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Comment by dreen | Hacker News Reader

Here is something I haven't really seen considered in this context:

If AI lowers the need to hire people by x% for a given project, then it doesn't just affect existing projects/companies. It lowers the barrier of entry for running such things for everyone. This means more people will be able to run similar ventures, and they all need the (100-x)%. In the long run, the amount of work available is not lower by x%, it could be lower or higher in general, although changes definietely happen, like in any disruption.

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That's a good point.

By having an assistant guiding you along this helps less capable people do jobs they might have struggled with before. It's not simply bigco firing people doing manual data entry spreadsheet type work but helping people otherwise stuck doing those jobs be capable of doing much more without a big investment in education, or the money to hire people to help them. Which has big implications for people starting small businesses and projects within existing companies which they didn't have the capacity to do on their own (or with a small team) before.

It's the usual story, more people generating higher output means more innovation, developing new niches/industries/product categories/etc at a higher rate, etc which means more jobs, not less, and more tax revenue for government.

This is one of the things I'm pretty interested in seeing play out. The technology lowers the skill ceiling for everything. All of a sudden, everyone has their own personal consultant. You can ask very vague questions about business ideas, and it can break the question down into actionable steps for you. Then you can iterate on that and ask it to clarify the things you don't understand. I believe we're going to see a flood of competition enter the business world.

This is generally a trend with all the solopreneur internet careers, but it’s not a good path for everyone and many other types of small businesses are on the decline so it’s hard to say.

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