Hacker News Reader

Comment by jamager | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps contrary to popular believe, I think the jobs that have survived thousands of years will likely survive another 50, even when all automatization included:

- teachers

- writers & artists

- doctors

- farmers

- builders

- scientists

- what people say is the oldest profession in the world

It is the relatively new jobs (< 100 yrs old) that face more uncertainty: they perhaps have proven themselves worthy in the last decades (and they are booming right now), but might not be resilient enough for world that is coming. It is not only about automation, but adaptability to quick / disruptive changes.

- programmers

- traders

- journalists

- marketers

However, I wouldn't call this a "prediction". I think very few jobs will actually disappear completely.

View on HN

I guess most HN readers are aware of it by now, but if anyone isn't this is basically the idea of the Lindy Effect [0] -- counter-intuitively, in many cases age is a good predictor of future life span.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect

> ounter-intuitively, in many cases age is a good predictor of future life span.

So people making swords was a job for 30 000 years but for some reason the Lindy Effect does not work with that one? That kind of logic does not work at all with all the jobs that disappeared in the 19th and 20th century.

The logic worked for 29999 years, which is the whole point. It's like the German Tank Problem[0], but for lifespans.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem

that's exactly why it's counter-intuitive! Obviously it can't be right forever, but at any given moment if you need predict the minimum future life span of a book, framework, language, job, country, whatever and you have very limited information it turns out that just predicting the thing's age will often be a reasonable prediction -- probability is hard!

A "good predictor" doesn't need 100% accuracy.

Rather looks like 10% accuracy in this case

Weapon smiths might be gone but weapons manufacturing is as big or even bigger than ever in history. So until humanity does a fundamental shift and stops all armed conflicts, it is as safe job as any.

> Weapon smiths might be gone but weapons manufacturing is as big or even bigger than ever in history

That's called moving goalposts

> I think the jobs that have survived thousands of years will likely survive another 50

That's a strange assumption. So the world will completely change but for some reason only these ones will remain intact and untouched? Btw most farmers are out of job compared to the early 20th century. Now a single farmer produces what 100's or more produced before.

So, we're agreed then that farming as a profession remains?

I'm smack bang in the middle of a large agricultural region and while farm areas are larger than ever before they are multi million dollar (in annual cash flow) family businesses still.

They have massive sheds, small fleets of machinery, WAN's and storage, welding shops, silos .. and are still extended family businesses that are crying out for more boots on the ground.

The nature of farming has changed and will continue to change, but there will continue to be farmers; the robot that fixes the robots will get bogged and need repair itself.

Exactly, farming is a good example. It was the dominant economy sector 100 years ago, and still is in many countries. Right now less than 2% of world population works on farming, if I am not mistaken. But all the massive improvements, all the low hanging fruit it's gone - at least when you look at the next 50 years. The more something is optimized, the harder is to optimize it harder.

No way, our food will come from 'labs' aka giant grow warehouses etc in 50 years. The only 'recognizable' farmers, ie tiling the soil, milking cows, herding sheep, and so-on, will be subsisting in poor countries or will be organic artisans.

Innovation is at an inflection point for our food system.

> our food will come from 'labs' aka giant grow warehouses etc in 50 years

I heard this same prediction 40+ years ago.

But the solution then was just to cut down more forests and throw some more chemicals in the soil.

That's not going to work any more, and the tech for indoor farming, LEDS, vertical farming, biotech (heme, cells feeding on co2 and electricity) etc, is just now becoming viable.

Hey, this is completely separate from your current conversation, but I just saw your post here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8869890#8870443) from a couple of years ago.

I love the logo. I've been using the glider for years, but just learned about Eric Raymond's racist tirades and the like, and was looking for something to replace it with.

If its okay with you, I'll change it up a little bit (maybe change the color or etc), and use it for my personal projects?

I would have replied on the linked comment above, but its so old replies are turned off. Hope your hackerspace is still going strong : )

Yes sure, totally forgotten I'd posted that, for anyone else the logo is here https://imgur.com/ba7o9i0

The different shades were meant to represent different kinds of people coming together at our hackerspace which is sadly no more, and green for growth obviously, but feel free to change it around to suit.

It animates (in the game of life) up and to the right BTW, unlike Raymond's version which goes down...

Awesome, thank you.

Sad to hear about the hackerspace. But love the logo : D

Its kinda nuts how much better it is than the original, for all the reasons you mentioned here and in the previous post : D

A pleasure, thanks for recognizing it's virtues.

It would be nice to see it's use, and variations, grow organically, vs the current emblem's quite ironic much-more-cathedral-than-bazaar dictats.

I won’t be around to see it, but I wouldn’t bet against humanity’s desire to avoid eating anything grown in a lab.

They/we learned to eat some pretty non-natural stuff in the 20th century, I'm sure they'll be fine.

interesting you say writers and artists would survive over programmers when AI has practically threatened all writers and artists livelihood as of recent.

I hear people say this, but I haven't seen any concrete examples of AI generated art actually threatening the entire art industry. Sure, AI can generate me a nice pic to use for my blog post, but are game studios ready to fire all of their concept artists?

Well, the _entire stock image industry_ has surely been disrupted. If you relied on stock imagery last year as your primary source of income, you may be out of work come next year.

https://www.shutterstock.com/press/20435

Press F to doubt.

20 years? Maaaaybe.

Next year? No way.

Maybe when SD can do high res and soft focus.

> but I haven't seen any concrete examples of AI generated art actually threatening the entire art industry

Because you have not waited long enough. AI generated pictures were just born yesterday.

I disagree. By definition, AI can generate average-ish work, but not new, disrupting, expressive work. It would have never come up with cubism, magic realism, or any innovation that makes art, art. They will improve at requiring less training data, less energy, come up with more likely possible works, polish out edges, sure. AI can imitate, period. It is not small feat. It is a fantastic achievement that can be used for good.

By definition, AI can generate average-ish work, but not new, disrupting, expressive work.

The vast majority of people working full time as 'artists' are paid to quickly produce "average-ish" work to spec and on time. Nobody (to a first approximation) hires artists to produce capital A Art.

If you want to get semantic about it, we could say the illustator and graphic design jobs (often done by artists) will be lost rather artist jobs.

It'll just become even more of a bimodal distribution of income than at the moment. There will be hundreds of thousands of people writing for free in communities, with whatever anti-AI policing they need to make that work for them, and a few dozen celebrities who make a living from writing.

Right? I don't think, however, that any competent writer or artist feel threatened by AI outputs at all. The threat comes for others abusing AI to misuse their name and steal their work. That is a legitimate concern.

Journalism goes back to AT LEAST 200AD. Han dynasty China had regular government news bulletins, albeit for internal use, not public consumption.

Regularly published newspapers go back to the 1500's in China and early 1600's in the west.

It depends: is a programmer the same as the people who automated looms? designed steam engines? Because if we are, then we have some life left in us yet!

we are driving towards an axiom here I believe. IMO the only way programming will change is the set of tools we are going to use on a daily basis, but no matter how evolved AI is going to be the need to formulate features in a formal manner will always be a requirement. Think of lawyers for instance. To a certain degree they are programmers acting within the boundaries of the law. Basically they are glueing together modules. I think programmers fate will be similar to that

Reply on news.ycombinator.com