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Ask HN: What career would you switch into if AI ate your profession?

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Re: Ask HN: What career would you switch into if AI ate your profession?

#81

Post by talaba »

ldoughty wrote: post #11

Top picks: Game development -- AI will eventually be guidable to write code, but it likely won't have "imagination" in the next decade (and I am not worried about my finances after that) Beer making -- Similarly, AI likely won't understand taste for quite some time Woodworking -- When everything is mass produced by automation, I suspect people will want unique, custom, hand-made things more. Edit: Fix format, clarify…

> beer making

No need for AI. T-test (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student%27s_t-test) was invented more than a century ago to improve beer quality.

Re: Ask HN: What career would you switch into if AI ate your profession?

#82

Post by dogma1138 »

ldoughty wrote: post #72
speedgoose wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it likely won't have "imagination" in the next decade I find GPT models to perform very well on this task. ChatGPT is the best right now but even small models like GPT J 6B are good.

They work on text, but could ML/AI design SimCity 2000 in a way that is fun and enjoyable? or a game like Starcraft? (In the next 10-15 years, which is the scope of this Ask HN relative to me) It might be able to make realistic text, even storylines, but I don't think ML/AI will be able to make GOOD games without significant guidance, especially things that 'break the mold' (Portal, Black & White, the first "Sim" gam…

ML/AI like every tool isn’t about absolute autonomy but rather about force multiplication.

This is what happened to farming, the textile industry, manufacturing etc.

It’s not that anyone thinks that an AI would be able to develop a game or an app from scratch but how many people it would displace by automating things from code generation to UI design and art assets creation.

We still have farmers, however their farms tend to be much larger and there are far fewer farmhands than there were 50 years ago let alone 100 or 150 before the Industrial Revolution kicked into high gear.

Ironically the productivity of AI/ML is quite likely going to open the door for many people the tech part of the tech community was quite often dismissive off - as in “I’m a big picture type of person and I can instinctively know how good looks like but I lack the knowledge to make my dream a reality”.

Whilst plenty of people that think they are like that often fall quite far from that even those who don’t like the Jobs of the world tend to be quite divisive individuals that too many people tend to dismiss as charlatans that failed upwards.

Overall I don’t think that an apocalypse is coming down at least not yet, however I don’t actually mind the fact that there might be more opportunity for people who really want to focus on the problem rather than people who just seem to know what the solution is or should be and find a problem that fits it.

And if AI can get to a spot where it can actually help people iterate solutions in a rapid and cheap manner it can really change how a lot of industries operate.

Also ironically a lot of other far less glorious IT professions are probably safe, old school sysadmins and infrastructure folks seem to be able to demand far higher wages than ever before which is what happens when 9 out of 10 new people in “IT” these days know how to package a hello world app that has 4GB of Node.JS dependencies and write the helm charts and TF deployment code which probably has more lines than the original Windows NT kernel but can’t calculate a subnet mask or know what MAC address is…

Re: Ask HN: What career would you switch into if AI ate your profession?

#85

Post by mikewarot »

If I hadn't gotten pushed out of the labor force by Long Covid, I'd still be making gears, and gear like objects, in a job shop. Producing real goods that have value to society in small batches.

Artisanal Gears? ;-)

I'd like to make a small machine that turns out gear hobs. I'd also like to figure out how to skive bevel gears, which is impossible at present, because the pitch of the tooth varies across its face.

Re: Ask HN: What career would you switch into if AI ate your profession?

#86

Post by de_nied »

ldoughty wrote: post #11

Top picks: Game development -- AI will eventually be guidable to write code, but it likely won't have "imagination" in the next decade (and I am not worried about my finances after that) Beer making -- Similarly, AI likely won't understand taste for quite some time Woodworking -- When everything is mass produced by automation, I suspect people will want unique, custom, hand-made things more. Edit: Fix format, clarify…

All your top picks have "innovation as a requirement for success" in common. AI is meant to reproduce outcomes, which means that innovation isn't something an AI can do. Or can it?

Re: Ask HN: What career would you switch into if AI ate your profession?

#88

Post by throwaway675309 »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #39
curioussavage wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha! So three very popular hobbies for programmers? I guess we’ll all all join you in those endeavors

Programmers tend to have a lot of free time. You'd be hard-pressed to find a hobby that isn't popular among programmers

Anecdotally but I find the following hobbies weirdly overly represented in IT:

1. Micro brew or craft brewing of some kind, Or at the very least an obsession with beer

2. Swing dancing

3. Frisbee golf

4. Cooking

As an engineer myself my hobbies don't intersect unfortunately:

1. Juggling and card manipulation

2. Sparta running training

3. Piano composition

4. Aviation

Re: Ask HN: What career would you switch into if AI ate your profession?

#90

Post by courgette »

Swizec wrote: post #60
courgette wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair. But I would be weary of the swap also swapping the compensation down. Not that it really matter on the long run in the context of that question

I found this article insightful: https://milkyeggs.com/?p=303 When the internet empowered more people to do the lawyers’ grunt work, compensation became bimodal. There is more value in being on the high end, but less on doing the grunt work. I think that’s gonna happen with other professions. Including ours (engineering). If you’re doing grunt work – be afraid. If you’re doing high level work – rejoice, it’s about to…

That theory is floating around on HN since a few month. I find it appealing, to an extend.

Even if AI wrote most of the code, who check for completeness and is on prod support ?

I’m not 100% convinced that legal grunt work translate to software grunt work ( I don’t know about real engineering)

It may, but 20 years in that industry make me think that a legal PDF compiling jurisprudence is easier to “maintain” than any sizeable system.

That being said : it the AI output perfect, flawless and 100% up services, you don’t need human to know how the sausage is made. ( until it broke )

Question for you : what is engineering grunt work ? I’m not sure where I stand at this point. Working in giant structure make you feel like a cog, but I’m far removed from my earlier year problematic.

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