infinity ag said:

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YouBet said:

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infinity ag said:

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YouBet said:

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BusterAg said:

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FriendlyAg said:

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I would add, that higher quality technology (software for accounting) and the use of chat gpt have made our output faster and higher quality than 5 years ago.

In the attorney side, I think it just saves them time on drafting, but a lot of what they do is communicate/negotiate verbally to other attorneys or to non-attorney decision makers. That's the bulk of their time from what I see. So, AI helping with drafting probably cuts the cost down or increases output.


I still struggle a bit with making sure the new grads learn the basics/fundamentals if we take that out of their hands.

---

My prediction is that it will make entry-level employees more efficient, so that the best entry-level employees will be more marketable, but lower performing entry level employees will be edged out of the competition.

If you can hire one Jr. Analyst to do the job of 3, and that one Jr. Analyst will work past 5pm, doesn't complain about coming into the office, thinks strategically instead of just following directions well enough to get home, then why in the world would you not go that route?

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This. And it's exactly what I did. I had plans to hire 3 headcount. I've only hired 1 because we have re-engineered our product cycle to lean hard into AI. I don't need more headcount if my one person gets proficient at writing AI prompts.

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You will soon be hiring 5 people after you screw it up and are forced to hire some good people to get the job done because you will see that this 1 person plus AI effed it up.

Enjoy talking about how you saved money until then. This cycle has been seen before every 25 years.

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Nah. I'll hire more people eventually, obviously. I just won't be hiring at the headcount numbers we otherwise would have. No reason to.

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So you made my point. You will hire more eventually. By relying on AI instead of people, it will take you longer to get to what you want.

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lol. I did not and it absolutely will not. Read my next post.

This isn't a zero sum game. I'm not ever only going to have 1 person. As we scale, add more project, more tech, more whatever...I will need more people. I just won't need the number of people I would have needed in years past.

infinity ag said:

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Ag with kids said:

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AtlAg05 said:

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Here's an idea, cut the meaningless college courses that are just filler for majors (looking at you Diff Equ). More real world subjects need to be taught in high school and even college, personal finance comes to mind.

It seems most of what we learned in college doesn't translate to our jobs (always exceptions) but it's there to prove you CAN learn.

This will help prepare people more for their first job and society.

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Diff Eq is used in engineering...

Those history classes? Not so much.

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You are right about Diff Eqs.
However, history classes add to one's knowledge of the world and helps you build on what you studied. I am an engineer and a business adm person. I love history. It helps me argue issues on TA . And makes me interested in politics because I have a context. The people who don't know history are really boring people.

I encourage my kids to read a LOT but know what is a career and what is a hobby. History is a hobby. Computer Science is a career.

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I agree with that and am a fan of history.

But, I didn't need it at all in my 35 years as an engineer.

Just pointing out that if you're talking about FILLER classes, history fits a lot more than Diff Eq...

The calculator didn't eliminate accounting or finance jobs. It allowed millions of more accounting opportunities to open up across the nation.

AI will be similar. It will allow more smaller companies be able to more with less. There will be avenues for revenue that we can't even think about right now open up because we won't have people stuck doing basic tasks that AI can handle.

Maybe you are right though, and this will be the first technology that reduces the total amount of jobs in the economy, instead of creating entire new industries of opportunity.

It's just a tool. AI is robots for desk jobs. Just like robots haven't eliminated manufacturing jobs, AI won't eliminate the desk jobs. It just changes what they do. There is nothing new under the sun.

YouBet said:

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infinity ag said:

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YouBet said:

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infinity ag said:

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YouBet said:

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BusterAg said:

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FriendlyAg said:

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I would add, that higher quality technology (software for accounting) and the use of chat gpt have made our output faster and higher quality than 5 years ago.

In the attorney side, I think it just saves them time on drafting, but a lot of what they do is communicate/negotiate verbally to other attorneys or to non-attorney decision makers. That's the bulk of their time from what I see. So, AI helping with drafting probably cuts the cost down or increases output.


I still struggle a bit with making sure the new grads learn the basics/fundamentals if we take that out of their hands.

---

My prediction is that it will make entry-level employees more efficient, so that the best entry-level employees will be more marketable, but lower performing entry level employees will be edged out of the competition.

If you can hire one Jr. Analyst to do the job of 3, and that one Jr. Analyst will work past 5pm, doesn't complain about coming into the office, thinks strategically instead of just following directions well enough to get home, then why in the world would you not go that route?

---

This. And it's exactly what I did. I had plans to hire 3 headcount. I've only hired 1 because we have re-engineered our product cycle to lean hard into AI. I don't need more headcount if my one person gets proficient at writing AI prompts.

---

You will soon be hiring 5 people after you screw it up and are forced to hire some good people to get the job done because you will see that this 1 person plus AI effed it up.

Enjoy talking about how you saved money until then. This cycle has been seen before every 25 years.

---

Nah. I'll hire more people eventually, obviously. I just won't be hiring at the headcount numbers we otherwise would have. No reason to.

---

So you made my point. You will hire more eventually. By relying on AI instead of people, it will take you longer to get to what you want.

---

lol. I did not and it absolutely will not. Read my next post.

This isn't a zero sum game. I'm not ever only going to have 1 person. As we scale, add more project, more tech, more whatever...I will need more people. I just won't need the number of people I would have needed in years past.

---

Of course you did. You will end up hiring more people after the AI you relied on screws up so nothing is different. It will take some time though, just like all corp processes.

Ag with kids said:

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infinity ag said:

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Ag with kids said:

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AtlAg05 said:

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Here's an idea, cut the meaningless college courses that are just filler for majors (looking at you Diff Equ). More real world subjects need to be taught in high school and even college, personal finance comes to mind.

It seems most of what we learned in college doesn't translate to our jobs (always exceptions) but it's there to prove you CAN learn.

This will help prepare people more for their first job and society.

---

Diff Eq is used in engineering...

Those history classes? Not so much.

---

You are right about Diff Eqs.
However, history classes add to one's knowledge of the world and helps you build on what you studied. I am an engineer and a business adm person. I love history. It helps me argue issues on TA . And makes me interested in politics because I have a context. The people who don't know history are really boring people.

I encourage my kids to read a LOT but know what is a career and what is a hobby. History is a hobby. Computer Science is a career.

---

I agree with that and am a fan of history.

But, I didn't need it at all in my 35 years as an engineer.

Just pointing out that if you're talking about FILLER classes, history fits a lot more than Diff Eq...

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Yes, I agree on that.

BusterAg said:

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If entry level knowledge workers are about 25% more efficient, then that sector should shrink a little less than 25%.

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If every worker is 25% more efficient, you would need 20% fewer, not 25%.

Phatbob said:

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It's just a tool. AI is robots for desk jobs. Just like robots haven't eliminated manufacturing jobs, AI won't eliminate the desk jobs. It just changes what they do. There is nothing new under the sun.

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And that exactly is the point. There will be changes for sure, there will be some cuts, some additions. Just like any new tech.
The folks who claim that "AI changes everything" are just delusional and the social media people who say this are farming for likes due to shock value.

I have a friend (whom I don't like too much) here who is jealous of my kids as mine are much smarter than his (academically). I enforced good grades as a goal from when they were very small. He did not. His choice, and my choice.

My son is in CompSc and his daughter is doing BioMed Engg. He was so gleeful when ChatGPT came out and could not contain his euphoria when he told me that all programming jobs would be gone and done by AI. That was his way of getting back at me through my kids. Smart hard working people will survive anywhere. I have done a lot of low level programming in my early career 20+ years ago. My kid may not have to do that for too long. I programmed HTML when I was at A&M in the mid 90s. Soon after everyone used editors, no one hand-codes HTML. Things will progress and change.

infinity ag said:

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YouBet said:

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infinity ag said:

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YouBet said:

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infinity ag said:

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YouBet said:

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BusterAg said:

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FriendlyAg said:

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I would add, that higher quality technology (software for accounting) and the use of chat gpt have made our output faster and higher quality than 5 years ago.

In the attorney side, I think it just saves them time on drafting, but a lot of what they do is communicate/negotiate verbally to other attorneys or to non-attorney decision makers. That's the bulk of their time from what I see. So, AI helping with drafting probably cuts the cost down or increases output.


I still struggle a bit with making sure the new grads learn the basics/fundamentals if we take that out of their hands.

---

My prediction is that it will make entry-level employees more efficient, so that the best entry-level employees will be more marketable, but lower performing entry level employees will be edged out of the competition.

If you can hire one Jr. Analyst to do the job of 3, and that one Jr. Analyst will work past 5pm, doesn't complain about coming into the office, thinks strategically instead of just following directions well enough to get home, then why in the world would you not go that route?

---

This. And it's exactly what I did. I had plans to hire 3 headcount. I've only hired 1 because we have re-engineered our product cycle to lean hard into AI. I don't need more headcount if my one person gets proficient at writing AI prompts.

---

You will soon be hiring 5 people after you screw it up and are forced to hire some good people to get the job done because you will see that this 1 person plus AI effed it up.

Enjoy talking about how you saved money until then. This cycle has been seen before every 25 years.

---

Nah. I'll hire more people eventually, obviously. I just won't be hiring at the headcount numbers we otherwise would have. No reason to.

---

So you made my point. You will hire more eventually. By relying on AI instead of people, it will take you longer to get to what you want.

---

lol. I did not and it absolutely will not. Read my next post.

This isn't a zero sum game. I'm not ever only going to have 1 person. As we scale, add more project, more tech, more whatever...I will need more people. I just won't need the number of people I would have needed in years past.

---

Of course you did. You will end up hiring more people after the AI you relied on screws up so nothing is different. It will take some time though, just like all corp processes.

---

You are so damn bitter with your constant bleeding over corporations. Are you hedge's alter ego?

You will note that I'm not a "AI is going to change everything and get rid of everyone person". It will absolutly impact certain sectors and functions of which mine is one of them. If you actually work in this space as claimed, then you should already know this. So, you are either ignorant of what is right in front of you and haven't studied up yet, or you lying about what you do.

Or maybe your emotional trauma over corporations is blinding you here.

YouBet said:

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infinity ag said:

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YouBet said:

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infinity ag said:

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YouBet said:

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infinity ag said:

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YouBet said:

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BusterAg said:

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FriendlyAg said:

---

I would add, that higher quality technology (software for accounting) and the use of chat gpt have made our output faster and higher quality than 5 years ago.

In the attorney side, I think it just saves them time on drafting, but a lot of what they do is communicate/negotiate verbally to other attorneys or to non-attorney decision makers. That's the bulk of their time from what I see. So, AI helping with drafting probably cuts the cost down or increases output.


I still struggle a bit with making sure the new grads learn the basics/fundamentals if we take that out of their hands.

---

My prediction is that it will make entry-level employees more efficient, so that the best entry-level employees will be more marketable, but lower performing entry level employees will be edged out of the competition.

If you can hire one Jr. Analyst to do the job of 3, and that one Jr. Analyst will work past 5pm, doesn't complain about coming into the office, thinks strategically instead of just following directions well enough to get home, then why in the world would you not go that route?

---

This. And it's exactly what I did. I had plans to hire 3 headcount. I've only hired 1 because we have re-engineered our product cycle to lean hard into AI. I don't need more headcount if my one person gets proficient at writing AI prompts.

---

You will soon be hiring 5 people after you screw it up and are forced to hire some good people to get the job done because you will see that this 1 person plus AI effed it up.

Enjoy talking about how you saved money until then. This cycle has been seen before every 25 years.

---

Nah. I'll hire more people eventually, obviously. I just won't be hiring at the headcount numbers we otherwise would have. No reason to.

---

So you made my point. You will hire more eventually. By relying on AI instead of people, it will take you longer to get to what you want.

---

lol. I did not and it absolutely will not. Read my next post.

This isn't a zero sum game. I'm not ever only going to have 1 person. As we scale, add more project, more tech, more whatever...I will need more people. I just won't need the number of people I would have needed in years past.

---

Of course you did. You will end up hiring more people after the AI you relied on screws up so nothing is different. It will take some time though, just like all corp processes.

---

You are so damn bitter with your constant bleeding over corporations. Are you hedge's alter ego?

You will note that I'm not a "AI is going to change everything and get rid of everyone person". It will absolutly impact certain sectors and functions of which mine is one of them. If you actually work in this space as claimed, then you should already know this. So, you are either ignorant of what is right in front of you and haven't studied up yet, or you lying about what you do.

Or maybe your emotional trauma over corporations is blinding you here.

---

I just don't lick corporate's shoes like many pseudo conservatives here. Show me a good corporation that treats people right or CEO and I will praise them. Almost all of them are scumbags. From your posts, I am sure you were one of those who thought Jack Welch was worship worthy.

But I don't want to go OT.

If the above is what you said, nothing is surprising or different from what happens for 25 years. Every time a new tech comes, things shift. AI is no different. There are a lot of people who use AI to justify layoffs because the CEO screwed up for a different reason. If you really are in the industry for long as you claim, you would have seen it and should be skeptical about what they say. An "I hire only 1 engineer instead of 3" boast just shows that you either have no less than 5 years of work experience or one of those Boomer CEOs who have no clue even though they have 40 years of experience.

So bottom line, nothing new in what you said.

infinity ag said:

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YouBet said:

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infinity ag said:

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YouBet said:

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infinity ag said:

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YouBet said:

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infinity ag said:

---

YouBet said:

---

BusterAg said:

---

FriendlyAg said:

---

I would add, that higher quality technology (software for accounting) and the use of chat gpt have made our output faster and higher quality than 5 years ago.

In the attorney side, I think it just saves them time on drafting, but a lot of what they do is communicate/negotiate verbally to other attorneys or to non-attorney decision makers. That's the bulk of their time from what I see. So, AI helping with drafting probably cuts the cost down or increases output.


I still struggle a bit with making sure the new grads learn the basics/fundamentals if we take that out of their hands.

---

My prediction is that it will make entry-level employees more efficient, so that the best entry-level employees will be more marketable, but lower performing entry level employees will be edged out of the competition.

If you can hire one Jr. Analyst to do the job of 3, and that one Jr. Analyst will work past 5pm, doesn't complain about coming into the office, thinks strategically instead of just following directions well enough to get home, then why in the world would you not go that route?

---

This. And it's exactly what I did. I had plans to hire 3 headcount. I've only hired 1 because we have re-engineered our product cycle to lean hard into AI. I don't need more headcount if my one person gets proficient at writing AI prompts.

---

You will soon be hiring 5 people after you screw it up and are forced to hire some good people to get the job done because you will see that this 1 person plus AI effed it up.

Enjoy talking about how you saved money until then. This cycle has been seen before every 25 years.

---

Nah. I'll hire more people eventually, obviously. I just won't be hiring at the headcount numbers we otherwise would have. No reason to.

---

So you made my point. You will hire more eventually. By relying on AI instead of people, it will take you longer to get to what you want.

---

lol. I did not and it absolutely will not. Read my next post.

This isn't a zero sum game. I'm not ever only going to have 1 person. As we scale, add more project, more tech, more whatever...I will need more people. I just won't need the number of people I would have needed in years past.

---

Of course you did. You will end up hiring more people after the AI you relied on screws up so nothing is different. It will take some time though, just like all corp processes.

---

You are so damn bitter with your constant bleeding over corporations. Are you hedge's alter ego?

You will note that I'm not a "AI is going to change everything and get rid of everyone person". It will absolutly impact certain sectors and functions of which mine is one of them. If you actually work in this space as claimed, then you should already know this. So, you are either ignorant of what is right in front of you and haven't studied up yet, or you lying about what you do.

Or maybe your emotional trauma over corporations is blinding you here.

---

I just don't lick corporate's shoes like many pseudo conservatives here. Show me a good corporation that treats people right or CEO and I will praise them. Almost all of them are scumbags. From your posts, I am sure you were one of those who thought Jack Welch was worship worthy.

But I don't want to go OT.

If the above is what you said, nothing is surprising or different from what happens for 25 years. Every time a new tech comes, things shift. AI is no different. There are a lot of people who use AI to justify layoffs because the CEO screwed up for a different reason. If you really are in the industry for long as you claim, you would have seen it and should be skeptical about what they say. An "I hire only 1 engineer instead of 3" boast just shows that you either have no less than 5 years of work experience or one of those Boomer CEOs who have no clue even though they have 40 years of experience.

So bottom line, nothing new in what you said.

---

lol. Jesus. This is such a black and white, rigid stance that is false. I'm 51 and both my wife and I are former F500 who worked near the top especially her. We would both share some of the critiques you have of corporate America because we actually lived it. And I would never work for one again unless I was financially desperate. And you won't ever find us being Jack Welch acolytes.

If you seriously think productivity and efficiency won't happen with this then you are simply ignorant or so emotionally invested in being anti-corporation that you can't be objective. All I've said is that I won't need to hire as many people as I otherwise would have....so just like every other evolutionary leap in technology has wrought. So, yes, in that regard there is nothing new here. New tech developments increase productivity and so has AI.

If it makes you feel any better, it's likely that you will simply see an up-skill or re-tooling of workers that will create new opportunities that we can't yet see...as someone else already said.

As an engineer by education, and with a four-decade career in technology, I think the OP's conclusion is false. Over the course of history, many technologies have replaced others - and the void is always filled with different and better jobs. It is political foolery to promote the idea of "universal income" under the premise of a large, unproductive population. Bookmark this post and I'll see ya in 2035!

doubledog said:

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lead said:

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In reality, the benefits of AI will probably manifest as improved product quality rather than reduced labor. We didn't shed a lot of knowledge jobs when the internet came on the scene (much more gradually, albeit).

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AI relies on our collective knowledge. There will always be room for those you think abstractly.

On the other hand, AI rewrites are useful for those who write out their own thoughts, but need some grammatical help.

https://ahrefs.com/writing-tools/paragraph-rewriter

---

Extremely few people understand that there is a HUGE difference between knowledge processing and knowledge CREATION. AI is still extremely limited at knowledge creation. I have been on a project spending thousands of hours training an AI model for a catalytic process, and it still provides rudimentary predictive capabilities. Unfortunately, our society has utter contempt for knowledge creation these days, which naturally means that the capabilities of AI are overstated.

RAB87 said:

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As an engineer by education, and with a four-decade career in technology, I think the OP's conclusion is false. Over the course of history, many technologies have replaced others - and the void is always filled with different and better jobs. It is political foolery to promote the idea of "universal income" under the premise of a large, unproductive population. Bookmark this post and I'll see ya in 2035!

---

Let's go through some of those technologies, and talk about what changed:

1) Industrialization / Robotics - US manufacturing has gone up in productivity, total manufacturing output in the US has gone up, but jobs have gone down. This is the most obvious counter-example to your post.

2) Excel - Excel's biggest impact is that we don't have a ton of women working with T-accounts with pen and paper and adding machines doing accounting anymore. In the 1970's accounting functions at major corporations shrank significantly. Not at the top, if anything the need for more senior accountants expanded by a few slots, but the rank and file "AP lady" largely disappeared from the workforce. The invention or ERPs just continued this consolidation.

3) Internet and legal clerks - The research that first year associated do now online used to include the help of a lot of paralegals that looked up cases and whatnot from libraries for review by jr. lawyers. That role has largely disappeared.

I am not advocating at all for UBI. I do think that there will be a huge shake-up of the knowledge based economy from AI, and it would not be wise for people to ignore it.

There was once upon a time where people looked out the efficiency gains that we were experiencing from technology, and hypothesized that it would lead to all people working less and having more leisure time. George Jetson had a 4 hour work week at Spacely Sprockets. What we didn't predict is that the people who really valued working hard to make life better for themselves would just wind up working harder, and being even more productive. People who valued leisure chose to basically exit the competitive part of the workforce, the highly motivated and talented became even more valuable with these better tools, and worked harder for marginally more money.

I am actually predicting that AI is not some huge new thing, it is just the next iteration of technology, and it is likely to have a similar impact on society. The highly productive and those willing to learn are going to get even more efficient, forcing even more people out of the knowledge economy. Furthermore, the application of AI will level the field somewhat between the US culture and foreign cultures, and people outside of the US are going to start to improve on providing knowledge products faster than the US is improving, largely because they have a much lower starting place, and a lot more room to improve. This change in the growth of comparative advantage (this is a second level improvement, it is not that foreign competition is going to get better than us, it is that their improvement is going to grow faster than ours. It's the difference, for example, between speed and acceleration, if that makes sense.) will shift a lot of our economic focus away from the knowledge based economy, and more of those very grunt level jobs will get outsourced more efficiently.

AI is not going to be the end of all work across society as some are predicting. But it will definitely improve efficiency for a lot of jobs, and the impact will be the shrinking number of people in those industry doing lower-level work. You ignore that at your own peril.

We leaned hard into AI on two recent aircraft proposals.

We lost both competitions.

I hope senior management learned from it. I bet they didn't.

94chem said:

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doubledog said:

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lead said:

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In reality, the benefits of AI will probably manifest as improved product quality rather than reduced labor. We didn't shed a lot of knowledge jobs when the internet came on the scene (much more gradually, albeit).

---

AI relies on our collective knowledge. There will always be room for those you think abstractly.

On the other hand, AI rewrites are useful for those who write out their own thoughts, but need some grammatical help.

https://ahrefs.com/writing-tools/paragraph-rewriter

---

Extremely few people understand that there is a HUGE difference between knowledge processing and knowledge CREATION. AI is still extremely limited at knowledge creation. I have been on a project spending thousands of hours training an AI model for a catalytic process, and it still provides rudimentary predictive capabilities. Unfortunately, our society has utter contempt for knowledge creation these days, which naturally means that the capabilities of AI are overstated.

---

A shift towards more fundamental research would be an interesting and potential shift based on this analysis. There is plenty of room for this. Our knowledge of the universe is often over-sold.

One of the areas of interest in pharmaceuticals, for example, is more personalized medicine. In the past, to get something through clinical trials, you formed a universe of potential patents that were representative of the nation as a whole, and you ran a double-blind experimental study where half of the patients got the experimental drug, and half of the patients got a sugar pill or the currently approved drug for the same ailment. If your drug showed statistically improved results over the control group, and the side-effects were not high compared to the efficacy results, your drug got approved.

One limiting thing about this approach is the selection of the universe of patients. Imagine a world where you did a clinical study with a variable group of 1,000 people, and about 100 of the people showed real improvement while the other 900 in the variable group. Some backwards analysis of the DNA of these people, through an AI algorithm, determines that 95 of these 100 people show a certain set of genetic traits. You run the same experiment, where your universe of patients in the control and variable group now both have similar DNA structures to the people from the variable group from the first experiment that got a lot better. The new trial shows that people with that genetic structure show remarkable improvement on the drug compared to the control group. Congrats, you just got a drug approved for a sub-set of the population with a specific DNA structure. This type of new job is going to take the brains of highly efficient and smart researchers. As far as figurative lab rats, not so much.

The changes from AI are going to be real and significant. Where the changes come from will likely surprise the majority of us, myself included.

fc2112 said:

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We leaned hard into AI on two recent aircraft proposals.

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This can mean a lot of things.

1) We used AI to determine what work we needed to accomplish, and put that plan into our proposals.

2) We emphasized our use of AI to develop what we are going to do in our proposals; ie we proposed the leverage of AI a lot in what we were planning on doing as part of the proposal.

3) We used AI to determine what a winning proposal vs. a losing proposal was for these organization seeking proposals, and focused our proposal based on that information.

Not asking for the secret sauce, but some better description here would be interesting.

And the drug came from where?

Im reminded of all the mail room jobs that no longer exist at corporations because of email becoming prevalent throughout the private sector. Is the American economy worse off because entry level positions no longer require you to sort mail for people all day? Or are they better off because entry level positions are now given a higher set of responsibilities in the organization?

Definitely Not A Cop said:

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Im reminded of all the mail room jobs that no longer exist at corporations because of email becoming prevalent throughout the private sector. Is the American economy worse off because entry level positions no longer require you to sort mail for people all day? Or are they better off because entry level positions are now given a higher set of responsibilities in the organization?

---

We held onto ours longer than we should have. I was there when we were still circulating documents on the old To/From envelopes where you would scratch out the previous round trip and put yours in. lol.

They finally disbanded the department about 5 years after they could have.

So my son a sophomore at A&M just got accepted into the accounting path at Mays. Should I tell him he's wasting his time. He'd be a great accountant, what's something he could do that won't be displaced by Ai

TheCurl84 said:

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Lots of talk about how AI will reduce or eliminate jobs, and about the need for young people to find ways to contribute value. Regardless of the numbers etc, let's embrace the general idea. So the question is, what are the best pathways for young people to deliver value? How would you advise a 20 year old today?

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I've been in IT and security since the 90s. I've had plenty of time to worry and plan for this. Originally it was automation to replace repeatable tasks. This eliminated a bunch of jobs over the last 20 years. AI is exponentially more powerful.

The only thing it won't ever replace is true human interaction. There will be a need for true human to human discussions, the need to discuss things on a personal level, and the need to understand why.

I've advised my kids to focus on interpersonal skills. What void can you fill directly with human care? What parts of that workforce will still be covered by a stupid robot screen that spits out the right answers?

I don't think people are truly aware of how powerful this already is, and the impacts on our future. AI is greater than the Industrial Revolution, internet, and cell phones. It will eventually solve most of the world's problems. Elon is right to be scared of it though. Countries will use it to their advantage in any way they can, and it will eventually lead to wars just like every other weapon in history.

ValleyRatAg said:

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So my son a sophomore at A&M just got accepted into the accounting path at Mays. Should I tell him he's wasting his time. He'd be a great accountant, what's something he could do that won't be displaced by Ai

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As long as earnings smoothing is a thing, accountants will be important.

If he really wants to be an accountant, he just has to make great grades. The competition for entry level positions will be tough.

If I had a kid in college right now who wanted to enter into a support career like law, finance, or accounting, I would be advising them to learn how to use AI in the context of their major. That will make them amazingly marketable when they graduate.

That's what I'm thinking he's a freshman with sophomore hours. He's already has an internship lined up for the summer at a small accounting firm in San Antonio that pays well and will employ him through the school year remotely. He's a people person and has a weird passion and ability for accounting. His added value to accounting will come in business development, account management, and leadership.

Thanks for the feedback.

I don't think AI products can be trusted with confidential information. At least that's what's keeping companies in my industry from adopting it for everything. We still need the engineers to run studies with this confidential information. I know you can supposedly get an AI that only lives on your company servers, but would you really trust it?

ValleyRatAg said:

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That's what I'm thinking he's a freshman with sophomore hours. He's already has an internship lined up for the summer at a small accounting firm in San Antonio that pays well and will employ him through the school year remotely. He's a people person and has a weird passion and ability for accounting. His added value to accounting will come in business development, account management, and leadership.

Thanks for the feedback.

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Agree with Buster. Tell him to lean hard into AI and how he can harness it for his degree. The ones that do this will be the ones that don't get automated. Don't be scared of it; embrace it, learn it, and become an expert in how to leverage it for your space and you will be fine.

I liked DiffEq so much, I took it 3 times.

1st time... the prof started in Ch 6 and I got lost and dropped.
2nd time... the prof started in Ch 1 (same book) and nothing I learned the 1st time applied.
3rd time... the prof used a different book. I did pass.

lead said:

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In reality, the benefits of AI will probably manifest as improved product quality rather than reduced labor. We didn't shed a lot of knowledge jobs when the internet came on the scene (much more gradually, albeit).

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Agreed.

We (my boss and I) talk about AI's impact in our company. A 25% reductdion in time spent on email doesn't mean you can eliminate 25% of your employees. It means you have employees with more time to surf the web and piddle.

In my group, AI has allowed us to produce documents that otherwise would never get done. So, it has give us MORE work. I had a guy create a document in a few mins that would have taken 6 months. SO, it would have never gotten done because he'd never justify the time. Now, he took that doc and in 4-5 hours massaged it and edited it to be something meaningful for others.

lead said:

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In reality, the benefits of AI will probably manifest as improved product quality rather than reduced labor. We didn't shed a lot of knowledge jobs when the internet came on the scene (much more gradually, albeit).

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Exactly. We didn't shed a lot of workers during the computer revolution either. Our products, systems and society became more complicated. Robotics has, and will continue to change manufacturing. But that's been going on for four generations.

DallasAg 94 said:

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I liked DiffEq so much, I took it 3 times.

1st time... the prof started in Ch 6 and I got lost and dropped.
2nd time... the prof started in Ch 1 (same book) and nothing I learned the 1st time applied.
3rd time... the prof used a different book. I did pass.

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I took Trig at A&M my freshman year. I didn't have calculus in high school so the thought was I would take that as a prerequisite for Calculus.

Hardest class I took at A&M. We started with about 75 people. I held out until the last day allowed for Q Drop. By that day, there were about 10 of us left. Also, by that day, I had been handing in quizzes that were literally blank because I had no idea how to do the math.

Pointless class.

I always enjoy these threads as the topic is always interesting and tinged with doomsday tones.

I am completely sure this will not affect me so it is fascinating to watch the predictions.

ValleyRatAg said:

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So my son a sophomore at A&M just got accepted into the accounting path at Mays. Should I tell him he's wasting his time. He'd be a great accountant, what's something he could do that won't be displaced by Ai

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I would tell your son he is going to make more money than he ever imagined.

Accounting will never be replaced by AI.

My CPA wife would tell your son the industry is about 30% understaffed and with so many of the older generation reaching retirement and so few going into Accounting, she has great concern on the industry's ability to meet all that is required.

She does Audit. She was retired and was begged back to work. She is too old for the hours and the grind.

My nephews went that path. One got a $80K/yr job after getting his Masters in Finance (no CPA), went to $105K after 1 year and works about 5-6hrs/day. The other I believe has a BA in Finance (no CPA) started at $85K and they have him in a 2yr program of training before he is expected to even produce. Neither got Acct degrees, but both are in the Acct industry without a CPA.

Young CPAs right now can probably make about $50 per billable hour.

My company does AI/ML in Fraud. There are no expertise to do anything with it.

Accounting is actionable and requires human interaction. AI/ML will help the Acct field be more productive and more effiecient, which only means they have the ability to provide better information for their clients.

BusterAg said:

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ValleyRatAg said:

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So my son a sophomore at A&M just got accepted into the accounting path at Mays. Should I tell him he's wasting his time. He'd be a great accountant, what's something he could do that won't be displaced by Ai

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As long as earnings smoothing is a thing, accountants will be important.

If he really wants to be an accountant, he just has to make great grades. The competition for entry level positions will be tough.

If I had a kid in college right now who wanted to enter into a support career like law, finance, or accounting, I would be advising them to learn how to use AI in the context of their major. That will make them amazingly marketable when they graduate.

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You must not actually be anywhere near public accounting. Earnings smoothing has nothing to do with the market for accountants and the firms are hurting for entry level people right now. The big 4 have sort of lost their way partially because of the weird focus on "AI" in their businesses without understanding a use case. They have taken to calling regular old technology AI so they can say it was successful.

The kid just needs to figure out what he wants to do in or adjacent to accounting. He'll get a few options for internships through the 5 year program but there is no way he has a clue at this point what all the options are. Just don't go straight to an industry job as a staff accountant. He will be stuck at that level for much longer. LLMs and tokenized prediction models are great and everyone has access to them. The more important and useful things I've seen from staff are ability to write Python scripts to automate things or use ML to do analytics and draw conclusions.

ETA: Tell the kid to do a better job at math than OP. The abstract says they saved 3 hours a week on email. That's 25% of their email time, not 25% total.

MGS said:

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BusterAg said:

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If entry level knowledge workers are about 25% more efficient, then that sector should shrink a little less than 25%.

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If every worker is 25% more efficient, you would need 20% fewer, not 25%.

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AI probably wouldn't have caught this.

100% this.

Python will make you marketable and money.

The BIg4 have converted many of their Consultants into "AI experts" which just means they took a webinar, but otherwise not very knowledgeable on AI/ML. The Big4 have learned that Consulting is far more profitable than Audit.

Accountants have learned they can make far more money "Consulting" than doing Audit.