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Comment by ninetyninenine | Hacker News Reader

Obviously AI is different. While LLMs are more of a power tool now, the future trendline points towards something that (possibly) replaces us. That's the entire concern right? I mean everyone knows this.

Is this not obvious?

Why do people hide behind this ridiculous analogy: "That's right, there are no carpenters or lumberjacks anymore because power tools were invented"

???

I mean sure the analogy is catchy and makes surface level sense, but can your brain do some analysis outside the context of an analogy??? It makes no sense that all of AI can be completely characterized by an analogy that isn't even accurate yet people delusionally just regurgitate the analogy most fitting with the fantasy reality they prefer.

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What exactly do you mean by replace? Replace in particular roles (causing the humans to shift into new roles), or replace as in nothing useful left for humans to do? Those are two very different trajectories.

So far in the industrial revolution we have been experiencing the first. Waves of automation that displaces workers in one role, and then new roles open up for humans (often involving the machines). I believe that for the foreseeable future human + AI tools (symbiosis) will be a much stronger than AI alone. Of course it will tend towards more and more AI per human over time. The same way modern manufacturing is "machine tending", where a few workers might supervise a factory that outputs what would have taken thousands of workers in the past. If the thing being produced is has unrealized demand, then we would expect that being able to do it more effectively would just mean more production, possibly to the extent that the same or even more humans are needed to produce it. So the real questions are - which things does humanity have a lot more demand for (2-1000x) - and can be made more effective with AI in the loop / on the team. And the flip side, which things are we near max demand for, and can also be made more effective with AI. Jobs in those areas are going to be decimated, move away as quickly as possible.

sure. But why is digging one’s head in the sand a good strategy? To be clear i’m not advocating for trying to keep up all the time. You gotta live life too. But “ejecting” completely is dumb.

Are you saying that when the sewing machine was invented, it would be in the employees interest to not learn how to use it? Or when the computer was invented, it’s not in the employees interest to learn how to use it?

Even if you are a software engineer and are fired / laid off / pushed out of the industry because of AI, knowing how to use AI, its risks, etc is still helpful. It’s a skill you can hopefully use in your next career, whatever you pivot to. Unless you pivot to manual labor.

Thinking otherwise is shortsighted.

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