There's no point at which turning your brain off will work
23 points by binjip978
23 points by binjip978
“No point” seems like an exaggeration born of wishful thinking. If LLMs become good enough to perform all the functions of an employee, there will still be a transitionary period in which employees have realized that the LLM is good enough but employers have not. Depending on the agility of the company, it could be a week or a year. A perfectly efficient company would not have such a period, but companies are not perfectly efficient.
An employee successfully delegating 100% of their job to an LLM would be an example of arbitrage. The presence of arbitrage in other existing markets suggests that we don’t know how to eliminate arbitrage in the job market, either.
Also, even if LLMs become good enough to do only 90% of the work, a selfish employee who doesn’t plan to stay at their current company might find it worthwhile to turn their brain off. The company will eventually notice the employee’s decreased performance and fire them, but the employee would get some extra paychecks for no effort. If they already have another job lined up or they are near retirement, they might not be worried about how that would affect their reputation.
there will still be a transitionary period in which employees have realized that the LLM is good enough but employers have not
We are currently witnessing employers laying off employees based on the false belief that LLMs can do the employees' jobs. Employers are so ready to believe that LLMs are good enough that they're jumping the gun. I don't think there's going to be a point where bosses could stop paying employees but aren't ready to believe it.
Currently the people pushing hard for LLM use are the corporations, because they want to remove the employees. They're going to be watching real close for any sign that the employees are now redundant.
There'll be a "just in case" window when the employer isn't sure that just removing the human will work out, but I doubt it'll be a large one.
And then, when everyone is laid off, who is going to buy a company's product? That's the catch 22, even in the case where the LLMs work, they do not.
And then, when everyone is laid off, who is going to buy a company's product?
Another company. With sufficiently autonomous entities, you can make the economy work without people, it's just not very good for people.
You are jumping straight to paperclips, but you can't get there, because that's far past society's breaking point. Datacenters will be burning and CEOs will be getting lynched in the streets way by the time unemployment hits 20%.