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What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves

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Re: What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves

#181

Post by CalRobert »

asdff wrote: post #111
chromacity wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The prevailing sentiment on HN is that AI will make coders 10x more productive, but that we'll all keep our jobs and salaries, with the possible exception of people who don't embrace AI quickly enough. But let me ask you this: has AI made life easier for illustrators, book authors, or musicians? They were affected by the technology earlier on. If they don't embrace AI, they face increased competition from cheaply-mad…

The thing is, for most artists outside say in commercial work where AI is a great risk to jobs, they are judged by the finery of their craft, not rate of output. How many clients are there who say "we don't care how long it takes for you to come up with the solution, we just want it beautiful and representative of your style."

I think you just described a tiny minority of artists though.

Re: What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves

#182

Post by Capricorn2481 »

asdff wrote: post #109
F7F7F7 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound like you're not a home owner. In populated areas it could take a week to get a electrician or plumber out. And contractors are hard to find.

It takes a week because if you want it fast they charge you an emergency rate. This aspect of the tradesman is independent of demand and one of the perks of their lines of work much like over time in other fields.

They charge you an emergency rate because they are so booked out it takes a week to get them.

Re: What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves

#183

Post by karakoram »

ardeaver wrote: post #175

I've always felt that AI's main contribution to eliminating jobs is giving CEOs the ability to do layoffs while trying to both separate themselves from the current economic uncertainty and imply that they are an AI company. Companies do this all the time. A CEO's job is to convince investors that their company stands to win in whatever the current hot trend is. During bitcoin's crazy run in like 2022 or whatever, a t…

> Talking about AI is cheap.

AI is about to get a lot more expensive as Taiwan (TSMC) and other South East Asian chip manufacturers don't get their Natural Gas or the Natural Gas they need becomes really expensive.

Re: What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves

#184

Post by ehnto »

CalRobert wrote: post #156
ghufran_syed wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I look forward to seeing your company actually producing and selling food for “next to nothing”, given how easy it apparently is

Bulk grains, etc are pretty cheap.

That may waver, a main input across the whole chain for farming is crude oil.

Re: What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves

#185

Post by fakedang »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #45
abcde666777 wrote: post #41

> People fear that programming is dead. > People stop learning programming. > Programmers become scarce. > Programmers become valuable again. Maybe it's wishful thinking but I'm not going to be surprised if it plays out like this. In some sense the reverse happened over the last couple of decades - everyone and their mother got into IT and the industry became saturated.

It's hard to say if there's anything new under the Sun... There were always unqualified people coming out of college, but the amount of people in interviews that can literally do nothing these days seems higher than before. There was always some cohort of people that somehow managed to graduate from college with a CS degree, and seemingly not learning anything, or at least not learn how to even write basic code (inde…

> It seems like AI is not reducing that percentage - possibly increasing it.

AI is definitely increasing it. I barely type out any code now, and simply sit back and review what Claude dumps out. Even if it's a minor UI change, I just request the LLM and it executes the change for me. Thankfully I don't write code for my day-job anymore and mostly just sit in my office and pontificate :). I know my code skills and inclination to write code have atrophied to an extent, thanks to AI. Currently what I'm able to do with AI far surpasses the capabilities of what I was able to do without relying on AI.

Now if my employees were relying on LLMs to do their coding for them, I would be very disappointed. And I think that that limited space in algorithmic and HFT trading is where exceptionally talented programmers will find room in, leaving the others to dry out and wither.

Perhaps the best example of frogs in a boiling pot are all these folks in frontier AI companies themselves who are building the blocks for the very things that are going to replace them, if not already. Maybe they'll make off like bandits before their work gets adversely affected, or maybe not.

Re: What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves

#186

Post by Capricorn2481 »

closewith wrote: post #138
jasondigitized wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Documentation rarely reflects how anything is actually done, referred to by good business analysts as 'shadow functions'.

LLMs are already good enough to read corporate email and document shadow functions and hierarchies.

Corporate email documents even less.

Re: What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves

#188

Post by KellyCriterion »

alex43578 wrote: post #32
denkmoon wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having an industry’s labour supplied only by those inherently passionate about it is a great way to crush wages and working conditions. Look at what companies like Blizzard get away with because their employees just want to make video games at their favourite dev studio. While they’re a pain in the ass sometimes, I welcome the devs who are only here for the cash.

This is totally leaving out the supply and demand aspect. People like the idea of making games more than working on the plumbing of some accounts payable software, so Blizzard can pay less and treat worse than NicheBoringFinanceCo.

>plumbing of some accounts payable software,

As many of us in the early IT generation, I came because of I wanted to build games and program cool stuff.

Today, while I admit Games are supercomplex stunning apps, I hate it and I love to do boring finance app development :-))

If you would have told me in my 20ies that I will end up in banking & finance IT, I would have laughed at you - today I really like it and I do not play a single game anymore.

Re: What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves

#189

Post by ReptileMan »

karakoram wrote: post #183
ardeaver wrote: post #175

I've always felt that AI's main contribution to eliminating jobs is giving CEOs the ability to do layoffs while trying to both separate themselves from the current economic uncertainty and imply that they are an AI company. Companies do this all the time. A CEO's job is to convince investors that their company stands to win in whatever the current hot trend is. During bitcoin's crazy run in like 2022 or whatever, a t…

> Talking about AI is cheap. AI is about to get a lot more expensive as Taiwan (TSMC) and other South East Asian chip manufacturers don't get their Natural Gas or the Natural Gas they need becomes really expensive.

Energy is minor part of the cost. Now helium is something else

Re: What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves

#190

Post by nazgul17 »

zarzavat wrote: post #148
galaxyLogic wrote: post #125

So a lot of people might lose their jobs because of AI, right? But the same amount of economic output, probably more, will be produced because of AI. By whom will that output then be consumed? If people don't have jobs they don't have money to buy and therefore ... prices will have to come down! Society as a whole will be better off because there is more output, better quality output. Then it's for us to vote in a go…

> prices will have to come down Prices of services will come down. Prices of things that require natural resources will go up. In a hypothetical world where let's say we have AIs that can do any human job more effectively than a human, rich people who can afford to control the AIs will control society and poor people who have nothing to offer economically will live in poverty. A good proxy for our future is Angola: a…

Is it a good proxy, though? My intuition is that many economic effects play out very differently if they are limited to one country vs the whole world.

To make this more concrete, tax havens only work because most countries keep producing for real. AI will take all jobs, not just Angolan jobs.

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