My (uninformed) guess would be that approximately 0 of these layoffs we because of AI. If anything the recovery in tech stocks partly due to AI hype prevented a lot more layoffs at big tech companies.
Just talked with a friend from VMWare they are to be laid off soon after the acquisition. It went like this - they prohibited usage of chatgpt, but we continue to use it at my team - because the AI won't take my job, but the programmer using AI will do.
It is a tremendous force multiplier. It will take time to run trough organization - but if you are not the steamroller you will be the asphalt. And it will destroy a lot of the white collar bullshit jobs.
This is what it is: a massive force multiplier. It speeds things up like nothing before it. Cookie cutter code that you would have to otherwise write can be offloaded to AI flawlessly. Boring stuff like writing unit tests is easily AI’s domain.
Among small startups and entrepreneurs, it can also increase speed of execution. Instead of handing off instructions to a designer (IF you have one already - otherwise you have to find one) and waiting for the results, you can tinker around with prompts and get what you want within hours. More than the cost, it eliminates another source of friction.
Where exactly will these magical programmers come from, if not the existing pool? That is the fundamental flaw with this argument - there are not tens of thousands of people with not enough skill to be currently employed, but enough skill to out-compete current programmers as long as they can use GenAI.
If these tools get orders of magnitude more powerful then maybe we can have a real discussion about the number of programming jobs diminishing, but that hasn't been the case yet.
The reality is that for a typical software developer, you're looking at a single digit increase in productivity if you use Copilot. ChatGPT provides even less productivity increase right now.
Not really. But it is trendy to assume so. In the real world ai is mostly used by inexperienced people that after a while realise it doesnt work as advertised and pester colleagues with annoying questions on how to fix its broken code.
I have to say that it's been bizarre watching people say how much of a "game changer" LLMs are. There is clearly an advance there, no doubt, but it hasn't really been able to solve any actual problems that I have.
AI is definitely having an impact anywhere there is graphic artist, banal marketing material. There are hundreds of types of jobs that need rather ordinary text, and they are all at risk. Amazon had to shut down self publishing already.
There was just a huge writers strike to combat this.
The problem seems to be that unless a company reports layoffs 'because of AI', then people think 'oh it wasn't because of AI'. It is definitely happening, but nobody actually doing layoffs is going to say that is the reason.
thinkharderdev|2 years ago
ReptileMan|2 years ago
It is a tremendous force multiplier. It will take time to run trough organization - but if you are not the steamroller you will be the asphalt. And it will destroy a lot of the white collar bullshit jobs.
spaceman_2020|2 years ago
Among small startups and entrepreneurs, it can also increase speed of execution. Instead of handing off instructions to a designer (IF you have one already - otherwise you have to find one) and waiting for the results, you can tinker around with prompts and get what you want within hours. More than the cost, it eliminates another source of friction.
skepticATX|2 years ago
Where exactly will these magical programmers come from, if not the existing pool? That is the fundamental flaw with this argument - there are not tens of thousands of people with not enough skill to be currently employed, but enough skill to out-compete current programmers as long as they can use GenAI.
If these tools get orders of magnitude more powerful then maybe we can have a real discussion about the number of programming jobs diminishing, but that hasn't been the case yet.
The reality is that for a typical software developer, you're looking at a single digit increase in productivity if you use Copilot. ChatGPT provides even less productivity increase right now.
pylua|2 years ago
gumballindie|2 years ago
hotpotamus|2 years ago
FrustratedMonky|2 years ago
There was just a huge writers strike to combat this.
The problem seems to be that unless a company reports layoffs 'because of AI', then people think 'oh it wasn't because of AI'. It is definitely happening, but nobody actually doing layoffs is going to say that is the reason.
lifestyleguru|2 years ago
Zetobal|2 years ago
infotainment|2 years ago