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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

#231

Post by cyanydeez »

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…

See, we have enough food to feed the entire world, every year.

It's not our production capabilities that keep people hungry; it's either greed or the problem of distribution.

Automation will definitely amplify production but it'll certainly continue to make rich richer and poor, well, the same. As inequality grows, so too does the authoritarian need to control the differential.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#232

Post by drnick1 »

hirvi74 wrote: post #207
9dev wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most non-banana republics across the world define the Minimum standard of living as having all of the things you listed, meaning welfare/social safety nets provide for that. As they should. We’re not animals.

I appreciate that Finland considers Internet access of a minimum of 1 Mb to be a basic human right. I am not sure if other countries follow, but I wish the USA did.

It's laughably slow given how bloated the modern Web is. In fact even 10Mbps is barely enough to stream 1080p content.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#233

Post by ares623 »

small_model wrote: post #220
ares623 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

Delivered by other people in the same financial situation as you of course :)

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#235

Post by UncleOxidant »

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 memory problem is already being addressed in various ways - antigravity seems to keep a series of status/progress files describing what's been done, what needs doing, etc. A bit clunky, but it seems to work - I can open it up on a repo that I was working in a few days back and it seems to pick up this context such that I don't have to completely bring it up to speed every time like I used to have to do. I've heard that claude code has similar mechanisms.

I've been doing stuff with recent models (gemini 3, claude 4.5/6, even smaller, open models like GLM5 and Qwen3-coder-next) that was just unthinkable a few months back. Compiler stuff, including implementing optimizations, generating code to target a new, custom processor, etc. I can ask for a significant new optimization feature in our compiler before going to lunch and come back to find it implemented and tested. This is a compiler that targets a custom processor so there is also verilog code involved. We're having the AI make improvements on both the hardware and software sides - this is deep-in-the-weeds complex stuff and AI is starting to handle it with ease. There are getting to be fewer and fewer things in the ticket tracker that AI can't implement.

A few months ago I would've completely agreed with you, but the game is changing very rapidly now.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#236

Post by Nevermark »

lbrito wrote: post #81
Nevermark wrote: post #29

> Bottlenecks rule everything around me The self-setup here is too obvious. This is exactly why man + machine can be much worse than just machine. A strong argument needs to address what we can do as an extremely slow operating, slow learning, and slow adapting species, that machines that improve in ability and efficiency monthly and annually will find they cannot do well or without. It is clear that we are going thr…

The black plague's capital-concentration aftermath supposedly fueled the renaissance and the city-state ascensions, and ultimately the great land discoveries of the 14th and 15th centuries. Not sure if there's an analogy to make somewhere though

Gross inequality is going to lead to accelerated human space exploration? It is actually a plausible parallel.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#237

Post by ordersofmag »

slopinthebag wrote: post #168
jatari wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

That's not what I mean, rather than humans cannot create a type of intelligence that supersedes what is roughly capable from human intelligence, because doing so would require us to be smarter basically. Not to say we can't create machines that far surpass our abilities on a single or small set of axis.

Seems like if evolution managed to create intelligence from slime I wouldn't bet on there being some fundamental limit that prevents us from making something smarter than us.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#238

Post by zozbot234 »

small_model wrote: post #230
slopinthebag wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what I mean, rather than humans cannot create a type of intelligence that supersedes what is roughly capable from human intelligence, because doing so would require us to be smarter basically. Not to say we can't create machines that far surpass our abilities on a single or small set of axis.

Given SOTA models are Phd level in just about every subject this is clearly provably wrong.

I'll believe that claim when a SOTA model can autonomously create content that matches the quality and length of any average PhD dissertation. As of right now, we're nowhere near that and don't know how we could possibly get there.

SOTA models are superhuman in a narrow sense, in that they have solid background knowledge of pretty much any subject they've been trained on. That's great. But no, it doesn't turn your AI datacenter into "a country of geniuses".

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#239

Post by Nevermark »

throwaway0123_5 wrote: post #78
Nevermark wrote: post #29

> Bottlenecks rule everything around me The self-setup here is too obvious. This is exactly why man + machine can be much worse than just machine. A strong argument needs to address what we can do as an extremely slow operating, slow learning, and slow adapting species, that machines that improve in ability and efficiency monthly and annually will find they cannot do well or without. It is clear that we are going thr…

> Job loss is likely to have statistics more comparable to the Black Plague. Maybe this is overly optimistic, but if AI starts to have negative impacts on average people comparable to the plague, it seems like there's a lot more that people can do. In medieval Europe, nobody knew what was causing the plague and nobody knew how to stop it. On the other hand, if AI quickly replaces half of all jobs, it will be very obv…

> And at the end of the day, AI can be unplugged

We can't stop OpenClaw, because humans are curious. It just takes one unleashed model with a crypto account and some way to make money for the first independent AI's to start bleeding into cyberspace.

We can't opt out of AI competition, because other individuals, organizations and nation states are not going to stop, and not going to leverage their AI if they get ahead of us.

> AI job loss would quickly eclipse all other political concerns.

True. I think this is one of only a few certainties.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#240

Post by paulddraper »

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.

Exactly.

Living quarters, transportation, healthcare, food. What were theses figures in 1926, and how much work is needed to achieve them.

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