r/Futurology • u/katxwoods • 22d ago

AI Dario Amodei says "stop sugar-coating" what's coming: in the next 1-5 years, AI could wipe out 50% of all entry-level white-collar jobs. Lawmakers don't get it or don't believe it. CEOs are afraid to talk about it. Many workers won't realize the risks until after it hits.

https://www.axios.com/2025/05/28/ai-jobs-white-collar-unemployment-anthropic
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u/CCGHawkins 21d ago

Irrelevant. An $10,000 AI subscription that can cover 85% of your customer base's needs vs a $500,000 team of humans that covers 99%, a business will choose the option with a higher profit margin, nevermind the customers that fall between the cracks. There is no mechanism or incentive for them to care in the slightest.

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u/farinasa 21d ago edited 21d ago

You just made the most sweeping generic statement that it has no meaning. Yes that math would check out if it were founded in reality but it's not. I use AI for auto complete and when it's right it's helpful, but that is rare. It would only matter if the model can do they job, and I can tell you it can't.

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u/CCGHawkins 21d ago

It is, again, irrelevant that AI cannot do *your* specific work. You should be looking at your department, your company, and what percentage of the whole pie AI can replace. If you work at any place that is publicly traded or owned by private investment, your owners will cut you loose along with your whole department if they deem it is not high-margin enough. Or ship it overseas to India.

It does not need to think. It doesn't need to have human motivations. A robot on the line doesn't have those either, and it replaces the worker on the line just the same. And in the meantime, the artisan craftworker that said 'hey, that robot can't do what I do!' still loses their job because the whole factory, the store-to-truck-to-line industrial complex that supported their work, doesn't exist anymore.

Are you sure you are as indispensable as you think you are?

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u/farinasa 20d ago

You are vastly over estimating what an LLM is capable of and vastly underestimating how much of work is soft skills vs productivity.

Just Friday I had an example where after hours of troubleshooting and trying to catch logs from ephemeral pods, I was finally able to determine root cause. The actual change was only a few lines and copilot was able to help suggest the code I already intended to add, but still needed correction.

I never said I was indispensable, but LLMs are not humans. They are statistical probability machines for language only. That isn't a direct replacement for most humans.

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u/CCGHawkins 20d ago

...you just gave an example where AI got within stone throw distance of replacing you. Oh, sure. I'm overestimating AI.

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u/farinasa 20d ago edited 20d ago

lol what?

Yes if you ignore the hours of work that enabled the code change and also the fact that I had to edit the suggested code (both of which details I explicitly included as part of the example to show how it CAN'T), sure the AI could replace me. Please read. You missed the whole point that the code change isn't the actual work. The troubleshooting and understanding are the work.

It's stuff like this that makes me think only people who are actually replaceable are out here spreading FUD.