Everyone saying AI is an excuse: <whatever> is always an excuse. Companies build up marginal people over time: people who aren’t overtly fire-worthy, but who aren’t core contributors either. The pressure builds up, like the conditions for an avalanche, over time. When it’s at a critical point an inciting event can be relatively minor. And then the list gets made, and if there’s no one who says, “We really need Bob,” Bob goes on the list.
It can be about the proximal cause, but it doesn’t have to be at all.
All of that said, AI is going to directly cause job loss, I’m calling it now. Not as much as the doomsayers predict, but more than most people expect.
> All of that said, AI is going to directly cause job loss, I’m calling it now. Not as much as the doomsayers predict, but more than most people expect.
Unless there is some limit to model development we can't currently foresee, plain economics will see to it that white collar job losses will be close to total. Likewise blue collar if we don't find a limit to spatial AI and robotics development.
The problem with all these discussions is that no-one rubbishing the job-apocalypse forecasts can say why or how progress will peter out - beyond pointing to economic limits ("it's a bubble") which won't apply over longer terms. Given the pace of progress the last few years, and this inability to say why job losses won't scale with the tech, anyone ruling them out is either wish thinking, or showing a staggering failure of imagination.
If there's a reason the losses will be "Not as much as the doomsayers predict", say what it is.
AI will certainly cause job loss. It already has (regardless of to what degree it was an excuse for something else in many cases). I agree with what you say, though.
The big question to me is whether the people who lost those jobs will have better opportunities in the future. That's kind of up to all of us.
It’s mostly manufactured hype to keep the AI bubble going.
Nearly all the tech layoffs are simply companies trimming fat that was there the whole time. Outside the tech bubble folks have increasing disdain towards AI and can smell AI generated content from a mile away.
The tech is cool, and useful, but massively overhyped. Now there’s a mad rush for companies to IPO before the music stops.
You need to look at this in context of longer timeframes; recent college graduates have had higher unemployment rates since 2019, well before AI, and the diff has increased since covid. I suspect it's more about a decline in overall growth and hiring and AI now gives a convenient excuse, but the trend has been in play for a while.
It's hard to separate impact of workers being replaced by AI from an impact of a recession (or stagnation). It's not obvious how AI impacts employees with various experience: on one hand a senior is better at spotting AI hallucination one other hand a junior using AI can do much more than a junior was able to do a couple years ago for a lower (if adjusted for inflation) than a couple years ago salary.
I struggle to see how WFH, especially as that was far more common from 2020 to 2023 than 2023 to 2026
Rather than the post-covid slump we've seen globally
> WFH makes supervision, monitoring, and on-the-job learning harder
It makes it different. In many ways it makes it easier, if you have the right supervisors and mentors working in the right way.
The larger impact would be hotdesking. Going to an office and not sitting anywhere in your team makes collaboration harder than working from home.
The requirement to move job to progress in remuneration harms retention, and thus reduces willingness to invest in a junior, but it's the expectation to move job after 2-3 years.
Everyone saying AI is an excuse: <whatever> is always an excuse. Companies build up marginal people over time: people who aren’t overtly fire-worthy, but who aren’t core contributors either. The pressure builds up, like the conditions for an avalanche, over time. When it’s at a critical point an inciting event can be relatively minor. And then the list gets made, and if there’s no one who says, “We really need Bob,” Bob goes on the list.
It can be about the proximal cause, but it doesn’t have to be at all.
All of that said, AI is going to directly cause job loss, I’m calling it now. Not as much as the doomsayers predict, but more than most people expect.
> All of that said, AI is going to directly cause job loss, I’m calling it now. Not as much as the doomsayers predict, but more than most people expect.
Unless there is some limit to model development we can't currently foresee, plain economics will see to it that white collar job losses will be close to total. Likewise blue collar if we don't find a limit to spatial AI and robotics development.
The problem with all these discussions is that no-one rubbishing the job-apocalypse forecasts can say why or how progress will peter out - beyond pointing to economic limits ("it's a bubble") which won't apply over longer terms. Given the pace of progress the last few years, and this inability to say why job losses won't scale with the tech, anyone ruling them out is either wish thinking, or showing a staggering failure of imagination.
If there's a reason the losses will be "Not as much as the doomsayers predict", say what it is.
AI will certainly cause job loss. It already has (regardless of to what degree it was an excuse for something else in many cases). I agree with what you say, though.
The big question to me is whether the people who lost those jobs will have better opportunities in the future. That's kind of up to all of us.
It’s mostly manufactured hype to keep the AI bubble going.
Nearly all the tech layoffs are simply companies trimming fat that was there the whole time. Outside the tech bubble folks have increasing disdain towards AI and can smell AI generated content from a mile away.
The tech is cool, and useful, but massively overhyped. Now there’s a mad rush for companies to IPO before the music stops.
Unemployment rates for recent college graduates stand at around 5.6%, well above the level for all workers.
I think we just found the first evidence of AI's expected influence on the labor market.
You need to look at this in context of longer timeframes; recent college graduates have had higher unemployment rates since 2019, well before AI, and the diff has increased since covid. I suspect it's more about a decline in overall growth and hiring and AI now gives a convenient excuse, but the trend has been in play for a while.
It's been creeping up even before the release of chatgpt.
https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20250621_FNC...
It's hard to separate impact of workers being replaced by AI from an impact of a recession (or stagnation). It's not obvious how AI impacts employees with various experience: on one hand a senior is better at spotting AI hallucination one other hand a junior using AI can do much more than a junior was able to do a couple years ago for a lower (if adjusted for inflation) than a couple years ago salary.
A recent paper believes work from home reducing entry level gigs fits the data better, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6787638.
I hate it, but the X thread is the easiest review piece I can find, https://x.com/pj_lambert/status/2057477629528150369.
https://xcancel.com/pj_lambert/status/2057477629528150369
https://xcancel.com/pj_lambert/status/2057477629528150369
I struggle to see how WFH, especially as that was far more common from 2020 to 2023 than 2023 to 2026
Rather than the post-covid slump we've seen globally
> WFH makes supervision, monitoring, and on-the-job learning harder
It makes it different. In many ways it makes it easier, if you have the right supervisors and mentors working in the right way.
The larger impact would be hotdesking. Going to an office and not sitting anywhere in your team makes collaboration harder than working from home.
The requirement to move job to progress in remuneration harms retention, and thus reduces willingness to invest in a junior, but it's the expectation to move job after 2-3 years.
Looking at this graph
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Unemploy...
I think you'd struggle to draw any conclusions about AI.
Note your quote was "all workers", not "workers of same age with or without a degree"
In the aftermath of 2008, recent graduates hit 7-8%, but their contemporaries without a degree hit 15%