The End of the Office
blog.andrewyang.com
blog.andrewyang.com
Ok cool, so in a single year when this hasn't happened, we know never to listen to any grand claims he makes ever again.
How many translation jobs, or asset creation jobs are still available?
I also have witness backend teams being reduced, thanks to SaaS and iPaaS cloud products that remove the need of backend development, now one only needs to plug a couple of products, do some AI based integrations in Boomi, Workato, n8n,... create a frontend with Vercel's v0 and be done with it.
I am in no ilusion that it will come for me as well, and better slide into some other alternative skill set, at least I am closer to retirement, than hunting for my first job.
Buried there down to the bottom of the Fortune article,
> Just a week after his comments, however, IBM announced it would cut thousands of workers by the end of the year as it shifts focus to high-growth software and AI areas. A company spokesperson told Fortune at the time that the round of layoffs would impact a relatively low single-digit percentage of the company’s global workforce, and when combined with new hiring, would leave IBM’s U.S. headcount roughly flat.
I took one look and was like - meh. Finally he put out a piece that makes this glaringly obvious.
A man with a way of talking/writing but underneath it all, not much.
He appealed to proponents of basic income.
Years ago, forward thinking identified the trend of decreasing ipv4 availability. Pundits built html clocks to countdown to the depletion of ARINs IPV4 pool, prominently warning of an epoch after which no business could function without fully implementing ipv6. The countdown clocks looked scary and the situation sounded believable, inevitable even, we all wanted to hear, but something would finally force the boss to upgrade.
But hubris blinded these pundits to the possibility that a few large businesses implementing IPv6 and reselling their v4 allotments would indefinitely sustain ipv4 as the internet’s source of truth. With a simple workaround, the old model held.
Like the IPv6 pundits of old, Andrew Wang has correctly identified a trend in AI, but he projects it will erase all jobs and require redefinition of social contract. This is a wild claim, yet proponents of “basic income” are excited to hear anything that bolsters the ideas they prefer to believe.
But I suspect in this case too that the old model will adapt, just as it did with every other increase in human office productivity.
The thing we have to worry about is what's after the LLM.
If that supposed to be a dismissal, it's not a good one.
Yes, it can solve a lot of things, but an LLM isn't going to put everyone out of work, the thing after the LLM will.
2. but Perception is Reality in business
3. and FOMO is real.
Hence, the AI money machine https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1ppla7o/oc...
Even though many of these players are not publicly traded, they're clearly manipulating the public equity markets with their funky receivables and equity swaps, inadvertently creating what has become the largest "company" in the history of the World and setting us all up for a Greater Depression. https://d0k5l7l4820swi.archive.is/3GCs7/463302388f7f218ff374...
Like the USSR before it, China is a force to be reckoned with and certainly we need to increase national productivity and workforce participation in order to keep up with our debt, but this is not how we countered Sputnik as the memories of the 1930s and two World Wars were still top of mind. Look your children in the eyes and ask if the risk that's being put upon us is worth ...them. https://youtu.be/lNXTKVxOmfk
Its super annoying to read as someone who cares about that.
Surprisingly positive thought. People barely go out because they're stuck in their pavlov ass routine. Go get a coffee, king.
Also, shouldn't they be worried about AI providers launching competitors? If these predictions come true, and AI handles most of a company's workload, wouldn't the company itself be something that could be automated away by AI?
Launching competitors? Maybe so, but this too has existing analogs pre-AI[1]. The fact that many start-ups today are created with the explicit goal of being acquired rather than growing organically or existing in perpetuity tells me that the only thing that may change is the cost of Sherlocking a startup will come down below the cost to acquire. But if the cost of creating a start-up and using a lawyer-bot to protect its intellectual property also come down, then the math isn't settled.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(software)#Sherlocked...
I dont think it will be as dramatic as he is predicting.
this same thing was predicted 15 years ago, and im sure before that. its nothing new. anyone can claim tech progress eliminates jobs, its almost a truism.
One could argue the more bureaucratic it is, i.e Government organisation, the more apparent this will be.
There are some Bull Shit jobs where LLM still haven't figure it out, mostly due to work flow and inter department / government working together. Once this could be solved I would not be surprised if we could get another 20%. The rest of it will be people much more productive and people who specialise in human interaction and relationship skills.
But even if this isn't end of office, it will be much smaller office. And huge number of people made redundant. Those who claims blue collar jobs are safe dont realise some of these group of people will have to flow into their industry. And that is ignoring robotics. Just look at Unitree recent Lunar new year demonstrations.
It may not be "the end", but it certainly feels like it.
As the saying goes, it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
I love AI, I enjoy using it at work. I fear AI, the amount of work it does for me feels existentially threatening. We live in exhilarating times.
So if the psychopathic AI overlords succeed in making us destitute, no problem. They'll have about the same level of success selling Meta glasses and Netlfix subscriptions as currently in Africa, who's ahead of us in terms of AI disruption of jobs and life standard, that is, they are already there :)