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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

#311

Post by georgemcbay »

fragmede wrote: post #47
ctoth wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What should kids be aiming for according to you? Computer Scientist? Biologist? Finance? Construction? Can you sit down with an unfamiliar domain and develop enough genuine curiosity to get good at it, without a syllabus or a credential dangling in front of you? The kids who'll do well in a world where the field-to-security mapping keeps shifting are the ones who can self-direct — not the ones who picked the right…

> full disclosure I'm short humans and very long paperclips. What does that mean in practice? Are there specific stock market bets you've made because of that world view?

I don't think they are actually talking about the stock market and are just saying they think AI will destroy everything (referencing Nick Bostrom's Paperclip Maximizer theory).

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

#312

Post by greenhearth »

Maybe if college degrees are not so valuable anymore, then school will become cheaper and this will allow more people to go to school. I would hate to live in a world where everyone is a plumber. Nothing against plumbers, but being human is more than unclogging drain pipes and installing toilets, and the one place where humanity's definitions are concentrated most intensely is the university.

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

#313

Post by jabedude »

dominotw wrote: post #285
GorbachevyChase wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think we have any way of knowing what will happen. We’re in such an age of abundance now that it’s possible to make a living fighting with your girlfriends in Salt Lake City. Graphite block warehouse owners in China can be celebrities in the US. The influencer economy would have seems unthinkable and absurd in the 90s. What will be normal 30 years from now will probably seem just as bizarre. I’d like to think…

> make a living fighting with your girlfriends in Salt Lake City. what again?

Probably a reference to shows like 'Secret Lives of Mormon Wives'

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

#314

Post by laughing_man »

Moto7451 wrote: post #280
laughing_man wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No because you have the customers and budget in that moment for three already and I’m not interjecting that more budget is given or any taken away. Restated, I’m not saying we’re hiring more or less because of LLM AI productivity changes. I’m rejecting the idea we need less people for all the previous reasons stated and my own two cents that we’re yet to see the reduced work hours Keynesian economics predicted as out…

Budget is based on revenue, though, at least in broad terms. If you thought you could triple your revenue by hiring a few extra programmers, you would, even if it meant raising money somehow.

I doubt you will ever see two day work weeks. Instead of cutting hours it makes a lot more sense for companies to cut people and have the remaining employees work full time. Or more. There are a lot of fixed costs for each employee, and most people would rather make more money than work less.

I worked at a company which, faced with slow period, reduced everyone's pay by 20% and switched to a 32 hour work week instead of cutting people. Most of my colleagues were bitter about it and a few even quit. Personally I was happy, but I was in a small minority.

Sorry to hear about your rocky employment experience. I feel like that's getting to be the norm these days.

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

#315

Post by newsoftheday »

anthuswilliams wrote: post #135

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.

How will people be able to afford to pay for blue collar labor though, when AI will potentially have decimated all white collar and many blue collar jobs; that's what I worry about.

For example, if someone decides to stop being a software engineer and become an automobile mechanic, but few people can afford an automobile; they demand for their services will also greatly diminish.

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

#316

Post by georgemcbay »

justonepost2 wrote: post #261
alvah wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a ludicrous reply, to suggest it should be "socially unacceptable" to believe the Paperclip Maximizer thought experiment might reveal a scenario that is bad for humans overall.

Of course it would be bad for humanity. “Short humanity and long paperclips”, in my reading, is pro-extinctionism. The specter of Daniel Faggella haunts this site and this industry.

> pro-extinctionism

I can only speculate as I didn't write that post, but by my reading they were just stating their belief that AI is likely to lead to human extinction, not that they were happy about that outcome.

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

#317

Post by ethin »

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…

Why shouldn't they? They're constantly being told by CEOs and big companies that AI is going to take all the jobs and do all the things. They're told the same by AI boosters who only see utopias and not the consequences of said utopias. Of course they're going to insulate from AI as much as possible. Especially given that society still pretty much requires that you work to be successful in the world. The utopian dream of "you'll never have to work again, you can just do anything you want" is a very very long ways off, but it's being pushed hard as though it will be in the next 3 years. But society is still pushing the "you must work" message too.

Edit: of course, the "long ways off" assumes that that dream is even possible and isn't just that, a dream. I question whether even that is possible given how we are still split under hundreds of nation states and can't even unite on the most basic of things.

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

#318

Post by indoordin0saur »

ForHackernews wrote: post #307
abc123abc123 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. The ability to work without paying taxes in this profession is of enormous value. It keeps prices lower for the consumer, and income higher for the handyman. I seen many handymen with the latest and greatest luxury cars, and the demand is endless. On the other side, it seems technologists salaries are stagnating, and the new guys on the market get lower and lower salaries, so it does indeed seem as if the best a…

If you're willing to commit fraud anyway, just run a crypto scam. The payout is a lot higher, and it will use the white collar tech skills you already have rather than forcing you to learn a trade.

But then you have to feel bad that you're not contributing to society. The plumber is doing far more for society than any crypto con-artist is.

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

#320

Post by nilamo »

newsoftheday wrote: post #315
anthuswilliams wrote: post #135

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.

How will people be able to afford to pay for blue collar labor though, when AI will potentially have decimated all white collar and many blue collar jobs; that's what I worry about. For example, if someone decides to stop being a software engineer and become an automobile mechanic, but few people can afford an automobile; they demand for their services will also greatly diminish.

But cars will be 50% of their current cost, once all those useless managers and c-suite folks are replaced by ai. Right? Right??
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