"you built something that removes the pricey laywer, software developer, insurance policy writer, designer"

This statement is untrue. The people have the judgement, the AI does the rote work. The rest is marketing fluff and/or leadership fumbles. You can't get rid of judgement (unless of course leadership is fumbling).

With more AI, you got more radiology requests, and more radiologists [1] and better health results due to more abundant measurement. There is no evidence that the same isn't happening to the rest of the professions. And to support it all, we have more infrastructure construction (datacenters).

This is the textbook basics of a growing economy with growing productivity, even though it feels paradoxical [2]

[1]: https://www.ft.com/content/f2e03bd9-af67-45c4-8e1e-79978b5bc...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

▲

xlayn 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Jevons Paradox doesn't say more radiologist will have more work and will be paid at the same price, it says that there will be more work for radiologists because now they are paid less and because of that people is able to afford more radiologists.

"This statement is untrue. The people have the judgement, the AI does the rote work. The rest is marketing fluff and/or leadership fumbles. You can't get rid of judgement (unless of course leadership is fumbling)."

Let me refine it more... now the same lawyer/marketing/software engineer can work just approving the work of AI, reviewing it's correct so the exact same lawyer/marketing/software engineer can now perform X more times the amount of work they previously did, IF we don't triple the amount of work, then the rules of "free market" means that offer now exceeds by X the demand and you can now depress wages as much as you want because you can fire (x-1)/x of the people doing the work and the pool of people willing or needing to do that is increased.

This does not contradict at all what I stated above.

The ultimate proof of this is how much the "calculator people" now earns now that calculators were created... and for reference this old ad about the effect of calculators on the number of engineers

[0]: https://www.globalnerdy.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/200...

	▲	pj_mukh 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		"radiologists because now they are paid less and because of that people is able to afford more radiologists." But again, the opposite is happening. Radiologist salaries are up 9% YoY [1]. And you can now get your radiology done more cheaply [2]. Literal win-win. Radiologists are not human calculators, neither are lawyers, accountants or insurance adjusters. As we learned very quickly, their job is judgement and human relationships and you can't cut that out You did correctly lay out that if you can't grow your business by increasing demand, you are shrinking. And yes shrinking leads to layoffs regardless of AI. Very cliched now but: You are not being replaced by AI, you are being replaced by someone who's using AI, who is more productive with it. But specifically, this is true for individuals and company-wide. Less productive organizations will be pushed out if they can't lower their prices and meet the increasing demand, and the only way they do that for modern white-collar work (not rote 1950's calculator churning) is to hire more AI-ready staff. FWIW, The IBM ad is literal marketing fluff. More engineers were employed in the immediate aftermath of the mainframe than anytime before. EDIT: I'm not trying to argue with you, I'm trying to show you things most headline news refuses to show because it's boring and counter-narrative. Shoutout to the economist. [1]: https://fortune.com/article/ai-godfather-radiologists-obsole... [2]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10986240/

▲

dfwedsf 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Exactly spot on.

Why are people so stupid?

E.g. take the radiology example. In the past people would not have been sent to a radiologist due to resource constraints.

But because of AI you now more capacity - therefore there is an INCREASE in radiology requests.

And this is going to be the common theme - there are lots of things that people are doing right now has an implicit constraint. AI will unlock new capacity so we will see MORE of it -> this will actually create a bizarre scenario of a labour shortage in many respects.

I know that's not what Amodei and Altman want to hear but... ha.

THis is why people are so bad at predictions - they look at one variable move and forget the rest / many 'unknowns' they did not foresee.