Working in big tech and the writing on the wall for our kids

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work in big tech and what I am learning every day about the future of AI is so so concerning when it comes to our kids future.

The vast majority of what we do in white collar jobs is about to become obsolete. Our kids will largely either vibe code their way to solopreneurship, be part of the 2% of people who might get a rare ‘corporate job’, do something you need a physical body for, learn to invest or be without income. College is going to be overhauled and in many ways no longer necessary

Jamie dimon is correct that countries need to quickly make it illegal to fire your whole workforce and replace with AI, so we can buy time to figure out what the f to do.

In the meantime we are moving and saving hard. Truly a nuts situation that I think people are only just starting to grasp

So, OP, why are you plotting to make the world worse for kids? Kind of short sighted isn’t it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ll believe it when I see it.

AI still hallucinates like crazy and needs a lot of prompt engineering and training to do anything useful.

The notion that AI can replace “the vast majority of what we do in white collar jobs” is kind of laughable.

Yes, it will replace some things.

But it is very unlikely to replace the “vast majority” of people.

You're wrong. Google anything about this and read. This is a real thing that is happening.

Ok, let’s take one example.

Explain to me how AI will replace lawyers.

I’m not talking about AI being incorporated into legal workflows.

I mean a world in which we have no lawyers because AI is doing all legal work.

Will an AI agent represent a client in court?

What about doctors? Professors?

Will kids enter a classroom and be taught by an AI agent?

AI is not going to release all layers and doctors etc. but it’s going to greatly diminish the numbers of them.

Instead of 5 attorneys writing briefs you have AI write 5 briefs and then 1 attorney fact/law check it. Also while there are hallucinations now, exponential learning means AI will improve faster than we can adapt.

You will still have doctors, but they will be using AI to scour your treatment records and medical journals plus do much of your charting. Insurance companies will now expect doctors to see more patients more quickly. And this is already happening with PE getting into owning medical practices.

There are going to be fewer a fewer paths for normal people to build wealth and have professional careers.

I am a first gen college grad turned lawyer. My dad moved from blue collar to managerial blue collar work and my mom was a SAHM. I became a lawyer. I had hoped my kids will have a similar income and lifestyle as me, so I find it depressing that just 1 generation later they are now being expected to go into blue collar work again. The ownership class is going to keep us laboring for them as cheaply as they can and supplement heavily with AI unless we start legislating something soon.

This is such a great example of how the tech guys don't understand other fields that aren't structured like tech and don't scale like tech.

Law is not predominantly brief writing, and you do not write a brief (or anything else) in a closed box. Yes, there will be changes and probably efficiencies with new tech, just as email and word processing replaced most courier services and typing pools. But you will not see significantly fewer lawyers, sorry.

And, I don't think law is special in that way. I think most industries are dissimilar to tech.

I think it is more similar than you think. In my company, we’ve reduced headcount of lawyers because we don’t need as many. The number isn’t significant in my company (maybe reduction of 5 people right now), but multiply across companies, and parts of the company (it’s definitely not just legal where this is happening) and it will have a meaningful impact on jobs

+1 I'm an attorney and practice in an area that should be safe. If I were a trusts and estates attorney, I'd be very concerned. There's zero reason to pay an attorney to draft those documents when AI can do it for you. The days of enormous hourly rates are also going to be over because clients certainly aren't going to want to pay those fees anymore, even if they still want an attorney.

WSJ just had an article yesterday about how lawyer rates are higher than ever. Some are charging $3,400 an hour up from $2,500 just 18 months ago.

DP. I read that and those are outliers. Those are partners with highly specialized skill sets and large, high-profile clients. Your average partner in DC is not charging that much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ll believe it when I see it.

AI still hallucinates like crazy and needs a lot of prompt engineering and training to do anything useful.

The notion that AI can replace “the vast majority of what we do in white collar jobs” is kind of laughable.

Yes, it will replace some things.

But it is very unlikely to replace the “vast majority” of people.

You're wrong. Google anything about this and read. This is a real thing that is happening.

Ok, let’s take one example.

Explain to me how AI will replace lawyers.

I’m not talking about AI being incorporated into legal workflows.

I mean a world in which we have no lawyers because AI is doing all legal work.

Will an AI agent represent a client in court?

What about doctors? Professors?

Will kids enter a classroom and be taught by an AI agent?

AI is not going to release all layers and doctors etc. but it’s going to greatly diminish the numbers of them.

Instead of 5 attorneys writing briefs you have AI write 5 briefs and then 1 attorney fact/law check it. Also while there are hallucinations now, exponential learning means AI will improve faster than we can adapt.

You will still have doctors, but they will be using AI to scour your treatment records and medical journals plus do much of your charting. Insurance companies will now expect doctors to see more patients more quickly. And this is already happening with PE getting into owning medical practices.

There are going to be fewer a fewer paths for normal people to build wealth and have professional careers.

I am a first gen college grad turned lawyer. My dad moved from blue collar to managerial blue collar work and my mom was a SAHM. I became a lawyer. I had hoped my kids will have a similar income and lifestyle as me, so I find it depressing that just 1 generation later they are now being expected to go into blue collar work again. The ownership class is going to keep us laboring for them as cheaply as they can and supplement heavily with AI unless we start legislating something soon.

This is such a great example of how the tech guys don't understand other fields that aren't structured like tech and don't scale like tech.

Law is not predominantly brief writing, and you do not write a brief (or anything else) in a closed box. Yes, there will be changes and probably efficiencies with new tech, just as email and word processing replaced most courier services and typing pools. But you will not see significantly fewer lawyers, sorry.

And, I don't think law is special in that way. I think most industries are dissimilar to tech.

I think it is more similar than you think. In my company, we’ve reduced headcount of lawyers because we don’t need as many. The number isn’t significant in my company (maybe reduction of 5 people right now), but multiply across companies, and parts of the company (it’s definitely not just legal where this is happening) and it will have a meaningful impact on jobs

+1 I'm an attorney and practice in an area that should be safe. If I were a trusts and estates attorney, I'd be very concerned. There's zero reason to pay an attorney to draft those documents when AI can do it for you. The days of enormous hourly rates are also going to be over because clients certainly aren't going to want to pay those fees anymore, even if they still want an attorney.

WSJ just had an article yesterday about how lawyer rates are higher than ever. Some are charging $3,400 an hour up from $2,500 just 18 months ago.

DP. I read that and those are outliers. Those are partners with highly specialized skill sets and large, high-profile clients. Your average partner in DC is not charging that much.

You added nothing to the conversation.

[Anonymous]

I'm running a small business and we're up 50% in revenue Q1. No vibe coding needed to start a business

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ll believe it when I see it.

AI still hallucinates like crazy and needs a lot of prompt engineering and training to do anything useful.

The notion that AI can replace “the vast majority of what we do in white collar jobs” is kind of laughable.

Yes, it will replace some things.

But it is very unlikely to replace the “vast majority” of people.

You're wrong. Google anything about this and read. This is a real thing that is happening.

Ok, let’s take one example.

Explain to me how AI will replace lawyers.

I’m not talking about AI being incorporated into legal workflows.

I mean a world in which we have no lawyers because AI is doing all legal work.

Will an AI agent represent a client in court?

What about doctors? Professors?

Will kids enter a classroom and be taught by an AI agent?

No of course not all of them, but it will greatly reduce the numbers. In law, many small claims will definitely be handled by AI - that is already being tried in arbitration and it is very effective. That will expand, and eventually only the most complex cases will be tried before a jury and you won’t need many people for that. Same in medicine - you will certainly still need nurses and carers, and you will need some doctors, but many aspects of care/surgery/diagnosis will be able to be handled even more effectively by AI. Again, already happening to a significant degree in radiography, in surgery, and in patient admin.
There will still be jobs in these fields but there will not be as many. And the part that makes it different to anything the world has seen before is that these changes are happening across literally all industries at the same time. So it’s not like people in one industry can retrain and pivot to another because every industry is facing the same situation.

AI is not reducing the need for humans in surgery to any degree, at this time. There could be a day in the future that yet-to-be designed robots would operate with future AI, but not at this point.

— one of the busiest surgical departments at a major teaching hospital

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work in law and AI is constantly hallucinating things. How is this going to replace anyone at all?

Same.

[Anonymous]

The rich will need actual people to support their luxury. Lots of Ivy educated personal assistants to physically fetch the coffee, state school help to pack the skis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ll believe it when I see it.

AI still hallucinates like crazy and needs a lot of prompt engineering and training to do anything useful.

The notion that AI can replace “the vast majority of what we do in white collar jobs” is kind of laughable.

Yes, it will replace some things.

But it is very unlikely to replace the “vast majority” of people.

You're wrong. Google anything about this and read. This is a real thing that is happening.

Ok, let’s take one example.

Explain to me how AI will replace lawyers.

I’m not talking about AI being incorporated into legal workflows.

I mean a world in which we have no lawyers because AI is doing all legal work.

Will an AI agent represent a client in court?

What about doctors? Professors?

Will kids enter a classroom and be taught by an AI agent?

AI is not going to release all layers and doctors etc. but it’s going to greatly diminish the numbers of them.

Instead of 5 attorneys writing briefs you have AI write 5 briefs and then 1 attorney fact/law check it. Also while there are hallucinations now, exponential learning means AI will improve faster than we can adapt.

You will still have doctors, but they will be using AI to scour your treatment records and medical journals plus do much of your charting. Insurance companies will now expect doctors to see more patients more quickly. And this is already happening with PE getting into owning medical practices.

There are going to be fewer a fewer paths for normal people to build wealth and have professional careers.

I am a first gen college grad turned lawyer. My dad moved from blue collar to managerial blue collar work and my mom was a SAHM. I became a lawyer. I had hoped my kids will have a similar income and lifestyle as me, so I find it depressing that just 1 generation later they are now being expected to go into blue collar work again. The ownership class is going to keep us laboring for them as cheaply as they can and supplement heavily with AI unless we start legislating something soon.

This is such a great example of how the tech guys don't understand other fields that aren't structured like tech and don't scale like tech.

Law is not predominantly brief writing, and you do not write a brief (or anything else) in a closed box. Yes, there will be changes and probably efficiencies with new tech, just as email and word processing replaced most courier services and typing pools. But you will not see significantly fewer lawyers, sorry.

And, I don't think law is special in that way. I think most industries are dissimilar to tech.

I think it is more similar than you think. In my company, we’ve reduced headcount of lawyers because we don’t need as many. The number isn’t significant in my company (maybe reduction of 5 people right now), but multiply across companies, and parts of the company (it’s definitely not just legal where this is happening) and it will have a meaningful impact on jobs

+1 I'm an attorney and practice in an area that should be safe. If I were a trusts and estates attorney, I'd be very concerned. There's zero reason to pay an attorney to draft those documents when AI can do it for you. The days of enormous hourly rates are also going to be over because clients certainly aren't going to want to pay those fees anymore, even if they still want an attorney.

You can do simple estate documents (adequate for most people) with a template already, and that has been true for decades: an AI gloss on a template is not changing the market. AI isn't capable of doing the more complicated planning.
Most lawyers know that drafting is not the bulk of the work - lots of specialties use templates or reuse past documents to get started. The thinking, the reasoning by analogy, and the client interaction are most of the job.

[Anonymous]

If AI is so amazing, why can’t any of the chatbots these companies put on their websites answer or even understand my questions? I have just defaulted to typing “representative” rather than dealing with them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ll believe it when I see it.

AI still hallucinates like crazy and needs a lot of prompt engineering and training to do anything useful.

The notion that AI can replace “the vast majority of what we do in white collar jobs” is kind of laughable.

Yes, it will replace some things.

But it is very unlikely to replace the “vast majority” of people.

You're wrong. Google anything about this and read. This is a real thing that is happening.

Ok, let’s take one example.

Explain to me how AI will replace lawyers.

I’m not talking about AI being incorporated into legal workflows.

I mean a world in which we have no lawyers because AI is doing all legal work.

Will an AI agent represent a client in court?

What about doctors? Professors?

Will kids enter a classroom and be taught by an AI agent?

AI is not going to release all layers and doctors etc. but it’s going to greatly diminish the numbers of them.

Instead of 5 attorneys writing briefs you have AI write 5 briefs and then 1 attorney fact/law check it. Also while there are hallucinations now, exponential learning means AI will improve faster than we can adapt.

You will still have doctors, but they will be using AI to scour your treatment records and medical journals plus do much of your charting. Insurance companies will now expect doctors to see more patients more quickly. And this is already happening with PE getting into owning medical practices.

There are going to be fewer a fewer paths for normal people to build wealth and have professional careers.

I am a first gen college grad turned lawyer. My dad moved from blue collar to managerial blue collar work and my mom was a SAHM. I became a lawyer. I had hoped my kids will have a similar income and lifestyle as me, so I find it depressing that just 1 generation later they are now being expected to go into blue collar work again. The ownership class is going to keep us laboring for them as cheaply as they can and supplement heavily with AI unless we start legislating something soon.

This is such a great example of how the tech guys don't understand other fields that aren't structured like tech and don't scale like tech.

Law is not predominantly brief writing, and you do not write a brief (or anything else) in a closed box. Yes, there will be changes and probably efficiencies with new tech, just as email and word processing replaced most courier services and typing pools. But you will not see significantly fewer lawyers, sorry.

And, I don't think law is special in that way. I think most industries are dissimilar to tech.

I think it is more similar than you think. In my company, we’ve reduced headcount of lawyers because we don’t need as many. The number isn’t significant in my company (maybe reduction of 5 people right now), but multiply across companies, and parts of the company (it’s definitely not just legal where this is happening) and it will have a meaningful impact on jobs

+1 I'm an attorney and practice in an area that should be safe. If I were a trusts and estates attorney, I'd be very concerned. There's zero reason to pay an attorney to draft those documents when AI can do it for you. The days of enormous hourly rates are also going to be over because clients certainly aren't going to want to pay those fees anymore, even if they still want an attorney.

You can do simple estate documents (adequate for most people) with a template already, and that has been true for decades: an AI gloss on a template is not changing the market. AI isn't capable of doing the more complicated planning.
Most lawyers know that drafting is not the bulk of the work - lots of specialties use templates or reuse past documents to get started. The thinking, the reasoning by analogy, and the client interaction are most of the job.

Agreed. When I was an Army JAG 20 year ago, we had software that wrote wills for us. I am sure law firms have been using similar software for a long time. But you need to be able actually understand the rules and various instruments to put together a complicated estate plan. The software can write the document, but it can’t do the thinking or know what to ask the client.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ll believe it when I see it.

AI still hallucinates like crazy and needs a lot of prompt engineering and training to do anything useful.

The notion that AI can replace “the vast majority of what we do in white collar jobs” is kind of laughable.

Yes, it will replace some things.

But it is very unlikely to replace the “vast majority” of people.

You're wrong. Google anything about this and read. This is a real thing that is happening.

Ok, let’s take one example.

Explain to me how AI will replace lawyers.

I’m not talking about AI being incorporated into legal workflows.

I mean a world in which we have no lawyers because AI is doing all legal work.

Will an AI agent represent a client in court?

What about doctors? Professors?

Will kids enter a classroom and be taught by an AI agent?

AI is not going to release all layers and doctors etc. but it’s going to greatly diminish the numbers of them.

Instead of 5 attorneys writing briefs you have AI write 5 briefs and then 1 attorney fact/law check it. Also while there are hallucinations now, exponential learning means AI will improve faster than we can adapt.

You will still have doctors, but they will be using AI to scour your treatment records and medical journals plus do much of your charting. Insurance companies will now expect doctors to see more patients more quickly. And this is already happening with PE getting into owning medical practices.

There are going to be fewer a fewer paths for normal people to build wealth and have professional careers.

I am a first gen college grad turned lawyer. My dad moved from blue collar to managerial blue collar work and my mom was a SAHM. I became a lawyer. I had hoped my kids will have a similar income and lifestyle as me, so I find it depressing that just 1 generation later they are now being expected to go into blue collar work again. The ownership class is going to keep us laboring for them as cheaply as they can and supplement heavily with AI unless we start legislating something soon.

This is such a great example of how the tech guys don't understand other fields that aren't structured like tech and don't scale like tech.

Law is not predominantly brief writing, and you do not write a brief (or anything else) in a closed box. Yes, there will be changes and probably efficiencies with new tech, just as email and word processing replaced most courier services and typing pools. But you will not see significantly fewer lawyers, sorry.

And, I don't think law is special in that way. I think most industries are dissimilar to tech.

I think it is more similar than you think. In my company, we’ve reduced headcount of lawyers because we don’t need as many. The number isn’t significant in my company (maybe reduction of 5 people right now), but multiply across companies, and parts of the company (it’s definitely not just legal where this is happening) and it will have a meaningful impact on jobs

+1 I'm an attorney and practice in an area that should be safe. If I were a trusts and estates attorney, I'd be very concerned. There's zero reason to pay an attorney to draft those documents when AI can do it for you. The days of enormous hourly rates are also going to be over because clients certainly aren't going to want to pay those fees anymore, even if they still want an attorney.

You can do simple estate documents (adequate for most people) with a template already, and that has been true for decades: an AI gloss on a template is not changing the market. AI isn't capable of doing the more complicated planning.
Most lawyers know that drafting is not the bulk of the work - lots of specialties use templates or reuse past documents to get started. The thinking, the reasoning by analogy, and the client interaction are most of the job.

This. I'm sure that there is software where you can enter basic information about yourself, your estate, and your beneficiaries and answer a few questions about what happens if A predeceases B or whatnot, that will spit out a reasonably decent will, using a traditional model of rules-based coding, written and tested by humans. Like how tax software converts those IRS forms into a navigable series of questions for the user to input. Why introduce AI into that, which introduces the possibility of mistakes, when good old "if a, then b" coding works well for that kind of thing?

[Anonymous]

Our kids will adapt to the needs of their generation. It won’t look the same as your “big tech” job the same way your job doesn’t look the same as your mom or dad’s did. I once read a statistic (years ago, nothing to do with AI) that 50% of today’s jobs will not exist in 10 years.

Also, this is an aside, but AI needs to get a whole lot smarter before it can replace experts in certain fields. In many industries, the results we’ve seen from AI have been underwhelming at best.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ll believe it when I see it.

AI still hallucinates like crazy and needs a lot of prompt engineering and training to do anything useful.

The notion that AI can replace “the vast majority of what we do in white collar jobs” is kind of laughable.

Yes, it will replace some things.

But it is very unlikely to replace the “vast majority” of people.

You're wrong. Google anything about this and read. This is a real thing that is happening.

Ok, let’s take one example.

Explain to me how AI will replace lawyers.

I’m not talking about AI being incorporated into legal workflows.

I mean a world in which we have no lawyers because AI is doing all legal work.

Will an AI agent represent a client in court?

What about doctors? Professors?

Will kids enter a classroom and be taught by an AI agent?

AI is not going to release all layers and doctors etc. but it’s going to greatly diminish the numbers of them.

Instead of 5 attorneys writing briefs you have AI write 5 briefs and then 1 attorney fact/law check it. Also while there are hallucinations now, exponential learning means AI will improve faster than we can adapt.

You will still have doctors, but they will be using AI to scour your treatment records and medical journals plus do much of your charting. Insurance companies will now expect doctors to see more patients more quickly. And this is already happening with PE getting into owning medical practices.

There are going to be fewer a fewer paths for normal people to build wealth and have professional careers.

I am a first gen college grad turned lawyer. My dad moved from blue collar to managerial blue collar work and my mom was a SAHM. I became a lawyer. I had hoped my kids will have a similar income and lifestyle as me, so I find it depressing that just 1 generation later they are now being expected to go into blue collar work again. The ownership class is going to keep us laboring for them as cheaply as they can and supplement heavily with AI unless we start legislating something soon.

This is such a great example of how the tech guys don't understand other fields that aren't structured like tech and don't scale like tech.

Law is not predominantly brief writing, and you do not write a brief (or anything else) in a closed box. Yes, there will be changes and probably efficiencies with new tech, just as email and word processing replaced most courier services and typing pools. But you will not see significantly fewer lawyers, sorry.

And, I don't think law is special in that way. I think most industries are dissimilar to tech.

I think it is more similar than you think. In my company, we’ve reduced headcount of lawyers because we don’t need as many. The number isn’t significant in my company (maybe reduction of 5 people right now), but multiply across companies, and parts of the company (it’s definitely not just legal where this is happening) and it will have a meaningful impact on jobs

+1 I'm an attorney and practice in an area that should be safe. If I were a trusts and estates attorney, I'd be very concerned. There's zero reason to pay an attorney to draft those documents when AI can do it for you. The days of enormous hourly rates are also going to be over because clients certainly aren't going to want to pay those fees anymore, even if they still want an attorney.

Just this week my estate lawyer read me an AI-generated response when we were trying to figure something out. I was like, "Um, I don't think we should be relying on AI. Let's read the actual reg."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ll believe it when I see it.

AI still hallucinates like crazy and needs a lot of prompt engineering and training to do anything useful.

The notion that AI can replace “the vast majority of what we do in white collar jobs” is kind of laughable.

Yes, it will replace some things.

But it is very unlikely to replace the “vast majority” of people.

You're wrong. Google anything about this and read. This is a real thing that is happening.

Ok, let’s take one example.

Explain to me how AI will replace lawyers.

I’m not talking about AI being incorporated into legal workflows.

I mean a world in which we have no lawyers because AI is doing all legal work.

Will an AI agent represent a client in court?

What about doctors? Professors?

Will kids enter a classroom and be taught by an AI agent?

AI is not going to release all layers and doctors etc. but it’s going to greatly diminish the numbers of them.

Instead of 5 attorneys writing briefs you have AI write 5 briefs and then 1 attorney fact/law check it. Also while there are hallucinations now, exponential learning means AI will improve faster than we can adapt.

You will still have doctors, but they will be using AI to scour your treatment records and medical journals plus do much of your charting. Insurance companies will now expect doctors to see more patients more quickly. And this is already happening with PE getting into owning medical practices.

There are going to be fewer a fewer paths for normal people to build wealth and have professional careers.

I am a first gen college grad turned lawyer. My dad moved from blue collar to managerial blue collar work and my mom was a SAHM. I became a lawyer. I had hoped my kids will have a similar income and lifestyle as me, so I find it depressing that just 1 generation later they are now being expected to go into blue collar work again. The ownership class is going to keep us laboring for them as cheaply as they can and supplement heavily with AI unless we start legislating something soon.

This is such a great example of how the tech guys don't understand other fields that aren't structured like tech and don't scale like tech.

Law is not predominantly brief writing, and you do not write a brief (or anything else) in a closed box. Yes, there will be changes and probably efficiencies with new tech, just as email and word processing replaced most courier services and typing pools. But you will not see significantly fewer lawyers, sorry.

And, I don't think law is special in that way. I think most industries are dissimilar to tech.

I think it is more similar than you think. In my company, we’ve reduced headcount of lawyers because we don’t need as many. The number isn’t significant in my company (maybe reduction of 5 people right now), but multiply across companies, and parts of the company (it’s definitely not just legal where this is happening) and it will have a meaningful impact on jobs

+1 I'm an attorney and practice in an area that should be safe. If I were a trusts and estates attorney, I'd be very concerned. There's zero reason to pay an attorney to draft those documents when AI can do it for you. The days of enormous hourly rates are also going to be over because clients certainly aren't going to want to pay those fees anymore, even if they still want an attorney.

You can do simple estate documents (adequate for most people) with a template already, and that has been true for decades: an AI gloss on a template is not changing the market. AI isn't capable of doing the more complicated planning.
Most lawyers know that drafting is not the bulk of the work - lots of specialties use templates or reuse past documents to get started. The thinking, the reasoning by analogy, and the client interaction are most of the job.

This. I'm sure that there is software where you can enter basic information about yourself, your estate, and your beneficiaries and answer a few questions about what happens if A predeceases B or whatnot, that will spit out a reasonably decent will, using a traditional model of rules-based coding, written and tested by humans. Like how tax software converts those IRS forms into a navigable series of questions for the user to input. Why introduce AI into that, which introduces the possibility of mistakes, when good old "if a, then b" coding works well for that kind of thing?

The bolded is one of my main frustrations with all the AI discourse. So many of the tasks people describe using AI to do are things you can already do just as quickly with older technological tools. Boring, but reliable and pretty quick.

What I can't figure out is why people get so emotional about pushing AI for these tasks. Some people have invested obscene amounts of money in it, sure, but they're presumably not on DCUM. So why the daily threads about AI and all-caps ranting about how dumb you are if you don't use AI to do something copy-paste can do?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ll believe it when I see it.

AI still hallucinates like crazy and needs a lot of prompt engineering and training to do anything useful.

The notion that AI can replace “the vast majority of what we do in white collar jobs” is kind of laughable.

Yes, it will replace some things.

But it is very unlikely to replace the “vast majority” of people.

You're wrong. Google anything about this and read. This is a real thing that is happening.

Ok, let’s take one example.

Explain to me how AI will replace lawyers.

I’m not talking about AI being incorporated into legal workflows.

I mean a world in which we have no lawyers because AI is doing all legal work.

Will an AI agent represent a client in court?

What about doctors? Professors?

Will kids enter a classroom and be taught by an AI agent?

AI is not going to release all layers and doctors etc. but it’s going to greatly diminish the numbers of them.

Instead of 5 attorneys writing briefs you have AI write 5 briefs and then 1 attorney fact/law check it. Also while there are hallucinations now, exponential learning means AI will improve faster than we can adapt.

You will still have doctors, but they will be using AI to scour your treatment records and medical journals plus do much of your charting. Insurance companies will now expect doctors to see more patients more quickly. And this is already happening with PE getting into owning medical practices.

There are going to be fewer a fewer paths for normal people to build wealth and have professional careers.

I am a first gen college grad turned lawyer. My dad moved from blue collar to managerial blue collar work and my mom was a SAHM. I became a lawyer. I had hoped my kids will have a similar income and lifestyle as me, so I find it depressing that just 1 generation later they are now being expected to go into blue collar work again. The ownership class is going to keep us laboring for them as cheaply as they can and supplement heavily with AI unless we start legislating something soon.

This is such a great example of how the tech guys don't understand other fields that aren't structured like tech and don't scale like tech.

Law is not predominantly brief writing, and you do not write a brief (or anything else) in a closed box. Yes, there will be changes and probably efficiencies with new tech, just as email and word processing replaced most courier services and typing pools. But you will not see significantly fewer lawyers, sorry.

And, I don't think law is special in that way. I think most industries are dissimilar to tech.

I think it is more similar than you think. In my company, we’ve reduced headcount of lawyers because we don’t need as many. The number isn’t significant in my company (maybe reduction of 5 people right now), but multiply across companies, and parts of the company (it’s definitely not just legal where this is happening) and it will have a meaningful impact on jobs

+1 I'm an attorney and practice in an area that should be safe. If I were a trusts and estates attorney, I'd be very concerned. There's zero reason to pay an attorney to draft those documents when AI can do it for you. The days of enormous hourly rates are also going to be over because clients certainly aren't going to want to pay those fees anymore, even if they still want an attorney.

WSJ just had an article yesterday about how lawyer rates are higher than ever. Some are charging $3,400 an hour up from $2,500 just 18 months ago.

DP. I read that and those are outliers. Those are partners with highly specialized skill sets and large, high-profile clients. Your average partner in DC is not charging that much.

It said associates at the big law firms are now at $1,000 to $2,000.

I get that BigLaw is probably only 10% if lawyers…but it’s not just 10 lawyers charging crazy rates.