Judging merely from the abstract, the study seems a little bit of a red herring to me: 1. Barely anyone talks about “imminent labor market transformation”, instead we say, it may soon turn things upside down. And the study can only show past changes.
2. That “imminent” vs. “soon” may feel like nitpicking but it’s crucial: Current tools the way they are currently used, are not yet what completely replaces so many workers 1:1, but if you look at the innovative developments overall, the immense human-labor-replacing capacity seems rather obvious.
Consider as an example a hypothetical ‘usual’ programmer at a ‘usual’ company. Would you have strong expectations for her salary to have changed much just because in the past 1-2 years we have been able to have her become faster at coding? Not necessarily, in fact, as we cannot do the coding fully without her yet, it might be for now the value of her marginal product of labor is a bit greater, or maybe a bit lower but AI boom anyway means an IT demand explosion in the near term, so seeing little net effect is surely not any particular surprise, for now. Or the study writer. Language improves, maybe some reasoning in the studies slightly, but habits of how we commission and overall organize, conduct studies haven’t changed yet at all; she also has kept her job so far. Or teaching. I’m still teaching just as much as I did 2y ago, of course. The students are still in the same program that they started 2y ago. 80% of incoming students are somewhat ignorant, 20% somewhat concerned about what AI will mean to their studies, but there’s no known alternative to them yet than to follow the usual path. We’re now starting to reduce contact time at my uni not least due to digital tech, so this may change soon. But, so, until yesterday: +- same old seemingly; no major changes so far on that front either, when one just looks at aggregate macroeconomic data. But this not least reflects the 2 or so years since the large LLMS have broken through; 1 or so year since people have widely started to really use them; is a short time, so we see nothing much in most domains quite yet.
Look at microlevel details, and I’m sure you find already quite a few hints of what might be coming though really, expecting to see much more ‘soon’ish than ‘right now already’.
Silicon valley is full of hype about imminent labor market transformation right now. For example, the Shopify CEO sent out a memo which included stuff like “Before asking for more Headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI.” And now boards are pushing for that sort of policy in lots of other companies as well.
Disclaimer: As always, views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.
Judging merely from the abstract, the study seems a little bit of a red herring to me:
1. Barely anyone talks about “imminent labor market transformation”, instead we say, it may soon turn things upside down. And the study can only show past changes.
2. That “imminent” vs. “soon” may feel like nitpicking but it’s crucial: Current tools the way they are currently used, are not yet what completely replaces so many workers 1:1, but if you look at the innovative developments overall, the immense human-labor-replacing capacity seems rather obvious.
Consider as an example a hypothetical ‘usual’ programmer at a ‘usual’ company. Would you have strong expectations for her salary to have changed much just because in the past 1-2 years we have been able to have her become faster at coding? Not necessarily, in fact, as we cannot do the coding fully without her yet, it might be for now the value of her marginal product of labor is a bit greater, or maybe a bit lower but AI boom anyway means an IT demand explosion in the near term, so seeing little net effect is surely not any particular surprise, for now. Or the study writer. Language improves, maybe some reasoning in the studies slightly, but habits of how we commission and overall organize, conduct studies haven’t changed yet at all; she also has kept her job so far. Or teaching. I’m still teaching just as much as I did 2y ago, of course. The students are still in the same program that they started 2y ago. 80% of incoming students are somewhat ignorant, 20% somewhat concerned about what AI will mean to their studies, but there’s no known alternative to them yet than to follow the usual path. We’re now starting to reduce contact time at my uni not least due to digital tech, so this may change soon. But, so, until yesterday: +- same old seemingly; no major changes so far on that front either, when one just looks at aggregate macroeconomic data. But this not least reflects the 2 or so years since the large LLMS have broken through; 1 or so year since people have widely started to really use them; is a short time, so we see nothing much in most domains quite yet.
Look at microlevel details, and I’m sure you find already quite a few hints of what might be coming though really, expecting to see much more ‘soon’ish than ‘right now already’.
Silicon valley is full of hype about imminent labor market transformation right now. For example, the Shopify CEO sent out a memo which included stuff like “Before asking for more Headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI.” And now boards are pushing for that sort of policy in lots of other companies as well.
Disclaimer: As always, views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.