[1] AI Inevitability Soothsaying https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47362178
> Saying "I am a software engineer" is beginning to feel like saying "I am a calcultor" in 1950 now that digital machines can use electrical circuits to count, add, multiply - it's not long until they'll be able differentiate a non-continuous function... You're beginning to feel less-than-useful.
> This bothers a lot of people for a reason (I think) that has nothing to do with the technology. The fear isn't really about losing a job title, it's about losing the story you tell yourself about who you are.
Get Fing real. Most, most, most people in the world need a job to survive. Some technologists might have stonks and financial independence. Those with stocks or other kinds of passive (parasitic) income are the minority.
I think that goes for most programmers as well.
Okay so we’re going to get to how this just means you’ll need to change jobs. So let’s wait for that.
> I like Susan Fiske's research on how humans judge each other shows something worth sitting with. When you meet someone, you assess them on two dimensions. The first is warmth - do you believe they mean you well? The second is competence - do you believe they're capable?
This is farcical when you consider that people with enough capital can survive on just that, capital. No matter what the research says about “competence”. There are billions of dollars invested in portraying people with money as competent. But if that propaganda is ineffectual it’s not like it matters. The system is arranged such that they won’t be inconvenienced by the judgement of commoners.
> Thus far we have automated away "wasteful" or "unnecessary" jobs. Perhaps the elevator operator was your friend, someone you saw everyday. I'm not certain their purpose was "useless". They're gone nonetheless.
> This is the whole point of the system. [...]
The point of the system is to commoditize everything and concentrate wealth.
Labor is a commodity. Labor created automation. And labor will be discarded once the automation that it created displaces labor.
The automation is then fully in the hands of the so-called competent. Capital.
> Whether you do well through an economic transition or not has little to do with the cause (AI, digital technology, industrialization, coal), and more to do with the social and political structures which exist around you (which is a blog post for another day).
That’s rich. The author already told us the fairytale version of Capitalism, the version where we are supposedly all going to benefit. But now the author pretends to shy away and tell us that it is a blog post for another day?
No—you already took a stance with that statement, even with the premise of this therapeutic distraction since you assume that it is just a matter of changing jobs.
Is it though? When the whole system is made for Capital? And Capital obviously owns the automation? Who managed to buy up so much RAM that it caused a global shortage?
But meh, political structure and all that—trivialities for another day. We’re here to pump up Inevitability discourse with.
> You are not your job. You're a person first. Your ability to connect, be present, and make people feel understood is what makes you irreplaceable to the people around you, which is the only market that counts.
I’ll remember that while in the unemployment line.