If ultimately the aim is for AI to take all the jobs, who is actually going to pay for anything if nobody has got any money? (including paying for the AI itself)
Given the tech industry's track record, how soon before those AI costs exceed the previous payroll?
My wife got out of recruitment last year and when she talks to her old work mates they're all panicking about AI. One of them who changed companies recently has just had her probation extended. Not because she's doing a bad job but because they think they might not need her to do it soon enough!
It could be a huge problem around here as we're a bit of a recruitment hotspot with plenty of people earning big salaries and bonus without the need for degrees or other qualifications. If the jobs go there will not be anything else available on anywhere near comparable money.
Anyone who believes that because an aspect of their job has a physical component, that it makes them immune to AI really needs to see the progress I’m seeing in humanoid robotics. It’s amazing and frankly terrifying.
If your job has a significant amount of critical thinking, judgment, safety and/or cost associated to that judgement, I think you’re safe for up to 10 years…75% of everyone else is ****ed inside of 3y.
It also depends on how deep the pockets of the employer are, the cost of the tools are going to rocket at some point soon when the providers realise that the data centre costs are insane
Yeah. I would be curious how cheap AI actually is once the VC start asking for return on investment. Currently they are massively subsidised and at some point its going to be cheaper to use actual devs again. There is also the question of how much it can scale in terms of when it takes peoples power/water as well as their jobs they might get a bit smoky.
Oddly enough was in a meeting with Anthropic today with them demoing the latest and greatest to a pilot group of us devs. Was quite funny how they kept going back to "dont worry you wont lose your jobs" and that they are hiring more devs - although at the same time saying how they barely code nowadays.
Currently I get to use several tools and find it mixed. It still makes lots of simple mistakes and needs good guidance. I still rate it as a rather keen junior dev who does need careful monitoring.
It is definitely a threat to various levels of software jobs but not sure exactly how it will work out. If its given good requirements it generally does okay but then again good luck getting that out of most BAs.
I do think for most people AI as it stands at the moment is a net negative by quite a long way. Misinformation, AI slop everywhere, deepfaked pron, job losses, environmental impact etc., control of much of it in the hands of people who really shouldn't have that power. Lots of money in it for some people, not so much for everyone else. And it's not like it'd doing the crap jobs while everyone else gets to be creatives, it's taking the good stuff too.
I suppose you've got things like spotting cancers in the plus column, but I don't think that's in the same category of techniques.
I was thinking that a lot of trades are safe. But then I watched that guy Martin program the other night and I see houses being mass produced in a factory, in kit form. And a lot of it is done by robots, using new materials and techniques.
It may be hard to replace a bricklayer and lay bricks with ai/automation, but if you don't use bricks, you don't need a bricklayer at all.
It's easy to think a job might be safe cos it's hard to automate, but maybe not if in the future things are just done differently
It may be hard to replace a bricklayer and lay bricks with ai/automation, but if you don't use bricks, you don't need a bricklayer at all.
Prefabs have been around for quite a while now, some very cheap, some very expensive. Haven't yet caught on in a big way, maybe someone in construction has a reason for that?
I do think for most people AI as it stands at the moment is a net negative by quite a long way. Misinformation, AI slop everywhere, deepfaked pron, job losses, environmental impact etc., control of much of it in the hands of people who really shouldn't have that power. Lots of money in it for some people, not so much for everyone else. And it's not like it'd doing the crap jobs while everyone else gets to be creatives, it's taking the good stuff too.
I suppose you've got things like spotting cancers in the plus column, but I don't think that's in the same category of techniques.
Yeah there are strong long term fundamentals there, from an investment perspective, its just in the short term, it's gonna get messy. Very messy.
To paraphrase Elon Musk - There's no point saving for retirement, AI will fix everything!
Yeah I don't see you building hospitals or solving world hunger, or the energy crisis with your zillions... the money flows uphill, not down hill.
They don't share.. that's the problem. Not the technology per-se, but the product owners.
I don't really care what makes me redundant, just wish it would get on with it
The frankly insane levels of "investment", I think $2Tn floating between about 10 companies, and for what?
Ed Zitron writes a lot about all this. Too much really, he could do with a decent editor, but still. He makes a very compelling case that the major AI companies are going to run out of money sometime towards 2027. They are burning cash at an insane rate, even the paid plans are loss leaders, on top of which they're trying to build these gigantic data centres for billions. Their income comes from VCs who are running out of cash to invest, and the megacorps like Microsoft and NVIDIA who are passing money back and forth. It really does look like a massive bubble.
And this is really what I don't get. What is the end game here?
If ultimately the aim is for AI to take all the jobs, who is actually going to pay for anything if nobody has got any money? (including paying for the AI itself
This is the other thing. Sam Altman, if you can believe anything he says, said his plan is to create AGI and then ask it how to make money.
More realistically, the aim is to hype their companies enough to get contracts in government, defence etc, for huge and ongoing revenue. Which is also why Musk is merging Grok with SpaceX, to get govt money.
But as tech types keep saying, there's no moat! Maybe Claude and ChatGPT are the best around for now. But deepseek, qwen, mistral etc, are all only months behind. Google and Facebook can subside their models for a long time. There won't be the opportunity to get everyone hooked and yank up the prices - people can just vote with their wallet.
So yeah, i definitely see a big deflation of the bubble before the decade is out, and it will hit Microsoft, NVIDIA, oracle etc the hardest.
I got made redundant after 25 years last year due to an 'advanced new system' which would save on wages. I got 2 years money finished on the Friday and started a similar job Monday.
i'm 54 now so if the company i'm working for pulls the same stunt in 3-5 years it will be brilliant for me.
Feel for some of my younger colleagues but for an old salt like me AI has been just the ticket!
But as tech types keep saying, there's no moat! Maybe Claude and ChatGPT are the best around for now
Thats not entirely true. The moat is the ability to throw money into a bottomless pit or come up with something really innovative to avoid that. For Claude is was fascinating listening to a sales pitch that it isnt just the model but how the models are integrated into the tools they are offering which is what counts. An attempt to start building moats compared to say github copilot/cursor.ai etc who try to be model agnostic.
Google and Facebook can subside their models for a long time.
I am not sure. Even they are playing weird and wonderful accounting tricks to move stuff off their main balance sheets. Their investors seem somewhat wary about the massive costs of the data centres.
Investors seem somewhat wary about how sustainable it is eg Oracles share price bouncing around due to their exposure to OpenAI.
Right now, "hey copilot, publish this review of new wheels" kinda works
It doesn't for all the reasons you suggested earlier. LLM (I wish people would stop referring to it as AI) don't know anything. They don't know what a wheel is, anything they write on any subject may be superficially readable, but they still hallucinate, if you ask them to review a passage or essay it'll mostly mark it's grammar, or review positively even if the essay is shit, it still mostly misses the point - because it doesn't know anything.
Outside of code writing, which at least according to this thread it does well enough, it's a best; a time saver, it can (sometimes) analyse a spreadsheet for you and produce graphics in a fraction of the time it would take a civilian like me to do them, but the work they produce still needs v careful checking as it just makes shit up, and it's very good at doing that. Yesterday the microsoft LLM told my ops manager that 3+9 is 11.
someone up thread called it an enthusiastic junior worker, I think it's like the dog in Up that has the device that translates its thoughts into English.
I suppose you've got things like spotting cancers in the plus column, but I don't think that's in the same category of techniques.They trained some pigeons to spot cancers with the same accuracy as experts a few years ago... So AI ain't that smart.
And my job will be ok for the foreseable future. As will a lot of my colleagues, we've got an entire team working on AI and LLM generally and another team looking at Gemini specifically, and neither of them are turning out anything that would be useable in the real world. Some of it just about reaches the level of garbage. A lot of it would be dangerous/illegal to sell.
It is useful for a lot of the programming tasks. Within quite limited boundaries.
I think it'll make my job (commercial pilot) slightly easier but won't replace me. Everything around aviation relies on deterministic provable programming, not an outcome which is different every time it runs. I'm sure you could teach the equivalent of Tesla's FSD software to take off and land, but you could never prove that it's safe.
Stuff like spotting hidden threats in weather radar returns is the sort of thing that takes a lifetime to learn, but a well-trained LLM could highlight them straight away.
IT Project Manager here. I can use AI for all the boring stuff and as a bit of a sounding board. But for the herding of cats and random requirement changes we get I think it would struggle.
Enterprise/ Solution architect here 👋
Similar thoughts to you
Same here. I quite often think if AI can do all of what I do, its welcome to it 😀
Was watching the news last night and they were interviewing 3 graduates who were struggling to find work. One a graphic designer another wanting to break into film and TV. Couldn't help think that they were truly screwed. Hopefully their horizons will broaden soon.
We think we've got problems as a bunch of 50 year olds. Fairly grateful I only really need another 4-5 years .
Statista has a chart on age bracketed unemployment rates, not yet at Financial Crisis levels but heading that way for 16-24 year olds. https://www.statista.com/statistics/974421/unemployment-rate-uk-by-age/
I'm relieved to find STW being a haven of sensible assessment of this all. Reading the posts about the investment into AI, there is of course a huge incentive for those companies pumping $trns into AI to make companies believe that AI is the future and will replace all employees - and many business reporters are credulously reporting it. Even the Economist every week seems to have a minimum number of articles it must write on how AI is definitely really changing the world of work (nothing to do its Anthropic sponsorship deal).
But a couple of interesting things I read recently:
This https://hbr.org/2026/02/ai-doesnt-reduce-work-it-intensifies-it is a bit of a mixed bag. In the one company they observed, AI didn't make people redundant, but it did do enough of the menial, no QC required stuff that the employees could actually branch out into other things.
And on the Moltbook nonsense, this seems to sum it up pretty well:
One a graphic designer another wanting to break into film and TV. Couldn't help think that they were truly screwed. Hopefully their horizons will broaden soon.
I couldn't help feel that they needed to think about their career choices a bit more - especially the girl/lady who wanted to get into TV/films. My niece wants to do this also (has a great talent and has qualified very well) but the opportunities are slim - and even then it doesn't seem to be a good industry to be in. She's working making candles at the moment.
I really feel for all those looking for jobs, it's very demoralising getting knocked back time and again. So glad my 3 girls (23, 23 & 26) are all in good employment at the moment.
It's the nature of the "knock backs" that are the real demoralising factor for many young people looking to start their career. No human connection, reply or reason for rejection given. Young people spending hours, if not days, jumping through the hoops of application forms and online tests, only to hear nothing beyond an auto-reply.
it still mostly misses the point - because it doesn't know anything.
Some of the time that will come down to what you are asking it to do. Give vague requests and you get vague answers. Get more specific and it works better.
Which is possibly why it does better at software development within narrow parameters since you can have it tests itself with the "does this build?" which gets rid of quite a few of the more stupid answers. It does, which is going to be a problem longterm if management buys into it, struggle with anything new and poorly documented though.
Hark back to the time when we thought email would be time saving....
LLM (I wish people would stop referring to it as AI)
It is AI, it is Generative AI. Clearly very different from General AI but AI nonetheless.
It is really a pity that Keynes wasn't proved right especially as we are now almost in 2030;
In his 1930 essay "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren," economist John Maynard Keynes famously predicted that, due to rapid technological advancements and increased productivity, by 2030 people would work only 15 hours a week. He believed that once "absolute needs" were satisfied, societies would choose to prioritize leisure over endless consumption
Does look rather naive now with the way the world is run and by whom.
On a more general level and quicker than we think, AI will de-skill the vast majority of western workers. Not just in their jobs but across many many day to day tasks. This will have an affect on our brains which we can only guess at right now. I suspect we'll begin to think more like machines and less like individuals - group think will become endemic and we'll be lead by the nose as a species by the tech we have created by orders of magnitude more than we are now. People who say 'well someone has to program the AI' and 'we'll get the AI to do what we want' don't understand how it works and we are only in the foothills. Its basically going to coral the human condition down a particular pathway and whilst I suspect there may be a chance of steering this right now, the window of opportunity is pretty small and looking at those in charge it doesn't fill me with optimism as to what direction we'll be taking...
i draw things to solve simple problems on cigarette packets .... or laterally paint - then machine them.
from what ive seen AI isnt coming for those kinds of screw ups any time soon.
On a more general level and quicker than we think, AI will de-skill the vast majority of western workers. Not just in their jobs but across many many day to day tasks.
Won't the outsourced 'cheap' tech work sent to India etc., be the first to go?
Not for the foreseable.
Chartered Accountant in Education. New finance system is supposed to be AI equipped. Yeh right, we can't even get basic information out. Also AI doesn't have people skills so can't do my job. Should be fine until retirement
Won't the outsourced 'cheap' tech work sent to India etc., be the first to go?
Yes. The claims being made about AI resulting in deskilling by removing the entry level jobs has been in play for a long time now with offshoring. Of course this has had a visible impact over time.
Yep, expect 5 years absolute max in my current role in financial services. Already theres AI report writing and AI Financial Advice.
I think the bigger question isn't if you AI will make you redundant, it's the whole economy effect. There won't be customers or other jobs to move to if large numbers of the workforce haven't got money to spend. I'm working on a plan to protect myself from that outcome.
My wife works in insurance for the NFU.
Basically what they call personal lines - car, house insurance etc - is rapidly moving towards an AI only environment.
The bigger commercial stuff that she does is somewhat safer as it's a lot harder to send a bot onto a farm and do an assessment of their equipment, safety and buildings.
LLM (I wish people would stop referring to it as AI)
It is AI, it is Generative AI.
Nah. Saying it's something doesn't make it something - much like when "AI" spits out an output it doesn't make it true, useful or valuable.
It's a word jumbling machine.
It doesn't for all the reasons you suggested earlier. LLM (I wish people would stop referring to it as AI)
You're missing the point I think. Doesn't matter whether it's actually 'intelligent' or what we call it. What matters is that it can do the jobs of lots of skilled workers right now, and will soon be able to do the jobs of millions of others very soon. I despair for the younger generation. I have two daughters in uni (second and first year) and I'm increasingly concerned that there will be very few jobs outside of working in bars or supermarkets when they graduate. I expect to be supporting them for quite a while and I think that's going to be the reality for the forseeable future. For kids who don't have the luxury of parents with a bit of money that's going to be a catastrophe.
It's an important point though, because referring to it as "AI" is marketing spin... and an awful lot of effort is going into convincing people that these tools are "intelligent" rather than an effective way of reusing and repurposing existing work... and that's essential to stop people asking "why is the owner of the recycling machine getting paid, and not the creators of the prior work?"
Our lot appear to be doubling down, despite AI largely having been a failure to date. Worse yet, there is very much a sense of 'We have an AI shaped peg, so let's desperately try to find or create an AI shaped hole'.
Literally senior management asking us to spend our time trying to think up new ways we can use AI rather than getting on with our day job, as if they're willing to pivot the entire company to only producing things which, coincidentally, can be produced by AI. I doubt it will fly in our particular industry which basically relies upon critical thinking, accuracy and detail 🙄
Daughter is just doing her Masters in Digital animation - potentially a worrying area, but I don't think AI is likely to be capable of the 'personal creativity' bit.
Mechanical maintenance on an oil rig. Not a chance mine will get done by AI although the amount of bloody paperwork we need to do now it would be welcome to do that side of things and let me actually fix things.
It's not replacing me as such - but it is making my (design & creative based) job very very dull and unfulfilling ever since my boss has decided that it will increase output and we all have to use it as much as possible.
Things I used to enjoy like layout design, copywriting etc have largely turned into me shouting at a robot and then making tweaks on the dogs**t that it spits out; rinse and repeat. I know it saves time but it makes me feel worthless and stupid, and somewhat annoyed.
It's getting better at quite an alarming rate though, so I would imagine in a few years, if the bubble doesn't burst, then it would outright replace jobs like mine.
In our customer service team, new staff are also being told to heavily use LLM answers & info, and therefore gain absolutely no technical or product knowledge compared to if you actually learned about the thing you're trying to help someone with.
Luckily I have just got a new job doing something totally different!
I'm increasingly concerned that there will be very few jobs outside of working in bars or supermarkets when they graduate.
Have you tried getting a tradesperson recently?
but I don't think AI is likely to be capable of the 'personal creativity' bit.
The question is how willing is management to be paying for that personal creativity bit? Whilst in some cases they will in others they will decide its good enough.
Although again this does go back to how sustainable the growth is and what the price model is going to end up being for an AI tool.
For a time there was the joke about AI standing for "Actually Indian" due to several companies claiming advanced AI tools in reality using offshore teams. Once the token cost hits a certain level humans are going to start to appeal again. Whilst some companies seem to have improved model efficiency a lot of it does seem based around just throwing hardware at the problem and then wrapping it in various guardrails/prompt rules to make it appear better.
As the great Charlie Mullins said recently "Learn a trade to avoid AI jobs bloodbath". Probably the first and only ever time I would agree with him seeing as he is such a massive ****.
Have you tried getting a tradesperson recently?
Who is going to hire those tradespersons though when everyone but them, barstaff and a few other professions have been undermined?
Time to bodge it instead.
I'm increasingly concerned that there will be very few jobs outside of working in bars or supermarkets when they graduate.
Have you tried getting a tradesperson recently?
That'll change when a large percentage of the workforce have less income/unemployed
I use LLMs a lot in both work and private scenarios. With familiarity you become very aware that it is isn't thinking. It is reflecting.
I know this is not where AI development ends, but the idea that you can get a detailed and pertinent answer out of AI when you don't provide clear instruction is fallacy. All the futurists predict a watershed where delegation to AI starts to be become viable - at that point you will need to meta-manage the AI to ensure its intent is aligned with yours or... surrender. That's the AI apocalypse.
Right now, I can be more productive because of my interactions with LLMs. Compared to human peers and subordinates, I can iterate an idea on a topic quicker and with a better access to supporting information.
But, the limitations are worth keeping in mind. The responses can provide lots of false information with astounding confidence. There can be errors through omission. In essence you need to know enough about the subject area to spot the LLM blind spots.
So right now I'm feeling confident. My personal productivity is up and my value as an employee is high enough to see me to the end of my career.
maybe someone in construction has a reason for that?
Seems to be, in the UK, a mix of bad press due to some of the post WWII variants, planning issues and mortgage issues.
There is also the problem that they come with large upfront costs and whilst there have been a few attempts think all have failed now due to not having enough orders.
Its the sort of thing which a coherent government strategy could address but sadly we just have them shouting about newts blocking building and trusting the big housing companies to completely change their strategy and undermine their own profitability if we relax planning rules.
Who is going to hire those tradespersons though when everyone but them, barstaff and a few other professions have been undermined?
Seemed to be a fair few posters saying it wouldn't be making them redundant up above. Interesting how some roles, eg IT coding, which have only been around as mainstream jobs, say thirty years will be gone.
Who is going to hire those tradespersons though when everyone but them, barstaff and a few other professions have been undermined?
Seemed to be a fair few posters saying it wouldn't be making them redundant up above. Interesting how some roles, eg IT coding, which have only been around as mainstream jobs, say thirty years will be gone.
Any job that follows a model or rules will reduce in numbers. Law, Architects, Massive efficiency gains for Doctors, Call Centres, Purchasing etc...
I've used AI a few times at work, but don't really trust it & can't rely on it.
Some of the managers at work are really trying to push us into using it for day to day stuff. I didn't want to come across as a completely dismissive luddite so have tried to embrace it.
The first time I used it, I asked it to tabulate the properties of two refractory metals so I could compare them easily.
I figured this would be quicker than me finding datasheets & putting the info into a table myself.
It got the very first output row in the table wrong (melting point) even though when I looked at the source material it referenced it was correct. So, it had somehow reversed the numbers in the output which meant the rest of it could not be trusted & I had to check it myself.
The second time I used it was for some broad outline concepting work. It created ideas that sounded feasible but I couldn't quite get my head around what they might look like. No worries, it asked if I would like a diagram to accompany the ideas to help me visualise it. Sure, sounds great. Yes please.....
The output was complete nonsense & while some bits made sense; all the difficult bits which my questions were really targeted towards were complete visual gobbledy gook. Like it had just cut and pasted images from all over the place into something that it thought made sense.
Quite possibly there will be a reduction in numbers in certain disciplines within work areas, such as junior contract and commercial law, but in others areas not .
Maybe I'm just an optimist. But I for one salute our new AI overlords.
From this year's Chinese Spring Festival TV extravaganza:
Coming soon to a street protest near you:
I think we should remember that AI is very young as a technology. Five years ago, it basically was unusable except in labs for proving that it could exist and now we can use it to do large amounts of simple programming. A couple of years ago, there was an AI-generated video of Will Smith eating spaghetti, which was hilarious. Now there is one which almost looks real. This rate of progress is phenomenal, and we can't really predict what will be happening in the next three to five years.
The trouble is that because of all the hype, everybody wants to use it for everything now. This means it's being used when it's not appropriate. It's being used for advanced tasks when it is best used for simple tasks and people are trying to use it where it simply isn't applicable at all. I realise the example above is to show how silly AI answers can be, but it also shows the kind of mentality that some managers have. Almost anybody can work out how to wash a car a hundred metres away; however, the manager demands you use AI and demands you follow the instructions it gives because AI is the future. That is the current biggest problem I think in using AI at work.
I do think AI will replace a lot of the work necessary for certain roles and maybe make certain roles no longer required. This is different to making people redundant. My role used to include spending bloody hours tarting up PowerPoint presentations to make sure everything lined up and used the right template. This part of my role is now redundant, as I can get an AI tool to give me a decent looking presentation, providing I put in the content and thought to give it the structure. It can do the pretty work.
I think that once the hype settles down, people will just look at AI and say, "Is it cheaper and does it provide a good enough result to work?" If it does, then they'll use it; if it doesn't, then they won't.
The reason I’m sure there will be a widespread effect on the economy is how AI is now being used in coding. Right now I’m doing more than 8 times the work than I could before (and fortunately have managed to get adjusted renumeration).
Right now companies are working on how to capitalise on these efficiency gains. Traditional automation of roles via software can be accelerated by using AI. It’s easy to point out holes in AI, but if a developer can use it to build more faster, this will accelerate.
I’ve worked with a Law firm who was already automating large elements of their business 5 years ago, they’re now moving to a significantly more comprehensive process with the use of A.I to create the code.
If you work at the DWP, then I bloody hope so. The simplest thing, like paying for your NI gap, requires endless hanging on the phone and then waiting months (literally) for a call back, They don't need AI, or LLM, or anything close. A Sinclair Spectrum would do the job better.
I heard something on the radio the other day when a politician or some other expert was saying about the youth unemployment figures. One of the big problems was that companies were becoming more efficient and more automated and better run, and that was causing unemployment for the young.
I'm not sure if he was implying that companies should be forced to be less efficient and less automated.
I know that in supermarkets in France, for example, the prices on the shelves are digitally controlled and automatically updated. We didn't bother in the UK because our workforce was so underpaid it was cheaper just to use people. I'm not sure this is a good or bad thing. AI will simply move this trend up the pay scales.
If I knew that then I'd be retraining to a job I'd be able to keep. However, at the moment, I don't think so.
Outside of the big american tech companies who are currently making loads of cash over this, are all other companies coming along for the ride? Has AI made those companies massively more productive? Growth says not. We've had the past few years of AI going to eat everything, it's not yet happened.
Will it? Who knows. We were going to have self driving cars 15 years ago, but they're still not quite there. I do think that LLMs are a fairly transformative technology, but I also think it's going to take longer for that to happen than all the very breathless articles out there.
The reason I’m sure there will be a widespread effect on the economy is how AI is now being used in coding. Right now I’m doing more than 8 times the work than I could before
As per some of the points and links above, that assumes that throughput of writing code is the major limiting factor.
I get your point in general though. I just don't think the economic effect will be directly proportional
https://pca.st/episode/cb1cb111-c970-4fdb-8ad1-5e4436f9400a
From the NYT.... Might be relevant.
Carpenter/joiner here. There are some aspects where AI, or rather technology, has had an affect on how we work, but it's mostly in CNC.
For what I do/did it's not relevant.
Same goes for many trades. Can't see AI hanging a door, fitting a kitchen, scribing round a wardrobe, laying pipe work, running cables, tiling a bathroom or trimming your bush.
Prefabs have been around for quite a while now, some very cheap, some very expensive. Haven't yet caught on in a big way, maybe someone in construction has a reason for that?
Simply put. Because of the cost.
Building a factory, infrastructure and the skills needed outweighs the current cost of having guys do the jobs onsite.
Had a project years ago around Stratford where all the wet rooms on site were craned in and bolted in place, fully finished. All I had to do was hang the door. Obviously the plumber and spark had to come along and connect everything, but otherwise each bathroom was finished.
As per some of the points and links above, that assumes that throughput of writing code is the major limiting factor.
For a standard junior/mid-level software dev jobs it is. Writing code, tests, associated documentation, and then going through the back and forth of - often over enthusiastic - code reviews is a boring slog which takes a significant amount of time. An average mid-level developer will do well to complete 2 or 3 features in a single two week sprint. Use AI (or LLMs for those offended by the term) dev tools though and you could potentially do that in a single day. And that's just mid-level or junior devs. For seniors multiply that again because done the right way you probably don't need the juniors to do the grunt work of writing the code and you can orchestrate agents to do it instead.
Once up to speed with the tools and patterns (which takes time admittedly) the time and cost savings are pretty mind-blowing. It might not apply everywhere but in software development that's probably 100s of thousands of relatively high paying (40-60k per year) jobs gone.
A quick chatgpt say there's approx 500k software development jobs in the UK paying an average of 50k resulting in 6bn per year in tax. Without even considering the multiplying effects that's a lot of tax income for the govt which is going to evaporate into thin air if they don't manage to replace those jobs with something else.
Who is going to hire those tradespersons
Your roof is still going to need replacing.
Your boiler is still going to bed repairing or replacing.
You're still going to need a new kitchen/bathroom/boiler/roof at some point.
Those basic maintenance jobs are always going to be there.
I'm some ways it may increase the quality of work in these fields as competition there increases. The main reason many people don't go into the trades is because of their parents expectations (more so if the parents are "academics") and not wanting their kids to get their hands dirty.
If you're using/relying on AI in @thols example then you should probably give up now and ask your doctor for a lethal dose of morphine.
Mate of mine is a lawyer for contract law or whatever you call it. Basically writing the same dross over and over again. His job is gone.
Got a few friends who work for SAP and they are worried about their jobs (ironically they're using AI to do their write code for them). Those jobs are potentially gone.
GF's sister sits there all day inputting numbers into excel tables making sure they tally up. Her job is gone.
Have a two friends who work directly for BMW (via subsidiaries) designing the presses that stamp out the panels for cars. Their jobs are already gone. One is now designing parts for drones used in Ukraine against Russia.
I've tried with copilot but I don't have enough knowledge to properly drill down into it.
Have you tried hitting it with a hammer?
Can't see my job becoming AI, although it can be useful. It's entirely about people, their experiences and interactions.
No knowledge of Copilot, so can't drill down and get into it? Kind of suspect irony there, but going with the flow: If only there was a readily available AI tool that could help you there.
Those basic maintenance jobs are always going to be there.
Did you miss the point? Who's going to pay for these maintenance jobs to be done? The economic risk here is a big down turn in employment, paired with continuing stagnation in wages, and more and more companies (and state bodies) around the world paying more to the US or China tech giants rather than on local employment. Money being diverted to the offshore tech giants rather than being spent on local wages means less money for trades people.
Did you miss the point? Who's going to pay for these maintenance jobs to be done
All the people whose jobs rely on face to face interaction and negotiation and are still employed, those dealing with complex physical tasks, those required to use imagination and artistry? And builders.
All the people whose jobs rely on face to face interaction and negotiation and are still employed
Why do you assume that? Replacing this is one of the stated aims of the tech companies pushing this stuff.
those dealing with complex physical tasks
Why do you assume that? They've got longer before they feel the impact, because despite the glossy videos the tech companies are a long way off developing the physical side of their "not as good as a human, but cheaper than a human" projects... but it's coming.
Anyway, assuming you're right, it still means that money will be drawn towards the tech giants abroad and away from the local market... which still means less money to pay trades people. The downstream impacts (positive and negative) of economic changes is often overlooked. If you want to picture it... when the mines were closed, it wasn't just the miners that were negatively affected, was it.
speaking of miners, are the (proverbial) ones who were told to 'learn to code' going to be joined back down t'pit with the former scrum master?
Who is going to hire those tradespersons
Your roof is still going to need replacing.
Your boiler is still going to bed repairing or replacing.
You're still going to need a new kitchen/bathroom/boiler/roof at some point.
Those basic maintenance jobs are always going to be there.
I'm some ways it may increase the quality of work in these fields as competition there increases. The main reason many people don't go into the trades is because of their parents expectations (more so if the parents are "academics") and not wanting their kids to get their hands dirty.
If you're using/relying on AI in @thols example then you should probably give up now and ask your doctor for a lethal dose of morphine.
Mate of mine is a lawyer for contract law or whatever you call it. Basically writing the same dross over and over again. His job is gone.
Got a few friends who work for SAP and they are worried about their jobs (ironically they're using AI to do their write code for them). Those jobs are potentially gone.
GF's sister sits there all day inputting numbers into excel tables making sure they tally up. Her job is gone.
Have a two friends who work directly for BMW (via subsidiaries) designing the presses that stamp out the panels for cars. Their jobs are already gone. One is now designing parts for drones used in Ukraine against Russia.
The numbers of tradespeople will increase in size as other job pools reduce, so the price for getting those jobs will reduce dramatically. Many people with less money and more time will do more DIY. I personally hire tradespeople because I’m time poor, when I go through periods of unemployment (I’m freelance), I do it all myself.
If fewer spend money on leisure, business for maintaining restaurants etc will vanish. It will affect everyone.
I am already replacing 4-8 junior staff as an experienced developer armed with AI. Those junior staff won't be buying houses when they're 30, so won't need them maintaining, they'll be in badly kept rental property. They won't be getting extensions built etc.
Have you tried hitting it with a hammer?
I just turned it off then turned it back on again
Money being diverted to the offshore tech giants rather than being spent on local wages means less money for trades people.
This is the crux of the problem. Politicians are going to have to get creative. The obvious one is a direct tax (or a tariff even) on the AI companies but we all know it won't happen for fairly obvious reasons. Which means we're about to see a huge chunk of the UK labour force outsourced to US (and maybe Chinese if they open them up) tech firms. The alternative is regulation of some form to discourage or restrict AI use to protect jobs.
Interesting counterpoint to all the mass-redundancy headlines, although seems to be a tiny bit conspiratorial regarding the motives of the researchers who are quitting jobs etc.
It is a bit emperor's new clothes. Everyone is trying to convince themselves it's fantastic. But rubbish in rubbish out, I watched a series of emails that were obviously run through copilot turn into nonsense and it didn't take long. It was so obvious that the protagonists were using a summarize and answer function.
A human is going to read a contract written and agreed through two sets of AI/LLM and find expensive mistakes and then the use for various tasks will be questioned.
AI wont replace me as I'm on the tools in construction. A robot may in so many years when they become affordable but I'll be retired then. If anything we can demand higher wages now than ever before. How long that lasts for is anyone's guess.
For all those that aren't too worried about their jobs because they are close to retirement you might want to remember that at least your state pension is not funded from anything you've paid in but from those still working so a reduction in jobs or just a move to lower paid jobs could still be a problem for you.
Only if you're relying on a state pension.
QC Inspector working for a company that overhauls aeroderivative gas turbines. I can't think of a single task I do that could be done by AI or a robot.
As with others I fear what the long term societal effects will be, but think that the problem is unstoppable.