AI Jobpocalypse - Another angle of class warfare

[Anonymous]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/podcasts/hardfork-ai-jobpocalypse.html

So the extremely wealthy tech glitterati and all industry CEOs are all pushing for the development and deployment of AI and AI agents to take over the work of white collar workers. They are ignoring the long term problem where a junior entry level team can be replaced by a mid-level with a team -- long term there wont be a pipeline to have mid-levels working up from entry level, but they are betting that AI will advance and eventually it will be the board of directors, CEO, some sales guys, and an army of AI agents at every corporation in the country.

That is the future it seems like, unless you are a nepo baby (Hard Fork calls out to Gracie Abrams, but honestly I feel like there are a lot more generational pipelines in all industries but maybe its just more visible with the internet) or rich enough to start your own company and thus catapult to the CEO class (the podcast talks about Stanford grads forgoing HFT jobs and similar to instead found a company before all jobs go away).

I feel bad for our kids, as we are barely middle class, and came from LMC families so its just us propping up our children away from destitution if jobs really are gone forever.

Queue the plumber and trades proponents, who don't understand that a) we all can't be in the trades, the work just doesn't scale like that, and there is a finite demand for trade work which will shrink as their are fewer white collars working looking to hire them and b) everyone going into trades will crush the wages and the economy as its not light you can export expertise in fixing toilets.

[Anonymous]

Once the AIocalypse happens, who will all these companies sell things to? If no one has jobs, how will they buy cars, vacations, clothes, movies, electronics, homes, shoes, and basically every consumable product possible?

Even non-white collar jobs will get slammed. Who's going to hire all of the electricians, plumbers, carparenters, masons, etc. when no one has money for things like home repairs due to job loss?

Corporate America will get what it wants with AI rollout, but then they'll cry later with a shocked Pikachu face when the entire economy tanks because no one has money anymore to buy anything.

AI will actually devolve the world. Get ready to go back to agrarian societies where no one participates in a money based society. We will all have to grow our own stuff and barter with each other for good and services.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Once the AIocalypse happens, who will all these companies sell things to? If no one has jobs, how will they buy cars, vacations, clothes, movies, electronics, homes, shoes, and basically every consumable product possible?

Even non-white collar jobs will get slammed. Who's going to hire all of the electricians, plumbers, carparenters, masons, etc. when no one has money for things like home repairs due to job loss?

Corporate America will get what it wants with AI rollout, but then they'll cry later with a shocked Pikachu face when the entire economy tanks because no one has money anymore to buy anything.

AI will actually devolve the world. Get ready to go back to agrarian societies where no one participates in a money based society. We will all have to grow our own stuff and barter with each other for good and services.

We are looking at Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Once the AIocalypse happens, who will all these companies sell things to? If no one has jobs, how will they buy cars, vacations, clothes, movies, electronics, homes, shoes, and basically every consumable product possible?

Even non-white collar jobs will get slammed. Who's going to hire all of the electricians, plumbers, carparenters, masons, etc. when no one has money for things like home repairs due to job loss?

Corporate America will get what it wants with AI rollout, but then they'll cry later with a shocked Pikachu face when the entire economy tanks because no one has money anymore to buy anything.

AI will actually devolve the world. Get ready to go back to agrarian societies where no one participates in a money based society. We will all have to grow our own stuff and barter with each other for good and services.

According to Musk, we will have UBI at that point, but not if Rs are in power, which will mean we will be living a la Mad Max per the PPs.

[Anonymous]

https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-cpo-computer-science-degree-coding-important-skills-project-managers-2025-5

Microsoft's chief product officer of experiences and devices says people should keep learning to code.
Computer science isn't dead, Aparna Chennapragada said on a podcast, and engineer roles will endure.

If anything, I think we've always had higher and higher layers of abstraction in programming," she added.

But, yes, low level programming has been going out of fashion in the US for a while now. It's either been offshored or now being taken over by AI, though someone still needs to operate and QA the AI generated code.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-cpo-computer-science-degree-coding-important-skills-project-managers-2025-5

Microsoft's chief product officer of experiences and devices says people should keep learning to code.
Computer science isn't dead, Aparna Chennapragada said on a podcast, and engineer roles will endure.

If anything, I think we've always had higher and higher layers of abstraction in programming," she added.

But, yes, low level programming has been going out of fashion in the US for a while now. It's either been offshored or now being taken over by AI, though someone still needs to operate and QA the AI generated code.

to add.. which is why she said we need "software operators".

Chennapragada said it was possible that, in the future, we'd think of software engineers more as software operators, but the role itself was unlikely to disappear.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Once the AIocalypse happens, who will all these companies sell things to? If no one has jobs, how will they buy cars, vacations, clothes, movies, electronics, homes, shoes, and basically every consumable product possible?

That's what I wonder, too. If people don't earn money at jobs, how will they buy anything?

[Anonymous]

OP I am in an adjacent field to AI and I agree 100%. This is super scary and no one is talking about it. It will shift society and economies in a cataclysmic way and will be here even before climate change.

[Anonymous]

I’m tired of these threads. If it truly gets to a point where no one can get a job, there is no money for food, fighting in the streets, whatever, I’d just shoot myself. But there is nothing we can do about this.

[Anonymous]

Here are some things we know -

The tech industry is driven by hyperbole and promises of absurd growth. Wall Street loves eliminating jobs and automation. Companies that are tech focused, or are actively incorporating tech advances, are viewed favorably. Everyone in this situation has a strong incentive to play up continued advances now matter how specious.

We also know that we do not even understand intelligence, a fact that AI researches are frustrated about, having been waiting for quite some time more insight into how to construct an artificial equivalent. The current batch of models impress with their language ability on face value. However, they're already levered up the extreme in terms of data, resource consumption, and fiddling with the underlying model architecture. Unlike previous advances in tech like the web and smartphones, there is no clear path forward to continued advancement. The companies working on the models are burning many billions attempting to lure people in, however, still no killer product. Disappointing usage given the amount of growth that needs to occur to plausibly one day turn a profit.

The models perform text completions. There is 0 intelligence or reasoning ability. They can plausibly automate some tasks with a human in the loop. The industry will throw out terms such as 'reasoning' and 'agents', but it is essentially the same models just 'talking' to each other and not any form of intelligence. The industry will continue to try and ride the hype hoping someone, somewhere, has a breakthrough. The odds are the bubble pops and these companies go bankrupt/divest (as we already see evidence of them doing).

Where's the AGI again? Next year? Again next year? The year after?

[Anonymous]

Technofeudalists want you to be a digital serf. They are working very hard to make that happen. 10 companies own all of the AI infrastructure and we will all be beholden to them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Once the AIocalypse happens, who will all these companies sell things to? If no one has jobs, how will they buy cars, vacations, clothes, movies, electronics, homes, shoes, and basically every consumable product possible?

That's what I wonder, too. If people don't earn money at jobs, how will they buy anything?

They want a Universal Basic Income. Essentially we will all get $20,000 a year to live on and they will have all the money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Once the AIocalypse happens, who will all these companies sell things to? If no one has jobs, how will they buy cars, vacations, clothes, movies, electronics, homes, shoes, and basically every consumable product possible?

That's what I wonder, too. If people don't earn money at jobs, how will they buy anything?

They want a Universal Basic Income. Essentially we will all get $20,000 a year to live on and they will have all the money.

That’s not even enough to pay my mortgage. So are they planning on just foreclosing all houses? Who will have money to buy these houses? So the rich people snap them up, but they won’t be able to rent them or resell them.

[Anonymous]

You also have to consider that as AI becomes smarter, the average human will become dumber, reinforcing our dependency on AI.

Relatedly, I don't understand why the likes of Elon want more humans. What is the point, when there will be fewer jobs for humans, and we will all have less money to consume all of his products?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m tired of these threads. If it truly gets to a point where no one can get a job, there is no money for food, fighting in the streets, whatever, I’d just shoot myself. But there is nothing we can do about this.

I’m tired of these, too. It’s every day a new doomsday thread about AI…I feel like it’s a bit of something. I posted about this but my post was removed.
What is the bot hoping to achieve?