Hacker News Reader

Comment by efitz | Hacker News Reader

Support is gonna work great for the top few use cases and is gonna suck for everything else.

One interesting thing about generative AI is that we got all our “AI is gonna take all our jobs” wrong. AI is going to decimate entry level white collar jobs like tech support, low level lawyers, low level doctors (like radiology which is already widely outsourced), low level programmers, etc. As it gets better it will move up the experience chain. It will affect some service jobs (the ones without manual labor) like customer service, order taking, etc. It won’t have any effect for the foreseeable future on jobs that involve manual labor.

View on HN

> It won’t have any effect for the foreseeable future on jobs that involve manual labor.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. A lot of manual labor can be fully or partially automated, it just isn't economically viable yet. If AI results in automation getting significantly cheaper, it is going to have an impact on manual labor too.

We're already seeing this in practice at companies like Amazon. Rather than having a human walk around the warehouse and collect items, the items are brought to the human by robots moving storage units. The human is solely needed to take the item out of the storage unit and place it into a box. Once they figure out how to make robot arms that can pick up arbitrary objects, that job will disappear completely.

AI is making some manual/mechanized labor like construction/farming/etc more efficient. People aren't going away, but products are using AI to get better results, faster.

*> low level programmers

I know what you mean from context but I can't help but notice these are kernel and embedded developers, the most difficult to decimate (by AI too)

> low level doctors (like radiology which is already widely outsourced)

Is this true that radiologists are low level doctors? isn't radiology among the top paying specializations in medicine? Looking at fuzzy x-rays and screenings to guess/predict a disease or ailment must take skill.

In my country you have to study 12 years to become a radiologist, so, no I don't think radiologist is a "low level doctor", they are way overpaid though...

The radiologist can use AI to automate billing you separately through the hospital.

Are you saying 12 years of study after medical school? Even surgery, opthalmology, etc don’t require that.

When I say “doctor” I already included 20 years of education.

In the USA radiology is sometimes outsourced; I don’t know all the ins and outs but the last few radiologists I had interpret results anppeared to be overseas.

I think they're (over)paid they way they are because they have to look at fuzzy data and made tough calls. Is that cancer? Is it benign? Is it the mild version of a disease or is it the virulent form? All this from black and white images with death as the possible price of a false diagnosis.

I have no skin in the game. Only know that my son was recently diagnosed with pneumonitis by an experienced radiologist on the basis of a lung x-ray. We were suspecting worse but this (correct) diagnosis made me want to hug the guy.

>low level doctors (like radiology which is already widely outsourced)

lol, no. In my country, doctors have basically the strongest union possible, they decide who gets in/out and what tools get used so there's no way they'd let their jobs get automated or outsourced away. At best radiologists will use AI tools to improve their work but they'll still be in charge.

My fear is that after a while, just like with people having crashes from leaving autopilot in charge without constant supervision, radiologists will get sloppy/lazy and just rubber-stamp every diagnostic the AI gives them on autopilot, without checking for themselves, and we'll end up with more fake positives/negatives and people's lives ruined.

Hopefully I'm wrong.

The patient ultimately sanity checks doctor recommendations. The referring clinician sanity checks the radiologist. The primary care sanity checks the referring clinician. Medicare sanity checks the bills. there are checks and balances. radiologists are the most tech savvy of the docs. And there are only about a 1000 / year new ones. I think we will be fine.

My first job was a call center and then an entry level developer.

I am now a senior developer.

You can't have AI replace steps 1-5 on the path to seniority and have faith they will keep getting better and replace everyone. The risk is that if AI doesn't stick the landing and keep improving, then we are going to have a talent crisis in 15 years.

You can't get high-level experienced support/lawyers/whatever without someone hiring entry level folks...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com