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I'm not worried about AI job loss

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Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#151

Post by fragmede »

gordonhart wrote: post #93
fragmede wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, what is the validation system? Either it exists in code, and thus can be discovered if you point the AI at repo, or... what, it doesn't exist? For the UX, have it explore your existing repos and copy prior art from there and industry standards to come up with something workable. Web scale issues can be inferred by the rest of the codebase. If your terraform repo has one RDS server, vs a fleet of them, multi-r…

Honestly curious, have you seen agents succeed at this sort of long-trajectory wide breadth task, or is it theoretical? Because I haven't seen them come close (and not for lack of trying)

Opus 4.6, with all of the random tweaks I've picked up off of here, and twitter, is in the middle of rewriting my golang cli program for programmers into a swiftui Mac app that people can use, and it's totally managing to do it. Claude swarm mode with beads is OP.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#152

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

matt_heimer wrote: post #50
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…

It's not binary. Jobs will be lost because management will expect the fewer developers to accomplish more by leveraging AI.

Already built in. We haven’t hired recently and our developers are engaged in a Cold War to set the new standard of productivity.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#153

Post by slopinthebag »

deet wrote: post #135
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…

Just keep in mind that there are many highly motivated people directly working on this problem. It's hard to predict how quickly it will be solved and by whom first, but this appears to be a software engineering problem solvable through effort and resources and time, not a fundamental physical law that must be circumvented like a physical sciences problem. Betting it won't be solved enough to have an impact on the wo…

Why do you think it's not a physical sciences problem? It could be the case that current technologies simply cannot scale due to fundamental physical issues. It could even be a fundamental rule of intelligent life, that one cannot create intelligence that surpasses its own.

Plenty of things get substantial resources and investment and go nowhere.

Of course I could be totally wrong and it's solved in the next couple years, it's almost impossible to make these predictions either way. But I get the feeling people are underestimating what it takes to be truly intelligent, especially when efficiency is important.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#154

Post by nemo1618 »

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…

"The steamroller is still many inches away. I'll make a plan once it actually starts crushing my toes."

You are in danger. Unless you estimate the odds of a breakthrough at <5%, or you already have enough money to retire, or you expect that AI will usher in enough prosperity that your job will be irrelevant, it is straight-up irresponsible to forgo making a contingency plan.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#155

Post by globalnode »

zozbot234 wrote: post #127
RevEng wrote: post #101

I was with the author on everything except one point: increasing automation will not leave us with such abundance that we never have to work again. We have heard that lie for over a century. The stream engine didn't do it, electricity didn't do it, computers didn't do it, the Internet didn't do it, and AI won't either. The truth is that as input costs drop, sales prices drop and demand increases - just like the parad…

> I was with the author on everything except one point: increasing automation will not leave us with such abundance that we never have to work again. That's because we prefer improved living standards over less work. If we only had to live by the standards of one century ago or more, we could likely accomplish that by working very little.

sure sure

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#156

Post by theshackleford »

mudil wrote: post #7
Flavius wrote: post #2

Maybe you should be a little worried. A healthy fear never killed anyone.

"For quality of life, it is better to err on the side of being an optimist and wrong, rather than a pessimist and right." -Elon Musk

If only I took life advice from ketamine junkies.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#157

Post by slopinthebag »

qgin wrote: post #40

You don't need AI to replace whole jobs 1:1 to have massive displacement. If AI can do 80% of your tasks but fails miserably on the remaining 20%, that doesn't mean your job is safe. It means that 80% of the people in your department can be fired and the remaining 20% handle the parts the AI can't do yet.

That's an oversimplification. Work is rarely so simply divisible like this.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#158

Post by techpression »

ddtaylor wrote: post #117
mattlondon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What society is ready for that? We are looking at an possible outcome that will make the Great Depression look like a strong financial era of growth and prosperity. I don’t think most people are ok with the road to the goal in this case, doesn’t matter if you have work or not, mass unemployment destroys societies.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#159

Post by jatari »

slopinthebag wrote: post #153
deet wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just keep in mind that there are many highly motivated people directly working on this problem. It's hard to predict how quickly it will be solved and by whom first, but this appears to be a software engineering problem solvable through effort and resources and time, not a fundamental physical law that must be circumvented like a physical sciences problem. Betting it won't be solved enough to have an impact on the wo…

Why do you think it's not a physical sciences problem? It could be the case that current technologies simply cannot scale due to fundamental physical issues. It could even be a fundamental rule of intelligent life, that one cannot create intelligence that surpasses its own. Plenty of things get substantial resources and investment and go nowhere. Of course I could be totally wrong and it's solved in the next couple y…

>It could even be a fundamental rule of intelligent life, that one cannot create intelligence that surpasses its own.

Well that is easily disproved by the fact that people have children with higher IQ's than their own.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#160

Post by slopinthebag »

trilogic wrote: post #20

You are not worrried for one of the 2 reasons: 1 You are not affected somehow (you got savings, connections, not living paycheck to paycheck, and have food on the table). 2 You prefer to persue no troubles in matters of complexity. Time will tell, is showing it already.

3 You realise that super-autocomplete is an incredible technology but the hype behind it far exceeds its capabilities and you're excited for the possibilities it may promise for making your work easier and more enjoyable.
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