“Replaced Google” is definitely an impact, but it’s nothing compared to the people that were claiming entire industries would be wiped out nearly overnight (programming, screenwriting, live support, etc).
Speak to some illustrators or voiceover artists - they're talking in very bleak terms about their future, because so many of them are literally being told by clients that their services are no longer required due to AI. A double-digit reduction in demand is manageable on aggregate, but it's devastating at the margin. White-collar workers having to drive Ubers or deliver packages because their jobs have been taken over by AI is no longer a hypothetical.
We had this in content writing and marketing last year. A lot of layoffs were going to happen anyway due to the end of ZIRP, AI came just at the right time, and so restructuring came bundled with "..and we are doing it with AI!".
It definitely took out a lot of jobs from the lowest rungs of the market, but on the more specialized / upper end of the ladder wages got actually higher and a lot of companies got burned, and now they have to readjust. It's rolling over slowly still, as there a lot of companies selling AI products and in turn new companies adopting those products. But it tells you a lot that
A) a company selling an AI assistant last year is now totally tied to automating busy work tasks around marketing and sales
B) AI writing companies are some of the busiest in employing human talent for... writing and editorial roles!
It's all very peculiar. I haven't seen anything like this in the past 15 years... maybe the financial crisis and big data was similar, but much much smaller at scale.
>It definitely took out a lot of jobs from the lowest rungs of the market, but on the more specialized / upper end of the ladder wages got actually higher
Effectively all mechanization, computerization, and I guess now AI-ization has done this. In the past you could have a rudimentary education and contribute to society. Then we started requiring more and more grade school, then higher education for years. Now we're talking about the student debt crisis!
At least if AI doesn't go ASI in the near term the question is how are we going to train the next generation of workers to go from unskilled to more skilled and useful than the AI is. Companies aren't going to want to do this. The individuals are going to think it's risky getting an education that could be replaced by a software update. If left to go out of control this is how a new generation of luddites will burn data centers in protest they are starving on the streets.
We should be thinking pretty hard right about now why this kind of progress and saving these expenses is a BAD thing for humanity. The answer will touch deeply ingrained ideas about what and who should underpin and benefit from progress and value in society.
