I'm not worried about AI job loss • Hacker News Board

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#111

Post by palmotea » Fri, Feb 13, 2026, 9:43 PM UTC

rockbruno wrote: post #60

gordonhart wrote: post #23

Whenever I get worried about this I comb through our ticket tracker and see that ~0% of them can be implemented by AI as it exists today. Once somebody cracks the memory problem and ships an agent that progressively understands the business and the codebase, then I'll start worrying. But context limitation is fundamental to the technology in its current form and the value of SWEs is to turn the bigger picture into a…

While true, my personal fear is that the higher-ups will overlook this fact and just assume that AI can do everything because of some cherry-pick simple examples, leading to one of those situations where a bunch of people get fired for no reason and then re-hired again after some time.

> leading to one of those situations where a bunch of people get fired for no reason and then re-hired again after some time.

More likely they get fired for no reason, never rehired, and the people left get burned out trying to hold it all together.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#112

Post by Jianghong94 » Fri, Feb 13, 2026, 9:46 PM UTC

mjr00 wrote: post #34

I'm one of those developers who is now writing probably ~80% of my code via Claude. For context, I have >15 years experience and former AWS so I'm not a bright-eyed junior or former product manager who now believes themselves a master developer. I'm not worried about AI job loss in the programming space. I can use Claude to generate ~80% of my code precisely because I have so much experience as a developer. I intuiti…

This. At this point AI/LLM/Claude Code is still a power user tool; the more you know about your domain + the more you're willing to reasonably use it, the more gain you have.

That being said the real danger is not coming from AI today, it's more C-suites believing AI can just zero shot any problem you throw at it.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#113

Post by justonepost1 » Fri, Feb 13, 2026, 9:49 PM UTC

ef2k wrote: post #99

The article frames the premise that "everything will be fine" around people with "regular jobs", which I assume means non knowledge work, but most of public concern is on cognitive tasks being automated. It also argues that models have existed for years and we're yet to see significant job loss. That's true, but AI is only now crossing the threshold of being both capable and reliable enough to be automate common task…

There is no “preparing for the disruption” at an individual level, aside from maybe trying to 100x a polymarket bet to boost your savings.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#114

Post by ddtaylor » Fri, Feb 13, 2026, 9:57 PM UTC

iberator wrote: post #41

ddtaylor wrote: post #9

Labor substitution is extremely difficult and almost everybody hand waves it away. Take even the most unskilled labor that people can think about such as flipping a burger at a restaurant like McDonald's. In reality that job is multiple different roles mixed into one that are constantly changing. Multiple companies have experimented with machines and robots to perform this task all with very limited success and none…

I lost my job as a software developer some time ago. Flipping burgers is WAY more demanding than I ever imagined. That's the danger of AI: It takes jobs faster than creating new ones PLUS for some fields (like software development) downshifting to just about anything else is brutal and sometimes simply not doable. Forget becoming manager at McDonald's or be even good at flipping burgers at the age of 40: you are comp…

I have worked in the restaurant industry within the last 5 years and I'm probably older than you.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#115

Post by ddtaylor » Fri, Feb 13, 2026, 9:59 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #105

Borg3 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh.. sorry to hear :( I am myself unemployed right now. Its really hard to land a job in tech.. Luicky, I dont need to flip burgers for now...

Who's gonna play you to flip burgers with no experience doing it and everyone else needing a job as well?

There is a huge demand for low-skill labor in other industries. Stuff like plumbing, HVAC, and a ton of other traditionally unsexy jobs that can barely keep enough people in a town to perform these jobs at higher costs than normal.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#116

Post by ddtaylor » Fri, Feb 13, 2026, 10:01 PM UTC

password54321 wrote: post #13

ddtaylor wrote: post #9

Labor substitution is extremely difficult and almost everybody hand waves it away. Take even the most unskilled labor that people can think about such as flipping a burger at a restaurant like McDonald's. In reality that job is multiple different roles mixed into one that are constantly changing. Multiple companies have experimented with machines and robots to perform this task all with very limited success and none…

>the most unskilled labor People are worried about white-collar not blue-collar jobs being replaced. Robotics is obviously a whole different field from AI.

> Robotics is obviously a whole different field from AI

I agree, but people are conflating the two. We have seen a lot of advancements in robotics, but as of current that only makes the economics worse. We're not seeing the complexity of robots going down and we're seeing the R&D costs going up, etc.

If it didn't make sense a few years ago to buy a crappy robot that can barely do the task because your business will never make money doing it, it probably doesn't make sense this year to buy a robot that still can't accomplish the tasks and is more expensive.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#117

Post by ddtaylor » Fri, Feb 13, 2026, 10:03 PM UTC

mattlondon wrote: post #59

ddtaylor wrote: post #9

Labor substitution is extremely difficult and almost everybody hand waves it away. Take even the most unskilled labor that people can think about such as flipping a burger at a restaurant like McDonald's. In reality that job is multiple different roles mixed into one that are constantly changing. Multiple companies have experimented with machines and robots to perform this task all with very limited success and none…

Jobs that require physical effort will be fine for the reasons you state Any job that is predominantly done on a computer though is at risk IMO. AI might not completely take over everything, but I think we'll see way fewer humans managing/orchestrating larger and larger fleets of agents. Instead of say 20 people doing some function, you'll have 3 or 4 prompting away to manage the agents to get the same amount of work…

> So the people flipping the burgers and serving the customers will be safe, but the accountants and marketing folks won't be.

And that's probably something most people are okay with. Work that can be automated should be and humans should be spending their time on novel things instead of labor if possible.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#118

Post by ddtaylor » Fri, Feb 13, 2026, 10:06 PM UTC

slavoingilizov wrote: post #25

ddtaylor wrote: post #9

Labor substitution is extremely difficult and almost everybody hand waves it away. Take even the most unskilled labor that people can think about such as flipping a burger at a restaurant like McDonald's. In reality that job is multiple different roles mixed into one that are constantly changing. Multiple companies have experimented with machines and robots to perform this task all with very limited success and none…

Can you walk me through this argument for a customer service agent? The jobs where the nuance and variety isn’t there and don’t involve physical interaction are completely different to flipping burgers

A customer service agent that can be automated should be, but it's not working right now. Most support systems are designed to offload as much work as possible to the automated funnel, which almost always has gaps, loops, etc. The result is customers who want to pay for something or use something that get "stuck" being unable to throw money at a company. Right now the cost of fraud is much greater than the cost of these uncaptured sales or lost customers.

Eventually that will change and the role of a customer service agent will be redefined.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#119

Post by ddtaylor » Fri, Feb 13, 2026, 10:10 PM UTC

Der_Einzige wrote: post #28

ddtaylor wrote: post #9

Labor substitution is extremely difficult and almost everybody hand waves it away. Take even the most unskilled labor that people can think about such as flipping a burger at a restaurant like McDonald's. In reality that job is multiple different roles mixed into one that are constantly changing. Multiple companies have experimented with machines and robots to perform this task all with very limited success and none…

Funny, I go to South Korea and the fast food burger joints literally operate exactly as you say they couldn't. I've had the best burger in my life from a McDonalds in South Korea operated practically by robots. It's a non reality in America's extremely piss poor restaurant industry. We have a competency crisis (the big key here) and worker shortage that SK doesn't, and they have far higher trust in their society.

> McDonald’s global CEO has famously stated that while they invest in "advanced kitchen equipment," full robotic kitchens aren't a broad reality yet because "the economics don't pencil out" for their massive scale.

> While a highly automated McDonald’s in South Korea (or the experimental "small format" store in Texas) might look empty, the total headcount remains surprisingly similar to a standard restaurant

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#120

Post by ddtaylor » Fri, Feb 13, 2026, 10:16 PM UTC

tsss wrote: post #22

ddtaylor wrote: post #9

Labor substitution is extremely difficult and almost everybody hand waves it away. Take even the most unskilled labor that people can think about such as flipping a burger at a restaurant like McDonald's. In reality that job is multiple different roles mixed into one that are constantly changing. Multiple companies have experimented with machines and robots to perform this task all with very limited success and none…

The burger cook job has already been displaced and continues to be. Pre-1940s those burger restaurants relied on skilled cooks that got their meat from a butcher and cut fresh lettuce every day. Post-1940s the cooking process has increasingly become assembly-lined and cooks have been replaced by unskilled labor. Much of the cooking process _is_ now done by robots in factories at a massive scale and the on-premise emp…

> and the on-premise employees do little else than heat it up

This is correct. This also is a lot more complex than it sounds and creates a lot of work. Cooking those products creates byproducts that must be handled.

> and the cashiers have largely been replaced by self-order terminals so that employees no longer even need to speak rudimentary English

Yet most of the customers still have to interact with an employee because "the kiosk won't let me". Want to add Mac sauce? Get the wrong order in the bag? Machine took payment but is out of receipt paper? Add up all these "edge cases" and a significant amount of these "contactless" transactions involved plenty of contact!

> It will happen to you.

Any labor that can be automated should be. Humans are not supposed to spend their time doing meaningless tasks without a purpose beyond making an imaginary number go up or down.