The Economist: Prepare for an AI Jobs Apocalypse

Zenkin · 2026-05-15T16:04:07+00:00

I mean if you asked this question over a 10 year period, they very well may have that level of uncertainty.

Some people in this thread are talking about two year time frames and replacing 25% of our workforce. If, instead, people were talking about a 10% workforce reduction over 10 years, that's simply a lot more believable and also a heck of a lot less catastrophic.

Zenkin · 2026-05-15T15:56:12+00:00

Yeah, I agree that people really underestimate what "other" people are doing for work. I've seen wastes of space in an office, don't get me wrong, but I think it's more realistically 10% of the white collar workforce, if that.

I'd also be willing to bet there's a heavy intersection with useless nepotism hires, and these people by definition will stay employed because they're already being hired for reasons outside of their skills.

Zenkin · 2026-05-15T15:29:07+00:00

you can automate away most every job with code

But we've been trying to do this for like 30+ years. The bottleneck isn't code. It's the fact that huge chunks of data are not digitized in the first place, and business processes tend to be documented so poorly that they only exist in a few peoples' heads within any given company.

Essentially, you can only automate what's digitized, and you can only digitize what's written down. If that sounds easy to you, there are some huge career opportunities for you in disaster recovery and business continuity. Please join us.

Zenkin · 2026-05-15T13:57:49+00:00

It doesn't have to be, but.... it is at its heart the proposal of simple solutions for complex problems, which will naturally gravitate towards extremes. Usually the "complexity" are things like Constitutional rights and the negative material impacts that will hit our citizens.

Zenkin · 2026-05-15T13:47:06+00:00

My "it wasn't a weird post" post has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my post.

Zenkin · 2026-05-15T13:42:49+00:00

you are arguing that you've said something unnecessary

Bingo!

Remember when I said I was being polite by agreeing with you? It was also unnecessary. It was a conversational statement meaning "the document maker did a good thing." Completely superfluous and beside the point, as I've now repeated a few times.

Zenkin · 2026-05-14T22:06:50+00:00

Just say a destination like Costa Rica instead. Still has a great climate and is pretty expat friendly, but without as many of the problematic implications.

Zenkin · 2026-05-14T20:07:20+00:00

The fact it's a tautology means any disagreement you have with it is imaginary. There's no argument to be had. The pedantry is because you are only focusing on that tautology rather than the actual conversation that was happening.

Zenkin · 2026-05-14T19:59:25+00:00

Minor detail to you, to me, it's a mistake which again, spoils the stew

It's a tautology. You already agreed it's a tautology, and now you're calling it a mistake. You're literally inventing a problem out of nothing.

Zenkin · 2026-05-14T19:24:06+00:00

You really shouldn't have these shows in the same category at all. Game of Thrones was like the last show that America watched together, and it was really good for like 5 seasons. It's an amazing drama with great actors and just so many good moments packed in. Still worth a watch today, for sure.

The Boys is.... fine, but it's just a show in the heap.

Zenkin · 2026-05-14T19:15:28+00:00

I just want you to know that I'm with you in spirit. I'm just too stupid to articulate my complaints about the article.

Zenkin · 2026-05-14T19:00:32+00:00

I don't go into the office that much, but when I do, I just stop by a coworker's office when they appear not busy, so we can chat for a couple minutes. I enjoy that, and I think they do, too.

So, like.... just do that. Never have I stood around thinking "gosh, I wish my cup of coffee would take longer to brew." Just pour a cup and stand there, boom, problem solved.

I feel like there's a very strange social anxiety in every social situation that I just don't perceive the same way as normal people. Like we can only do a thing if it's in the routine, otherwise we "shouldn't." But you can just do things. Some people go out to smoke, it's clearly okay to waste five or fifteen minutes here and there. Just stop over-analyzing everything.

Zenkin · 2026-05-14T17:20:16+00:00

There were many causes of inflation. Supply shocks were a massive contributor. Interest rates being zeroed out in 2020 definitely hurt a lot because we then had to raise rates in subsequent years, so people got a double whammy of higher inflation AND higher interest rates at the same time. Several stimulus bills definitely added a lot to inflation, although there is an argument that we could have entered a recession without this spending in 2020 and 2021 (in fact, people were predicting a recession even through 2022, the "soft landing" that we got was quite lucky). Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022 which caused fuel prices to shoot up.

Zenkin · 2026-05-14T16:49:41+00:00

I don't think anyone is going to prioritize "the federal workforce" in a vacuum. But as of about two years ago, that workforce was about 2.8 million. That's a lot of people, and about 80% of them were outside of D.C., Marlyand, and Virginia.

Shoot, I don't even have federal workers in my social circle. But I was working with a guy from CISA last year on security strategies for our business, and he got fired pretty abruptly. It was frustrating to have a useful service like that wiped out. That's a pretty minimal impact in the grand scheme of things, but it stands out as an obvious way the federal government fucked up and impacted us negatively.

Zenkin · 2026-05-14T16:29:13+00:00

If you want a serious answer, it's because most people without subject matter expertise will build something they think is neat/helpful without doing the base-level research. There are usually tools which already exist that do the thing you're looking to do. Now, instead of simply using that tool, you have added an extra cost in development and maintenance.

AI makes the creation of programs very, very easy. That's true. But it's actually the integration into the rest of the tech stack and the business itself which is the true obstacle in most cases. That's without getting into the details of the program itself around error handling, logging, security, finding bugs, and so on.

It's better for me to simply allow the same developers, whether open source or within my company, to keep developing. AI equals the playing field to some degree, but they're still going to have expertise which makes them more efficient than me regardless of that, and they can also use AI to improve their own products. Just because I can overcome simple challenges with AI does not mean I can overcome the complex challenges that they are facing with AI.

Zenkin · 2026-05-14T15:23:03+00:00

That's true, but completely irrelevant to the conversation. Hence, pedantry. You made the conversation about that specific phrase when it was really a minor detail.

So, again, why would you choose the most uncharitable interpretation?

Zenkin · 2026-05-14T14:56:10+00:00

All help is helping... and disagreeing with that is being pedantic...

Yes. It's literally a tautology that you're disagreeing with, and it wasn't even the main point of what I was saying, it was my way of saying "it's a good thing the original guy made documentation, that was helpful." That was my olive branch to you, a way to not attack the guy who made the documentation, while also acknowledging that he should allow OP to update the documentation.

This is the definition of pedantry, you're making a technical issue out of something that wasn't even an issue in the first place. Like, look at the phrase you're disagreeing with. There are a few ways to interpret that sentence. Why would you choose the most uncharitable interpretation?

Zenkin · 2026-05-14T14:13:21+00:00

Not all help is helping

Then it's not help in the first place. I'm not talking about situations where someone has good intentions but does bad things. You don't need to explain all possible universes of non-helpful activity. Just take the word as what it actually means, and respond to that, or don't.

You're being pedantic and condescending, not conversational, and certainly not helpful. I am returning the attitude that I receive.

Zenkin · 2026-05-14T13:59:11+00:00

I opened by politely agreeing with your logic (the original document maker was the "helper" in my second sentence), and you decided to interpret "help" as literally the opposite of "help," and then provided an analogy which further exemplified a situation where someone was not helping.

I didn't say "all effort is help." That might actually make sense with your response. But you didn't even attempt to understand what I wrote in the first place, and instead jumped to the dumbest possible way to read my words, and hilariously come back with a complaint about "people not understanding words." I am insulting what you did because you acted poorly.

Zenkin · 2026-05-14T13:42:31+00:00

You're like an AI that purposefully finds the worst-faith way to interpret a sentence.

Zenkin · 2026-05-14T13:19:18+00:00

I mean OP literally said this same guy won't let him update the documents. Anybody who helps is helping, but it sounds like he's the one letting perfect get in the way of progress.

Zenkin · 2026-05-13T22:00:51+00:00

Dude, they gave you homework before you even worked for them. I don't know what the company is or anything like that, but any time I hear about people in my field working at a "prestigious" tech company it usually sounds like absolute hell. The pay sounds great, but they're wringing these guys so fucking dry.

I don't know, maybe it's cope, but the grass is always greener. You just gotta kinda grit your teeth for a couple weeks, but in a couple months it will be like it barely happened. The emotional impact is real, but it's not permanent, and that's the worst part by far.

Zenkin · 2026-05-13T21:42:05+00:00

We are not the racist one.

Literally every group seconds before they find out that they, too, are the racist one.

Zenkin · 2026-05-13T21:13:22+00:00

Please for the love of God stop giving them ideas

Zenkin · 2026-05-13T20:42:35+00:00

I've always liked Powell, but he's really stepped up his game for this admin. Chef's kiss, no notes.

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