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Comment by stonyrubbish | Hacker News Reader

AI is probably in need of far more legal safeguards than we have now, but I am sort of tired of the "everyone will lose their jobs" narrative. There are so few jobs LLMs can fully automate. I think what will actually happen is that corporate CEOs will try to cut staff, it won't work, people will be rehired, and AI will largely make people's jobs easier and less labor-intensive.

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The way this always works in a corporation is people's jobs will be just as hard or harder and they'll hire far less people. As always happens productivity per person will skyrocket and median wages will somehow be lower.

Real median wages have been increasing pretty consistently since the FRED started recording it: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

Apologies median wages was the wrong statistic to choose because the top x% rise has been astronomical. The productivity has gone up along with CEO wages. That money does get made even if the workers never see it. Or if they do see it they immediately give it back (and then some) when they pay their rent.

No, my job is already highly LLM assisted and I just have more work to do. Because now I can tackle things on the backlog we thought could never be prioritized.

For now yes.

But you will end up finishing the backlog and once competitors get rid of employees and become more profitable your employer will do the same.

Right now we're in a transitional space. Doesn't mean things will stay this way.

I’m equally disheartened by the people who dismiss job losses as unlikely because “AI can’t automate entire jobs”.

What do you suggest happens when you automate half of 10 people’s jobs? Do you expect they want to pay for 10 people to operate at 50%, or would someone be more likely to just keep 5 people to do the part they couldn’t automate (yet)? Do you think CEOs will want to add 5 more heads back later, or do you think they will add the minimum necessary and still seek a cheap alternative to fill remaining gaps?

I absolutely agree with you that it COULD make people’s jobs easier, but unless that directly translates into revenue for the company, a relaxing easy day of work isn’t generally the goal of profitable companies.

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