Are you looking for utility in all the wrong places?
Recent news have quite a few mentions of: AI tanking the job prospects of fresh grads across multiple fields and, at the same time, AI causing a job market bloodbath in the usual outsourcing capitals of the world.
That sure lines up with known AI capabilities.
AI isn’t at the point of “radical transformation of everything” yet, clearly. You can’t replace a badass crew of x10 developers who can build the next big startup with AIs today. AI doesn’t unlock all that many “things that were impossible before” either—some are here already, but not enough to upend everything. What it does instead is take the cheapest, most replaceable labor on the market, and make it cheaper and more replaceable. That’s the ongoing impact.
The “entry-level jobs” study looked alright at a glance. I did not look into the claims of outsourcing job losses in any more detail—only noted that it was claimed multiple times.
There’s this recent paper, see Zvi’s summary/discussion here. I have not looked into it deeply. Looks a bit weird to me. Overall, the very fact that there’s so much confusion around whether LLMs are or are not useful is itself extremely weird.
(Disclaimer: off-the-cuff speculation, no idea if that is how anything works.)
I’m not sure how much I buy this narrative, to be honest. The kind of archetypical “useless junior dev” who can be outright replaced by an LLM probably… wasn’t being hired to do the job anyway, but instead as a human-capital investment? To be transformed into a middle/senior dev, whose job an LLM can’t yet do. So LLMs achieving short-term-capability parity with juniors shouldn’t hurt juniors’ job prospects, because they weren’t hired for their existing capabilities anyway.
Hmm, perhaps it’s not quite like this. Suppose companies weren’t “consciously” hiring junior developers as a future investments; that they “thought”[1] junior devs are actually useful, in the sense that if they “knew” they were just a future investment, they wouldn’t have been hired. The appearance of LLMs who are as capable as junior devs would now remove the pretense that the junior devs provide counterfactual immediate value. So their hiring would stop, because middle/senior managers would be unable to keep justifying it, despite the quiet fact that they were effectively not being hired for their immediate skills anyway. And so the career pipeline would get clogged.
Maybe that’s what’s happening?
(Again, no idea if that’s how anything there works, I have very limited experience in that sphere.)
In a semi-metaphorical sense, as an emergent property of various social dynamics between the middle managers reporting on juniors’ performance to senior managers who set company priorities based in part on what would look good and justifiable to the shareholders, or something along those lines.
This is the hardest evidence anyone has brought up in this thread (?) but I’m inclined to buy your rebuttal about the trend really starting in 2022 which it is hard to believe comes from LLMs.
Are you looking for utility in all the wrong places?
Recent news have quite a few mentions of: AI tanking the job prospects of fresh grads across multiple fields and, at the same time, AI causing a job market bloodbath in the usual outsourcing capitals of the world.
That sure lines up with known AI capabilities.
AI isn’t at the point of “radical transformation of everything” yet, clearly. You can’t replace a badass crew of x10 developers who can build the next big startup with AIs today. AI doesn’t unlock all that many “things that were impossible before” either—some are here already, but not enough to upend everything. What it does instead is take the cheapest, most replaceable labor on the market, and make it cheaper and more replaceable. That’s the ongoing impact.
idk if these are good search results, but I asked claude to look up and see if citations seem to justify the claim and if we care about the results someone should read the articles for real
Yep, that’s what I’ve seen.
The “entry-level jobs” study looked alright at a glance. I did not look into the claims of outsourcing job losses in any more detail—only noted that it was claimed multiple times.
Citation needed
I’m not saying it’s a bad take, but I asked for strong evidence. I want at least some kind of source.
There’s this recent paper, see Zvi’s summary/discussion here. I have not looked into it deeply. Looks a bit weird to me. Overall, the very fact that there’s so much confusion around whether LLMs are or are not useful is itself extremely weird.
(Disclaimer: off-the-cuff speculation, no idea if that is how anything works.)
I’m not sure how much I buy this narrative, to be honest. The kind of archetypical “useless junior dev” who can be outright replaced by an LLM probably… wasn’t being hired to do the job anyway, but instead as a human-capital investment? To be transformed into a middle/senior dev, whose job an LLM can’t yet do. So LLMs achieving short-term-capability parity with juniors shouldn’t hurt juniors’ job prospects, because they weren’t hired for their existing capabilities anyway.
Hmm, perhaps it’s not quite like this. Suppose companies weren’t “consciously” hiring junior developers as a future investments; that they “thought”[1] junior devs are actually useful, in the sense that if they “knew” they were just a future investment, they wouldn’t have been hired. The appearance of LLMs who are as capable as junior devs would now remove the pretense that the junior devs provide counterfactual immediate value. So their hiring would stop, because middle/senior managers would be unable to keep justifying it, despite the quiet fact that they were effectively not being hired for their immediate skills anyway. And so the career pipeline would get clogged.
Maybe that’s what’s happening?
(Again, no idea if that’s how anything there works, I have very limited experience in that sphere.)
In a semi-metaphorical sense, as an emergent property of various social dynamics between the middle managers reporting on juniors’ performance to senior managers who set company priorities based in part on what would look good and justifiable to the shareholders, or something along those lines.
This is the hardest evidence anyone has brought up in this thread (?) but I’m inclined to buy your rebuttal about the trend really starting in 2022 which it is hard to believe comes from LLMs.