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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

#211

Post by themafia »

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.

As if "higher-ups" is an assigned position.

If you fail as a "higher up" you're no longer higher up. Then someone else can take your place. To the extent this does not naturally happen is evidence of petty or major corruptions within the system.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#212

Post by hirvi74 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #187
nemo1618 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

So AI is going to steamroll all feasible jobs, all at once, with no alternatives developing over time? That's just a fantasy.

It'd probably be cold day in Hell before AI replaces veterinary services, for example. Perhaps for mild conditions, but I cannot imagine an AI robot trying to restrain an animal.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#213

Post by ryandrake »

hinkley wrote: post #146
gruez wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems pretty easy to work around with "UBI for citizens" only. There's not much pushback for social security, for instance, even if minorities get it.

I still like the idea of clawing back mineral and water rights and paying for basic services out of the money payed by industry for the right to dirty our air and water. As a citizen you're entitled to compensation for the smoke you're breathing. People talk about how socially progressive Scandinavia is but they have a shitload of petroleum resources and that money goes into social programs.

I'd love to make companies pay for their products' entire lifecycle, including disposal and cleanup. It's not right that a company can manufacture future-trash, sell it, and then absolve itself of the negative externality when the customer throws the product away and off it goes into a landfill.

If a company's process produces waste, it should bear the entire cost of leaving the environment the way they found it rather than just pumping the waste into it. If a company's products are not reused, it should bear the cost of taking the used product back and restoring the world to the way it was before the product was built.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#214

Post by tshaddox »

shigawire wrote: post #169
gruez wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems pretty easy to work around with "UBI for citizens" only. There's not much pushback for social security, for instance, even if minorities get it.

>There's not much pushback for social security, for instance, even if minorities get it. The racist moral panic over "welfare queens" seems to be a counter example.

And the same person who posts about that on Facebook will the next day post “keep your government hands off my social security check.”

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#215

Post by adriand »

themafia wrote: post #205
nemo1618 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

> Unless you estimate the odds of a breakthrough at I do. Show me any evidence that it is imminent. > or you expect that AI will usher in enough prosperity that your job will be irrelevant Not in my lifetime. > it is straight-up irresponsible to forgo making a contingency plan. No, I'm actually measuring the risk, you're acting as if the sky is falling. What's your contingency plan? Buy a subscription to the revoluti…

> What's your contingency plan? Buy a subscription to the revolution?

I’ve been working on my contingency plan for a year-and-a-half now. I won’t get into what it is (nothing earth shattering) but if you haven’t been preparing, I think you’re either not paying enough attention or you’re seriously misreading where this is all going.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#216

Post by wombatpm »

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?

Who’s buying $6.00 burgers when the old customers have been replaced by AI?

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#217

Post by tshaddox »

cbdevidal wrote: post #191
Gigachad wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is interesting is the new things are cheap while the old stuff is now expensive. Average house in Australia is $1,000,000 while a TV is $500. The internet, social media, etc are cheap. Having someone repair your shoes is expensive.

Automation made the TV inexpensive, but if you look at a chart on inflation almost everything that cannot be easily automated has risen in price. https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/cpichart2019-...

Surely U.S. housing was not twice as automatable 12-13 years ago as it is now.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#218

Post by small_model »

contagiousflow wrote: post #38
stephenpontes wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. I feel like most of the people sounding the alarm have been in the software-focused job hunting market for 6+ months. Those who downplay it are either business owners themselves or have been employed for 2+ years. I think a lot of software engineers who _haven't_ looked for jobs in the past few years don't quite realize what the current market feels like.

Alternatively: this is an America problem. I'm outside of America and I've been fielding more interviews than ever in the past 3 months. YMMV but the leading indicator of slowed down hiring can come from so many things. Including companies just waiting to see how much LLMs affect SWE positions.

It's from AI either directly or indirectly, either the top SWE's using AI are replacing 10 mid/juniors or your job is outsourced to someone doing it at half your Salary with a AI subscription. Only the top/lucky/connected SWE's will survive a year or two, if you have used any SOTA agent recently or looked at the job market you would have seen this coming and had a plan B/C in place, i.e. Enough capital to generate passive income to replace your salary, or another career that is AI safe for next 5-10 years. Alternatively stick your head in the sand.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#219

Post by adriand »

codegangsta wrote: post #108
gordonhart wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an example ticket that I'll probably work on next week: Live stream validation results as they come in The body doesn't give much other than the high-level motivation from the person who filed the ticket. In order to implement this, you need to have a lot of context, some of which can be discovered by grepping through the code base and some of which can't: - What is the validation system and how does it work t…

But planning like this is absolutely something AI can do. In fact, this is exactly the kind of thing we start with on our team when it comes to using AI agents. We have a ticket with just a simple title that somebody threw in there, and we asked the AI to spin up a bunch of research agents to understand and plan and ask itself those questions. Funny enough, all the questions that you posed are things that come up rig…

Absolutely. Eventually the AI will just talk to the CEO / the board to get general direction, and everything will just fall out of that. The level of abstraction the agents can handle is on a steady upward trajectory.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#220

Post by small_model »

ares623 wrote: post #26
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.

For 1, unless you already have an self-sustaining underground bunker or island, you will be affected. No matter how much savings and total compensation you have. If you went out to get grocery in the last week, it will affect you.

You can get stuff delivered now and just need a ring camera and solid locks :)
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