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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

#191

Post by DeathArrow »

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.

>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.

Also, before the war Trump got GCC countries to promise they will invest $ 2 billion into AI. Now those money will probably not come anymore.

Also, the power will get more expensive, so running AI data centers will be more expensive.

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

#192

Post by KellyCriterion »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #17
time0ut wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Optimistically, I hope it filters out the people who were only interested in it for the money. When I was in school, decades ago now, very few people went into CS compared to other majors. Everyone I knew going into it did it because they loved it. I would have done it regardless of the career opportunities because I want to build stuff. Interviewing candidates over the years since then, my experience has been there…

I only went into SWE for the money. I initially pursued my real passion which was math and physics and got a cold water bucket to the face only after grad school.

So you didnt tap your toe into a real dev environment before that second? :-)

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

#193

Post by ardeaver »

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.

I'd be interested to see if the actual cost of AI will actually have any impact on how often CEOs end up talking about it. In my experience, there's a certain level of assessment that goes into whether or not a line item on your expenses is considered a problem or an investment. If you can still hand wave your way into convincing investors that $200K in AI credits replaces 3 $200K/year software engineers, even though it used to be $100K for the same amount of credits, you might be fine. At some point, some part of that equation will likely fall out of favor with investors or the math will no longer work out, and maybe it's the cost of natural gas or helium.

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

#194

Post by CalRobert »

Animats wrote: post #134
yojo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having spent a couple years rehabbing a 100 year old house, I’m convinced the trades will be the last thing to go. When the building you’re working on has been ship-of-Theseus’d by 3 generations of home owners, everything is out of distribution. When a robot can reliably do this work, I think it can reliably do any human job that requires physical ability and judgement.

We really need automated roofing. Installing shingles is easy, except that it has to be done on top of buildings. There's an experimental roofing robot, but it's not good enough for production yet.[1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60DqYMO_nRE

Metal roofs seem nice and easier to install too, but at least where I had a house built (Ireland) the local planners (aka meddling old people with too much time) thought it wasn’t suitable for a “home” so you had to spend four times as much on a slate roof.

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

#195

Post by kuboble »

laughing_man wrote: post #164
Moto7451 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes-Anding you, if one developer is suddenly 3x more productive and does 40 hours of work in 15 with AI tools, any reasonable manager would still want the same three people to keep working at 3x productivity. I don’t see Keynes’ theory we would all be working drastically fewer hours per week suddenly materializing due to AI. As always we’re just going to try to output more in the same time. The fact I, a manager, can…

You need paying customers for whatever those developers are producing. If your market size is relatively fixed, you don't need three people anymore. Look at it this way: if there really was a 3x market potential, why wouldn't that manager have hired six more people already?

One thing could be that there is an extra management cost for each person to manage.

It's much easier to manage 3 people with better tools than to manage 9 people even if their output would be the same

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

#196

Post by andrekandre »

striped_hash wrote: post #4

I don’t think kids should be insulating from AI. The examples in this article suggest for example that some people are dropping out of college and going into trade schools. I get that society needs electricians and construction workers and new software graduates are finding it difficult to get jobs. But having had a moderately successful career building software, I tend to think there is a lot of scope for the $40 tr…

  > I tend to think there is a lot of scope for the $40 trillion white collar economy to be disrupted (re-imagined/made more efficient), so still see potential for software engineering demand to stay high over the next decade as the true ramifications of AI plays out.
i would hope so, but wherever i have worked its the bureaucracy/endless "agile" ceremonies and meetings that make things less efficient, and so far (where i'm at anyways) ai has done nothing to help that...

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

#197

Post by csomar »

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…

I like your optimistic view. The reality is that AI concentrates power and when power concentrates, the rulers can dictate. Democracy is not just voting but also a productive populace that has a voice in the production process.

The people on the top are not going to share sh*t. That's just not how greed works.

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

#198

Post by thaumasiotes »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #177
returnInfinity wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets take the example of Uber. If Uber ships 10x the code and features, I will still not 2x my rides. Even if Uber makes the cost of travel to 0, I will still not 2x my rides.

How would they lower the prices to 0 in this scenario, if they have to keep operating their AI-driver-army?

Lowering the cost of travel to 0 would mean implementing a technology by which anyone can simply desire to be somewhere else, and they will instantly teleport to that new location.

returnInfinity is simply lying about not doing double (or more!) the amount of travel in that case.

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

#199

Post by gosub100 »

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…

> We can do this, in a democracy.

In a democracy where corporations have 0 representation, I would agree with you. However, they do have representation in a way that is invisible to see and impossible to quantify. And it goes beyond citizens united. There is an invisible hand pressing on the scales.

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

#200

Post by overfeed »

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…

> If people don't have jobs they don't have money to buy and therefore ... prices will have to come down

Here's the one trick the oligarchs will not tell you: they intend to bill the government directly, they won't care if unemployment rises to 80%. They'll keep it up for however long the taxes and debt will last, and then jet off to their bunkers to usher in what comes next - or wait out the chaos.

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