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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

#71

Post by rootusrootus »

array_key_first wrote: post #31
stephen_cagle wrote: post #8

I'm somewhat skeptical of this "enter the trades" movement. Actually, I am more skeptical of that statement than I am of LLM's replacing white collar work in general. I think parts of coding are being replaced quickly because they are the parts that don't require discernment. Trades likely contain just as many automatable and just as many discernment parts as white collar work. At this moment in history, the automata…

Robots are expensive, software is not. I can instantly duplicate software 1 million times and run it in parallel, I can't just produce 1 million robots. Physical world is always harder. Even if we get robots who can, say, build roads start to end, there is still a HUGE gap between that and it actually being used. There is a hard floor, too. Robots are made of physical things, physical things have scarcity, and there'…

> Robots are expensive

People are not, though, and all the folks who are no longer necessary in knowledge work are available for physical work.

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

#72

Post by rootusrootus »

bigiain wrote: post #38
stephen_cagle wrote: post #8

I'm somewhat skeptical of this "enter the trades" movement. Actually, I am more skeptical of that statement than I am of LLM's replacing white collar work in general. I think parts of coding are being replaced quickly because they are the parts that don't require discernment. Trades likely contain just as many automatable and just as many discernment parts as white collar work. At this moment in history, the automata…

Hasn't the US already minimised the cost of all the construction work that are "the parts that don't require discernment" to minimum wage who-cares-if-they're-documented-or-not day workers?

Seems the answer is no, the average wage is about $25/hr depending on region.

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

#73

Post by adamtaylor_13 »

saltyoldman wrote: post #57
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…

You're coping. Everyone wants a remote software job. These are dead. If you want something in software, it will need to be robotics or space related and you'll drive to a location to do it. If you want to be in a remote, small town, get into construction and become a builder with their own GC license in a few years. Then charge people 400k to build that little dream cottage with 2 guys (you and a team mate) twice a y…

Wha do you mean these are dead? I work a remote software job and it ain't going anywhere from what I can see.

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

#74

Post by ares623 »

yojo wrote: post #46
margorczynski wrote: post #33

The "go into trades" thing has two major flaws: 1) The supply of work will skyrocket when everyone will flock there for work 2) Demand will plummet as the white collar people who bought these services will loose their jobs and income And of course if robotics will get solved to an acceptable degree most of those jobs will also get mostly automated.

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.

If the other 2 comments still make it hard to understand, South Park had a great episode explaining this.

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

#75

Post by dspillett »

crop_rotation wrote: post #6
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…

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.

Development is the same though.

If things play out I see there being two classes of low paid developers in a decade or so: the first being the vibe coders who earn a subsistence wage because most people can do it (not everyone, there will still be a cost of entry, paying for the tools, which will exclude some groups), the second being the more “artisnal” developers working on the things that can't (yet) be vide coded and fixing up the problems caused by insufficient care by the vibers and those employing them. These will be low paid because while the work is important demand will be low and there will still be a fair few people with the skills and desire (they'll make ends meet between good jobs by taking on gig-economy vide-coding work themselves). There will be a lucky few still making a decent living, but a much lower proportion than now.

I'm hoping to arrange retirement before things get that far… Failing that I'll do something else (I could be a sparky, though if all the youngsters are training for that perhaps that industry will gain a bad supply/demand picture from the worker's PoV too!) to pay the bills and reclaim dicking around with tech as a hobby.

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

#76

Post by ares623 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #68
cal_dent wrote: post #48

I still don't understand the logic that any job is safe from ai (if it lives up to expectations). Sure, it might not be directly impacted by ai but why is there this expectation that the excess labour from those directly impacted doesnt act to suppress the earning power of other jobs? Especially considering that the implication is that humans just become a pair of hands with opposable thumbs?. Take the electrician in…

Agreed, there would definitely be knock-on effects. If a bunch of people who were otherwise going to be software developers decide to focus their career on the trades, then the wages for trades jobs will drop.

And if the wages drop, then there will be less demand of those trades, and when there's less demand, ...

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

#77

Post by noelsusman »

abcde666777 wrote: post #41

> People fear that programming is dead. > People stop learning programming. > Programmers become scarce. > Programmers become valuable again. Maybe it's wishful thinking but I'm not going to be surprised if it plays out like this. In some sense the reverse happened over the last couple of decades - everyone and their mother got into IT and the industry became saturated.

Assuming the AI maximalist digital god bros are wrong, there will always be some demand for programmers, the question is how much. It's not hard to see a future where programming goes the way of farming where the demand for small-scale farming still exists but at a tiny fraction of what it once was.

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

#78

Post by ares623 »

abcde666777 wrote: post #41

> People fear that programming is dead. > People stop learning programming. > Programmers become scarce. > Programmers become valuable again. Maybe it's wishful thinking but I'm not going to be surprised if it plays out like this. In some sense the reverse happened over the last couple of decades - everyone and their mother got into IT and the industry became saturated.

Software became ubiquitous because a huge majority of the population found utility and enjoyment from what software had to offer. Very quickly that number in the population is dwindling. (Good) software can only thrive in an environment where other sectors are also thriving. Who needs 99.999% uptime when your family is starving and freezing.

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

#79

Post by acdha »

chromacity wrote: post #35
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…

The prevailing sentiment on HN is that AI will make coders 10x more productive, but that we'll all keep our jobs and salaries, with the possible exception of people who don't embrace AI quickly enough. But let me ask you this: has AI made life easier for illustrators, book authors, or musicians? They were affected by the technology earlier on. If they don't embrace AI, they face increased competition from cheaply-mad…

It’s also not exactly a secret that the executive class resents having to pay high-income workers and is champing at the bit for layoffs. Even if you fully embrace AI, they want white collar jobs to look more like call center work with high surveillance, less autonomy, and constant reminders of replaceability. Most people saw through that “our people are our greatest asset” talk before, but they’re not even trying anymore.

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

#80

Post by khuey »

variadix wrote: post #62
abcde666777 wrote: post #41

> People fear that programming is dead. > People stop learning programming. > Programmers become scarce. > Programmers become valuable again. Maybe it's wishful thinking but I'm not going to be surprised if it plays out like this. In some sense the reverse happened over the last couple of decades - everyone and their mother got into IT and the industry became saturated.

Maybe, another possibility is the frontier providers change their pricing terms to try to capture more of the value once a sufficient number of people’s skills have atrophied. For example: 20% of the revenue of all products built with $AI_SERVICE. For someone several years out of practice they may have no other option.

I think there's a decent chance that the open weight models remain close enough to the frontier labs that they won't be able to do things like this.
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