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Comment on Sam Altman Says If Jobs Gets Wiped Out, Maybe They Weren’t Even “Real Work” to Start With

I agree with the sentiment, as bad as it feels to agree with Altman about anything.

I’m working as a software developer, working on the backend of the website/loyalty app of some large retailer.

My job is entirely useless. I mean, I’m doing a decent job keeping the show running, but (a) management shifts priorities all the time and about 2/3 of all the “super urgent” things I work on get cancelled before then get released and (b) if our whole department would instantly disappear and the app and webside would just be gone, nobody would care. Like, literally. We have an app and a website because everyone has to have one, not because there’s a real benefit to anyone.

The same is true for most of the jobs I worked in, and about most jobs in large corporations.

So if AI could somehow replace all these jobs (which it can’t), nothing of value would be lost, apart from the fact that our society requires everyone to have a job, bullshit or not. And these bullshit jobs even tend to be the better-paid ones.

So AI doing the bullshit jobs isn’t the problem, but people having to do bullshit jobs to get paid is.

If we all get a really good universal basic income or something, I don’t think most people would mind that they don’t have to go warm a seat in an office anymore. But since we don’t and we likely won’t in the future, losing a job is a real problem, which makes Altman’s comment extremely insensitive.

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sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
The same is true for most of the jobs I worked in, and about most jobs in large corporations.

I don’t think that’s necessarily true.

My job started as a relatively BS job. Basically, the company I work for makes physical things, and the people who use those physical things need to create reports to keep the regulators happy. So my first couple years on the job was improving the report generation app, which was kind of useful since it saved people an hour or two a week in producing reports. But the main reason we had this app in the first place was because our competitors had one, and the company needed a digital product to point to in order to sell customers (who didn’t use the app, someone a few layers down did) on it. Basically, my job existed to check a box.

However, my department went above and beyond and created tools to optimize our customers’ businesses. We went past reporting and built simulations related to reporting, but that brought actual value. They could reduce or increase use of our product based on actual numbers, and that change would increase their profitability (more widgets produced per dollar spent). When the company did a round of cost cutting, they took a look at our department ready to axe us, but instead increased our funding when they saw the potential of our simulations, and now we’re making using the app standard for all of our on-staff consultants and front-and-center for all new customer acquisitions (i.e. not just reporting, but showcasing our app as central to the customer’s business).

All that has happened over the last year or so, so I guess we’ll see if that actually increases customer retention and acquisition. My point is that my job transitioned from something mostly useless (glorified PDF generator) to something that actually provides value to the business and likely reduces costs downstream (that’s about 3 steps away from the retail store, but it could help cut prices a few percent on certain products while improving profits for us and our customers).

If we all get a really good universal basic income or something

I disagree with your assertion that many jobs exist because people need jobs. I think jobs exist because even “BS” job create value. If there was a labor surplus today, jobs would be created the lower cost of labor acquisition makes certain products profitable that wouldn’t otherwise be.

That said, I am 100% a fan of something like UBI, though I personally would make it based on income (i.e. a Negative Income Tax, so only those under $X get the benefit), but that’s mostly to make the dollar amount of that program less scary. For example, there are ~130M households in the US (current pop is 342M, or about 2.6 people per household). The poverty line is $32,150 for a family, and sending that out as UBI would cost ~4.1T, which is almost as much as the current US budget. If we instead brought everyone to the poverty line through something like NIT, that’s only ~168B, or about 4% of the current budget.

Regardless of the approach, I think ensuring everyone is between the poverty line (i.e. unemployed people) and a living wage (i.e. minimum wage people) is a good idea for a few reasons:

allows you to quit your BS job and not be screwed - puts pressure on employers at low-paying jobs to provide a better work experience and pay

allows us to distribute other benefits in dollars instead of services - this book opened my eyes to how much poor people want cash, not benefits; it’s easier to move if you have $1k/month in rent allowance than stuck in your section 8 (government assisted) housing

could eliminate the federal minimum wage - if employers aren’t paying well, people won’t take the job because they’d rather take the gov’t handout, so I’d consider the UBI/NIT to be the minimum wage instead

encourages entrepreneurs to start businesses - my main reason for not starting a business in worries about not being able to cover my basic needs; UBI/NIT covers that, so I probably would have started a few small businesses if I had that as a fallback

can replace Social Security (or other gov’t pension plan), since retirees can treat UBI/NIT as their pension, and not be restricted to a specific age to take it (benefits would be lower, but very predictable)

Giving people a backup plan encourages people to take more risks, which should result in more value across the economy.
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andrewrgross@slrpnk.net ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Agreed. His comments are so bizarrely stupid on so many levels.

They’re not just “wrong”: they’re half-right-half-wrong. And the half that is wrong is idiotic in the extreme, while the half that is right casually acknowledges a civilizational crisis like someone watching their neighbors screaming in a house fire while sipping a cup of coffee.

Like this farmer analogy: the farmers were right! Their way of life and all that mattered to them was largely exterminated by these changes, and we’re living in their worst nightmare! And he even goes so far as acknowledging this, and acknowledging that we’ll likely experience the same thing. We’re all basically cart horses at the dawn of the automobile, and we might actually hate where this is going. But… It’ll probably be great.

He just has a hunch that even though all evidence suggests that this will lead to the opposite of the greatest good for the greatest number of people, for some reason his brain can’t shake the sense that it’s going to be good anyway. I mean, it has to be, otherwise that would make him a monster! And that simply can’t be the case. So there you have it.

It’ll be ~~terrible~~ great.

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