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I'm not worried about AI job loss

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Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#301

Post by sarchertech »

ArchieScrivener wrote: post #287
jackfranklyn wrote: post #248

[flagged]

Yeah bro, its been three years. We are just beginning. We will replace the vast majority of professional service workers in 10 years including lawyers as Ai shifts to local and moves away from the cloud.

If we wipe out the vast majority of white collar jobs in just 10 years, we’re talking complete economic collapse.

No society can possibly absorb that kind of disruption over such a short time.

Also even assuming AI could completely replace lawyers. Lawyers control the legislature. They may not be able to stop your local model from telling you how to do something, but they can stop you from actually doing it without a lawyer.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#302

Post by ddtaylor »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #201
ddtaylor wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a huge demand for low-skill labor in other industries. Stuff like plumbing, HVAC, and a ton of other traditionally unsexy jobs that can barely keep enough people in a town to perform these jobs at higher costs than normal.

Those jobs don't often pay well until you graduate out of journeyman / apprentice, or are a business owner. They usually require some training and testing ahead of time. They also carry a higher risk of serious injury or death.

The average salary for a software developer in Montana is $88k/yr. The average salary for an HVAC technician in Montana is $58k/yr.

The average salary for a software developer in Oregon is $118k/yr. The average salary for an HVAC technician in Oregon is $74k/yr.

It's for sure less, but the gap is smaller than some might think. I think some markets (SF) distort the cost a bit.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#303

Post by jopsen »

nemo1618 wrote: post #154
gordonhart wrote: post #23

Whenever I get worried about this I comb through our ticket tracker and see that ~0% of them can be implemented by AI as it exists today. Once somebody cracks the memory problem and ships an agent that progressively understands the business and the codebase, then I'll start worrying. But context limitation is fundamental to the technology in its current form and the value of SWEs is to turn the bigger picture into a…

"The steamroller is still many inches away. I'll make a plan once it actually starts crushing my toes." You are in danger . Unless you estimate the odds of a breakthrough at <5%, or you already have enough money to retire, or you expect that AI will usher in enough prosperity that your job will be irrelevant, it is straight-up irresponsible to forgo making a contingency plan.

> it is straight-up irresponsible to forgo making a contingency plan.

What contingencies can you really make?

Start training a physical trade, maybe.

If this the end of SWE jobs, you better ride the wave. Odds are you're estimate on when AI takes over are off by half a career, anyways.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#304

Post by dullcrisp »

gedy wrote: post #286
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throughout history, big advances have come from humans having more "idle time", so we should be aiming for the population to be less busy as they can then hopefully focus on pursuing the arts or sciences.

> big advances have come from humans having more "idle time" A few people

Which ones?

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#305

Post by everett_w »

ryandrake wrote: post #213
hinkley wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still like the idea of clawing back mineral and water rights and paying for basic services out of the money payed by industry for the right to dirty our air and water. As a citizen you're entitled to compensation for the smoke you're breathing. People talk about how socially progressive Scandinavia is but they have a shitload of petroleum resources and that money goes into social programs.

I'd love to make companies pay for their products' entire lifecycle, including disposal and cleanup. It's not right that a company can manufacture future-trash, sell it, and then absolve itself of the negative externality when the customer throws the product away and off it goes into a landfill. If a company's process produces waste, it should bear the entire cost of leaving the environment the way they found it rath…

this reminds me of retropunk and the hundred rabbits

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#306

Post by christophilus »

dullcrisp wrote: post #300
xyzzy123 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not very familiar with the field on a practical basis. What parts of the job require judgement that is resistant to automation? What percentage of customers need that? If the hours an accountant spends on a customer go from 4 per month to 1, do you reckon they can sustainably charge the same?

Why would better efficiency mean they have to charge less?

Because your competitor will double their number of customers, and halve their prices— forcing you to do the same.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#307

Post by SecretDreams »

zozbot234 wrote: post #127
RevEng wrote: post #101

I was with the author on everything except one point: increasing automation will not leave us with such abundance that we never have to work again. We have heard that lie for over a century. The stream engine didn't do it, electricity didn't do it, computers didn't do it, the Internet didn't do it, and AI won't either. The truth is that as input costs drop, sales prices drop and demand increases - just like the parad…

> I was with the author on everything except one point: increasing automation will not leave us with such abundance that we never have to work again. That's because we prefer improved living standards over less work. If we only had to live by the standards of one century ago or more, we could likely accomplish that by working very little.

> That's because we prefer improved living standards over less work. If we only had to live by the standards of one century ago or more, we could likely accomplish that by working very little.

Is that trend still true? I can look from the 50s to 2000s and buy into it. I'm not clear it is holding true by all metrics beyond the 2000s, and especially beyond maybe the 2020s. Yes, we have better tech, but is life actually better right now? I think you could make the argument that we were in a healthier and happier society in that sweet spot from 95 - 2005 or so. At least in NA.

We've seen so much technological innovation, but cost of living has outpaced wages, division is rampant, and the technology innovations we have have mostly been turned against us to enshitify our lives and entrap us in SaaS hell. I'd argue medical science has progressed, but also become more inaccessible, and, somehow, people believe in western medicine LESS. Does not help that we've also seen a decline in education.

So do we still prefer improving our standards of living in the current societal framework?

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#308

Post by everettde »

what an absolute undermining of the human greed, and our ability to rationalize the part of society that'll affect our well-being until we're dead.

they don't care about the majority losing jobs, or even starving to death so long as they ensure a great future for themselves and the people they, supposedly, care about.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#309

Post by everettde »

Gigachad wrote: post #166
nemo1618 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The steamroller is still many inches away. I'll make a plan once it actually starts crushing my toes." You are in danger . Unless you estimate the odds of a breakthrough at <5%, or you already have enough money to retire, or you expect that AI will usher in enough prosperity that your job will be irrelevant, it is straight-up irresponsible to forgo making a contingency plan.

My contingency plan is that if AI leaves me unable to get a job, we are all fucked and society as a whole will have to fix the situation and if it doesn’t, there is nothing I could have done about it anyway.

this has been me ever since my philosophy undergrad.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#310

Post by jopsen »

qgin wrote: post #40

You don't need AI to replace whole jobs 1:1 to have massive displacement. If AI can do 80% of your tasks but fails miserably on the remaining 20%, that doesn't mean your job is safe. It means that 80% of the people in your department can be fired and the remaining 20% handle the parts the AI can't do yet.

I'd you team bought the latest IDE for $200/mo and was able to finish tickets, you 50% of your team be laid off?

Or would you just do more stuff?

I feel like most software projects have an endless backlog.

Better IDEs, programming languages, packages, frameworks, etc have increased our productivity, reduced bugs -- but rarely reduced headcount.

Ever hard anyone migrate from php+jQuery to react+node and reduce head count due to increased productivity?

I sometimes reminiscent about the LAMP stack being super productive. But at the time I didn't write tests :)

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