The difference is that one of those things actually happened, and the other one is your hypothetical extremist/exaggerated/worst possible case of what might happen this time.
The entire premise of the article is that we're being promised that an entire workforce is going to be eliminated overnight. The people who are promising this, do not care about what happens to the working class. This is clearly causing anxiety.
The comparison is useful. Printers had decades to pivot and hence the anxiety didn't exist like it does today. Today's capital allocated wants this to happen within a decade.
-Mustafa Suleyman "So white-collar work, where you're sitting down at a computer, either being a lawyer or an accountant or a project manager or a marketing person — most of those tasks will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months."
-Jim Farley “Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers.”
-Dario Amodei predicted that AI could eliminate up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years
-Arindam Paul has said that 40-50 percent of white-collar jobs in India could cease to exist because of AI, and an Anthropic researcher had predicted that AI would be able to automate any white-collar job by 2028.
No, I’m not. You can take it to mean just the tech workforce, and still none of these quotes say that the entire tech workforce will be eliminated overnight. The second one is the closest, but it’s talking about tasks, not jobs. Most of the others are all talking about max 50% of the tech workforce over years, not “entire” workforce “overnight”. The Altman one is a tiny fragment, who knows what the context even is!
AI skeptics constantly lie and misrepresent what the leaders in this field have actually said, and then get themselves all spun up about something they fabricated in the first place!
You can also take it to mean a subset of the entire workforce, which has already lost their jobs to AI. Again, you’re the only person in this thread using the phrase “THE entire workforce” in regards to the idea that jobs will be replaced with AI. People here are telling you that that isn’t the argument being made and you keep rallying against it anyway.
You can also take it to mean a subset of the entire workforce, which has already lost their jobs to AI.
OK, so I guess the claim is true as soon as one person loses their job?
And again, YOU are the one focused on "THE entire workforce", I already said fine, we can just talk about tech or whatever subset you'd like. The point is that it's pretty clear these quotes are not nearly as widely sweeping as AI detractors usually misrepresent them as.
The parent is making a point about the rate/scale at which technology replaced workers. If you think the hypothetical is too extreme, then what would a more realistic version be? Are you uncertain about the rate of disruption?
the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero reason to think about events that haven't happened yet. you imbecile. you fucking moron"
I don't think they said that at all. I'm pretty sure they were saying that the thing to think about / discuss is the thing that happened, rather than the hypothetical.
My own initial comment literally addressed the uncertainty.
Here:
> You can argue about whether the obsolescence is real or not, but if it is [emphasis in source], the plight of the printers is totally incomparable.
"It hasn't happened yet" is a non-sequitur at best, but obviously the goal of such a "contribution" is to chill discussion. The same "contribution" can be made to any conversation about any possible future events. So long as everyone already knows they're talking about the future, it is not helpful in any way.
