499
submitted 11 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

The AI boom is screwing over Gen Z | ChatGPT is commandeering the mundane tasks that young employees have relied on to advance their careers.::ChatGPT is commandeering the tasks that young employees rely on to advance their careers. That's going to crush Gen Z's career path.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] Obsession@sh.itjust.works 317 points 11 months ago

The fucked up part isn't that AI work is replacing human work, it's that we're at a place as a society where this is a problem.

More automation and less humans working should be a good thing, not something to fear.

[-] Sheltac@lemmy.world 159 points 11 months ago

But that would require some mechanism for redistributing wealth and taking care if those who choose not to work, and everyone knows that’s communism.

[-] dmention7@lemm.ee 36 points 11 months ago

So much this. The way headlines like this frame the situation is so ass-backwards it makes my brain hurt. In any sane world, we'd be celebrating the automation of mundane tasks as freeing up time and resources to improve our health, happiness, and quality of life instead of wringing our hands about lost livelihoods.

The correct framing is that the money and profits generated by those mundane tasks are still realized, it's just that they are no longer going to workers, but funneled straight to the top. People need to get mad as hell not at the tech, but at those who are leveraging that tech to specifically to deny them opportunity rather than improving their life.

I need a beer. 😐

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 33 points 11 months ago
[-] mosiacmango@lemm.ee 17 points 11 months ago

I think you misspelled "taxes," but its possible your spelling will turn out to be more accurate.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[-] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 69 points 11 months ago

Exactly. This has nothing to do with AI and everything to do with UBI.

But, the rich and plebes alike will push AI as the Boogeyman as a distraction from the real enemy.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 20 points 11 months ago

There's this bizarre right-wing idea that if everyone can afford basic necessities, they won't do anything. To which I say, so what? If you want to live in shitty government housing and survive off of food assistance but not do anything all day, fine. Who cares? Plenty of other people want a higher standard of living than that and will have a job to do so. We just won't have people starving in the street and dying of easily fixable health problems.

load more comments (5 replies)
[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 43 points 11 months ago

It's not even a new thing either.

It used to be that every single piece of fabric was handmade, every book handwritten.

Humans have been losing out on labor since they realized Og was faster at bashing rocks together than anyone else.

It's just a question of if we redistribute the workload. Like turning "full time" down to 6 days a week and eventually 5, or working hours from 12+ to 8hrs. Which inflates the amount of jobs to match availability.

Every single time the wealthy say we can't. But eventually it happens, the longer it takes, the less likely it's peaceful.

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] Aceticon@lemmy.world 26 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

There are both dystopian (a tiny Elite owns the automatons and gets all gains from their work and a massive unemployed Underclass barelly surviving) and utopian (the machines do almost everything for everybody) outcomes for automation and we're firmly in the path for Dystopia.

[-] Cheers@sh.itjust.works 20 points 11 months ago

But how will the rich people afford more submarines to commit suicide in?

[-] foggy@lemmy.world 19 points 11 months ago

Wait you expect a wealthy mammal to share?

[-] legion02@lemmy.world 17 points 11 months ago

The problem, as it almost always is, is greed. Those at the top are trying to keep the value derived from the additional efficiency that ai is going to bring for themselves.

[-] Galluf@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago

This was exactly the problem that Charles Murray pointed out in the bell curve. We're rapidly increasing the complexity of the available jobs (and the successful people can output 1000-1,000,000 times more than simple labor in the world of computers). It's the same concept as the industrial revolution, but to a greater degree.

The problem is that we're taking away the vast majority of the simple jobs. Even working at a fast food place isn't simple.

That alienates a good chunk of the population from being able to perform useful work.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[-] Dnn@lemmy.world 144 points 11 months ago

Bullshit. Learn how to train new hires to do useful work instead of mundane bloat.

[-] Lmaydev@programming.dev 57 points 11 months ago

100% if an AI can do the job just as well (or better) then there's no reason we should be making a person do it.

[-] phario@lemmy.ca 41 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Part of the problem with AI is that it requires significant skill to understand where AI goes wrong.

As a basic example, get a language model like ChatGPT to edit writing. It can go very wrong, removing the wrong words, changing the tone, and making mistakes that an unlearned person does not understand. I’ve had foreign students use AI to write letters or responses and often the tone is all off. That’s one thing but the student doesn’t understand that they’ve written a weird letter. Same goes with grammar checking.

This sets up a dangerous scenario where, to diagnose the results, you need to already have a deep understanding. This is in contrast to non-AI language checkers that are simpler to understand.

Moreover as you can imagine the danger is that the people who are making decisions about hiring and restructuring may not understand this issue.

[-] exbot@lemmy.world 14 points 11 months ago

The good news is this means many of the jobs AI is "taking" will probably come back when people realize it isn't actually as good as the hype implied

[-] astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz 9 points 11 months ago

Not quite. It's more that a job that once had 5-10 people and perhaps an "expert" supervisor will just be whittled down to the expert. Similarly, factories used to employ hundreds and a handful of supervisors to produce a widget. Now, they can employ a couple of supervisors and a handful of robot technicians to produce more widgets.

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 25 points 11 months ago

They don't want to train new hires to begin with. A lot of work that new hires relied on to get a foothold on a job is bloat and chores that nobody wants to do. Because they aren't trusted to take on more responsibility than that yet.

Arguably whole industries exist around work that isn't strictly necessary. Does anyone feel like telemarketing is work that is truly necessary for society? But it provides employment to a lot of people. There's much that will need to change for us to dismiss these roles entirely, but people need to eat every day.

load more comments (3 replies)
[-] PlexSheep@feddit.de 10 points 11 months ago

Exactly this.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] kokiriflute@lemmy.world 114 points 11 months ago

Lol it's not ChatGPT screwing over Gen Z. It's the rich business owners who care more about profits than people.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] Aceticon@lemmy.world 52 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

It was already happenning in things like Software Developmnt with outsourcing: all the entry level stuff was sent away to be done by people who cost a fraction of what even a Junior Dev would cost in the West, and that's exactly the stuff that one starts one's career with.

[-] ExecutorAxon@lemm.ee 18 points 11 months ago

As someone who lives in the east where these jobs are outsourced to, it's not like junior devs here get to work on them either. Most outsourced stuff is assigned to people higher up. The talented juniors are left sitting on the bench as retainer manpower, others are in an endless string of unpaid internships.

The job situation is more similar then you think all over the world

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] RagingNerdoholic@lemmy.ca 49 points 11 months ago

In an ideal world, people would start receiving better and more fulfilling opportunities when their mundane tasks are automated away. But that's way too optimistic and the world is way to cynical. What actually happens is they get shitcanned while the capitalists hoard the profits.

We need a better system. One that, instead of relentlessly churning for the impossibility of infinite growth and funneling wealth upwards, prioritizes personal financial stability and enforces economic equallibrium.

[-] rf_@lemmy.world 47 points 11 months ago

We need to start instituting universal basic income to compensate for the job losses. It’s inevitable. We have to protect the person, not the jobs.

[-] T156@lemmy.world 40 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

So what would that mean for the company itself long-term? If they're not training up their employees, and most of the entry level is replaced by text generator work, there would be a hole as executives and managers move out of the company.

It seems like it would be a recipe for the company to implode after a few years/decades, assuming that that the managerial/executive positions aren't replaced also.

[-] hglman@lemmy.world 49 points 11 months ago

What are these decades? Is that something longer than next quarter?

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] orclev@lemmy.world 16 points 11 months ago

there would be a hole as executives and managers move out of the company.

And why would those executives and managers care about that? They just need to make sure they time their departures to be early enough that those holes don't impact the share prices. Welcome to modern capitalism where the C suites only goal is to make sure they deploy their golden parachute while the company still has enough cash left over to pay them.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (10 replies)
[-] manitcor@lemmy.intai.tech 32 points 11 months ago

governments need to take seriously what we are looking at in the next 40 years. There IS going to be less work, and less need for it. We can no longer play a game of work = virtue and that you must work to live.

If we fail to address this we will be complicit in a slow genocide

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] Shardikprime@lemmy.world 32 points 11 months ago

Bro service industry jobs and similar are booming. Train under a plumber, electrician or gassist and you will be set for years

[-] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 34 points 11 months ago

Go where the future is...HVAC. Soon everyone is going to need AC just to survive.

[-] quantum_mechanic@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago

Which will accelerate the destruction of the planet. Yay!

[-] dimlo@lemmy.world 12 points 11 months ago

Whether you have ac or not, the planet is set on course to be destroyed unless big oil countries suddenly find their kindness to all mankind and stop drilling oil. Which is impossible.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] Steeve@lemmy.ca 22 points 11 months ago

Where I'm from even those jobs pay shitty salaries that haven't kept up with the cost of living. I know electricians who can barely afford rent.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[-] dottedgreenline@lemmy.ml 25 points 11 months ago

The problem is the concept of work hasn't shifted to keep up with the technological reality that has been created. Jobs should slowly be phased out. We need a new economical concept to take hold that doesn't rely solely on class and fear to make it trundle along. Jobs should be what you do to grow your own fruit and veggies for fun, while the administration and maintenance of basically everything should be left to technology. Wealth and wealth accumulation should no longer exist or be seen as anything other than childish and irrelevant.

[-] Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world 16 points 11 months ago

"Haha best I can do is lower wages and more homelessness"

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] jsavage@lemmy.world 18 points 11 months ago

It's not just Gen Z, everyone's jobs are at risk as AI improves and automates away human labor. People who think that with exponential rate of progress of AI there will continue to be an abundance of good jobs are completely delusional. Companies hire people out of necessity, not some goodness of the heart. If machines can do everything humans can do and better, then companies will hire less people and outsource to machines. Sure there will be people working on the bleeding edge of what AI isn't yet capable of, but that's a bar that's only going to get higher and higher as the performance advantage gap of humans over machines reduces.

Of course none of this would be an issue if we had an economic system that aligned technological progress with improved quality of life and human freedom, but instead we cling on to antiquated systems of the past that just disproportionately accrue wealth to a dwindling minority while leaving the rest of civilization at their mercy. Anyone with any brain or sense of integrity realizes how absurd this is, and it's been obvious we need a Universal Basic Income for a long time. The hope I have is that Andrew Yang explained it eloquently 4 years ago and it resonated way stronger than I expected with the American population, so I think in a few years when AI is starting to automate any job where one doesn't need a 160 IQ, people will see the writing on the wall and there will finally be the political capital to implement a UBI.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] hup@lemmy.world 17 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

And the funny part is that ChatGPT isn't good enough at anything to be trusted with doing it alone. You still need an expert on the subject matter to proofread anything that will be seen by the public or used to make a business decision.

[-] DaCookeyMonsta@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago

You can say the same for entry level employees though. I'm not trusting anyone new to post without review.

Granted I rather the company pay someone so they can be taught and eventually become autonomous over time.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] WeaselBoy@lemmy.world 17 points 11 months ago

I think AI is a very good example of science advancing much faster than wisdom in society. I think as these large companies continue to implement AI to increase profits while simultaneous driving out the working class, it’s only going to further drive a wedge between the upper and lower class. I foresee a “dark age” of AI characterized by large unemployment and a renewed fight focus on human rights. We might already be seeing the early stages of this in some industries like fast food and with the Hollywood strikes.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] plutolink@sh.itjust.works 13 points 11 months ago

There's something that a person close to me said about certain tech/features that stuck with me and seems to click here, it was: "A lot of it just stops you from using your brain."

load more comments (9 replies)
[-] const_void@lemmy.ml 13 points 11 months ago

Good thing our governments are totally on top of making sure this doesn't cause some kind of crisis /s

load more comments (9 replies)
[-] black_forest_gummies@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago

I am a software engineer and I frequently find myself admiring getting things done without requiring an internet connection. Access to information and instant communication is amazing but it’s also overwhelming. I really wouldn’t mind living in a simpler time

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago

I consider myself, at best, a medior profile in my industry (IT). ChatGPT with GPT-4 (at least the initial version of it) was completely capable of doing EVERYTHING I need to do daily for my job. And probably faster and with much fewer mistakes.

That simply tells me it's a guarantee my job's gone in a matter of time. Whether that's one year or five remains to be seen, but it's inevitable.

[-] Shapillon@lemmy.world 14 points 11 months ago

Otoh one of my friends is an IT teacher and there are regular issues with students blindly following dumb chatGPT advice.

Recently, one had removed their fstab directory 🤣

ChatGPT is very good at giving advice that sounds good but it still has absolutely no understanding about what it says. The quintessential child of a politician and a manager...

[-] bouh@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago

Good! We will finally free people of work!

[-] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 11 points 11 months ago

Great, free to starve in a gutter. Such freedom.

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
499 points (93.1% liked)

Technology

55610 readers
2656 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS