Be kinde to folk. This changeth the whole habitat.
- Manlobbi
Personal Finance Topics / Macroeconomic Trends and Risks
No. of Recommendations: 2
MIT study finds AI can already replace 11.7% of U.S. workforce
What the researchers found is that the visible tip of the iceberg — the layoffs and role shifts in tech, computing and information technology — represents just 2.2% of total wage exposure, or about $211 billion. Beneath the surface lies the total exposure, the $1.2 trillion in wages, and that includes routine functions in human resources, logistics, finance, and office administration. Those are areas sometimes overlooked in automation forecasts.https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/26/mit-study-finds-ai...One of the Steelcase dealers I worked for had a RIF every year. The first RIF swept through middle management. What changed after the middle managers were tossed? Nothing. The work carried on as before.
Steve
No. of Recommendations: 0
<img src="
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/upload..." alt="This infographic compares the time taken to complete work tasks with and without the use of generative AI, highlighting productivity gains."/>
If one clicks on the image it shows AI can perform the task anywhere from half the time to 1/3 of the time as a human depending on what the task is.
No. of Recommendations: 1
Years ago, I was sitting in a hotel hot tub with a management consultant to fortune 500 firms. I said that, in my opinion, managers spent way too much time in useless meetings, while they left the operations of their department to their administrative assistants. I said that my solution to greater corporate profitability would be to simply double the salaries of al the "secretaries" and fire their bosses. He answered "Yes, but I would be out of a job as well".
Jeff
(Who, while running my businesses, rarely had more than three people in a meeting and meetings rarely lasted more than a few minutes. I figured that, if they lasted longer, it meant that the participants were unprepared and time was being wasted by the others in the meeting. If others needed to know, then a second meeting of just those necessary was called. Most meetings took place with all participants standing up, again in the promotion of a speedy resolution. While my managers had a tremendous amount of autonomy, their compensation was generally tied to net profit for the company. The meetings were very democratic in nature. The other participants would lay out the data and then their opinions of what should be done. I would then decide on a course of action which they would follow. OK, so maybe not that democratic after all :-)
No. of Recommendations: 5
If one clicks on the image it shows AI can perform the task anywhere from half the time to 1/3 of the time as a human depending on what the task is.
It’s an interesting chart. I looked all around but couldn’t find the comparison for “correcting hallucinations or other obviously faulty results”
No. of Recommendations: 1
"Yes, but I would be out of a job as well".
My theory about why McKinsey is so popular among "JCs" is they tell the "JCs" what they want to hear. Example: Volkswagen AG. VAG has several vanity brands, as well as three mass market brands that compete against the VW brand. VAG is in a significant financial bind. So, what do they do? Lay off tens of thousands of production workers, offshore Golf production to Mexico, but they keep the vanity and redundant brands, each with it's own pile of administrative overhead.
Decades ago, I saw a meme about "the happy, productive, worker". The company saw that the worker was happy and productive, so they started adding layers of administration "to help him". The pile of administrative overhead grew larger and larger, until the company was in trouble. In response to the financial bind, they laid off "the happy, productive, worker", while keeping the administrative overhead.
Steve...former part of administrative overhead that AI could replace
