Let’s imagine that AI will become cheaper and more efficient, it will not differ from humans in terms of the quality of its work, it will replace almost all intellectual workers, and only the operators of these AI models will have jobs, that is, one person or several people monitor the entire office of AI workers for a small salary. Yes, the AI bubble will burst, but the problems of ordinary people will only get worse from this, jobs will not return, no, automation will continue anyway.
Is it worth retraining as a mechanic, plumber or something like that?
AI will not be able to replace intellectual workers, not as it is now anyways. The only people who think that either don’t understand the intellectual work or the LLMs.
For an AI to be able to do that it would need to be an AGI, which we’re not even close to. And if it gets created it’s not just intellectual workers that are at risk, in fact intellectual workers would be the last one to be replaced.
LLMs are a neat trick, they provide some usefulness and can be used to improve productivity. But the moment you give them any autonomy they will destroy everything. And that’s a core issue with the technology, LLMs don’t understand what they’re replying to, they’re just a word predicting machine. Expecting LLMs to do any form of intellectual work is akin to saying accountants will lose their jobs because calculators exist.