The CEO of a company I worked for decided to fire all the people in post production because he was convinced AI could replace humans in that department. He then sold the company after realizing AI wasn’t the magic solution he thought it was.
So it likely doesn’t matter if AI is replacing jobs or not if the people in charge of the workforce believe it can so much that it impacts decisions. The results are the same.
Sure, but these companies just serve as a warning to others, and the hype is already is already dying down. This happens every time new technology appears. There is no structural shift happening with AI meaningfully replacing human labor.
I wouldn’t say “every time new technology appears” since portrait painters definitely got replaced by photography as a widespread industry and a structural shift did happen. Technology in general tries to reduce human effort because human effort is expensive. Any expense that can be shaved down year after year to make more profits will be made regardless of if the quality is consistent. AI doesn’t need to be as good as creatives to replace them (either in part or in whole) eventually. It just needs to be “good enough”. And the thing about technology is that it’s always trying to get to a point to replace people whether it’s there yet or not. Photography couldn’t replace portrait painters initially due to color and image quality, but it eventually got there.
Of course, the long-term goal of automation is to reduce labor, but current AI is nowhere near replacing human workers. Right now, it’s just a tool that speeds up certain tasks with, as the article notes, very mixed results. That said, we’ve seen steady increase in automation since the Industrial Revolution without mass unemployment. Instead of work disappearing, it is merely transformed. Portrait painters fade out, camera operators emerge. The jobs shift, but the need for human labor persists, just in new forms.
The CEO of a company I worked for decided to fire all the people in post production because he was convinced AI could replace humans in that department. He then sold the company after realizing AI wasn’t the magic solution he thought it was.
So it likely doesn’t matter if AI is replacing jobs or not if the people in charge of the workforce believe it can so much that it impacts decisions. The results are the same.
Sure, but these companies just serve as a warning to others, and the hype is already is already dying down. This happens every time new technology appears. There is no structural shift happening with AI meaningfully replacing human labor.
I wouldn’t say “every time new technology appears” since portrait painters definitely got replaced by photography as a widespread industry and a structural shift did happen. Technology in general tries to reduce human effort because human effort is expensive. Any expense that can be shaved down year after year to make more profits will be made regardless of if the quality is consistent. AI doesn’t need to be as good as creatives to replace them (either in part or in whole) eventually. It just needs to be “good enough”. And the thing about technology is that it’s always trying to get to a point to replace people whether it’s there yet or not. Photography couldn’t replace portrait painters initially due to color and image quality, but it eventually got there.
Of course, the long-term goal of automation is to reduce labor, but current AI is nowhere near replacing human workers. Right now, it’s just a tool that speeds up certain tasks with, as the article notes, very mixed results. That said, we’ve seen steady increase in automation since the Industrial Revolution without mass unemployment. Instead of work disappearing, it is merely transformed. Portrait painters fade out, camera operators emerge. The jobs shift, but the need for human labor persists, just in new forms.