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Ask HN: Do the IT layoff and the AI rise correlate?

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Ask HN: Do the IT layoff and the AI rise correlate?

#1

Post by tapkolun »

I'm quite terrified of what's happening with GPT. Management, junior coders, website developers, database architect, devops, who will be replaced in a couple of years by AI?

If GPT is already capable of performing as a "very eager junior programmer", in a few months who is going to hire any junior coder to perform task, if GPT is doing that for me? How many months are left before we will "open the benefits of programming to new audiences"?

I've invested my time and effort to gain a large quantity of knowledge that will be replaced by generated code. All my effort to create a career or my dreams of creating new technologies and services are fading since coding soon will no more be an ability but a matter of prompting to an AI.

I know that some of you are thinking that the AI will open so many possibilities of building, but for who? An AGI or an assistance is a way of centralizing information access, not expanding it. Users will access and perform things with the assistance and nothing else. So what are we going to build, plugins for the AI?

I've never felt such a low hope for the future of IT and for my future.

reference: - https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt-plugins

Re: Ask HN: Do the IT layoff and the AI rise correlate?

#2

Post by PaulHoule »

Big Tech was in trouble before the A.I. boom. In particular the idea that “I want to work for FAANG” has been Hacker News’s #1 delusion that really is more like “I want to get bit by an Alligator”

You certainly get paid well at those firms (except for one of the A’s) but you won’t learn anything transferable because those firms are profitable because of monopolies (F, G, and 1.5 A’s) or over capitalization (N, half an A, look at the case of Uber, it is easy to sell a lot of half price taxi rides but it doesn’t make money in the long term.)

The technology of LLMs may wind up less centralized than you think, the current networks are still pretty inefficient as people understand how they work they’ll get cheaper to build and run, On huggingface (which publishes numerous free models) they list 13 applications of transformers but y’all are hung up on just 1 of them. (Getting seduced by text-generation bullshitters)

As I see it there is a whole world opening wide and it is time to jump in. The danger is not that those chatbots replace coders it is that they replace the Donald Trumps and L. Ron Hubbard’s and Eliezer Yudkowskys.

Re: Ask HN: Do the IT layoff and the AI rise correlate?

#3

Post by dougmwne »

I’ll keep repeating this: if you don’t have a career future you who are smart, engaged, knowledgeable and passionate, then no one does in any field. Personally, I believe this tech will change work, make it faster, let us get more done and remove our blockers faster. Like the introduction of the computer to the office, we will have to adapt and re-learn, but will also be more productive. You sound like a person to loves to learn and so would be at an advantage.

But if this really is going to destroy wide swaths of jobs, if it becomes a human-level AGI copilot that lets a CEO run a Fortune 500 with just a few dozen prompt engineers, then forget trying to become a plumber. We will have the most massive wave of unemployment in history and it will end either in basic income and quality of life for all or a butlerian jihad.

Re: Ask HN: Do the IT layoff and the AI rise correlate?

#4

Post by ethanwillis »

data, hardware, and further levels of abstraction. Do you write machine code or even assembly? We've had compilers producing very good code for decades.

There are hard practical limits on just how much self-optimizing any paradigm shift towards higher levels of abstraction can do.

Re: Ask HN: Do the IT layoff and the AI rise correlate?

#5

Post by gus_massa »

dougmwne wrote: post #3

I’ll keep repeating this: if you don’t have a career future you who are smart, engaged, knowledgeable and passionate, then no one does in any field. Personally, I believe this tech will change work, make it faster, let us get more done and remove our blockers faster. Like the introduction of the computer to the office, we will have to adapt and re-learn, but will also be more productive. You sound like a person to lo…

> then forget trying to become a plumber

I think the election of "plumber" is just a saying, but I expect plumbers to be one of the safest professions. You need to make a hole in the wall, avoid the electricity wires and structural columns. The pipes inside the wall sometimes are not like the pipes in the paper blueprint, in particular when the building is old and had some fixes before you. Identify the hole, decide what to change and solder the new parts. Now cover that, and make a bad looking repair of the wall. Did I miss something? It need a lot of advancement in robotic and image recognition and other non textual AI.

Re: Ask HN: Do the IT layoff and the AI rise correlate?

#7

Post by dev_0 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

Big Tech was in trouble before the A.I. boom. In particular the idea that “I want to work for FAANG” has been Hacker News’s #1 delusion that really is more like “I want to get bit by an Alligator” You certainly get paid well at those firms (except for one of the A’s) but you won’t learn anything transferable because those firms are profitable because of monopolies (F, G, and 1.5 A’s) or over capitalization (N, half a…

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: Do the IT layoff and the AI rise correlate?

#8

Post by iExploder »

dougmwne wrote: post #3

I’ll keep repeating this: if you don’t have a career future you who are smart, engaged, knowledgeable and passionate, then no one does in any field. Personally, I believe this tech will change work, make it faster, let us get more done and remove our blockers faster. Like the introduction of the computer to the office, we will have to adapt and re-learn, but will also be more productive. You sound like a person to lo…

> if it becomes a human-level AGI copilot that lets a CEO run a Fortune 500 with just a few dozen prompt engineers

if thats the case everyone in the world will want a piece of this easy pie, this results in competition, that results in needing more talent to compete.

and when (or better yet if) we ever get to AGI, then it will be the end of humanity anyway. we will have far more pressing problems than looking for a job

Re: Ask HN: Do the IT layoff and the AI rise correlate?

#9

Post by guilhas »

Don't think so. I say more to do with: over hiring; possible recession; remote work; end of financial year... Things are changing not just AI and this firings must have been planned for awhile

Recent ML development/revelation do put pressure on these companies to shift priorities fast. But everyone is still scrambling to see what the AI future will be

If anything they need more people than ever working in AI product applications

Re: Ask HN: Do the IT layoff and the AI rise correlate?

#10

Post by dougmwne »

gus_massa wrote: post #5
dougmwne wrote: post #3

I’ll keep repeating this: if you don’t have a career future you who are smart, engaged, knowledgeable and passionate, then no one does in any field. Personally, I believe this tech will change work, make it faster, let us get more done and remove our blockers faster. Like the introduction of the computer to the office, we will have to adapt and re-learn, but will also be more productive. You sound like a person to lo…

> then forget trying to become a plumber I think the election of "plumber" is just a saying, but I expect plumbers to be one of the safest professions. You need to make a hole in the wall, avoid the electricity wires and structural columns. The pipes inside the wall sometimes are not like the pipes in the paper blueprint, in particular when the building is old and had some fixes before you. Identify the hole, decide…

Yes, if 95% of white collar professionals are put out of work, there will be so much competition for the trades that their labor value will be destroyed as well.
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