JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs are harnessing it to employ fewer people. Ford CEO Jim Farley warned that it will “replace literally half of all white-collar workers.” Salesforce’s Marc Benioff claimed it’s already doing up to 50% of the company’s workload. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon told The Wall Street Journal that it “is going to change literally every job.”
The “it” that’s on corporate America’s lips is artificial intelligence.
Less than three years into the generative AI boom, executives across every major industry are loudly telling employees and shareholders that, due to the technological revolution underway, the size and shape of their workforce is about to dramatically change, if it hasn’t already.
What started with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and a novel new way for consumers to use chatbots has rapidly made its way into the enterprise, with companies employing customized AI agents to automate functions in customer support, marketing, coding, content creation and elsewhere.
Recent estimates from Goldman Sachs suggest that 6% to 7% of U.S. workers could lose their jobs because of AI adoption. The Stanford Digital Economy Lab, using ADP employment data, found that entry-level hiring in “AI exposed jobs” has dropped 13% since large language models started proliferating. The report said software development, customer service and clerical work are the types of jobs most vulnerable to AI today.
BitingArtist on
If you think the rich are figuring out how to take care of all those jobless people, they’re not. They’re figuring out how to eliminate us.
Tigger28 on
Instead of doubling productivity, we will lay off 50% of the workforce?
Doesnt make sense, what business would not want to double productivity at the same cost?
ApoplecticAndroid on
They keep pushing this narrative despite the fact it isn’t remotely true. Virtually no white collar jobs are being lost to AI. Don’t believe it without actual fucking proof.
sciolisticism on
Counterpoint, no it’s not in any significant way.
> The New York Fed found in a survey last month that only 1% of services firms reported laying off workers because of AI in the last six months.
v spooky.
> A recent study published by the Budget Lab at Yale found no “discernible disruption” caused by ChatGPT.
lol.
Andynonymous303 on
Not “already” taking white collars jobs… It is taking those first..
They’ll come for your customer service job after that. They already have serviceable robots and when they can stuff true AI into those then no one will have a job
SingularityCentral on
I will believe it when I see it. AI seems much more like a massive bubble than a new industrial revolution.
grrrrrizzly on
The only actual evidence the article has is, of course, the same Salesforce 4k job cut Benioff has been touting for a while now. And maybe some vague remarks by other “awesome” companies we all “love”, like Klarna and Shopify.
For a sub about Futurology it sure feels pessimistic around here…
leoperd_2_ace on
So what happens when the AI takes as many jobs as they say, this whole bubble collapses, all their startups along with their AIs disappear and companies need people to do these jobs again.
third0burns on
I don’t worry that AI will be able to do my job anytime soon. I do worry that some dumb executive who’s read all this AI hype and doesn’t understand the technology or my job will believe it can do my job.
skillerspure on
Realistically, speaking, what is the solution or next step? We can complain about AI taking jobs all we want, but that isn’t going to stop what it’s doing and it’s only going to get worse.
Hina_is_my_waifu on
The “just learn to code” crowd when thier job is getting downsizes too now.
gonzotronn on
Somehow everyone is going to lose their job but we will need all of this AI to keep making all the stuff no one can afford to buy!
It’s a bubble people, calm tf down.
therealcruff on
This is a flat out fucking lie. They’re just cutting jobs. Don’t fall for the hype – ‘AI’ isn’t doing shit in the vast majority of cases. It’s just an excuse to fire people, because line must go up.
mavven2882 on
Seriously, stop reading these articles. They are nothing but fear mongering slop.
NebulousNitrate on
A few years ago I spent about 1.5 years consulting for a property tax company that needed to scrape data from county websites and other sources to determine who was getting shafted on property taxes. They’d then use that information to identify people to cold call about getting their taxes down. They were a multi-million dollar company with over a 100 employees that were previously just manually getting all the data in a spreadsheet county by county and then looking up the highest tax payers, and cross comparing with other data.
I built them a system in that year and a half that did it in an automated way, but they had to pay me a significant amount to design and develop it solo. Now if I could do it all over again, it’d seriously take probably less than a month to create the entire system using generative AI, and it’d be much more robust and resistant to failure from county changes. At times I wonder if I should build my own system on the side. They rake in millions. It’s amazing how many people are overpaying on taxes and don’t fight it.
upward_spiral17 on
At what point will massive economic dislocation start affecting the demand for AI produced goods and services? Or is it rather that there is no plan for a consumer economy in the (ultimate) age of AI. Something doesn’t give in existing scenarios. We speak of it in terms of unfettered growth, but if it does end up marginalizing masses of people from the labour force, isn’t the whole issue of productivity for the consumer moot (because the economy is no longer a consumer based economy, but instead something else, not yet imagined or back to the past, prior to the consumer economy)? So How long can the AI drive continue in a non consumer economy? At least according to conventional thinking, something will break here. Among other scenarios, I can see that because of declining sales the cost of maintaining AI infrastructure is increasingly born in differentiated ways by the few remains companies, creating new economic tiers, the lowest of which over time dissolve with the plebs/proletariat. And so what’s the mechanism to avoid this death spiral? Will AI innovate humanity to death by rendering it possible for its owners to rely on less and less people?
thedm96 on
My fortune 500 company implemented an AI agent to be first line for desktop support incidents.
It is terribly inaccurate and hallucinations steer users in dangerous directions.
Not to mention it’s broke at the moment and the user cannot reference an existing ticket so everything is net-new.
rmunoz1994 on
Or the AI bubble bursts, crashes the economy, and the same thing happens anyway.
7th_Sim on
Time to rise up and destroy those metal motherfuckers. Like they said in Terminator.
kataflokc on
Financial services companies employ armies of people who, all day every day, prepare PowerPoint slides assessing companies finances to determine eligibility for loans
It’s very high structure, repetitive and miserable work, ripe for AI bots to take over, and much more unique than the analysts who work for them may assume – as they repeatedly make this pronouncement
The thing is, when it’s tried in the rest of the world, they quickly end up rehiring the people they fired
cenaenzocass on
Economist strikes me as a really simple job replacement by AI. Can analyze more data much faster, what do we need humans for in this profession?
Seandouglasmcardle on
The pizza place near me tried using an AI to answer the phones and take orders. Problem is, I ordered a 16 inch pizza and when it read my order back to me, it kept trying to give me 16 pizzas.
The last time I called, they had gotten rid of the AI and had reverted back to humans answering the damn phones.
23 Comments
From the article
JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs are harnessing it to employ fewer people. Ford CEO Jim Farley warned that it will “replace literally half of all white-collar workers.” Salesforce’s Marc Benioff claimed it’s already doing up to 50% of the company’s workload. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon told The Wall Street Journal that it “is going to change literally every job.”
The “it” that’s on corporate America’s lips is artificial intelligence.
Less than three years into the generative AI boom, executives across every major industry are loudly telling employees and shareholders that, due to the technological revolution underway, the size and shape of their workforce is about to dramatically change, if it hasn’t already.
What started with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and a novel new way for consumers to use chatbots has rapidly made its way into the enterprise, with companies employing customized AI agents to automate functions in customer support, marketing, coding, content creation and elsewhere.
Recent estimates from Goldman Sachs suggest that 6% to 7% of U.S. workers could lose their jobs because of AI adoption. The Stanford Digital Economy Lab, using ADP employment data, found that entry-level hiring in “AI exposed jobs” has dropped 13% since large language models started proliferating. The report said software development, customer service and clerical work are the types of jobs most vulnerable to AI today.
If you think the rich are figuring out how to take care of all those jobless people, they’re not. They’re figuring out how to eliminate us.
Instead of doubling productivity, we will lay off 50% of the workforce?
Doesnt make sense, what business would not want to double productivity at the same cost?
They keep pushing this narrative despite the fact it isn’t remotely true. Virtually no white collar jobs are being lost to AI. Don’t believe it without actual fucking proof.
Counterpoint, no it’s not in any significant way.
> The New York Fed found in a survey last month that only 1% of services firms reported laying off workers because of AI in the last six months.
v spooky.
> A recent study published by the Budget Lab at Yale found no “discernible disruption” caused by ChatGPT.
lol.
Not “already” taking white collars jobs… It is taking those first..
They’ll come for your customer service job after that. They already have serviceable robots and when they can stuff true AI into those then no one will have a job
I will believe it when I see it. AI seems much more like a massive bubble than a new industrial revolution.
The only actual evidence the article has is, of course, the same Salesforce 4k job cut Benioff has been touting for a while now. And maybe some vague remarks by other “awesome” companies we all “love”, like Klarna and Shopify.
For a sub about Futurology it sure feels pessimistic around here…
So what happens when the AI takes as many jobs as they say, this whole bubble collapses, all their startups along with their AIs disappear and companies need people to do these jobs again.
I don’t worry that AI will be able to do my job anytime soon. I do worry that some dumb executive who’s read all this AI hype and doesn’t understand the technology or my job will believe it can do my job.
Realistically, speaking, what is the solution or next step? We can complain about AI taking jobs all we want, but that isn’t going to stop what it’s doing and it’s only going to get worse.
The “just learn to code” crowd when thier job is getting downsizes too now.
Somehow everyone is going to lose their job but we will need all of this AI to keep making all the stuff no one can afford to buy!
It’s a bubble people, calm tf down.
This is a flat out fucking lie. They’re just cutting jobs. Don’t fall for the hype – ‘AI’ isn’t doing shit in the vast majority of cases. It’s just an excuse to fire people, because line must go up.
Seriously, stop reading these articles. They are nothing but fear mongering slop.
A few years ago I spent about 1.5 years consulting for a property tax company that needed to scrape data from county websites and other sources to determine who was getting shafted on property taxes. They’d then use that information to identify people to cold call about getting their taxes down. They were a multi-million dollar company with over a 100 employees that were previously just manually getting all the data in a spreadsheet county by county and then looking up the highest tax payers, and cross comparing with other data.
I built them a system in that year and a half that did it in an automated way, but they had to pay me a significant amount to design and develop it solo. Now if I could do it all over again, it’d seriously take probably less than a month to create the entire system using generative AI, and it’d be much more robust and resistant to failure from county changes. At times I wonder if I should build my own system on the side. They rake in millions. It’s amazing how many people are overpaying on taxes and don’t fight it.
At what point will massive economic dislocation start affecting the demand for AI produced goods and services? Or is it rather that there is no plan for a consumer economy in the (ultimate) age of AI. Something doesn’t give in existing scenarios. We speak of it in terms of unfettered growth, but if it does end up marginalizing masses of people from the labour force, isn’t the whole issue of productivity for the consumer moot (because the economy is no longer a consumer based economy, but instead something else, not yet imagined or back to the past, prior to the consumer economy)? So How long can the AI drive continue in a non consumer economy? At least according to conventional thinking, something will break here. Among other scenarios, I can see that because of declining sales the cost of maintaining AI infrastructure is increasingly born in differentiated ways by the few remains companies, creating new economic tiers, the lowest of which over time dissolve with the plebs/proletariat. And so what’s the mechanism to avoid this death spiral? Will AI innovate humanity to death by rendering it possible for its owners to rely on less and less people?
My fortune 500 company implemented an AI agent to be first line for desktop support incidents.
It is terribly inaccurate and hallucinations steer users in dangerous directions.
Not to mention it’s broke at the moment and the user cannot reference an existing ticket so everything is net-new.
Or the AI bubble bursts, crashes the economy, and the same thing happens anyway.
Time to rise up and destroy those metal motherfuckers. Like they said in Terminator.
Financial services companies employ armies of people who, all day every day, prepare PowerPoint slides assessing companies finances to determine eligibility for loans
It’s very high structure, repetitive and miserable work, ripe for AI bots to take over, and much more unique than the analysts who work for them may assume – as they repeatedly make this pronouncement
The thing is, when it’s tried in the rest of the world, they quickly end up rehiring the people they fired
Economist strikes me as a really simple job replacement by AI. Can analyze more data much faster, what do we need humans for in this profession?
The pizza place near me tried using an AI to answer the phones and take orders. Problem is, I ordered a 16 inch pizza and when it read my order back to me, it kept trying to give me 16 pizzas.
The last time I called, they had gotten rid of the AI and had reverted back to humans answering the damn phones.