Posted on 09/27/2025 6:17:29 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Almost every week the world takes another step in the direction of artificial general intelligence. The most powerful ai models can do an astonishing array of tasks from writing detailed reports to creating video on demand. Hallucinations are becoming less of a problem. Small wonder, then, that so many people worry they will soon be surplus to requirements.
Earlier this year global Google searches for “ai unemployment” hit an all-time high. In cities such as London and San Francisco, “How long do you reckon you have left in your job?” is a common topic of conversation. But is Chatgpt actually putting anyone out of work? Lots of pundits claim that it is. Many point to a recent paper by Carl Benedikt Frey and Pedro Llanos-Paredes, both of the University of Oxford, which suggests a link between automation and declining demand for translators.
At the same time, however, official American data suggest that the number of people employed in interpretation, translation and the like is 7% higher than a year ago. Others point to Klarna, a fintech firm, which had boasted about using the tech to automate customer service. But the company is now undertaking an about-turn. “There will always be a human if you want,” Sebastian Siemiatkowski, its boss, has recently said.
Others still scour the macroeconomic data for signs of the forthcoming ai jobs-pocalypse. One popular measure is the ratio of the unemployment rate between recent college graduates and the overall American average. Young graduates are now more likely than the average worker to be jobless (see chart 1).
The explanation runs that they typically do entry-level jobs in knowledge-intensive industries—such as paralegal work or making slides in a management consultancy. It is exactly this sort of task that ai can do well. So maybe the technology has eliminated these jobs?
Well, no. The data simply do not line up with any conceivable mechanism. Young graduates’ “relative unemployment” started to rise in 2009, long before generative ai came along. And their actual unemployment rate, at around 6%, remains low.
Returning to a measure we introduced in 2023, we examine American data on employment by occupation, singling out workers that are believed to be vulnerable to ai. These are white-collar employees, including people in back-office support, financial operations, sales and much more besides. There is a similar pattern here: we find no evidence of an ai hit (see chart 2). Quite the opposite, in fact. Over the past year the share of employment in white-collar work has risen very slightly.
Across the board, American unemployment remains low, at 4.2%. Wage growth is still reasonably strong, which is difficult to square with the notion that ai is causing demand for labour to fall. Trends outside America point in a similar direction. Earnings growth in much of the rich world, including Britain, the euro area and Japan, is strong. In 2024 the employment rate of the oecd club of rich countries, describing the share of working-age people who are actually in a job, hit an all-time high.
There are two competing explanations for these trends. The first is that, despite the endless announcements about how firms are ushering ai into their operations, few make much use of the technology for serious work. An official measure suggests that less than 10% of American companies employ it to produce goods and services.
The second is that even when companies do adopt the tech, they do not let people go. ai may simply help workers do their jobs faster, rather than making them redundant. Whatever the explanation, for now there is no need to panic. ■
Ten years ago these same people were saying that tech jobs would be in abundance in the next ten years. Try getting a tech job now. Good luck!
They are trying to pursue the Philosopher's Stone of AGI (Advanced General Intelligence).
The total spend on AI Infrastructure over the past 18 months has been $400 BILLION dollars or more.
And this does not count the cost of water, electricity, of upgrading to new chips to keep from being passed by competitors in the space.
(Revenue in that time has been some $40 billion, 10% of costs. This is not the way to survive in business.)
So they are trying to buffalo / stampede all other businesses into firing everyone and replacing them with AI, I guess in the hope of forcing enough revenue to survive.
But more and more people in the know (Stanford and Harvard studies, I think an article out of MIT) are beginning to point out that the Emperor has No Clothes.
I used paid versions of ChatGpt, Grok and Gemini.
They are no where near being a threat in out thinking a human.
They are simply powerful aggregators.
Around 1972 or so the modern “women’s liberation” feminist movement gained traction.
One after another women sued or called in the Feds to demand a chance at various traditional male jobs. Firemen occupation became “firefighters”.
I was a university mail service delivery guy. We guys were told in 1966 that a woman demanded the job and was starting to sue. Early feminist outlier. She joined us, and soon about 30% or more after that were female.
But as we men predicted, what if the heavy stuff to go into the back of the mail truck required our strength. Sure enough, the girls looked innocent and appealing and sweetly asked for help so we did the heavy stuff for them.
One I notice never changed. No women fought to be the man digging a ditch by hand with a shovel, usually near a road or sidewalk. To this day, every time I see a ditch or an access place to lines, there is a man doing the hand digging.
Won’t be the least bit worried until AI develops a humorous writing wit. Right now, it just regurgitates “dad jokes” and decent puns.
This analysis is only a partial view of reality. In reality business decisions are often made irrationally. Executives frequently decide for the new, the latest even when it is not the best.
When I started in IT Anderson/Accenture #1 rule: If the client is centralized, recommend decentralization. If the client is de-centralized, recommend centralization. Medicaid heard and adopted this mindless approach. HHS is funding the decentralization of state managed, HHS funded Medicaid.
This is extremely expensive contracts to literally hundreds of contractors nationwide, over 50 in GA. This effort has no reason to exist except it is not what was done in the past. It isn’t intentiona WFA. It is just mis-management.
The same will occur with AI. There is no need for AI to be proven needed. It will be adopted solely because it exists.
As far as humor is concerned, AI will never achieve that singularity.
Humor is the ultimate wisdom, which depends heavily on timing, situation, context, and subtext. AI can never grasp that.
I use lowly google AI. It has many errors of fact. Many errors of logic. Plus many biases, I assume because it has only partial data.
How do ChatGpt, Grok, Gemini compare to google AI?
I use the free versions of chatgpt and Grok. I like them and use them every day but I’m not really impressed. basically they just find info really fast. They are biased though, of course. Many times I point out to the AI that the information is wrong, and they apologize a lot. I don’t see myself being replaced any time soon. It really does remind me of crypto and tulips
AI will buy water, electricity, chips, big facilities empty of humans but filled with purchased cpus, memory, drives.
The big money still to be made in AI is with companies that will enable cuts to labor costs.
AI Building Inspection
AI Architect
AI Teacher
AI Police Dispatcher
AI Psychiatrist
AI Doctor
AI Personnel Director
AI Hiring Manager
AI Merchandiser
AI Buyer
AI Ad Writer
AI Family Law
AI Tech Helper
Man, for all of his blemishes, will always have something that AI cannot replicate: the image of God.
AI can’t even make a coherent transcript for a short video.
Errors of fact, logic, and biases in AI are regularly found by many people. AI is in a learning curve and at some point you will not find those errors.
AI will have advanced to the point where no one can find an error. The errors will still be there but AI will have learned how to diguise them.
You mean programmers in India will hide their errors:
ia.acs.org.au/article/2025/the-company-whose--ai--was-actually-700-humans-in-india.html
You can bet those 700 programmers who got fired went to work at another "AI" company.
“It really does remind me of crypto and tulips”
**********************************************
You owe me a keyboard!! I had a good sip of Good Booze (grin)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.