this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2026
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I don't use it but my wife uses it for spreadsheet equations. She has to verifiy and test every answer but then so would anything written by an intern.
So yeah, AI is killing jobs, not in an individual sense, but in aggregate like spreadsheet software did 50 years ago when before that all work was done by hand.
That's just making one person do the job of more than one. I call bs.
Capitalism has been doing that long before LLM'S.
How do you call bs on one person doing the work that used to take two? It was one person and an intern.
Every company had a secretary pool 60 years ago before word processors allowed people to type by themselves without an extra support person.
aka 'Productivity increase'
Productivity has increased for decades without much of it going to wage increases. Instead, it's gone to the companies/shareholders
People could have always learned to type, that part didn’t change much with the switch to computers. I think they just liked having secretaries around back in the day and were willing to pay for it.
Typing quickly on a mechanical typewriter is a skill not easily mastered. It's not just the typing, it is the extreme accuracy needed. There's no backspace and no cut and paste. A letter covered in white out isn't acceptable.
I have a few mechanical typewriters I got into as a hobby, it’s not that hard. This is where I’m just like, skill issue. People didn’t want to type, they just liked having secretaries around and were willing to pay for it. Back in the 70’s and earlier they literally thought typing was “women’s work” like sewing because it required high levels of manual dexterity that big tough men were obviously incapable of.
Well that's everything. If you are an expert you can do it quickly and accurately. Everyone else needs to take more time and will make mistakes. Word Processing software means a single typo doesn't ruin ten minutes of typing. It enabled regular people without skill to type well enough to do the work themselves.