Robots taking people’s jobs—examples

[Puppycow]

Apologies to Arthwollipot who posted this in another thread:

'We all got AI-ed': The Australian jobs being lost to AI under the radar

'We don't need writers anymore': the small businesses being reshaped by AI
. . .

"I was like, 'Oh my God, We just spent an hour of our time on a pitch that would have taken 8 hours and we just won 25 grand [worth of work] … That's a game changer.""

Like most smaller agencies, Ezra's business has a small number of core staff and hires contractors to work on specific contracts.
. . .

As soon as he grasped the new capacities of generative AI, he called a meeting, telling staff: "We don't need writers anymore. We don't need storyboard artists anymore … You just need to learn how to ask [AI] the right questions so it gives you what we need.
. . .

"We're working on nine of these films over the next three years, so that's 180 people that we're not going to be contracting."

Even so, Auperle is still hiring people, albeit fewer than half the original number.

"While we've gone down 20, we're plus eight … so these are kind of high-end VFX film professionals," he says.

"The real beauty is that … we're able to deliver a far-higher-quality product for the same budget.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

But there have been and will be actual people who are either replaced or made redundant or obsolete by technology in coming years. Things already look somewhat dire in my own industry, translation. I still have a job and I haven’t heard any rumors about layoffs coming up but it does make me worry about the future.

I would assume you already use AI for your job, no? The translators I know all use Machine Translation for a first pass and then have humans fix it. Are you doing E>J or J>E or other language pairs?

As far as examples of jobs being replaced I've seen two examples recently:

1) I was at a fast food drive through in the Midwest, and placed my order with what I thought was a human. I made a bit of a small talk comment during the placement of the order and apparently went off script causing the AI to fail and a human to take over. I only noticed it as a dramatic change in voice, but then realized retroactively what had happened.

2) Tony Robo, the new robotic running back for the Chicago Bears, is incredible. He has his detractors, but 756 rushing yards last Sunday was a new NFL record. Of course, the Bears still managed to lose.

 

[Puppycow]

I would assume you already use AI for your job, no? The translators I know all use Machine Translation for a first pass and then have humans fix it. Are you doing E>J or J>E or other language pairs?

I'm on the checking end. Most of the work we do is confidential and if the translators use it, they don't tell me. They aren't supposed to do anything that would divulge the data to any third party who isn't covered by an NDA. It's in the contract. So if they are using it, it would have to be a version that doesn't let any unknown computers on the Internet read the data. Using say, Google translate or some cloud-based free translation tool without permission is a big no-no. That said, we do also provide MTPE, or even just straight MT if that's what the customer wants.

Our company does both, but I personally only do J to E. I could do E to J but it's the economics of comparative advantage. It's more efficient for me to only do J to E and let Japanese co-workers do E to J.

 

[alfaniner]

Last night at the grocery store I saw a giant floor-cleaning robot moving up and down the aisles. Although I've had a Roomba for years, this being the first time I saw a big one it surprised me. The beeping was annoying as hell, though, and I could swear it was chasing me because it always seemed to end up in the aisle I was in.

 

[theprestige]

Apologies to Arthwollipot who posted this in another thread:

'We all got AI-ed': The Australian jobs being lost to AI under the radar

"I was like, 'Oh my God, We just spent an hour of our time on a pitch that would have taken 8 hours and we just won 25 grand [worth of work] … That's a game changer.""

...

As soon as he grasped the new capacities of generative AI, he called a meeting, telling staff: "We don't need writers anymore. We don't need storyboard artists anymore … You just need to learn how to ask [AI] the right questions so it gives you what we need.​

This touches on something I've been trying to wrap my head around for a while. "You just need to learn how to ask AI the right questions" - I.e., you need an AI Whisperer. Which is a new job, that has to go to a human.

But this new job replaces dozens or hundreds of other jobs. One skilled AI whisperer can do the work of several teams of humans. Even if you have to pay her as much as two teams, if she's doing the work of three or four teams you're still coming out ahead.

It seems like automation creates a few new, high-paying jobs, eliminates a lot of low paying jobs, and results in a massive increase in overall productivity. Which, in the long run, seems to create more jobs.

 

[The Man]

not AI, but similar. I used to work in Real Estate Appraisals. When I started, and as late as 2002, we were using 1 hour photo, and gluing those to hard copy reports, had plat maps faxed over by title companies, photocopied map pages and used stickers to denote Subject and Comparables, etc. We charged $350. When we went all digital, it saved a lot of time and money. We then charged...$350

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/10/ftc-proposes-rule-ban-junk-fees

here's an article about junk fees and why people don't like them and why they are a problem. charging for a service you're not providing is what i'd consider to land under bogus fees. convenience fees and processing fees are great examples, but really anytime a company charges for a service they aren't providing is dishonest. having to charge for something they did is ok, no having to do it anymore but still charging for it is a lie.

i know you framed it as why would they be nice, but that was actually a really good and pretty straightforward example. they charge $350 for a service that was a lot of labor to cover an expense, it became not a lot of labor due to technology advancement, but the price stayed the same. no lying and ripping people off isn't being nice, it's dishonest.

Back in the early days going digital wasn't cheap. I used to do similar graphics stuff as gabeygoat but in production of technical and instructional documentation. Physical layup pasteup, photocopy and cutout. By the time such professional things started to become more digital I was already working in an engineering laboratory and taking that digital. While it did help saving labor, equipment and software wasn't cheap and was still beyond the budget of a casual user. Some years later it cost me about 3 to 4 grand to set myself up with just a basic photo editing system for my personal use. Photo quality Printer, scanner, camera, storage and transfer media and software. The continuation of a charge for things way back when being done digitally may just represent the cost of investing in such equipment at the time. So then it wasn't labor cost of people's time anymore but perhaps recouping capital investment cost of professional grade equipment.

ETA: OK 2002 for gabeygoat's example (sorry I missed that). Yeah, off the shelf stuff for a couple few grand was readily available by then, along with the internet. So investment cost would be more than recouped in about 10 such charges. Not nice after that.

 

[pzkpfw]

"I was like, 'Oh my God, We just spent an hour of our time on a pitch that would have taken 8 hours and we just won 25 grand [worth of work] … That's a game changer.""

...

As soon as he grasped the new capacities of generative AI, he called a meeting, telling staff: "We don't need writers anymore. We don't need storyboard artists anymore … You just need to learn how to ask [AI] the right questions so it gives you what we need.​

This touches on something I've been trying to wrap my head around for a while. "You just need to learn how to ask AI the right questions" - I.e., you need an AI Whisperer. Which is a new job, that has to go to a human.

But this new job replaces dozens or hundreds of other jobs. One skilled AI whisperer can do the work of several teams of humans. Even if you have to pay her as much as two teams, if she's doing the work of three or four teams you're still coming out ahead.

It seems like automation creates a few new, high-paying jobs, eliminates a lot of low paying jobs, and results in a massive increase in overall productivity. Which, in the long run, seems to create more jobs.

Just before I read your post I saw this news item: https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/latin...by-chatgpt-approved-by-brazil-local-authority

tl;dr guy in Brazil gets ChatGpt to write a new law.

"I go back to that phrase that has already become a sort of cliché in this subject: No one will be replaced by artificial intelligence, but we could all be replaced by those who know how to use artificial intelligence," Rosário told The Washington Post. "So we have to prepare ourselves for this path."

 

[sts60]

Tony Robo, the new robotic running back for the Chicago Bears, is incredible. He has his detractors, but 756 rushing yards last Sunday was a new NFL record. Of course, the Bears still managed to lose.

Reminds me of the classic,
Mike Trout hit three homes runs and raised his average to .528 while Shohei Ohtani did something that hasn't been done since 'Tungsten Arm' O'Doyle of the 1921 Akron Groomsmen, as the Tigers defeated the Angels 8-3.

Sorry for the OT. I will soon be replaced here by artificial stupidity: posting dumb stuff more efficiently.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

OK 2002 for gabeygoat's example (sorry I missed that). Yeah, off the shelf stuff for a couple few grand was readily available by then, along with the internet. So investment cost would be more than recouped in about 10 such charges. Not nice after that.

In a free market a business will soon find themselves losing business if they are 'overcharging'.

But were they? There's a lot more to doing real estate appraisals than sticking photos in a report. If a way is found to make that part quicker and cheaper, more time is available for doing the other more important stuff. The result could be better appraisals, a win-win for you and the customer.

When I sold my last property I went with the real estate agency who had the best reputation. They certainly weren't the cheapest, but I got the price I wanted with it only on the market for 2 weeks. My agent didn't do the appraisal alone, the whole team came to my house. I was impressed, and gladly paid them a fee that would allow them to continue providing such excellent service. My agent also showed me around a lot of properties at no charge, though in the end I didn't buy through them.

The property I bought through a different agent was another story. He couldn't be bothered turning up for the handover and I had to track down the keys being held at a lawyers' office. I guess he was too busy sticking photos onto reports.

 

[The Man]

In a free market a business will soon find themselves losing business if they are 'overcharging'.

But were they? There's a lot more to doing real estate appraisals than sticking photos in a report. If a way is found to make that part quicker and cheaper, more time is available for doing the other more important stuff. The result could be better appraisals, a win-win for you and the customer.

When I sold my last property I went with the real estate agency who had the best reputation. They certainly weren't the cheapest, but I got the price I wanted with it only on the market for 2 weeks. My agent didn't do the appraisal alone, the whole team came to my house. I was impressed, and gladly paid them a fee that would allow them to continue providing such excellent service. My agent also showed me around a lot of properties at no charge, though in the end I didn't buy through them.

The property I bought through a different agent was another story. He couldn't be bothered turning up for the handover and I had to track down the keys being held at a lawyers' office. I guess he was too busy sticking photos onto reports.

Exactly, cost competitiveness, are you still competitive in the market regardless of how you do things.

As a side agent tale, back in the subprime days I went to a place offering the interest only loans. Didn't make much sense to me and the discussion I had with the loan officer confirmed that. While we were talking, some real estate agent walks by, introduces himself and shakes my hand. I never did any business with that loan company or said agent. Later as I'm working with and looking at houses with someone I've known from my childhood who happened at the time to be a real estate agent. She gets an Email from the dude that introduced himself accusing her of pilfering his client. I reassured her that I never had any dealing or business with this person and merely had a very brief casual introduction. Even signed a document to that effect, for her, asserting she is my agent and this dude is just talking out his arse.


Now in rough and tumble cutthroat markets like that how intimidating or outright ballsy BSing can AI be? I guess only as much as it is trained but can it be nuanced, or it just ends up like that schmoe. Who thought some brief introduction obligated me to him to the point where he was going to try to intimidate the agent I was actually working with who also just happened to be a lifelong friend.

 

[acbytesla]

Anyone who believes that automation hasn't led to a tremendous loss of jobs hasn't been paying attention. Now the argument has always been that the destruction of jobs also leads to job creation. A phenomenon known as creative destruction. That said, it has also led to lower paying jobs for the masses. That creative destruction doesn't benefit those that went from a high paying manufacturing job to a lower paying service job.

 

[arthwollipot]

Obligatory video that talks about that exact phenomenon and why it's different now (15:00, CGPGrey)

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

I wonder when Al is going to replace high level management. After all most of those jobs should be easy to automate given who does them now and the savings for shareholders would be massive.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

I wonder when Al is going to replace high level management. After all most of those jobs should be easy to automate given who does them now and the savings for shareholders would be massive.

Well with Starmer's announcement to turn the UK economy into AI central, we'll see how quickly the next best thing since NFTs* take us to the moon!

*Brought to you by the same conjobs.

 

[arthwollipot]

I wonder when Al is going to replace high level management. After all most of those jobs should be easy to automate given who does them now and the savings for shareholders would be massive.

In the above video an example is given of a project management application that breaks up a project into subtasks, allocates those tasks to freelancers on the internet, and watches those freelancers so that it can do that task next time.

 

[Puppycow]

Anyone who believes that automation hasn't led to a tremendous loss of jobs hasn't been paying attention. Now the argument has always been that the destruction of jobs also leads to job creation. A phenomenon known as creative destruction. That said, it has also led to lower paying jobs for the masses. That creative destruction doesn't benefit those that went from a high paying manufacturing job to a lower paying service job.

At least on the level of nationwide employment data as compiled by the government, the argument seems to be holding true, for now.

U.S. adds 256,000 jobs, as Biden leaves Trump with a sturdy labor market

The job market cooled down in 2024, but the year saw a burst in hiring in its last two months.

www.nbcnews.com

To be sure, this high-level data may be obscuring job loss trends in certain types of jobs due to gains in other types of jobs, but that's kind of what a dynamic economy is supposed to do. If more workers are needed to do certain kinds of work, and fewer are needed to do other kinds of work, the labor market is supposed to reallocate workers from where they aren't needed to where they are.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

The OP is addressing the wrong problem.
Rising productivity over the last century means that about 3/4th of all jobs are already completely unnecessary busywork, or work that is necessary to patch over the problems caused by other jobs that should not exist.
AI taking jobs just gives us another opportunity to look at the concept of Work again, and realize that it is not what we have been told it is.

 

[Puppycow]

The OP is addressing the wrong problem.
Rising productivity over the last century means that about 3/4th of all jobs are already completely unnecessary busywork, or work that is necessary to patch over the problems caused by other jobs that should not exist.
AI taking jobs just gives us another opportunity to look at the concept of Work again, and realize that it is not what we have been told it is.

"3/4th of all jobs"?? OK, maybe by some definition of "necessary". Anything involved in entertainment or culture or art and music or much of academia I suppose is not strictly necessary, and a lot of office jobs are probably at least on the borderline of unnecessary. I suppose you could say that anything that isn't necessary for the provision of food, clothing, shelter, healthcare and security are not, strictly speaking, "necessary." But some things that aren't absolutely necessary improve the quality of life.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

-all middle management is unnecessary if you organize properly and don't let organizations become too big - when you do, all benefits of economies of scale are being eaten up by increased need for supervision, documentation, internal strife. In addition, big organizations distort markets.
-pretty much all financial services are unnecessary and dangerous, creating artificial fluctuations in markets and creating markets where no markets are needed, and distort markets
-all programs based on means-testing are unnecessary, creating waste and preventing those who really are in need it from getting help
-most law-related jobs are complete busywork, artificially created, and the result of an arms race between powerful private interests.
-most products are completely redundant and/or built intentionally to be ineffective or quickly obsolete to create more demand.
- most people don't need to owe most things themselves, they could share them, instead of buying inferior products they use only a fraction of the time
-all adverting is unnecessary and distorts the market

I could go on for much longer - obviously, since we have gained so much productivity, and yet at the same time people work more than ever before, proof that what we are doing is superfluous.


quality of life depends on not having to worry about basic needs and having the time to enjoy each other's company.

 

[psionl0]

quality of life depends on not having to worry about basic needs and having the time to enjoy each other's company.

Now that Elon Musk has become POTUS, you can be sure that this aim will be increasingly further away.

 

[Puppycow]

-all middle management is unnecessary if you organize properly and don't let organizations become too big - when you do, all benefits of economies of scale are being eaten up by increased need for supervision, documentation, internal strife. In addition, big organizations distort markets.
-pretty much all financial services are unnecessary and dangerous, creating artificial fluctuations in markets and creating markets where no markets are needed, and distort markets
-all programs based on means-testing are unnecessary, creating waste and preventing those who really are in need it from getting help
-most law-related jobs are complete busywork, artificially created, and the result of an arms race between powerful private interests.
-most products are completely redundant and/or built intentionally to be ineffective or quickly obsolete to create more demand.
- most people don't need to owe most things themselves, they could share them, instead of buying inferior products they use only a fraction of the time
-all adverting is unnecessary and distorts the market

I could go on for much longer - obviously, since we have gained so much productivity, and yet at the same time people work more than ever before, proof that what we are doing is superfluous.


quality of life depends on not having to worry about basic needs and having the time to enjoy each other's company.

OK, but what to do? I'm skeptical of most of these assertions. I think that dividing the economy and jobs market along the lines of someone's subjective idea of what is "necessary" or "unnecessary" is not, ultimately, a useful way to think about it.

Is a Taylor Swift concert tour "necessary" or all of the jobs and economic activity created by it? No. I think you would have a hard time arguing that any sort of leisure activity, art, music or the like is "necessary". Nobody will die if they don't get to see Taylor Swift in concert.

If you think that "most law-related jobs are complete busywork" try living in a society without laws or people to enforce them. Haiti comes to mind.
Massacre Upon Massacre: Haiti’s Bleak Spiral Into a Failed State (New York Times)

A news conference to announce the reopening of a public hospital that had been closed for nine months because of gang violence came under another gang attack, killing two reporters and a police officer.

The hospital shooting followed two massacres in separate parts of the country that killed more than 350 people and have shined a harsh spotlight on the failures and shortcomings of local authorities and an international security force deployed to protect innocent civilians.

One of the massacres unfolded last month in an impoverished, sprawling, gang-controlled Port-au-Prince neighborhood where a lack of any police presence meant that for three days older people were dismembered and thrown to the sea without the authorities finding out. At least 207 people were killed between Dec. 6 and Dec. 11, according to the United Nations.

At about the same time, another three-day killing spree took place 70 miles north in Petite Rivière. Community leaders say 150 people were killed as gang members and vigilante groups attacked one another.

Haiti: Guatemalan forces arrive to tackle gang violence

Guatemala sends 150 soldiers to Haiti's capital to help a UN-backed force tackle powerful armed gangs.

www.bbc.com

Guatemalan and Salvadoran forces arrive in Haiti to join fight against violent gangs (CNN)

If "all programs based on means-testing are unnecessary" what would you replace them with, and who would pay for it? Universal income? I'm attracted to the idea in theory but I'm an empiricist. I want to see an actual working example of such a society before I buy into it. When all these jobs that you claim are "unnecessary" go away, what actually happens? Do young men with no other employment prospects join street gangs, like in Haiti?

 

[The Great Zaganza]

baseline communism, organized on the local level. Just as happens organically in any small, close-knit community or family.
This has been the State of Human Existence throughout most of history. It's the basis of most World Religions; it's the actual Family Values.

as even Smith new, people's natural instinct is to take care of each other - it takes a lot of brainwashing to make people accept that in a contest between common decency and profit maximization, the latter is the moral choice.

RE: Bad Men: only only need them in a crisis, so avoiding crises is the best way to avoid needing Bad Men. The moral problem on the Titanic was not who would or would not get into a lifeboat, but who built the ship with too few lifeboats in the first place.

 

[catsmate]

In the above video an example is given of a project management application that breaks up a project into subtasks, allocates those tasks to freelancers on the internet, and watches those freelancers so that it can do that task next time.

Indeed, I'm working on a project atm where this is being used. The freelancers are happier with the AI management.

 

[catsmate]

The OP is addressing the wrong problem.
Rising productivity over the last century means that about 3/4th of all jobs are already completely unnecessary busywork, or work that is necessary to patch over the problems caused by other jobs that should not exist.
AI taking jobs just gives us another opportunity to look at the concept of Work again, and realize that it is not what we have been told it is.

Absolutely, but few people are willing to even contemplate the necessary social reorganisation that will be needed.

We are living in the period of human history where the rate of change is greatest. Humans don't like change.

 

[Puppycow]

Trying to get back onto the original topic of the thread. There was a recent labor dispute involving longshoremen in US where opposition to automation was a key demand of longshoremen.

US longshoremen reach tentative deal with ports and shippers to avert strike

Agreement, which could take weeks to ratify, contemplates six-week contract with compromise on automation

www.theguardian.com

The picket signs for example express opposition to "automation" and "machines".

So at least one union is very much opposed to "robots taking people's jobs."

 

[The Great Zaganza]

The Wire Season 2 ?

 

[Skeptical Greg]

So at least one union is very much opposed to "robots taking people's jobs."

Makes sense, since robots don't pay union dues.

 

[Darat]

Yet. Just wait until they organise their own unions...

 

[Brainster]

Yet. Just wait until they organise their own unions...

The League of Humanity will be run by humans.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

You want the A.I. takeover to stop ?

Build a Robot Cop.
Their Union WILL act.

 

[theprestige]

A friend of mine does a lot of technical writing. Her employer's adoption of AI has made her job a lot easier. It greatly speeds up her first draft process, reducing cognitive load and letting her expertise get to a final document much faster.

 

[novaphile]

A friend of mine does a lot of technical writing. Her employer's adoption of AI has made her job a lot easier. It greatly speeds up her first draft process, reducing cognitive load and letting her expertise get to a final document much faster.

I'd assumed that a lot of 'technical' writing has been produced by robots for a long time.

The result in 'documentation' like this:

The flurbleblooble screen contains seven buttons.
The buttons may be pressed.
The button labels are: trheach, treaglor, tratch, fringlefrap, csartts, iletrope and scradle.

Trheach may contain a value from -1,000 to +65.
Treaglor may be deprecated in a future release.
Tratch must have a value that is consistent with the iletrope value.
Fringlefrap may or may not contain text.
...

None of the terms appear in any industry publication, none of the terms return anything on any search, except for thousands of people asking what the ◊◊◊◊ the terms mean, using every forum they can find around the world.

I'm being kind. Most applications have a secondary edit that removes any hint of what fields do, or valid values from any documentation.
Even though the documentation says that Fringlefrap may contain text, the application will not run unless it contains a specific series of numbers and those numbers have to be entered via an arcane process that stops them from being stored as a string, and that process is achieved through a direct update to the database, the correct value cannot be entered via the administration functions, and every user is able to type crap into that field. When this happens the application will not run, shutting down your entire organisation, but the error message is something about public holidays, and the application has no HR or scheduling functions.

The documentation is thousands of pages of text, that only reveal what the administrator can see on the screen for themselves, without the slightest hint about what any function does, or why values need to be set.

This, my friends, is why the new age of you can sack all the programmers because of magic AI, is going to suck really, really, badly.

By the way, salespeople have been saying "You can sack all the programmers if you buy this product" since the 1950's.

Brain-dead managers have believed it, every ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ time someone buys them a lunch.