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What are the best coping mechanisms for AI Fatalism?

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Re: What are the best coping mechanisms for AI Fatalism?

#151

Post by vostrocity »

simonw wrote: post #149
logicprog wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a very credible, thorough, and telling survey from Pew on what average people think about AI: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/04/03/how-the-us-p... Key findings (to me): - Way more people think AI will have a negative effect on the US over the next 20 years than think it will have a positive effect (35% vs 17%) - Even more people think increased usage of AI will personally harm them than ben…

Thanks, that study is really useful. It does however suffer from the (maybe insurmountable?) problem that "AI" is an extremely vague term with many potential interpretations. I expect the "AI experts" in that study may have had a different definition in mind than the general public. I remain much more skeptical about the impact of AI image/video/audio generation on society than I do LLMs, but LLMs themselves have suc…

You might call me paranoid, but I’m avoiding AI boosterism in my public persona because I can imagine a future backlash against its advocates.

Re: What are the best coping mechanisms for AI Fatalism?

#152

Post by simonw »

vostrocity wrote: post #151
simonw wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, that study is really useful. It does however suffer from the (maybe insurmountable?) problem that "AI" is an extremely vague term with many potential interpretations. I expect the "AI experts" in that study may have had a different definition in mind than the general public. I remain much more skeptical about the impact of AI image/video/audio generation on society than I do LLMs, but LLMs themselves have suc…

You might call me paranoid, but I’m avoiding AI boosterism in my public persona because I can imagine a future backlash against its advocates.

There's a reasonably robust backlash already!

Re: What are the best coping mechanisms for AI Fatalism?

#153

Post by listic »

lysace wrote: post #97
bsaul wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i've been through a few hype cycles as well, but this one looks just as big as the invention of the internet, at the very very least (IMHO it's much much more than that). My way of coping with it is to just go with the flow and learn all the new technics there is to learn, until the machine replaces us all.

My mom (in her 80s) used to ask me "what do you think comes after the internet?". It seemed nonsensical, but here we are. From her perspective: 1. Radio 2. TV 3. Internet 4. ?

Interestingly, I (in my 20s back then) also asked the question in the early 2000's.

I had a CS background.

Re: What are the best coping mechanisms for AI Fatalism?

#154

Post by SirensOfTitan »

simonw wrote: post #149
logicprog wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a very credible, thorough, and telling survey from Pew on what average people think about AI: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/04/03/how-the-us-p... Key findings (to me): - Way more people think AI will have a negative effect on the US over the next 20 years than think it will have a positive effect (35% vs 17%) - Even more people think increased usage of AI will personally harm them than ben…

Thanks, that study is really useful. It does however suffer from the (maybe insurmountable?) problem that "AI" is an extremely vague term with many potential interpretations. I expect the "AI experts" in that study may have had a different definition in mind than the general public. I remain much more skeptical about the impact of AI image/video/audio generation on society than I do LLMs, but LLMs themselves have suc…

LLMs are obviously a transformative technology, but I think as tech people we have to be deeply thoughtful about how we ensure humans can apply meaning through their work.

A lot of my peers not in tech are worried about their capacity to work. And work isn’t just about making money but finding meaning. LLMs if not used correctly can transform meaningful labor into some perverse form of consumption.

Re: What are the best coping mechanisms for AI Fatalism?

#155

Post by bigtex88 »

simonw wrote: post #91
justonepost2 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> serious, thoughtful people with impressive careers behind them > I've spoken to multiple people who have come out of retirement because the challenges and opportunities of this new space are irresistible to them. > side project ideas from the past few decades This joy seems to apply to a lot of people who don't need to worry about silly unimportant things like money anymore.

Yes, it does. It's a lot easier not to be scared of the impact this stuff could have on your career if you are already financially secure. (I'm still personally optimistic that software engineering careers will have a bright future, for what that's worth.)

How do you expect this plays out when 99% of people have no money and no hope? Do you think they'll just sit back and take it?

Re: What are the best coping mechanisms for AI Fatalism?

#156

Post by ArtDev »

Lean into it. Work on that side-project you never had the time to complete!

The more broad your skillset, the more you will be able to transform your role in your company.

I have been having lots of fun with Claude Code but recently got in to Cursor too. Vibe coding with frameworks and languages I am already familiar with is wild. However, I want to vibe code with languages I don't know next!

Anyone who works with technology knows that it is inherently transformative. It's true that we need tech-worker Unions, UBI and AI regulations.. and without those the future is potentially very dark.

I like my scifi dark but I don't want to live in a dystopian Cyberpunk future. I think it is possible to both be an AI-optimist AND an AI-doomer at the same time. In fact, it is important to see both these sides.

Re: What are the best coping mechanisms for AI Fatalism?

#157

Post by cstoner »

bigtex88 wrote: post #155
simonw wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it does. It's a lot easier not to be scared of the impact this stuff could have on your career if you are already financially secure. (I'm still personally optimistic that software engineering careers will have a bright future, for what that's worth.)

How do you expect this plays out when 99% of people have no money and no hope? Do you think they'll just sit back and take it?

My friend once told me an analogy about modern software engineering that went something along the lines of the following.

There are piles of money just sitting around waiting for someone to pick them up. Unfortunately it's really hard to do because the piles are scattered around and hard for any one person to pick up.

So the best way to coordinate picking up all of these piles of money is to figure out how to convince a bunch of people with autism spectrum disorder to program machines to do it for you.

In this analogy you can get rich by doing one of a few jobs:

* Finding the piles of money (sales)

* Coding robots to pick up the piles of money (engineering)

* Coordinating the above two in come capacity (management)

AI certainly makes it less lucrative to pick up some of these piles because there will be more people picking them up. But will probably also be the case that it will let us pick up piles of money we didn't even know existed before. Or ones that we knew about but were hidden deep inside of sprawling caves that were intractable to search before.

If it turns out that we don't need any coordination to pick up these piles any more, then pretty much everyone is out of a job. Not just software engineers, but pretty much every white collar job. Once that's done it'll only be a matter of time before they can automate away the blue collar jobs, too.

I guess I'm just skeptical that we'll actually automate away all of the white collar jobs.

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