Brynjolfsson: an AI “job apocalypse” is unlikely.

Also Brynjolfsson: It will likely impact entry-level jobs. There are huge implications for business and the economy, including some increases in living standards, but also, potentially, job disruption. We must act now to address this gap. We can’t just sit back and wait for the tsunami to hit us.

Also Brynjolfsson: If companies don’t hire people at the base of the pyramid, then they’re not going to have those people later when they need them. Now, AI can do a lot of those basic tasks. Some companies, such as law firms and investment banks, are not hiring as many people at the base. In the short run, I can see that logic, but, in a few years, where are they going to have the most experienced people? So they need to think harder about that.

So there's that. Basically what he's hoping is if everyone does what he recommends re: regulation and policy, then maybe the job apocalypse will become unlikely.

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pyrolistical an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah the base requirement has gone up. So more training/schooling is required.

Imagine when jobs started adding the requirement entry level positions require ability to read? That cut out so many people when that requirement was added yet the economy survived

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bogzz 37 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

That requirement should probably make a comeback.

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a2ff6eeb0 33 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

I think the base requirement to compete will keep going up. We already have AI models that can debug and audit code better than the best humans.

You used to have a career as a software engineer or devops person if you were good at debugging. Today, I challenge you to take any past production outages, toss the traces into Claude, and see if it finds the bug faster than humans can.

I think this is the way the rest of white collar labor goes.

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devmor 3 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> We already have AI models that can debug and audit code better than the best humans.

I'd love to see one someday.

	▲	a2ff6eeb0 a minute ago \| parent [-]
		Did you try my suggested experiment? Which issues did Fable take longer than a human to diagnose once you started to describe the symptoms?

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pigpop 19 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For some roles, I agree but I also think that there will be many new-ish roles that will have lower requirements right down to being a warm body capable of walking and talking. The lower requirements will be possible because these roles will essentially be proxies for AI agents that need a human to go somewhere and do something in the physical world, whether that's resetting a breaker or just being a human face and voice delivering a message.

And yes, before anyone brings it up, I've read Manna and if you haven't you probably should[0] but I don't think it will be as dystopian or utopian as that. Humanoid robots would obviously replace some of the proxy need but there will still be a lot of things that only a living human can do even if it's just purely for legal and regulatory reasons.

I also think there will be a lot more roles that are purely human in nature and which will have an entirely different set of requirements but that's a different topic.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20120224063109/http://marshallbr...

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pydry 31 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Ive dealt with tons of bugs Claude couldnt recognize. Have you not?

	▲	a2ff6eeb0 23 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Honestly? Not really, not since Fable came out. There's been a bunch of times it needed to ask for context, and I needed to deploy some additional tracing at its request. (There have been a few times where it has refused to debug due to safeguards. This is actually the biggest risk.)

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pydry 17 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Companies didn't like hiring entry level engineers even before AI came along because it took them such a long time to become productive and they had a habit of job hopping as soon as they did.

LLMs didn't really change anything about that but people like to give it credit for stuff.

In the long run it meant seniors commanded high salaries. It's the tragedy of the commons i guess except where the apocalypse is you need to build a free sushi restaurant and on site laundry for your spoiled developers.