AI job grief: A psychological crisis hitting tech workers

The underlying issue here is the same as why I am generally opposed to large governments, entitlement programs, etc.

In the case of jobs, we are already overly dependent on individual incomes just to get by. We've collectively outsourced nearly everything a person needs to actually survive, choosing to pay for everything rather than know how to do it ourselves or go without. A tiny fraction of people today are involved in food production, and most of us don't know how the food is produced, processed, or stored. We don't know how to make our own cloths, fix an electrical or plumbing issue in our own home, or maintain our own vehicles yet we depend on all of these.

Insurance programs are much the same, though when those leave you high and dry its generally much more impactful than when you can't get a toilet fixed in short order. To their credit, some Democrats tried to warn us of the risks of tying health care to jobs and many Democrats tried to design a better system even if they didn't or couldn't explain the risks necessitating it. Now the tech industry is feeling the pain of all this centralization and dependence.

The story this article begins with is tragic, though the fact that we collectively are okay with, and even feel entitled to, being so dependent on various insurance programs is similarly tragic in my opinion.

We need to change the core of what our systems are based on today for any meaning, long lasting change to happen. We can keep duct taping the tears along the edges but it will continue to fail, and usually the failures become more painful and more frequent when we just look for more quick fixes.

> elitist junk masquerading as logic

Lol. "Déformation professionnelle" is an elitist junk these days. It's a defect, and I would gladly get rid my brain of all this programming bullshit if my life didn't depend on it and I wouldn't hear from every fucking corner how:

1) During 2010-2015 Indians/Eastern Europeans/Outsource agencies are going to replace me

2) During 2015-2022 Bootcampers/kids working for a bowl of rice/laid off journalists are going to replace me

3) 2024+ AI is going put me on the street

You seriously think living in a perpetual fear and constant arms race with Leetcode/System Design/other devs/AI is elitist? Fuck off.

You could completely eliminate US defense spending and you would only be able provide every individual with roughly $3000 annually.

Also, your comparison to other countries is confounded by the fact that Western countries (i.e. Europe) maintain a low level of defense spending because they have an explicit guarantee of defense under the North Atlantic treaty and a promise of being covered by the US’s nuclear umbrella. If the US were to cut defense spending, other Western countries would need to substantially increase their own.

Hahaha, this is the first time I've seen the pelican thing described as "propaganda"!

One of the main reasons I do the pelican thing is that it's making fun of the industry:

1. The smartest model in the world still draws pelicans riding bicycles worse than a five year old.

2. It highlights how absurd the task of comparing these models is. Oh, so it scored 78 on Terminal Bench 2.1? It also drew a crap pelican.

> So you are saying in the end of that piece that chess players came out stronger?

That was an off-the-cuff remark on the podcast which I included in the transcript. It's not my overall thesis.

I want a job because I need to pay the bills, as you said. But also, I like my job. It is a big part of my life, and I truly love what I do. Moreover, this is the one job skill I have, so if this career dies I'll have to resort to manual labor and the like. My job going away is an extremely unpleasant prospect for many reasons.

> But of course if we automated those jobs with AI, we could direct AI produced value into universal basic income so people wouldn't lose their income.

There isn't the remotest possible chance that this would happen. Any surplus (if indeed one exists, which isn't certain) would be pocketed by the mega rich who own the corporations.