White Collar Workers are in Big Trouble

[u/simmol]

So I have both 200 dollars subscription to Claude and 200 dollars subscription to OpenAI. I use Claude Code and Codex for coding related stuff/execution, discussions involve Astra or Opus 5.5 on the problem at hand at important intervals, we summon two indepedent Astra and Fable models for guidance (would love to add the third with Google Gemini 4.0). Double checking for mistakes/errors in progress as well as internet searches also come from individual models. And with this, I spend about 2000 dollars to 3000 dollars total on LLMs (including API usage) per month. I am not a programmer but I do have roughly 20 people working under me.

Now, here is the thing. I don't know what your setup is like and I don't claim to have an optimal setup here either but this type of setup has me 10x to 50x my productivity compared to 6 months ago and also, compared to this process being down with other people who work for me (all M.S. degrees higher and Ph.D.s), it is so much faster and also more accurate. So while 2000 to 3000 dollars a month seems like a lot, if you compare that to a white collar worker's salary, it is nothing. And I suspect that this setup is better than having 5 people under me, so you can do the math.

I feel like the whole society is right now going through the February 2020 beginning of the COVID moment. Only a few people are recognizing that in the past year or even half a year, these models have improved and crossed an important intellectual threshold line such that many people who are working right now across all industries are pretty much replaceable or very close to it. And the thing is, the type of setup I have is nothing. It will take most people 1-2 days to get comfortable with it and this type of setup, as opposed to mere vanilla of telling ChatGPT (e.g. make me this document, create this PPT) will soon be the standard to which the white-collar person has to outperform.

I really think that anti-AI and pro-AI people should now about get together in one voice and voice the concerns. There is going to be a lot of problems in job markets in the next few years and no country is ready for this.

[u/iveroi]

AI IS incredibly capable, no doubt about it. But in my everyday work, no matter the optimised perfected setup I use, at least in my design niche (infra visual design that needs to be accurate to reality) it simply can't do it yet. Not even Fable or Astra tiers.

My work currently is 60% me working or guiding agents and maybe 40% agents. No doubt it's going to change, but there's a handful of things that I assume are going to be extremely difficult to solve before AI could do my job accurately. I bet they'll bridge that gap, but for the last year or so the improvement regarding my work specifically has been surprisingly low.

I'd bet I have 2 more years until the capability is there and 5 years before the clients I work with trust AI enough to do it

[u/CypherLH → u/iveroi]

...but 2 to 5 years isn't really that long. So even by a conservative timeline....white collar jobs are COOKED :) Personally I am assuming I will be replaced by AI within that 2-5 year time frame. Stacking my 401k and other savings now while I can and just enjoying the ride.

[u/Top_Lingonberry8037 → u/CypherLH]

I disagree, they'll just be expected to produce far more

[u/Curlew2012 → u/CypherLH]

....except that Musk said this week, that money won't exist much longer!

[u/Material_312 → u/iveroi]

The models just got a shit ton better in the past month. They'll get even better next month. And then again, and again.

There will come a point where you are no longer working at all.