How to decide what to do next in a future that might make all of it obsolete | Hacker News Reader

How to decide what to do next in a future that might make all of it obsolete

10 pointsmrbear015 comments

The biggest problem I'm facing right now is deciding what to learn in a future that might render all of it obsolete. I love learning about AI and its workings, but can I make a significant impact on the field before AI becomes self-replicating? I highly doubt it, and this weighs heavily on my heart.

FYI: I came across this comment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD5GlCIS0sA&lc=UgwvZRhElDZoj5NPsqt4AaABAg and decided to post it here in an attempt to start a thread about it. I'm sure there are plenty of people grappling with the same issue.

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First: Don't define yourself by what you know or what you can do. That way, if what you do gets rendered obsolete, you aren't threatened. Your income may be, but who you are isn't.

Second: There has always been this threat; you're just more aware of it. Many farmers became obsolete due to mechanized agriculture. Many factory workers became obsolete due to automation and/or offshoring. Elevator operators. Telephone operators. Typists. And on and on; there's a long history of jobs disappearing. Try to be able to do more than one thing; it gives you more options.

One strategy might be to try to get better at relating to people. In the future, an AI may be able to give you an answer, but it can't give you a believable smile. Humans still want human contact; there's some value in being able to give it to them.

The future belongs to those who believe there will be one. Or, put the other way around: Those who give up in despair because they think that there will be no future will find that there isn't much of one, at least for them. Don't quit in despair. Keep trying to learn new things and new skills.

> I love learning about AI and its workings

Stop right there and throw sand on the rest. You are getting too caught up in a future that may or may not even happen. Stay grounded in the present. Also the odds of any individual having significant impact in any given field is tiny so don’t let that deter you from learning new things.

I’d say you have two priorities, one in the short term, and another for the long term. For the short term, it’s a coin toss: we all thought drivers would be as obsolete as elevator operators by now and, yet, AI seems to pose a bigger threat to lawyers and graphic artists than to drivers right now.

For the long run, my best suggestion is to get into politics and political activism, and push, HARD, for UBI and welfare state policies, as well as inequality reduction efforts. This way, when the first fails (and it eventually will), you and everyone else is covered.

For this case, let’s define the end of jobs, employment and hard work(=satisfaction?) as the doomsday;

If AI’s doomsday comes within a few years, there’s nothing much to do[0].

Assuming it’s not - we have a lot of work to do. Anyone can uniquely impact and contribute.

The jobs might slowly be replaced by an AI (like any tech), but it will create more jobs that require knowledge and flexibility.

A great read on focus: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25466764

[0] Until a beginner will acquire the knowledge to solve such problem, it will happen already.

AI won't become self-improving any time soon because current tech requires millions of $ each time a new LLM gets trained. For AI to become self-improving it would have to first somehow capture almost all the wealth in the world for itself, and then put thousands of engineers to work. It would also need a way to know the new trained algorithm is indeed an improvement to itself, which means it would have to stay around for some time after the new LLM is trained. All of this means humans will be in the loop for the time being.

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