alt Hacker News> AI continues to devalue intellectual labor
Hot take, but I don't think it actually does, tbh.
Setting aside the temporary delusions of management, the tech itself doesn't devalue anything. It just optimizes away redundant stuff. That was always kinda redundant, but it wasn't "intellectual labor" just because it was done by white-collar workers.
We only have to go back to pre-AI days and look at what kind of mindless nonsense tasks said workers back then complained to see what I mean.
No people ever wanted to do this kind of work anyway, so it is fantastic that they in the future will not have to. The only thing we need to ensure is that the benefits of that will not be harvested by the same rich few. But that was also the mantra before AI, so nothing changed there either.
We can do so, because anything made out of carbon can also be reduced to carbon. Nothing and no one is untouchable, but, ideally, words are the tool. Anything else has unforeseen side-effects.
Replies
> No people ever wanted to do this kind of work anyway
No one ever wants to do most of the work they do. That is the literal definition of work, as opposed to a hobby. You do it because otherwise you and your children starve. Job satisfaction is optional (and may cut into your salary).
> It just optimizes away redundant stuff.
Yes. "Optimizing away redundant stuff" is another way of saying "making workers more efficient," which means that employers need fewer workers to accomplish the same tasks. That is exactly what devaluing labor means: the work that you do is worth less because more of it can be done by a cheaper competitor, i.e. an LLM.
Weather or not anyone enjoys that work is irrelevant. English textile workers in the 1810s may not have enjoyed spending long hours sewing clothes by hand, but they needed to in order to support their families, so they were understandably upset when their labor was devalued by automated means of production. I am pretty sure exactly none of those unemployed textile workers breathed a sigh of relief and said "Well, thank god, now I can finally stop sewing and pursue my dream to work as a landscape painter."