alt Hacker NewsThere is a decent case for this thesis to hold true especially if we look at the shift in training regimes and benchmarking over the last 1-2 years. Frontier labs don't seem to really push pure size/capability anymore, it's an all in focus on agentic AI which is mainly complex post-training regimes.
There are good reasons why they don't or can't do simple param upscaling anymore, but still, it makes me bearish on AGI since it's a slow, but massive shift in goal setting.
In practice this still doesn't mean 50 % of white collar can't be automated though.
> In practice this still doesn't mean 50 % of white collar can't be automated though.
Let me ask you this, though: if we wanted to, what percentage of white collar jobs could have been automated or eliminated prior to LLMs?
Meta has nearly 80k employees to basically run two websites and three mobile apps. There were 18k people working at LinkedIn! Many big tech companies are massive job programs with some product on the side. Administrative business partners, program managers, tech writers, "stewards", "champions", "advocates", 10-layer-deep reporting chains... engineers writing cafe menu apps and pet programming languages... a team working on in-house typefaces... the list goes on.
I can see AI producing shifts in the industry by reducing demand for meaningful work, but I doubt the outcome here is mass unemployment. There's an endless supply of bs jobs as long as the money is flowing.