We have been automating at the beginning of the production chain , mostly.

This is the first automation that targets directly knowledge workers, and hit almost all of them but those in profession where error can cause people deaths.

Traditionally knowledge workers were the bulk of the middle class, because well it takes 30 years to produce one and not all make the cut, so they are paid market prices instead of minimum wages.

And by that nature, knowledge workers cannot reinvent themselves overnight, there will nowhere left to go for them.

Maybe lawyers and medics and a few other can entrenche themselves with legislation, but if you are a knowledge worker in a non union field things look scary.

> This is the first automation that targets directly knowledge workers

You really don’t think computers, software and telecommunications services have boosted the productivity of knowledge workers?

Automation meaning replacement of the knowledge workers.

These were automation tools for the knowledge worker, this is an automation tool of the knowledge worker.

Real human level strong AI would be that, but the LLMs we have now are nowhere close. They are just a powerful new software tool in the hands of specialists.

Maybe GPT10 might get there, but I suspect we’ll quickly reach diminishing returns with current and near future architectures.

I think you are overestimating complexity of most office jobs.

A lot of the simplest office jobs like typist and most managers personal secretaries have already been replaced.

These tools will increase productivity which will deprecate some jobs, but that is not at all the same thing as reducing overall employment.

This is a real hand wavy way to look at it. How about on the individual level? How is an individual affected by this and can you put yourself in their shoes?

I can’t tell you which individual people will lose their jobs, or even which specific jobs will end up being cut and why. Can you? We’re both just making different estimates of the likely overall effects. I’m basing mine in the known historical effects of automation on economies and employment, and the fact that previous arguments that were all doomed by it have every single time turned out to be false.

No, nobody can and that’s the point. Except the flaw in your thinking is your applying what happened in the past to the present. Nobody has every automated a human brain before, they mostly automated muscles away. This time is different so therefore you cannot assume that since a welding robot didn’t destroy the world that AI won’t. Automation and AI are not the same and we should quit calling it as such.

You will have somewhere to go. You can become a rich person’s serf and they give you food and an allowance and a place to live. It’s like childhood.

> You can become a rich person’s serf and they give you food and an allowance and a place to live

This, except I'm not sure they're going to actually deliver on the food, allowance, and place to live parts.

> painful periods of adjustment

sure like hunger, losing houses, unable to have kids or send them to decent schools or schools at all. but totally worth it right?

I certainly won’t claim that capitalism is immune from abuses or failures. It’s undeniable that it has its failures. But criticising its failures is one thing, while criticising it as a failure is another. To make the latter claim credibly you’d need to argue for a better alternative that either further minimises or eliminates the flaws. What is it?

I’m all for capitalism. What Im tired of is tech workers, of which I am one, automating people’s jobs away.