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So you think you could be an electrician?

456 points · 414 comments · zdw

  1. JSR_FDED · · focus · HN ↗
    Everyone seems to forget that if everyone followed the “AI-proof career” advice to become a plumber, electrician or carpenter - then there’d be so many of them that the pay would go down considerably
    1. georgemcbay · · focus · HN ↗
      > Everyone seems to forget that if everyone followed the “AI-proof career” advice to become a plumber, electrician or carpenter - then there’d be so many of them that the pay would go down considerably

      The demand will also drop through the floor because the people who previously had the well-paying white collar jobs who are a large amount of the non-corporate customers for trades people will be gone, so they can no longer afford to hire you. The corporate customers will have far less need for facilities other than data centers because they won't have nearly as many meat employees to house, so the demand craters there too.

      And some amount of the other people fleeing to the trades will have taken up your specific trade, and why would they pay someone to do something they can do themselves.

      So you'll have massively increased labor supply as everyone flees to these "AI safe" jobs and massively decreased demand due to a flattened low-wage economy where almost everyone is trying to scrape by on a trades job.

      If the AI labor disruption is big enough to cause a serious problem for all knowledge workers, I don't see how it doesn't take everything else down with it. The entire economy as we know it just spirals into chaos leading to, probably, violent revolution.

      1. king_crimson · · focus · HN ↗
        Exactly this I've been saying also. It’s completely obvious and I don’t understand how this argument is not brought up more frequent. If AI would take let’s say 50% of IT jobs there'd be a huge drop in consumer demand that’d send shockwaves through the entire economy…
        1. adabyron · · focus · HN ↗
          Because it sounds nice to certain groups of people and they put 0 thought into it.
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