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Comment by csullivannet | Hacker News Reader

If AI really generates the value it claims to cutting jobs is short sighted. If existing human knowledge is commoditized, then we should be able to invest in generating new knowledge, and creating new kinds of products that were not even possible before.

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And if AI makes workers more efficient, then businesses not actively hiring more employees are admitting that even with extra resources they have no strategy to grow their business. Like, if one person is effective as ten people, then a business should be able to grow quicker since their operating costs are effectively lower freeing up capital for growth.

So either their business is a dead end, the inefficiency is at the management layer, or AI isn’t actually making workers more efficient.

Most businesses have a limit to growth in general (e.g. market size, etc). Doesn't mean they are bad businesses just means they can't grow forever and there is a limit to the demand of that given activity. I argue this applies more so to tech products since they generally are relatively affordable already and for most people aren't price demand constrained. A dead end business w.r.t growth could be a cash positive asset for a very long time depending on what it does and maybe that's OK.

Its why I'm not the biggest believer in "Jevon's Paradox" when it comes to software. Most software projects scale and as such they aren't really cost constrained. Or another way of stating this is "if the idea is good and can make lots of money the cost of dev's isn't a limiting factor" - hence why AI doesn't necessarily increase demand all that much. This is unlike say physical industries where cost can absolutely matter especially if the good is constrained already by affordability.

I think most SWE's know this - they see it with outsourcing as well where cheaper costs don't necessarily mean more software is done; but there is some "hope" that things will be OK.

> So either their business is a dead end, the inefficiency is at the management layer, or AI isn’t actually making workers more efficient.

I'd bet on all three being generally true.

It's true. Instead of talking about cutting jobs, we'd be talking about all the new companies building new things and AI itself wouldn't be the story.

Instead we're still talking about cost cutting. Seems the market is not focused on investing outside the AI moonshot gamble.

that's what is happening. the economy is re-arranging itself and layoffs are obviously a part of re-arrangement.

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