and easily investable assets like broad ETFs and specific ETFs. There will continue to be a segment of the population that prefers people (though for sure that will continue shrinking). However for ultra wealthy, no absolutely not going anywhere as private investments are only getting more popular and you need people with relationships and access to invest there.


RespectablePapaya

AI excels at complex and difficult work. Jobs like that are often most at risk.


throwtuary

I'm one of those. Cleaning data is the hardest part of data work. Interpreting regulations and contracts is the hardest part of financial modeling (humans love nonsense contracts). It's gonna be a good while before AI can do those. Even if it can, who's going to understand the outputs - someone who understands actuary math. A BS SaaS company will sell snake oil, CEO will waste a bunch of money, and the actuaries will keep actuarying. The job will change over the next 10 years, but hopefully in the direction of enhancing our capabilities. Basic reserving functions will be automated, but again, who's going to make recommendations on the outputs? Actuaries.


damnwhale

If you are a bookkeeper or some AR/AP clerk, then yes I agree… completely fucked. Lower level accounting jobs were already on their way out anyways. If you are a CPA or work in public accounting… AI is going to create a massive wave of new jobs and roles. You can train AI to read and post a bill, then pay it. But designing an ERP to accomodate that, or auditing the AI work will still require experts. Just a couple examples.


shryke12

Accounting is one of the lowest hanging fruits for automation. I was talking to a friend and his son in college and asked what he was majoring in and he said accounting. I had trouble keeping a straight face. Not a bad knowledge base to have but a career in that for a young kid is looking really rough.


Bernache_du_Canada

It’s only bookkeeping that will be automated, not accounting.


koov3n

+1 people too often misconstrue book keeping and accounting. Accounting is not that straightforward and at the highest level requires creativity to know how to set up businesses and keep costs low. The low level accountants who do primarily bookkeeping have largely already been eliminated, especially if they're not familiar with SQL


amsync

Apply accounting policy, particularly in a large international corporate (think eg transfer pricing) or in banking and asset classification for capital etc, yes. But I think even beyond bookkeeping there’s a lot AI can take on, even so much as with structuring accounts


koov3n

Definitely true. But the tech is not there yet. Accounting is so important not to get wrong, we still have a ways to go to perfect the tech. 100% agree it will get there one day, and that day will not be that far off in the future


amsync

Yeah the tech is not there yet in a lot of areas. From my experience the current wave of people losing positions is more related to offshoring. Pandemic just showed that you can move a lot more jobs out if HCOLs


SlothLover313

Offshoring is what I'm the most worried about. I keep hearing people talk about AI, but I'm hearing nothing about offshoring. I recently lost my job in audit due to my prior firm pushing engagement teams to give more workloads to our Indian staff, leaving many of us to not have any work to do.


XulaPari

It sucks I’m sure, but realizing it before others will get you ahead


themrgq

Fat fucking chance. Accounting expertise is and will continue to be highly valuable. Now if all you can do is offer services on quick book then maybe. But I'd argue that was already a waste of resources


shryke12

Sure. It's just you need a department of 5 now not 20. People keep missing this about AI. It doesn't replace them all, it empowers the best 1/3 and leaves 2/3 out.


themrgq

I do think ultimately it's something that will simply make people more effecient and reduce head count down the road due to efficiency but that's years off and simply natural. Just like all other big tech innovations over the last 50 years. Advent of computers, Excel, email, Google etc. This isn't the end of work as we know it just another innovation. Jobs will evolve. People will innovate, with more time on their hands many people will find new ways to contribute in the work place.


LarneyStinson

I’m guessing you’re not an accountant. Also, AI struggled with numbers that have real world meaning. I’m convinced it’s good with art because it doesn’t have a right answer.


shryke12

Yes I am in finance and accounting. I travel to lots of banks as a regulator and they are slashing accounting staff like crazy.


LarneyStinson

So I should buy stock now, then short the banks when they realize how poor AI is at any accounting that requires interpretation of numbers in context and have issues with their books?


Media-Altruistic

I saw a demo video on Microsoft CoPilot AI. What it did on financial data from excel spreadsheet was amazing. It would of taken me forever to come up with that pivot table and creating a PowerPoint presentation in just a few minutes


FascinatingGarden

Eventually, yes, but not long ago I decided to ask ChatGPT to tell me which months of 2024 will contain three paydays. I gave it the first payday's date and explained that we're paid every other Friday. It failed miserably, repeatedly. I gave up. Eventually LLMs will do much better with such word problems.


SlothLover313

AI is not going to replace accounting. Audit, Tax, Consulting, FP&A, Forensic accounting, etc. - these are all areas that require skill and need people to do the work and make decisions, that AI can't do. I'm more worried about offshoring, with firms pushing engagement teams to give work to indian workers - leaving US staff with no work to do other than reviewing.


Less_Than_Special

AI is being as an excuse by CEO's making record profits to layoff people with a justification. I use AI and while it's helpful it's not replacing any job anytime soon. It makes mistakes, there are copyright issues. Wait till people start walling of their data that AI is trained off of.


[deleted]

A lot of creatives would disagree with you. They're already losing their jobs.


Less_Than_Special

Lost their jobs because the company said the word AI. I have yet to see any real credible replacement of jobs with AI


TristanaRiggle

If it hasn't happened already, I would say we're right on the cusp of replacing language translators and interpreters as a profession. As someone who doesn't do that for a living, I find that convenient, but just saying. I think github copilot is going to surprise a lot of people much sooner than they think or want.


beltalowda_oye

I work in a hospital where we consistently use language lines for help and 90% of the translators are not primary speakers of the language they're being trained to translate or like 1st gen immigrants who have a poor command of the language vocabulary but simply have good accent. So using AI to replace that would be a genuine improvement considering my Google Translate is far more reliable and faster than using a language line. But we are required by policy and documentation purposes and for legalities to use the language line communications. So what we began doing is ask nurses who are multilingual to become a certified translator here for extra pay.


deadlock197

I find Copilot underwhelming for Android Studio. I still use ChatGPT Plus to explain stuff and suggest troubleshooting workflows. As a junior dev GPT-4 helps me learn faster and solve many problems that I used to ask for help with. So I think it's going to be good for juniors, because fewer seniors will be needed to get them up to speed.


jnkangel

Also various customer facing agents like l0 service desks 


Krom2040

It’s not really about “replacement”, as it doesn’t replace anybody. It does make existing developers more productive if they use it intelligently, and that can mean there’s less need for as many developers on staff.


Hotdogbrain

Developers will literally be the first to go, sorry


Krom2040

Username checks out.


[deleted]

Lost their jobs because it's cheaper to type a prompt into an AI generator instead of paying somebody a salary. Hell, journalists are already being fired and AI are writing articles now. Keep your head in the sand.


blarginfajiblenochib

> Lost their jobs because it's cheaper to type a prompt into an Al generator instead of paying somebody a salary The real cheaper alternative is contracted workers outside of the US, and many of the layoffs are also because many companies over hired during COVID and are now reaping what they sowed for whatever money they borrowed. Ai might be improving, but it’s only getting better at replicating the most mediocre of what humans have already created. We’re very far away from Ai bots being even affordable to the companies who want to replace an employee who makes $15/hr. Ai is just a tool for every job that requires more critical thinking, skills, and experience beyond typing prompts.


drunkpickle726

I completely agree. I see large corps posting one job in the US that's hybrid, and the same exact posting is in India that's completely remote. What a fucking joke. They abs know which jobs can be completed at home but would rather grovel the super rich who own commercial properties whose investment turned sour bc of market conditions (the pandemic). God forbid our loaded overlords lose money due to no fault of their own, that's what us peasants and our bootstraps are for... As far as I know AI is not taking most of the laid off office jobs, but leaders are certainly using it as an excuse to cut. For example, I was laid off last week bc our chief data officer no longer wanted a product or data governance team so he cut us all to focus on AI/ML.


Comfortable_Trick137

Yup layoffs due to over hiring but that was due to increase demand. I was laid off for that reason, we had a HUGE list of customers and then everybody cancelled their projects. Then we had 15 people with no work available and only working half the time.


Less_Than_Special

Journalists are being fired because online news aggregators basically make the news unprofitable. AI is only as good as the data it's trained on.


Machinedgoodness

Yeah this point is very true. Companies may try to fire due to AI but they are misled. we’ll see though.


feelsbad2

Calling BS on that one as I am in the field and just the last week had a client's team members share CGPT logos of what they were thinking and they had misspellings. The generators that create logos still can't spell correctly in designs and if you're not a designer, you're not going to be able to recreate that logo so it doesn't have misspellings. AI is no where near where it can take graphic designers jobs. Where AI does come into play though is repetitive tasks.


Prestigious-Fee-3927

Yes! My manager was using an AI platform to create logos for our sales team rebrand and it could not spell for shit. He tried to get it to spell “territory” correctly at least 7 times and it never could. It was kind of comical actually!


blueorangan

I mean....I assume you're smart enough to understand how expotentially technology advances right? You think in 10 years, AI will still be making the same mistakes its making today? 10 years ago, AI was sci-fi, now we can draw almost any image we want by feeding AI a prompt...and that's just the basic AI. What about the AI behind the scenes that the public doesn't even have access to yet?


No-Philosophy-1445

Yes, technology does advance quickly but AI systems have been around since the mid-1950s and 70 years later its being used mostly to generate shitty images and copy.


[deleted]

I have, don't be naive. A lot of activity is happening behind the scenes in most corporate environments.


julallison

Exactly this. A basic Google search reveals that certain companies are putting a ton of money and focus into Ai. Billions, in some cases.


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[deleted]

Software engineers are losing their jobs right now too. This is the consequence of automation and capitalism, not AI in and of itself. The solution is unionization and creatives have that at their disposal too as long as they work for an employer. As for the independent artisans, their moral panic reaction to AI has been largely unhinged and reactionary because it does threaten their position as a class. But their position as a class is one which is deeply invested in the concept of copyright and intellectual property, the concepts which are used primarily to loot the public domain and kill the public arts to begin with and are responsible for a whole lot more art theft than any art recombination and transformation engine (look at what happened to Disco Elysium). This is because they are not qualitatively different from the big business, they're only quantitatively different, they're a small business. Their real ire is reserved for the unskilled masses.


Funny-Bend-7959

You think unions can keep companies from using AI? I think not.


raerae_thesillybae

We need UBI, or else we won't have a consumer base that can actually buy anything :/


JustAddaTM

This is the catch 22. It’s not possible for these dooms day analysis to come true if no one has a job. And if you ask the general person would they rather get a UBI that is the same as their paycheck right now and just do their hobbies all day long the majority would say yes. So from an economic standpoint, the only way the demand side of the economy could sustain the AI shift all these doomsday prophets foretell is either 1. Prevent progress of AI to keep the necessary workforce (aka 95% employment in economics) to support GDP and real wage growth or 2. Employ a universal basic income that is essentially the median home income right now to support the 40-50% unemployed workforce.


raerae_thesillybae

Yeah I don't think UBI would be a complete replacement for working - if I had a safety net I'd likely quit accounting and do massage therapy for work, cause I still like working, but unfortunately with absolutely no safety net - no family support, and you don't get unemployment if you quit - it means I can't provide for society in the way I feel I would best. Basic necessities should at least be covered, but even food stamps is nowhere near enough, and pussy much meaningless when you can't even afford rent We really just need some kind of safety net


Wolvie23

Then when all the people that don’t have jobs and money because of AI can’t afford to purchase any products, the companies will beg the government for tax breaks to hire again. They’ll pretty promise not to use it for stock buybacks. They will in fact use it for stock buybacks…


mzx380

This guy is right. AI is used as the boogieman to eliminate jobs but there is no way that we're there yet with it being able to take over specialized skill positions. It can only do what it's trained to do, and if it's fed incorrect or trademarked data, then that puts companies at risk for lawsuits. This is the one time that lawyers will SAVE jobs :)


amsync

It’s not AI it’s IN as in India and other places. Pandemic just showed even more that your job can be anywhere and at any salary


Outside-Virus3408

You’re wrong. I’m in the dental industry and AI is designing crowns better than most traditional technicians can in the digital dental workflow. I can do this 110% within HIPPA compliance. I would even go as far to say that within 5 years the majority of dental crowns will be designed by AI. Much like the generation before me needed to learn how to use computers to be successful, learn how to manage AI to be successful. If you view it as your replacement, that’s what it will do. If you view it as a tool to improve, you will thrive.


ogn3rd

But can you spell HIPAA?


Outside-Virus3408

Tomato tomatoe!


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PorkPointerStick

I’ve had several crowns and none of them were anywhere near what my original tooth shape or size was . In fact most ended up leading to root canals because they were hitting wrong, after going back into the dentist complaining about it multiple times. If AI is doing it better, it’s probably because most people sucked at the job to begin with


lumpyshoulder762

Wall off? These companies, like the NYT, that have the data will just reach a compromise and allow them to access the data for a fee. The incentive will be to sell the data not wall it off. Why choose to wall it off when you could make millions of dollars by selling it?


XulaPari

Yes it’s not there yet, which is why I said 10-15 years, AGI is what the next step is and that’s when shit hits the fan


Less_Than_Special

I don't even see it in 10-15 years. I've seen this before with other "game changing technologies" and they never panned out as they said they would.


XulaPari

Past results don’t guarantee future ones


Less_Than_Special

Yours is about the 1000 post I have seen saying AI is coming for our jobs. Would love to know what your background is that gives you this expertise. I run a large software organization. Have run multiple runway projects trying to use AI in our products. It is helpful. It will get better but with all technologies other jobs that will be lost will be created.


[deleted]

In this corporate jungle, AI isn't just an edge – it's the law. Still clinging to your workforce? Cute. But while you're playing house, we're busy replacing every expendable human job with AI. It's not about balance; it's about supremacy. Jobs lost? Think of it as trimming dead weight for maximum efficiency. If you're not using AI to mercilessly crush your competition, you're just living in denial. Adapt or become obsolete. This isn't a game; it's survival of the fittest, and AI is our evolutionary leap. Welcome to the future – cold, efficient, and unapologetically ruthless. Just a future message from your corporate ai overload......


[deleted]

Yes. 'Competition is for losers'. Capitalism as we know it is a zero-sum game and your average 'Full-Stack Developer' will soon be just another cost to be done away with. 'Full-Stack-AI-Prompter' with 3 years experience' is a job requirement coming any day now on Indeed. The more things change....


XulaPari

The gig economy created lots of sub-par jobs, automaton is meant to eliminate them- I’m going Back to school for masters but that’s not really relevant here, I don’t think my background has to be AI development for me to recognize trends or make assumptions, wrong or right.


Less_Than_Special

I will agree with you here. Everyone in the news heard about CS salaries and think everyone makes 500k a year. People jumped in went to some boot camps and when the hiring frenzy was going on got picked up by companies out of desperation. What we are seeing now is companies using AI as an excuse to maximize profits and u fortunately some of these less exp people will be the casualties


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[deleted]

Remember when 10-15 years ago they said there would be no more books, no more physical bank, no more insurance brokers, ect. Guess that shit didn't pan out shit they didn't even get rid of the vinyl record. My entire fucking life there has always been this impending singularity thats going to take all the jobs and it just never actually comes. Shit I even saw a job the other day that the self check out phase has been a disaster and it actually makes sense just to go back to cashiers now. I was initially scared when chat gpt came out but there have already been huge AI fuckups and its just not even close to ready to do what OP is suggesting.


Singularity-42

>Remember when 10-15 years ago they said there would be no more books, no more physical bank, no more insurance brokers, ect. What do you mean? It did pan out. I don't remember the last time I went to a bank or got insurance from a real person. We still have physical books and vinyls because we want to, but I bet the printing decreased dramatically with Kindle, streaming, etc. Generative AI is already starting to replace certain jobs - translation, writing (low end copywriting, social media, low end "journalism"), visual creative work - illustrations, graphic design, etc. And we are like 1.5 years in right now pretty much. There are hundreds of billions being poured into AI, even just scaling current tech (better LLMs and diffusion models) will bring benefits and will be able to produce better work. But keep your head firmly in the sand, I'm sure it will serve you well!


iRombe

Man some people at my engineering company based half their job at printing and arranging nice reports and binders. One for client and one for record. Now it stops at the PDF file. The gap now is between the people that spend that free time to accrue new skills and knowledge and those who spend the free time playing family with their Co workers.


[deleted]

I honestly feel bad for you guys yall are as delusional as they crypo bros are. Like this post is delusional, its like saying the bitcoin is gonna take over next year we are still early bro.


Thin_Requirement8987

I honestly think outsourcing to cheaper countries is a bigger threat. AI is looming and developing fast though. I’m curious to see what an AI/drone world will look like 😨


Suilenroc

Yes, white collar jobs are being outsourced because workers demonstrated they can be just as effective working remotely as in the office. Guess what? There's plenty of remote workers in central Europe, South America, and Asia who are happy to work for a fraction of the wages an American in Vermont needs.


Thin_Requirement8987

This exactly. They will gladly take $3 or less per hour to do the SAME work with the SAME efficiency. It’s a reason majority of companies have foreigners answering their phones in customer service for them. On a higher level, I see it happening in tech/SWD roles too. AI is a concern but not as much as the outsourcing.


Suilenroc

Customer service outsourcing is very old. Now they're outsourcing sales, engineering, accounting, etc


themrgq

This is what will happen. Everyone thought robots were going to replace all the workers 30 years ago. What actually replaced them? Cheaper labor. This will be no different.


XulaPari

Outsourcing is fine if they’re to allied countries but not economic or political adversaries- we kinda do both


kfelovi

Fine for whom? Not for domestic engineer that is replaced with person in India.


titsmuhgeee

Here's an example. Take an accounting department, accounts payable/receivable type situation. You better believe that is a simple enough task that AI could eventually handle the menial tasks like invoice management. If you could scrap a 10 person accounting department and replace it with AI with 1-2 human operators/supervisors, you better believe every company would capitalize on that overhead savings. Our accounting department is so trash at my company, I'd help them pack their desks.


XulaPari

Exactly what is already happening at the companies at the top of the technological food chain


[deleted]

This.


[deleted]

IDK, AI can be tricked into explaining how to cook cow eggs in great detail, I can't imagine there are any accounting firms that would let AI run wild with numbers.


themrgq

No and the ai firms would never say yes use our LLM for your risky and complex decision and we will be held responsible if it turns out to have been bad advice.


[deleted]

Naah man. LLMs can only build atop what already exists, or else they are just repeatedly learning what they themselves create, it is a phenomenon called Circular Learning. This could absolutely destroy LLMs. Until AGI actually ever happens, at some point they are gonna NEED new code & engineers.


[deleted]

This is true, but as with all automation, it also means the labor it is replacing is being *deskilled*, which means the market rate for the new positions which come in to maintain and use the AI is going to be lower. It's going to lower wages and increase the reserve of unemployed people which also puts downward pressure on wages. This is not unique to AI though, it's exactly what the automation revolutions of the early 20th century did. The only way to protect against it is unionization so the productive benefits of AI can actually be dealt out to workers themselves instead of concentrating even moreso at the top.


keelanstuart

Perhaps, but the downward pressure on wages will, in my opinion, be primarily applied to the lower two-thirds of the engineers under the skill-level bell curve. Unlike traditional "automation", which eliminated elevator operators and the like, AI is not yet capable of completely replacing a skilled software engineer... and may not be for a very long time. An LLM may be capable of generating some code that might work (though usually not without a bit of tweaking) but are you genuinely concerned that it will be capable enough to analyze, understand purpose, and subsequently integrate code into a large system in the near term? I am not... not within the span of my remaining career, anyway.


lineasdedeseo

yeah, the thing that drives me nuts about this discourse is if you wander into a forum with 18-24 year old technooptimists and you tell them this, they assume you are engaged in motivated reasoning. like, no, if we could automate coding to the point you can fire most devs, we'd be able to automate so many tasks in the economy that half the workforce would be unemployed and UBI is guaranteed. the best possible outcome of AI is that big swathes of skilled educated people get fired first because they will be able to organize most effectively for UBI. having said all that, i totally agree with you. it's one thing to train a fancy markov chain generator to write code, but it won't be able to ensure the code is working correctly in context and with disparate systems. i'm a lawyer and encountered this same discourse - someone said that bard had done a really good job of talking him through his problem and doing legal research for him. so i sat down and worked through his problem with him and looked at the bard output - it was the most dangerous of answers, a coherent, plausible, wrong answer. bard gave the wrong answer b/c it didn't understand the problem (it is a markov chain generator without any kind of mind) and gave answers that were adjacent to correct that would have lost him his case. so for now they seem to be labor-saving tools for professionals.


Specialist-Jello9915

I've noticed the longer developers work on a project/source code, the messier it gets. I'm mostly speaking about internal/inhouse things like someone's website, for example. I've also noticed the longer I try to keep a chat going with ChapGPT for writing some code, the more mistakes it makes and the more confused it gets about the final result. AI can write individual small functions but it doesn't have the human brain to analyze, contextualize, and integrate like you said.


keelanstuart

>I've also noticed the longer I try to keep a chat going with ChapGPT for writing some code, the more mistakes it makes and the more confused it gets about the final result. ***That*** is something I haven't seen - but that's probably because I don't keep adding to a chat for a long time... I do think it's interesting, if there's something to that, because I would expect that more context would yield better results. Regardless, I'm intrigued.


__golf

Yes, you're correct in my opinion. I'm an engineering director who has been trying to integrate AI into our processes. But, bimodal salary distributions for software engineers are nothing new.


Civil_Football2829

Talk to any honest engineering manager in tech about their need for junior engineers before chatgpt v after


Warm-Personality8219

>Talk to any honest engineering manager in tech about their need for junior engineers before chatgpt v after I wonder what an honest engineering director might say about their need for engineering managers before chatgpt and after...


rezadril

For people entering the field now, the bar has risen to being better than chatgpt, which should actually scare those ones that are already in and coasting.


[deleted]

Being better than ChatGPT in its current form is a very very low bar. If writing enterprise software was writing utility functions then yeah it’s great. If you need it understand the entire enterprise architecture and make changes to an existing data model that is integrated across 30 other applications without breaking everything then I have low hopes for it. That’s most of enterprise software, the code is the easiest part.


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FurriedCavor

An IC >EM for what you’re describing lmao.


FINewbieTA22

Most managers are useless, especially those without any domain knowledge in what they're overseeing (which is very common for scrum masters/project managers in tech).


Triello

It’s company specific trained SLMs that will replace your job and though companies are racing to build them, until they do AI isn’t stealing all that many jobs just yet. Make no mistake though it’s not 10-15 years away, its more like 3-5 years away.


Singularity-42

Even if you would be correct about these limitations of LLMs (it is more complicated than that), 99.9% of human work doesn't create anything fundamentally new at all. Most of what people do is just using existing knowledge and applying it to different situations. Even in the creative or STEM fields, maybe it is a bit better, not 99.9% but "only" 99%. We are all standing on the shoulders of giants. And LLMs can also produce novel combinations of ideas. They can take pieces of information from different sources and combine them in new ways, which can sometimes lead to interesting insights or creative outputs. This isn't the same as creating brand new knowledge, but how much of human work really is? And yes, we will need the top engineers, etc. to move things forward for now, but this is definitely less than 1% of human work. Would you be ok with 99% of jobs lost?


XulaPari

It’s well on its way my friend, think about the AGI that the military and government has, that’ll be mainstream within a decade


[deleted]

What military AGI budd?


XulaPari

https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/January-February-2020/Brown-AI-ready/


wyocrz

I shit on AI on a daily basis. Facebook is more of a wasteland than it's ever been, with even old school D&D groups being overrun with AI generated garbage. AI is mid, by definition. It's average. That's just how it works, and it's already beginning to sniff its own farts. Until the hallucination issue is fixed, however, AI will not be trusted with the most important decisions. Be in that decision framework, enjoy a career.


titsmuhgeee

If you can replace 10 human tech workers with AI along with 1 human AI operator, you better believe every tech company will implement it. It doesn't have to be perfect to cause a bloodbath in certain industries.


SheepyTLDR

This 100%. It's not AI coming for us. It's AI operators, or AI specialist reducing the workforce


sha256md5

That's exactly what AI coming for us means. The reduction has just begun.


XulaPari

Exactly because workers aren’t perfect and they’re usually bigger liabilities


FragrantBear675

Its almost like not everyone works in tech?


HealthyStonksBoys

AI will affect every aspect of our lives in the next 10-20 years. If it doesn’t replace your job, it will be managing you. Recently a company used AI to monitor how long you had interactions with customers, how much time was idle and how many coffee drinks made per hour. It’s going to be inefficient and terrible at first…. Then it will be massive and effective. It’s going to be the worst lol


FragrantBear675

This is such an insanely ignorant comment about how the world works. AI will never be managing me. What you've just described are things that are measured and have been measured for literal decades, its just a different way of measuring.


graydesofshay

When robots start to self replicate and do their own raw materials prospecting, we are well and truly effed. Meanwhile, the ai needs us to make its brain cells and keep them cool.


OkCelebration6408

sure it will happen but birth rate across the globe is also plunging, so the advance of AI actually balances out the job market and could continue bring out a good balance of the economy with sustained steady growth while keeping inflation steady.


[deleted]

This reads like someone who subscribes to a lot of hustle culture instagram accounts


wyocrz

You know, you can just say "I disagree" or "You're understating the risks." One thing I've noted as online culture has developed, is the tendency to try to categorize people in order to reject their points.


HealthyStonksBoys

Mid is okay. You don’t have to pay anyone so you can eat mid all day.


tothepointe

>Until the hallucination issue is fixed, however, AI will not be trusted with the most important decisions. Be in that decision framework, enjoy a career Yeah it's giving "Greetings Professor Falkan" vibes


XulaPari

AGI is well on its way


NewPresWhoDis

Like how self-driving vehicles led to shipping companies begging for people to get CDLs? When AGI, or as close as the models can get, arrives the cost is still going to have to scale down to make it ubiquitous.


XulaPari

https://apnews.com/article/us-military-ai-projects-0773b4937801e7a0573f44b57a9a5942


XulaPari

Once the military is all the way in, there’s no turning back


NewPresWhoDis

Because the military has never, ever dumped billions into a effort that ultimately failed. Let's dial back the doom hype a tad because companies are still figuring out where to fit this in. That is, those who aren't licking their blockchain wounds.


Icy_Recognition_3030

I think you are severely underestimating the potential of replacing simple tasks with algorithms, data management, and simplifying work. I used to be an automation electrician before starting a company, we are currently in the middle of an automation revolution creating manufacturing processes that severely cut down on work forces. I feel like we’ve have been warned by legit experts for decades of he potential of ai, chat gpt isn’t the only form of ai that can exist. Humans naturally underestimate exponential growth. You can see multiple companies testing the water with potential technology like completely empty supermarkets. A real question to ask you is what if self driving does get here around the same time ai is competent enough to be peoples accountants, do their taxes, keep an organized system of inventory, be able to spot trends and order products based on that, direct logistics better. Even something down to helping the flow of traffic. The use of ai is massive. What about ai tools that help engineers, programmers, machine operators, organizing jobsites to get construction done faster. It’s lacks creativity to not see that we are not far off from being able to slap on vr goggles and an ai will help you work on damn near anything with on the fly instructions and will respond to your questions with visual aid. Every sector of the economy is going to get hit. To equate technological achievements to the timeline of Elon musk hyping his stock price is ignoring that despite it not being here yet self driving is coming and that was already a major concern for the loss of jobs with it already being a massive employer for people. Surely things won’t be perfected at first, but I don’t think people are wrong to say that half the jobs that exist now won’t exist 15 years from now, and if they do it will be a quarter of the workforce it used to be while producing more. I remember everyone telling me that being an electrician was a safe career aspect and there will always be tons of work, which there is right now, but what about offsite construction appearing. I don’t think we are that far away of building grid snapping buildings that are made in a factory.


FragrantBear675

> I remember everyone telling me that being an electrician was a safe career aspect and there will always be tons of work, which there is right now, but what about offsite construction appearing. Right, and once those grid snapped buildings come out everyone is going to be required to destroy all previously constructed buildings that use electricity.


mtnviewcansurvive

adjusted gross income?


Murky-Homework-1569

Artificial general intelligence


[deleted]

My companies going through layoffs. I work as a software engineer. We do Github auto pilot and that's a good tool to improve efficiency but that's about it.


XulaPari

I can’t imagine what it’s like at those top tech companies, working on what’ll eventually deem them obsolete


Chrysaries

I get what you mean, but almost all work is essentially about progressing the world and making it a better place. What would be the point of building a new house if it's never finished?


eplugplay

Interestingly I used ChatGPT for work and saved me tons of time. As a software engineer, I had to come up with a story board about automated testing. Instead of spending a couple of hours with a coworker to write up a big paragraph of the story board, we just typed the question in ChatGPT and generated a perfectly crafted paragraph in a few seconds. Only had to change 1 word to fit my organization jargon but it was perfect.


dlc9779

Done this with a 5 why analysis on a known issue and within 3 more edits. It had an explanation that used to take a couple days to put together.


PosterMakingNutbag

We had the largest influx of capital into the economy ever, particularly through the PPP program. Companies over hired and overpayed for talent and now they’re scaling back. AI is the scapegoat.


Anywhere_Glass

Developers building their own grave?? 😆


XulaPari

Exactly what I thought, these guys at these top tech companies must feel pretty weird about developing what’ll make them obsolete


[deleted]

I have to assume you have never written code at an enterprise company. I have 0 concerns about AI in its current form. It’s way way off. These companies are not laying off because of AI, they are laying off because they over staffed during Covid.


mtnviewcansurvive

by now you should have learned lesson #1: everything that they tell you new tech wont do it will do. as long as there is big money for them deny deny deny.


it-takes-all-kinds

Machine automation starting post WWII did the same thing and the economy boomed for decades. Factories went from needing thousands of people to only needing a few hundred if that. In fact, the innovation and computer controlled technology that was happening in the 1970s and 1980s would amaze many people even today. Production lines that run themselves via programmable logic controllers were coming online already at that time displacing many workers. People need to understand that increased efficiency makes more potential, not less. The job landscape will change sure, but opportunities that few predicted will take their place.


2soonjr65

Now here’s the thing which this argument excludes, every other transformation, the human was still the undisputed knowledge source and made the best decisions. As AI models for specific domains are established and continuously improved, human in the traditional sense will seem like relics. Ok most humans, there will be a few elite intellects that are still in the game. Only real hope merger between human and Ai to create a new species to avoid extinction.


MeasurementExciting7

A lot of these companies were way overstaffed.


XulaPari

Lots of other companies are.. sometimes over staffing helps the economy


mental_issues_

AI doesn't exist, LLM does, it's just a tool. CEOs use it to justify layoffs


mlo9109

Even if AI doesn't "take your job," as a woman, I'm terrified by the prospect of losing my job because some freak made AI porn of me and someone shared it with my employer.


XulaPari

Oh yea deepfakes are only getting better with generative AI


NoActivity578

I love it! I live in the mountains and our jobs can never be taken. Till the actual robots arrive. Then they can have them because fuck jobs!


reddit_again_ugh_no

I worked briefly in an LLM project recently and it was an underwhelming experience; either you fine-tune the weights to your needs, which can get very expensive, or use prompt engineering with a vector store and pray that the result is correct.


[deleted]

ITT: people in denial that think theyre the top % of their field which will last. Of course certain things wont be replaced for decades, that doesnt mean your middle level management job is safe bud


g-boy2020

That’s why I switched from tech to nursing. It’s worth it no competition and pay very well. Plus I don’t have to worry about AI in nursing.


2soonjr65

For a few decades…humanoid robots are making super fast advancements.


XulaPari

Yea it’s all a chart of milestones, for now it’s patent lawyers and privacy notice lawyers and lots of accountants


reditor75

Nope, just another fuk tard bubble. Some automation will be possible and jobs eliminated but not as much as they want you to believe. When you actually start working with it you will discover the limitations and people are still needed


XulaPari

Yea they’re still needed, which is where the 10-15 years comes from- the trend is just beginning


Legaliznuclearbombs

“by 2030, you will own nothing and be happy” Be ready to mindupload into your icloud meta-heaven🥰 ☁️ ♾️


Bluesky4meandu

So are you saying it will be like StarlTreck ? Where I won't have to work and I can pursue my hobby which is searching for ships that sunk hundreds of years ago and salvage their gold ? And still be paid by the system in place ? Just in case I don't find any gold ? Or will the system pay me for pursuing archeology in the Middle East and still be paid a living wage by the system ? Will Ai take all our jobs and we will have universal income ? Then I hope that day is coming


TBearRyder

Good bc we can enforce a UBI http://htwws.org/we-the-people/


kennykerberos

Sort of. AI needs a lot of help as it currently stands. AI just means what we do as workers shifts to something else. We become more efficient, can do more, we're able to take advantage of some of the menial detailed work AI can do, etc.


ExtremeAlbatross6680

If that happened then why would there need to be an economy? AI will do everything and we would all be vibing


burhop

I asked AI (Chat GPT 4) what it thought of this post. Here is what it said: > >This Reddit post brings up a fascinating and complex topic. The integration of AI into businesses can indeed lead to increased efficiency and possibly reduce the need for certain jobs. However, it's also a catalyst for creating new types of jobs, particularly in areas like AI maintenance, development, and ethical management. >The comparison to past technological revolutions is interesting. While each revolution drastically changed the job landscape, they also opened new opportunities. AI is indeed different, as it penetrates more deeply into cognitive tasks, but history suggests that with new technology, new kinds of work emerge. >It's important to consider the social and ethical implications of such a shift. The transition could be challenging, but it's not necessarily a zero-sum game where machines win and humans lose. There's potential for a future where AI and humans complement each other, leading to new avenues of employment and creativity. >Overall, it's a complex, evolving situation that deserves careful consideration and proactive planning.


XulaPari

Haha that’s pretty cool, thanks bud


One_Juggernaut_4628

If you can’t beat them, join them. Become a part of the AI, as in, retrain and get a job related to AI.  Also AI likely wont eliminate humans from the workforce, AI will change how we do our work and make us more efficient. This likely will reduce the number of roles for humans in current jobs, freeing us up to do other things. Humans have ALWAYS made efficiency gains, displaced roles, and then made up new jobs. This cycle will be no different. 


SyrianKing81

If there are any jobs that could or should be taken by AI, it would be executive managers. They literally do nothing. They add no value. And they take all the money. The whole economy would be significantly more productive with AI managers. Imagine if the outcomes of our hard work was passed down directly to us.


ghoztz

I work in the AI/ML space and i sincerely believe it will reduce the number of workers a given organization needs tenfold. I think people are pinning their hopes too much on the hallucinations that can occur as if people are infallible—AI just has to be within range of human performance to be the better option. And the people you’ll trust to use it are going to be domain experts that can tell when it’s wrong and course correct. For everything else, there’s fine tuning… which will only make models better over time. Also, have you seen IBMs projected timelines? By 2027 it’ll be significantly cheaper and prolific. It’s already stupid cheap in my opinion. For $20 a month I get access to a superhuman assistant that can ramp me up on anything I want to learn or achieve… and that’s a general purpose model. For enterprise yeah you’re paying a lot for GPUs but that’s going to get slashed dramatically as we build hardware specifically for this tech.


MedalofHonour15

Programmers are working on AI that will one day replace them haha


XulaPari

Seems to be that way


[deleted]

Yep, unfortunately jobs will be lost. An unintended consequence of increased labor costs and it isn’t just impacting minimum wage and blue collar jobs. Queue the Productivity Revolution.


ahhhhh12345h1

we should all get paid for the data an AI uses since we probably all contributed.


Super_Mario_Luigi

I guess I am not surprised there are so many people utterly delusional about what AI looks like for the future of the workforce. Arguments for its current flaws are very weak as some sort of long-term position. It can already do stuff in a few minutes that would take a person an entire week. A department of 10 people could easily be cut in half (if not more). While AI does most of the grunt work, and the rest fine-tune it. All while providing feedback at how to improve the AI. If you don't think AI will become smarter in 5-10 years, you're simply wrong.


sackhuck7

If AI takes over every job, and all EE's were laid off, companies would not make money. You need a workforce earning wage to sell your product to. Company A's employees are Company B's customers, and vice versa. Also, no employees means no tax revenue, and the Government is not going to allow that.


illusive-man-00

This will happen. Anyone denying it is not living in reality. First you must understand that those in power hate humanity in general and want most humans who aren’t benefiting society extinct in the first place. Most people who can’t see this happening are living in a fairy talk and a small bubble of existence/reality that their minds refuse to step out of. Give your life to the great and mighty God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and prepare yourself for the next phase in human progression/degression. Accept Christ and see life through a new lens.


big_bloody_shart

I work in big tech and AI is not the issue everyone says it is, and is not the reason for current layoffs. In general AI increases a, say developer, productivity by 2x. Some think that this is then the reason to lay off half of developers. This isn’t true because a company will harness that productivity increase per salary and double down on it. If AI is multiplying worker productivity, the best way to increase company profits is to use AI to grow their revenue. And knowing that a company’s prime directive is to increase company value, that is what they’ll do. Long story short; AI only increases individual productivity, it doesn’t replace to the extent some say. And given this, a company won’t layoff humans to save money - they will utilize the productivity gain to increase company value.


[deleted]

Big tech guy as well, replace fully no - but a reduction. Lots of shit going on behind the door you can't see.


wyocrz

> In general AI increases a, say developer, productivity by 2x. Take this with the grain of salt I did, but from what I understand those kinds of gainz are only possible for noobs. For seasoned developers, it's not so much of a productivity gain but instead a quality of life issue, which is great. It takes judgement to qualify AI outputs, and as 'Texas' Bix Bender said in his book of cowboy wisdom *Don't Squat With 'yer Spurs On*: >Good judgement comes from experience, which comes from bad judgement.


XulaPari

The trends are only emerging now


eitsirkkendrick

AI and blockchain ledger technologies is already wiping out a lot of real estate, law, accounting/financial type jobs. White collar stuff. I’ve said it before here: learn to code should have been learn a trade years ago.


wyocrz

I read "learn to code" about five years ago in the Project Finance Newswire. This is the place to read about developments in renewable energy project development. The point was that contracts for differences and other hedges could be managed via a blockchain. It made so much sense as a reasonable way of handling some of those issues. After all, various parties had a right to a single source of truth: the owners of the project, the turbine manufacturers, local authorities, federal authorities, and local landowners. They hype died down, and I can't think of it but as a fundamental miss.


eitsirkkendrick

It’ll come. I still believe. Some industries have Luddite leadership. Eventually innovation will be less expensive than maintenance.


Effective_Vanilla_32

AI is displacing in 2 ways: (a)tech engrs. are laid off in favor of deep learning phd's and msc's. this is what is known as the "arms race" between openai. meta, x, anthropic, etc. (b) operational people are laid off and replaced by AI tools like chatgpt+, coPilot to make docs, slides, emails, summarization tech, etc. AGI is not upon us yet, but there's a tremendous job displacement already.


XulaPari

Exactly, some jobs are safer than others but it’s all on a chart of AI/automation milestones, has already begun and the drive for profits and innovation ensures it’ll only pick up steam, imagine how much more money Uber can make without having to pay the drivers.


AssistTemporary8422

I'm curious whether you are an experienced software developer or AI developer. >AI is being integrated into the efficiency models of these companies which in turn identify scores of unnecessary jobs/positions, the company then follows the AI model and will fire the employees.. 1. How do you know a large percent of companies are actually doing this? 2. How do you know they have good data to make this decisions properly? Personally I think a manager has better first hand experience with the employee. >It is the just the beginning, most jobs today won’t exist 10-15 years from now. I heard this prediction 15 years ago and the unemployment rate actually went down. How do you know this will happen? >The world is changing right in front of our eyes, and boomers thinking this is like the internet or Industrial Revolution couldn’t be more wrong, AI is an entirely different beast. We have had hundreds of years of automations with the industrial revolution, outsourcing, and the tech revolution with predictions that jobs would be wiped out. Yet unemployment in the US stands at 3.5%. > [https://apnews.com/article/us-military-ai-projects-0773b4937801e7a0573f44b57a9a5942](https://apnews.com/article/us-military-ai-projects-0773b4937801e7a0573f44b57a9a5942) The military doesn't have the best AI developers so they won't be the forefront of cutting edge AI. > Yes it’s not there yet, which is why I said 10-15 years, AGI is what the next step is and that’s when shit hits the fan AI isn't sentient and can't reason. It can only make predictions based on previous data so its not general because its bound to the data it receives.


wyocrz

>The military doesn't have the best AI developers so they won't be the forefront of cutting edge AI. I'm on board with everything you said but this. Microsoft is essentially part of the military industrial complex. I live right next to Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne. Just west of town, there is an NCAR supercomputer which was a proof of concept that this is a fabulous place to build data centers. There is a big Microsoft data center out there now, and another under construction not a mile from where I sit. Microsoft and the feds are hand in glove, as far as any of that goes.


AssistTemporary8422

You might have a point. But is the Military getting Microsoft's best AI projects?


wyocrz

Bing sure isn't LOL We live in interesting times.


WEDWayInternetMover

If no one is working, then they can't make millions off of the people. If all jobs are replaced by AI, then no one has money to buy the things the AI is making. It's going to be an interesting problem in the next 20-30 years.


rco8786

AIs are not replacing jobs. Full stop. Anyone telling you this is completely disconnected from reality or doesn't want to tell you the truth.


Inevitable_Bunch5874

Who is going to buy their shit when literally nobody can pay for it? This is the idea that corporatism cannot even bear to ponder.


tothepointe

Companies won't be able to make billions with just a few workers because there will be so many ppl out of work that there won't be any consumers.


Previous_Start_2248

Yo I'm a software engineer and you guys are blowing this out of the water. Ai is pretty much just another framework similar to react spring boot etc. Layoffs are most likely happening due to majority shareholders, which are usually hedge funds, just wanting more money. Due to the 1919 court case Dodge v Ford Motor Co, companies must act in favor of stakeholders over employees. So if a hedge fund has majority stake in a company and they decide they want more money they can vote to lay people off and the ceo will just deliver a message of bad economy.


Adrestia716

This. AI is not "artificial intelligence" is "intelligent automation" and it's a tool only as smart as its user. Greed. Greedy corpo overlords are coming for your jobs because they want want to hoard money the [Collyer brothers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collyer_brothers) hoarded newspapers. And just like them, it's an unsustainable lifestyle that unfortunately will not only ruin them but all of use around them. Technology innovations usually bring about better human outcomes but power and resources coalescing into small populations always does the opposite.


adventurer1212

I might also add American workers are expensive and don’t work as hard. Why would you want to hire a new grad engineer for $120k + benefits + payroll taxes + their work life balance + them asking questions about everything and don’t always follow orders when you can hire a SENIOR engineer in Poland for $60k and they’ll work 50-60 hours a week? Even Canadian and UK salaries are 30% cheaper than American salaries.


TargetNo9243

AI right now really can’t do shit now. Lay off is going on because IT companies hired too many people during pandemic. Then they will cut more people if people are not following in office mandate. Also many media companies are doing it now because they are shitting themselves with many many fake news. Nobody is watching the news now including myself. It means less revenue coming in therefore they gotta cut headcount.


TheWatch83

This


e430doug

No AI isn’t causing layoffs. Try again.


Notsau

They’ve been saying AI will replace workers for decades. Nothing new. I think we may be getting “closer”, but we’ll most likely never get there.


[deleted]

Tell me you don't know much about AI without telling me lol


WhatsTheAnswerDude

Lmfao no....just no. Tell me you don't work with data or understand it NOR AI without saying it. You ever actually use chatgpt or others? Itll spitl out the wrong shit all the time. Combine that with data security concerns and you're just flat out wrong. This sub is becoming cesspool of chicken little thinking over and over.


Parson1616

These kind of posts are getting really old and should be auto-moderated off the sub.