"Experts have a long history of torturing us with predictions about how technology will wipe us out, first our jobs and then just getting rid of us altogether because humans are a bother. The AI panic around Large Language Models over the last three years is no exception."
"The inconvenient truth is that by 2025, it was hard to find examples where LLMs had actually taken over lots of jobs. The layoffs that were supposedly related to AI look increasingly like they weren't-at best, they were in anticipation that AI would replace workers."
"In the early 2000s, advances in data science and the use of machine learning in predictions raised new alarms, with claims emerging in the 2010s that as many as half of all jobs were "at risk" of being taken over by new AI tools."
Throughout history, technological advances have sparked predictions of massive job displacement that rarely materialize. From the 1964 World's Fair robots to distributed computing in the 1990s, machine learning in the 2000s, and autonomous vehicles in the 2010s, each wave of innovation generated alarms about obsolescence. Despite claims that half of all jobs faced AI risk or that truck drivers would be obsolete by 2019, actual job losses remain minimal. Manufacturing robots correlate with employment growth rather than decline. By 2025, few concrete examples existed of LLMs replacing significant numbers of jobs. Many AI-related layoffs appear anticipatory rather than actual, with industry leaders acknowledging "AI washing." This pattern suggests current AI panic lacks supporting evidence.
Read at Fortune
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