Change My View

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Generative AI isn't going anywhere, and will replace a number of jobs. (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 day ago by PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works to c/changemyview@sh.itjust.works

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Generative AI has a number of uses that are already widespread, and I don't see going anywhere. Things like clipart and stock art, and initial contact customer support. AI automates these jobs, making it far, far cheaper than hiring a human to do the same job. It only takes one higher-end PC to do a job that a human would have had to be paid for. The economic incentive is already there.

Furthermore, Generative AI is a genie thats been let out of the bottle, and I don't see ever being put back in. These models are just files, which have already been replicated and become widespread. Sure, progress may slow as the "We're making a general purpose AI." bubble bursts, but if these tools work, they'll continue to be developed, and people will continue to get better at manipulating or augmenting them. I don't see any reason that would stop generative AI from continuing to exist from this point forward.

Generative AI isn't going anywhere, and will replace a number of jobs.

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[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

LLMs and generative AI will, and already has, replace "a number" of jobs.

LLMs have revealed something that shocked lots of job sectors: Quite often, having absolutely shit quality is good enough. 15 years ago, you could get two types of translation: Excellent, and None. So if you didn't want "none", you had to pay for Excellent, and as a result there was a very large sector providing Excellent translations of all sorts of materials. LLMs have revealed that many, maaaaany people don't want Excellent translations, they just want not-None. Suddenly, the market for Excellent translation plumets, and the market of not-None skyrockets. This has happened for quite a few different sectors. Especially the ones that work with text, like content writing, translations, etc. Then it happened for images. People don't generally want amazing artworks, they want not-a-blank-space.

Yes, LLMs generate slop, and will always generate slop, but we've recently been confronted by the reality that there's an absolutely immense market for slop.

But there's a different matter: LLMs are expensive, and nobody wants to pay for them. You're not paying what it costs to run the LLM you're using. If you're a private user, you're not paying what it costs to answer questions, generate cake recipes or make an easter-bunny picture. If you're a huge company paying millions for tokens, you're not paying what it costs to run the LLM. Tokens are hugely subsidized, but even they weren't, LLM companies couldn't afford to run. They're going to collapse 0.01 seconds after the venture capital stops coming.

Will the major collapse of large LLM companies end LLMs? Nah, of course not. Smaller, local LLMs will work just fine for many purposes. But almost every large scale LLM implementation is currently running on an industry that might as well be shoveling cash into a steamboiler.

So yes, "a number" of jobs will be replaced. It won't be a huge number, but contest writers, translators, basic artists and people in similar industries will be replaced, at least temporarily.

What will happen is that as the post-covid job bloat is reducing, the economy is slowing down and hitting its next crisis thanks to the US adventuring in the middle-east, there will be LOTS of people getting fired. And many of those companies will not say "We're firing people because the company isn't making money and we need to reduce our output" they will all be proclaiming "We're firing people because of AI, please don't think we're doing poorly!"