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Has the decline of knowledge work begun?

(www.nytimes.com)
388 points pseudolus | 4 comments | 25 Mar 25 17:02 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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bryanlarsen ◴[26 Mar 25 18:14 UTC] No.43485099[source]▶
At least for the moment, AI still needs knowledge workers to spec and prompt and check. AI makes knowledge workers more productive, but it doesn't eliminate the need for them.

And if knowledge workers are more productive, then knowledge work is cheaper. Cheaper knowledge work increases demand for knowledge work. So the number of workers required might actually increase. It also might not, but first order analysis that assumes decreased knowledge workers is not sufficient.

C.f. garment makers. Partial automation of clothes making made clothes cheaper, so now people have closets full of hundreds of garments rather than the 2 sets our great-grandparents likely had. There are now more people making garments now than there was 100 years ago.

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bitxbitxbitcoin ◴[26 Mar 25 18:23 UTC] No.43485195[source]▶
I wonder how the ratio of people making garments relative to the total world population has changed though in this example.
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1. bryanlarsen ◴[26 Mar 25 18:29 UTC] No.43485267[source]▶
No easy answer since most garments > 100 years ago were home-made. But I can confidently assert without data that the number of man-hours of labor in the average closet is substantially up.

garment makers chosen because of this recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43450515

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2. MITSardine ◴[26 Mar 25 20:27 UTC] No.43486897[source]▶
How can you be so sure?

I found this document: https://web.archive.org/web/20210126040017/https://ribevikin... It asks the question "How long would it take to make a Viborg shirt?". The answer seems to be 354 hours per their experiments. This is from seed to shirt. (linen)

I'd be surprised if we had that many man-hours, let alone 3 or 4 times that (this is a single piece of clothing), in our wardrobes. Conservatively assuming a man-hour in the wardrobe costs us $5 (while people are often paid less, their salaries are also but one expense), you'd need at least around $1500 to equal just that shirt.

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3. bryanlarsen ◴[26 Mar 25 20:46 UTC] No.43487113[source]▶
I'm talking 100 years ago, not 1000. We've had mechanized fabric production for > 300 years.

From your document, weaving and spinning are > 85% of the labor in your shirt. Those would be almost 0% for a shirt made 100 years ago. And those wouldn't be the only steps mechanized 100 years ago.

4. watwut ◴[26 Mar 25 22:21 UTC] No.43488125[source]▶
100 years ago is 1925 - people were already buying cloth in stores at that time. You need to go further into history.