211–220 of 418 posts
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> 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
Summary of article: in an uncertain job market, some young people are going into blue collar trades. Others are starting startups. Others are powering through. Journalist says some words about "AI" being the cause of all this uncertainty.
Your role writing these summaries could be outsourced to Ai if you don't improve your productivity.
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LLMs are already good enough to read corporate email and document shadow functions and hierarchies.
Corporate email documents even less.
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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.
See also: public school teachers. You either need to be insanely passionate or incredibly stupid to take ~$55k/year for long hours as an educator that is also a babysitter. And insanely passionate teachers are in short supply.
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We may very well end up with similar prices, a few stupendously wealthy people, and the rest of us living on the dole.
I wouldn’t say it’s impossible but I’d argue from all we know now highly unlikely. Why? Assume a company has a high margin because they used AI and reduced their workforce by 10x. What usually happens is that a new competitor comes in and offers the same for half the price. Since AI is lowering the bar for entry this process should be even faster than previously.
Wouldn't you need 10x the number of competitors to get back to the same amount of employees, assuming they are running with similar workforces?
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…
>What should kids be aiming for according to you? If it's my kid? Starting their own Enterprise. Between 'good enough' knowledge work getting cheaper and the bureaucracy that made entrepreneurship less attractive over the last decades being either trimmed or automatable, we may be looking at a golden age of new business formation. There's an old saying, "genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent persp…
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In ERP software there are MLOCs without any technical documentation. And nobody would spend a dime to create one. So, the deep expert knowledge on how business processes are supposed to work (in full detail) and how they are implemented is mostly in the heads of a couple of people.
AI is most excellent at reading and understanding large codebases and, with some guidance docs, can easily reproduce accurate technical documentation. Divide and conquer.
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Even if people assume the worst impacts of LLMs on white collar work, there is simply not enough demand for electricians and plumbers for that to work, right now these professions work only because the number of people going into them is limited.
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.
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>What should kids be aiming for according to you? If it's my kid? Starting their own Enterprise. Between 'good enough' knowledge work getting cheaper and the bureaucracy that made entrepreneurship less attractive over the last decades being either trimmed or automatable, we may be looking at a golden age of new business formation. There's an old saying, "genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent persp…
Entrepreneurship is like sales; it can't really be taught, only learned through practice, through trial and error. The best way for kids to learn business is through doing it.
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Me: dropped out of grad school, eventually becoming an electrician (IBEW). Decades as handyman doing various sideworks (my own "startup"?). Retired my own residential electrical contractor license (during Covid), good riddance [1]. Forty-something "you're still young!" #yeahOK
Also me: have worked part-time, as-needed, for three family startups (one as lowly eng.tech, other two in hardware manufacture/assembly [3d-manufacturing & EV energy management].
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I incurred severe student loan (&c) debt, wasting years both in college (IMHO: don't go, unless it's for an accredited engineering degree[0]) ...and wrecklessly pissing away my twenties drunk-and-stupid (anxiety from being -$235k in-the-hole, then).
When most of my electrician brothers were getting their first $80k pickuptrucks, I was trudging myself out of debt. A decade ago, I became worth $0.00.
[0] Seriously, if you're in college right now: read this again. Whether you want to be a PE, or doctor/lawyer, a B.E. will become an ultimate fallback (and incredible methods of viewing worldly interactions of fundamentals problem solving). To a certain clientele ($$$), that undergraduate in engineering will justify increased billingrates (not as much as MD/JD/MBA, but would still enhance even these).
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And my body has paid the price of blue collar drudgeries, despite other extremely-fortunate (&unexpected!) windfalls. I've had a handful of weeks in my life where serious consideration has been given to will I ever run/walk again...
Just as I've begun a quest to transition into something less physical (i.e. I dream of desk/office of my own, outside my messy home "office"), this brilliant genAI stuff comes along... and I'm just so glad past blue collar work has allowed me goodénuf savings, even perhaps a few more years of wandering around lost (like most-everybody else increasingly is).
[1] Last advice: you need to find niche tradework — just being a "residential electrician" is increasingly impossible to maintain, with competition from both legal, not, and tech workers. Be the guy (e.g.) that installs (just) meters or lighting or hottubs — or whatever — but don't be the oneguy that does everything (==bankrupt, sooner than not).
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Life is good, even on a Monday morning. Who the hell knows anymore...