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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?

#61

Post by giraffe_lady »

courgette wrote: post #53
giraffe_lady wrote: post #41

It's kind of amazing that we've created a world where it's plausible a lot of our jobs could become automated and this is a bad thing . We really fucked up lol. Anyway I don't have any other economically valuable skills and I'm not willing to go back to cooking. I'd try to join a monastery if any would have me. If not I'll just be homeless again until the people who still have jobs finally work up the courage to exec…

Yeah, growing up, my understanding of “the plan” that we would end up writing poetry and dance in farandoles in orchards while the machines slaves away our work. That plan got cancelled I think.

Instead we made machines to write poetry so we can have more time for work.

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

#63

Post by thorin »

courgette wrote: post #47
ChintanGhate wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same! would open a small patisserie.

Please do, the US has such a lack of patisseries and boulangeries ( sorry to assume your position )

It must be really hard work being a baker, it's very labour intensive and you sell each item pretty cheaply. I guess it's hard to make money. I'm always so happy in France to see every village having it's own bakery which is always busy. Even in the UK we have a great scene in village bakeries making cakes, bread and sausage rolls and pies and pasties. It's one of the finer things in life :-)

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

#64

Post by Melting_Harps »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #41

It's kind of amazing that we've created a world where it's plausible a lot of our jobs could become automated and this is a bad thing . We really fucked up lol. Anyway I don't have any other economically valuable skills and I'm not willing to go back to cooking. I'd try to join a monastery if any would have me. If not I'll just be homeless again until the people who still have jobs finally work up the courage to exec…

> It's kind of amazing that we've created a world where it's plausible a lot of our jobs could become automated and this is a bad thing. We really fucked up lol.

Agreed, we were promised self-driving cars and Tesla bots to do our house hores, instead what is really waiting is the dire prospect of being un or underemplyed as so many have been in other developed economies after sustained financial crisis: most of the World is mirroring what Japan has become after the bubble economy.

> Anyway I don't have any other economically valuable skills and I'm not willing to go back to cooking. I'd try to join a monastery if any would have me. If not I'll just be homeless again until the people who still have jobs finally work up the courage to execute those without.

Don't go back to cooking if you value your sanity and respect(ed) your craft, COVID destroyed any level of competence and soaring food costs coupled with untrained and unmotivated staff have choked the life of many of my chef friends: I went on a few stages to see for myself when I was home for the holidays in the US as the tech layoffs were in starting gather steam ahead of Xmas and new years in '22, and while I got work on the line on the spot I refused them for the same reasons: everything is being McDonal'ized in order to compete for market share where corps run things due to thier access to larger budgets, loans and outside investment that allow them to amoratize costs (and even run at a loss with franchise models) so cuisine is not even a post-thought.

This has made me want to see this entire Industry collapse.

Personally, I'm a Machine Learning student in university so I guess I'll be training the algos to take your jobs if this actually happens?

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

#65

Post by scyzoryk_xyz »

Haha since my profession has lately been nothing but studying human surgeons in training - with tedious user experience sessions - I don’t think what I’m doing is going away anytime soon. If anything AI has been helpful in transcribing, sorting and understanding all the video material. But I try to stick to human problems, and those are a plenty in medicine.

Watching them work though, I think I would want to start doing proper medicine. I’m extremely jealous of medical professions - I wish I could meaningfully contribute.

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

#66

Post by bboylen »

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…

As a current junior developer with ambitions to do high level work I have fear that the ladder will be pulled up by AI before I can get to that level.

We will see though :)

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

#68

Post by the_only_law »

animuchan wrote: post #57
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…

Game development is an interesting one. Looking at the bulk of recent triple-A titles, most of those feel so unimaginative and secondary that I can only assume AI already took over that field. :)

Funny enough though, the unimaginative, secondary nature that you describe has revived an old desire to make my own games, but I’m no artist.

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

#69

Post by Avshalom »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #61
courgette wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, growing up, my understanding of “the plan” that we would end up writing poetry and dance in farandoles in orchards while the machines slaves away our work. That plan got cancelled I think.

Instead we made machines to write poetry so we can have more time for work.

gotta free up workers for amazon warehouses.

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

#70

Post by courtesycumber »

I would probably volunteer more in my state's museum and attempt to break into academic paleontology. I've already donated some of my specimens and have the knowledge / skills to contribute to research. I expect the risk of automation in archaeology / paleontology is low.
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