AI Replacing Human Jobs: Hype vs. Reality and the Looming Power Imbalance

AI's impact on the job market is complex, creating both new opportunities and significant challenges for workers.

### The Illusion of AI Replacing Human Jobs: A Critical Perspective
* 🤖 The ad campaign by Jasper Carmichael Jack promotes the idea of **AI replacing human workers**, but this notion is met with skepticism as it **oversimplifies the complexities of technology in the workplace**.
* 💼 Gley's insightful commentary highlights that companies seeking to **replace employees with AI** are often those to avoid, while those focused on **enhancing human capabilities** are more likely to succeed.
* 🛠 The portrayal of AI as a **direct substitute for software engineers** is criticized as **misleading marketing** aimed at non-technical executives, who may be tempted to **cut costs by firing existing staff**.
* 💔 The reality is that AI tools like GitHub Copilot serve more as **assistants rather than replacements**, and relying on them without proper understanding can lead to **significant tech debt and disappointment**.
* 📉 The rise of AI is expected to create new jobs, but it also poses challenges for those unable to adapt, raising concerns about the **potential job losses** and the **mental health impacts** of such transitions.
* 💡 While AI has its benefits, the idea that it will universally improve life overlooks the fact that **not everyone can thrive in a world where traditional work is diminished**, and many find **purpose in their jobs**.
* ⚖ Ultimately, the concentration of power in the hands of a few tech leaders raises ethical questions about **who truly benefits from AI advancements**, suggesting a future where control over technology may lead to **greater inequality**.
* 🔍 The discussion reflects a broader concern that as technology evolves, it may not lead to a **utopian society**, but rather to a reality where **fewer individuals hold more power** over the lives of the many.

Did you actually see this Jasper Carmichael Jack's ad campaign? To stop hiring humans and use AI instead. So I thought I saw this on the internet.  Artisans won't complain about work-life balance. The era of AI employees is here. The homeless person next to it is a...

really nice touch. Yeah, the dichotomy between these two is just so good. I think this was Gley who said this on Twitter, and I think he did a really good job, which is that the companies and the places that say they want to replace people with AI are the ones you want to

run from. The places and the people that say they want to try to make people faster or get to solutions quicker are much more likely to be the ones that actually win. So this is probably comparing the difference between Devon, the one that claims to be a software

engineer, versus uh, Cursor, which claims to be an editor that's going to help you. Oh, there we go. It continues to sit poorly with me that this company is advertising its LLM product as a direct replacement for software engineers, calling it an "AI software engineer." This

is sleazy marketing targeting non-technical CEOs and execs, suggesting they can replace devs with it, which we all watched what happened when I tried to use it. Um, in reality, the product is a sidekick for software engineers, and one that has long iteration cycles. Here's a

review of the actual dev. Yeah, this is one that's reviewed for me. Even non-long-form versions of these videos aren't good enough, right? Like this is only 9 minutes. I just don't think this is good enough to actually show you what it really, really is like.

Like, you need to see and experience what the pain actually is. Where you actually make it do bigger projects and try to get it to do anything, and you will watch it just fizzle apart. I suspect that we'll see more claims from AI startups saying

they are a one-to-one replacement for jobs and more, suggesting that they can replace devs. This is because GitHub Copilot backed most of them in a corner with a $20 a month product that works pretty well. Yeah, GitHub Copilot's actually pretty amazing, still to this

day. I just, for me, I just quit using it again because I just feel like I lose some of my ability to learn new languages really quickly. I feel like I get this weird, like, syntax fuzziness in my head about how

things work. Uh, mainstream media will, for a while, end up eating this or eat up this narrative. Non-technical CEOs will flock and pay $500 a month per agent and assume they can now fire existing staff. Then they get disappointed when they realize how this, uh, how this

or how it's not... oh my God, how it's not how it works. Oh my gosh, I got dyslexia for a second. Hold on, let me... this... this 'sex' daily gets in my head every now and then. Then they get disappointed when realizing how it's not how this works. Oh my gosh, I can't

read! I can't read! I'm actually stupid. This is what an AI gold rush looks like. Uh, I actually really like this take because I think what people forget is there's this whole thing called legacy, and legacy is what happens right after your AI makes something and somebody

needs not only to take that change, but also to take that change in the perspective of all the other changes. Now, the context window of an AI is not nearly large enough to be able to make those decisions at any sort of level that's wise enough. This is a great take.

Which is, there are going to be—I think he's perfectly right on this, by the way—all these non-technical CEOs that are just going to go off and hire this $500-a-month… oh, it's only $8 an hour, of course I would want this…and fire people

because of it. I think it's absolutely crazy, and in reality, it's going to actually probably tank their product because their product's going to go, 'Oh wow, we got a…' and then their features are going to just grind to a halt; things aren't going to work nearly as well, and

then what's going to happen? It's just going to suck. Immediate tech debt right off the rip. None of these things work the way that you think they're going to work, right? I can't wait for the AI craze to die. I don't think it's going to die

anytime soon because I still think we've got another iteration after this, into the next model, that's going to promise big change, and the big change isn't going to…it's going to result in the exact same thing that we just got done seeing, right? AI-powered AI

powered product. Yeah. When I see this thing right here, this is an advertisement for non-technical people to be baited into this, because you must—you absolutely have to understand that, again, LLMs work by taking the input token and attempting to produce the

Most likely output that would result from this input. Like, that's not a great way to program, right? Like, that's not going to produce the program that you're probably going to want. Programming is not the most likely character or token afterwards; that's

just how you don't produce good programs. That's how you produce programs that don't even work. That's why APIs get like, made up so often, because it is like the most likely sounding correct thing coming out; it doesn't mean it actually is the correct thing coming out. Anyways,

this dude, the era of AI employees is here? It's not here; it is like not here at all. I think what we are... we are in the... we are in the era of realizing that text prediction is pretty cool. I think that's the era that we're in, and text

prediction is pretty cool. Like, you have to admit, me having a talk with Devin and it producing something that is like really cool, comparatively to what has ever been, it's really cool. But it is not an employee; it's not great; it's not solving all these

problems; it's not anything that they're promising. That's a huge difference between the two. I wish people would just understand this. This is the era of AI/ML jobs being available. Uh, I am proof of that.

You are true. Yeah, very true.  Have you tried 01 Pro? I haven't bought 01 Pro, but I will buy that next. I'm sad about the developer sitting on the side of this ad. I know this web developer, Devin. In fact, this actually reminds me of something else. There was... um... I wanted to look at this because I...

I haven't seen this yet, but this falls under the exact same thing that just kind of dropped. People will lose jobs; many new jobs will be created, I think, much better jobs. Uh, we feel a responsibility to educate society as we see it. We'll be right about some things,

wrong about others, uh, and to be as good as we can being stewards of this technology. But you know, not everyone's going to like all of the impacts, but this is coming. This is like...this is a scientific achievement of humanity that is going to get embedded in everything.

We do...the definition of work changes. You know, someone that lived thousands of years ago that was trying to be like a subsistence farmer probably would look at what you and I do now and say that's not really work; they're just having fun. I think it will be so clear once these

robots are off doing all of these other things that there's some special human things, and we don't really care that much what those robots do in the same way that, you know, we don't care that much about the machines in factories making stuff for us, right? But

we'll find stuff to do that we really care about. I...I always think it's a little bit weird how kind of cavalier people are about this. This change is going to cause a lot of people a lot of difficulty. Yeah, it's not as sane as

it was portrayed, because I didn't look...I didn't listen to it, but to me it's still very crazy that they're just like, yeah, people are going to lose their jobs, but this is good. What we're...what we're creating is good. People are going to

lose their jobs. I mean, there's a lot of people that will not be able to cope with the new world. Yeah, but he's right, it's good... I don't know if it's good. I don't know if that's good. I have no

idea. Like, I think if we largely looked at the internet, I'm not convinced that the internet has made people's lives amazingly better, right? Like, I don't know. Right? Like, I think that we also have a huge... we have like a mental

health crisis through the roof. Like, I can't say we can say that technology has been purely great. There's a lot of great things about technology. Like, I'm not a fool. I'm not one of those people that think that we should all return to

the Stone Age. Like, I will say that we largely don't have... we don't have to die from such stupid things anymore. Like, there's a lot of great things that have come with it, but not all things are great. And one thing we haven't lost thus far is the

ability to work. And I know a lot of... I know this is kind of a controversial one, but the ability to work is a very important thing. You see people who can't work, who don't have the ability to work, it really hurts them. It really hurts

them, right? Like, it hurts those people in huge ways. And the thing is, is like... I'll be like, oh yeah, well, I'll just be able to critically think and build whatever I want. Not everybody can just do whatever they want. There are a lot of people that

don't have the mental capacity to just build whatever they want whenever they want, and Ubi giving them money doesn't solve the problem of not being able to be out there working and doing something, gaining a life, right? Like, there are people in the city that I live in

there are programs for people who have a difficult time with mental health problems. There are various stores aligned for hiring people with these disabilities so they can come in, work, and have

meaningful interactions with people, and it really breaks them out of their shell, allowing them to be in a much better position in life. That's a real thing, and these kinds of things destroy that. I'm not saying there aren't

going to be a lot of awesome things, but I'm also not convinced it's going to be all good, right? This kind of utopian thought that everything will be great once the robots can do everything... I just don't think so, right? I just don't

think that's good. People feel terrified when their lives change, but actually it may just be a better place; it may also be a worse place. You've got to remember that... what is the underlying thing that happens here? What's the underlying thing that happens here? Let's just say that

Sam, Samuel, Samuel Jippy Alment is 100% correct. What is the underlying thing that happens here? Samuel J. Alment is king of everybody; he owns the software that everybody has to live off of. He is ultimately the richest, most powerful person, and he decides what is right.

And, wrong. And he is able to control effectively a huge portion of the world. Okay, it's not like, 'Oh, everything's great.' It's more like, 'Actually, there's one person, or his group of people, that it's really, really great for.' Overlord Sam will be the guy, whoever

owns it, will be the guy, right? They get to play God among men. All I see is that more power is condensing. 100 years ago, more people had more say over their lives. Now that power is being more and more condensed. It's... it's actually the chapter

three of... uh, there's a book called *The Abolition of Man*, and chapter three is all about how the escape from nature is just really a power struggle between a few people who actually wield the power, and a bunch of people who are disillusioned that they actually retain

the power over nature. And it really is this smaller and smaller and smaller world in which fewer and fewer people actually have the real power, because you and I don't have the power to escape nature; we purchase that power from other people, which is very interesting. So,

people think we all live greater than nature and all that. No, we are completely dependent on it; we just simply purchase it from other people. So it's a... it's a weird world to live in where fewer and fewer people get

to make decisions for more and more people. I don't know, that's my... that's my whole take on this.

The AI Employee Era Has Begun

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Critique of AI-driven job replacement marketing

Discussion of an ad campaign promoting AI over human employees.

Companies replacing humans with AI are viewed negatively.

Comparison of AI tools: Devon (software engineer) vs. Cursor (editor).

Criticism of marketing AI as a direct replacement for software engineers.

AI tools are more accurately described as sidekicks for engineers.

Short videos are insufficient to demonstrate the limitations of AI.

Concerns about AI's impact on the job market and learning

GitHub Copilot's impact on AI startups and job replacement claims.

Personal experience of reduced learning ability when using AI tools.

Prediction of non-technical CEOs overestimating AI capabilities.

Discussion of the limitations of AI's context window and legacy systems.

Long-term consequences of AI implementation and the power dynamic

Concerns about non-technical CEOs firing employees based on unrealistic AI expectations.

Potential negative impacts of hasty AI integration on product development.

Prediction of continued AI hype cycles and similar outcomes.

Explanation of how LLMs work and their limitations in programming.

Current era is characterized by the appreciation of text prediction capabilities.

Broader societal impact of AI and the future of work

Discussion of job displacement and creation due to AI advancements.

Emphasis on educating society about AI's impact.

AI as a scientific achievement embedded in various aspects of life.

Changing definition of work across different eras.

Concerns about the cavalier attitude towards job displacement.

Concerns about the overall impact of technology and AI

Questioning the overall positive impact of the internet on people's lives.

Acknowledging positive aspects of technology while acknowledging negative ones.

Importance of the ability to work and its impact on mental health.

Not everyone has the capacity to create their own work.

Importance of programs providing meaningful work for people with mental health challenges.

Power dynamics and control in the age of AI

Discussion of the concentration of power in the hands of those who control AI technology.

The potential for a single entity or group to control significant aspects of life.

Observation of increasing power concentration over time.

Reference to *The Abolition of Man* and the power struggle related to controlling nature.

Discussion of dependence on others for resources and the implications of this dynamic.