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Comment by credit_guy | Hacker News Reader

People doubt this, and maybe the percentage is too high, or the time horizon too low. But it's coming without a doubt.

Remember the times about 15-20 years ago when people were dishing good money on DSLR. Professional photographers were complaining that amateurs come in and lower both the quality and the prices charged. Well, after everyone now has a camera in their pocket that rivals a professional DSLR from 20 years ago, everyone can make decent photos. Not Ansel-Adams-levels, but usable photos.

AI will be like iPhone cameras on steroids. A lot of people will be able to do a lot of things, not at professional level, but at passable level. Very soon live speech translation will be a thing on a smartphone. How many professional translators will still have a job?

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TLDR (b/c AI predictions are overhyped): "Fluctuation Exists" in systems (including economic systems, societies, mechanical systems, etc.)

A modern, industrialized, knowledge-centric economy is constantly having to re-skill. (It seems to be largely due to innovation, but I am just guessing.)

e.g. A new technology comes in-- creating a rise demand for skills to use it, and a decline in demand for skills to use what it replaces.

The dichotomy of skills entering into and leaving importance & scarcity is apparent via the following lists of occupations:

Fastest __Declining__ occupations in the USA: https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/fastest-declining-occupations...

Fastest __Growing__ occupations in the USA: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/fastest-growing.htm

Surely this list isn't accurate?

"Motion picture projectionist" is one of the top 5 occupations with the highest projected growth..? In 2023? Color me doubtful!

Both lists have items that really make one scratch their head. The movie one specifically really feels like someone started plotting a line from 2020, during the height of the pandemic, to right now, with Barbenheimer, and is treating that tiny window as the trend line representing meaningful growth (rather than looking at theater performance as a whole, which is still about half of what it was at its peak in 2018/2019.

Sad to see Nuclear power reactor operators, Nuclear technicians, Power plant operators in the fast decline list, hopefully that's from improved automation and maybe green energy and not from anything truly regressive.

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