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Comment by bobosha | Hacker News Reader

IMO AI is going eat most jobs - including the experienced ones - it's just a matter of time. There is no sugar coating this unfortunately.

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Given a long enough timeframe, I think you're right. But I don't think that's a 'near future' state, but probably a 'in a few decades' state. More generally, I believe that eventually we'll reach a 'post-work society' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-work_society).

And that'll be interesting for humanity, as we derive at least some identity from the work we're doing.

Interesting indeed. Depending on the country you're in, "post work" will mean your value to the current violent, ruling regime is 0 or negative, with predictable consequences.

Luckily for the regime, the killbots are already here, AI-powered, and under their control.

Man, I wish I had your optimism. I can see us entering "post-work", but that's only because those who own the means of production no longer require us, and our resulting crises will be much lower on Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs.

Production for whom, though? At least any growth paradigm immediately dies without a mass of consumers. Billionaires can only consume so much.

Well, at the moment both "growth" and "wealth" have been removed from a lot humanity, having been abstracted into a market that most people can barely, if at all, participate in, and that has nearly entirely moved away from "you're worth $x because you make x widgets". I can't image that will disappear.

Yes, but will the powers that be accept a future without growth?

I'm not convinced that the indicators they use for growth would stop increasing. As people are so quick to point out, most of these people's worth is in the market, and that stopped being a rational actor a long while ago.

Are you talking about LLMs?

I'm talking about the belief that somehow AI will eventually do all our jobs for us. I don't personally believe that LLMs will get anywhere close to that.

Yeah, I'm definitely agreeing with you on this. Which is why I think we're probably decades out from a post-work society. I do think it's inevitable, but in an optimistic kind of way.

My take is that an LLM is not ever going to lead to AGI, it's fundamentally the wrong paradigm to develop true intelligence.

Either way, I doubt that will happen in my lifetime and I don't spend any time worrying about it.

I spend time worrying about the people who are trying to convince people it'll happen in our lifetime.

When AI takes all the jobs, it better start ordering junk from Amazon, have a Costco membership, order in Tacos on Tuesday and watch Instagram reels all day on its brand new iPhone because all the jobless people won’t be able to.

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