It should be obvious that `Thing` generating tools/machines will displace/replace `Thing` generating humans as soon the tool meets the employer's threshold of affordability/quality/speed. This is how capitalism works and you don't have to be a communist to understand or accept that.<p>With that said... <i>Forty times!</i> ... <i>Seventy percent?!</i> ... This seemed a bit extreme, so I had a look through the source article[0] to try and find out what these claims and figures (40x, 70%) were based on.<p>The <i>40x productivity spike</i> is drawn from a professional illustrator's claim that without AI tools, an illustrator could draw one piece in a day, but "with the help of AI, they could make 40 a day for their bosses to choose from." <i>(quoted from article, not direct quote from the illustrator)</i><p>The <i>70% job loss</i> is similarly based on a single individual's claim. They reckon that illustrator jobs (listings?) dropped by 70%, with no indication of how they arrived at that figure. Furthermore, although they are assigning blame to the AI tools, they think that "regulatory pressures and a slowing economy" are the primary causes.<p>To be clear, I'm not saying that either of these people are doing anything wrong. The reporting could be a little more critical, but this is not unexpected these days. The readers could be a little more critical as well...<p>[0] <a href="https://restofworld.org/2023/ai-image-china-video-game-layoffs/" rel="nofollow">https://restofworld.org/2023/ai-image-china-video-game-layof...</a>