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AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

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Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#381

Post by gavinhoward »

teawrecks wrote: post #336
gavinhoward wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who needs to build the next Amazon? I want a business that feeds my wife and me, with maybe a little extra. I don't need to be rich.

The problem is your plan hinges on you being the one and only company in your neighborhood with the "human touch". But you won't be. You'll be competing with every other human with a family who refuses to use modern technology. Even if it's possible, it's unlikely you'll win that fight. And even if you do, how many others did you have to beat out to make it work? It's just not a scalable plan. It reminds me of a midd…

I don't have to beat others completely out. I just have to convince enough people that my software and support are better for them.

Yes, I will be competing with every human. But my market will be "every" human, and I don't need to capture all of that market; I only need to capture enough.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#382

Post by gavinhoward »

asdfman123 wrote: post #355
gavinhoward wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Countercounterpoint: I doubt that AI will do as well in refactoring as me. I refactor religiously . I hate code that is subpar, so I'll refactor and refactor. In my current project, I have 180 commits that mention refactoring in the log message, and some of those are huge redesign commits. And I haven't even released it yet!

I would do that if I could, but at my brand name tech company (and a lot of others) they seem to treat refactoring as completely wasted time.

That sucks. I'm sorry.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#383

Post by gavinhoward »

m348e912 wrote: post #378
gavinhoward wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And my bet is that they will not, long term. If you use "AI" to increase productivity, you're doing it by reviewing the code from the "AI" less than you would your own. That lack of review, and testing, will slow down velocity over time as the software becomes untenable, unmanageable, and too complicated to understand. Meanwhile, my slow velocity at first will result in great design and little technical debt. Eventua…

I think you're describing the difference of AI creating code vs developing _with_ AI which firmly keeps humans in charge but enabling them to be many times more efficient.

They'll only be more efficient if they don't review the code. Otherwise, these tools are just typing helpers, and typing is a small part of the job.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#384

Post by JohnFen »

Herval_freire wrote: post #376
JohnFen wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Additionally there's just multitudes of construction jobs, maintenance jobs, physical jobs that can't be replaced. Yes, I should have been more specific: I can't think of a way I could adapt to such a world in a way that wouldn't be utterly soul-crushing. If those sorts of jobs were appealing to me, I would still be doing them. In any case, this is why I don't spend a lot of time thinking about this eventuality. I…

> There's far too much uncertainty right now to engage in anything like planning. I agree there's a huge amount of uncertainty. But I think there still must be some sort of plan B. Maybe a sort of nest egg of sorts of what to do in case it all goes to shit.

Well, yes.. an emergency fund (the bigger the better, but I compromise on keeping at least 1 year's pay) and disaster planning are extremely important regardless of whether or not advanced AI exists.

A plan B that targets the consequences of an advanced AI specifically is more problematic because, if the people who are all excited here see their fantasies come true, then not only are we all screwed, but the hardship will be permanent. I haven't yet worked out how to develop a contingency for that.

And look at all the comments on this very article replying to people who are positing contingency plans: it's almost all ridicule and telling them that their efforts are pointless. So, apparently, lots of people are upset at the very notion that people are considering contingency plans.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#385

Post by uconnectlol »

gpgn wrote: post #379
sharemywin wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As technological capability increases, there will just be a point where food and everything will be handed out for free. that's not the trend line I'm seeing.

yeah, no way "food will be handed out for free" when you can make a profit by selling it; they'd rather throw it away (as they do right now) than give it away for free

At some point you just have everything you need to survive automated. At that point there is no such thing as profit anymore aside from hookers. The only viable way I see someone hoarding it is because they see themselves as the new god because they were the first to automate the full chain. In that case they will claim humans are bad and try to police them like what we get with every single wingnut idiot these days.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#386

Post by timr »

ajmurmann wrote: post #264
timr wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is mostly due to gun violence, traffic accidents and drug abuse which IMO are largely cultural and not due to automation) Not really. It's mostly due to food and metabolic disorders (i.e. diabetes, heart disease; iirc heart disease is the #1 cause of death in the US, and depending on how you group, diabetes is in the top five), which actually underscores the point. People are dying at higher rates because they…

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1641799722418556931?...

Both this and what I wrote can be true at the same time.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#387

Post by nh23423fefe »

uconnectlol wrote: post #342

What's this constant obsession with "stealing jobs"? The tech industry has been dead for something like 30 years. There is zero intellectual design being put into it. Music is just a bunch of sellouts. You know how "content creators" do that cringy shit where they try to base their life around monetizing their "content"? That's how "musicians" worked before the internet. I couldn't care less how their jobs are threat…

Work/money is accounting. Work feels bad, money feels good: now go maximize you replicator.

> And mundane people will still be worse off by their own choosing.

As they always have. Crying about the environment we all live in and co-create is myopia transformed into arrogance.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#388

Post by jschveibinz »

golergka wrote: post #209
ajmurmann wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing to outsourcing or, even less fitting, immigration is a terrible analogy. Those jobs and their income go to other humans. Other humans who will consume goods and services, this is especially true for immigration. I'd also argue that offshoring is morally positive because it moves the work and associated income to where people need it more, that's why the labor is cheaper there Both automation and global move…

> However, automation allows for the owner of the goods of production to retain much more of the value created. Owners of means of productions are typically american people with 401k or other pensions funds. There's nothing wrong to provide good returns for regular people.

AI is arguably the most powerful production (as in “means of production”) tool ever created.

Anyone that is literate and somewhat intelligent/capable with access to the web is potentially more inventive and creative in the coming years than the greatest thinkers and creators that have ever lived. Billions of people will meet this qualification.

Everyone is now faced with a choice: use the tool and stay in the race, or ignore the tool and drop out of the race.

There are thousands of social problems to solve.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#389

Post by jschveibinz »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #312
fnimick wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm not. I'm not even in the top 10%. Also, we can be concerned for people less fortunate than us. "You're probably wealthy so why do you care" is such a stupid argument.

I will add even more to this point. If anything, people who are more fortunate have an actual incentive to ensure some level of care for those less fortunate even if it is just for purely selfish reasons. Hungry people are angry people and the moment there is a lot of hungry, angry people, being top 10% is unlikely to keep you or your wealth safe. There are obviously non-pragmatic considerations, but I am trying to a…

How will you use AI to solve these problems?

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#390

Post by throwaway22032 »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #356
throwaway22032 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do want to do them. That's why they do them. They simply don't ask for more money than the AI would require yet. Once there's a sufficient margin in it, not exactly at the cut-off but perhaps at 150-200%, they're gone.

> People do want to do them. That's why they do them. Incredibly naive. Very few people enjoy their jobs. I imagine job satisfaction of anything dealing with garbage is low. The only reason people stick to it is because it pays decently, plus maybe some sort of factor intrinsic to the job like not having to deal with people. But generally, people do their job because they have to do them in order to put a roof over t…

I am not interested in convincing you that people do indeed choose their jobs so we'll have to agree to disagree on this.
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