I remember seeing a paper that explained that while the a business needed 7 employees on average to reach something like $1MM in revenue in 90s, it was now 3.

So I think it still has the potential to replace some people. And even with AI and AGI eventually perhaps.

This is a progression. Besides, employment is a bad measure in general if one does not compare it to others such as cost of living, poverty etc...

Like non farm payroll doesn't say anything if everyone is employed living with the minimum paycheck.

> I remember seeing a paper that explained that while the a business needed 7 employees on average to reach something like $1MM in revenue in 90s, it was now 3.

An alternative interpretation: while in the 90’s, 7 people could only support one $1MM business, today they can support at least two.

(US unemployment is lower now than it was then.)

How much of that is because of inflation though? 1 million in 1995 corresponds to 2 million in 2023 dollars.

The industrial revolution replaced muscle power with machinery. AI is finally at the place where it can replace brain-power for many tasks, and will likely keep improving. I think you are underestimating the significance of this. I don't see too many horses with jobs these days.

Currently the AI is not even able to improve my work... How should it replace me? I think the statement "AI is finally at the place where it can replace brain-power for many tasks" is ridiculous.

I don't think your statement is true - AI can definitely improve my work and has done for a while now. It lets me be more productive, but it certainly isn't capable of being left unattended or even lightly attended to.

As long as you know the limits of what you're doing, tools like ChatGPT are very helpful. In about a minute, i was able to generate a skeleton app using a go framework including tests, the infrastructure as code to deploy as a lambda, a makefile build and run it, and a buildkite pipeline that will build and deploy it all. It's also correct.

Now, I can't rely on it to do everything, but it can give me an app scaffold for a tech stack I'm familiar with, quicker than I can Google for it.

That´s good for you and I could give you some anecdotes with ChatGPT, were it failed horribly, e.g. were it failed to generate unit-tests for a simple api-call (about 10 loc)...

I am sure the tools will only improve, but I don't understand all the hype/fear about it. ("We are fucked", "this is soo over", ... I think you will find more of those comments in older news-threads)

I agree - it's disastrous when it goes wrong. If you ask it to generate the code for a lambda with 32 CPU's it will happily spout out nonsense rather than tell you it's not a valid think to request.

That said, ive found it remarkably good at spitting out slightly modified boilerplate - like IDE templates on steroids. It's been a great tool, like a hammer. But not everything is a nail.

Sam Altman is saying we are going to see a shift from labor to capital and that is going to cause more economic inequality along with possibly breaking the social contract.

It is probably nothing though...As if this gopher server is going to replace my TV someday. Give me a break. It only does text!

Sam Altman is also a doomsday prepper because he anticipates societal collapse when the shift from capital to labor pushes economic equality past France 1789 levels.

It's the difference between "some human labor involved" and "zero". Getting to zero is very hard, and has very different ramifications then the "some" quantity.

As long as "some" labor is needed, then that's going to be the entire economy - it'll simply expand along whatever constraint that "some" represents.

The bizarre thing lately is all these arguments people make implying the economy is maximized. That all the things that will ever be needed are currently being produced and no new growth is possible or will ever happen (despite this literally never being the case in the entire history of the human race).

As a thought experiment:

- computers are able to churn through any problem more quickly and cheaply than people

- machines are able to perform any tasks that humans can, more quickly and cheaply

I’m curious what you think is left for people to _do_.

We may not be there today, but at some point, both of those things can and will become true.

Fantasies never come true.