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Comment by goodrun | Hacker News Reader

I read all the posts in this thread - but no one has a good idea to avoid software developer obsolescence. My guess is this profession has 5 more years. It was a good run while it lasted.

All the other white collar workers are in the same boat. A pillar of the economy is going to be destroyed with no obvious replacement in sight.

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Ok so it’s five years now? I’ve heard for the last three years that software developers will be out of job within the next 6-18 months. I’m glad to hear I’ll have a job for a little bit longer.

5 more years? That’s quite pessimistic, given how much evidence we have that LLM coding has as much of a long tail problem as any other tech we’ve created.

Which other profession has the same amount of training data freely available for the taking?

Don't need much training data for bank/insurance/retail analyst work - it's just basic reasoning and data retrieval. If AI could crack the programming nut - one of the most intellectually challenging professions - it can handle the rest with ease. The only human role will be high level monitoring - and even this will be largely automated so fewer will be required.

Sorry to reply to myself but I just recalled the recent Apple ad that ran last year about a corporate goofball who got his Apple device to fire off well crafted email slop to his manager who looked surprised/impressed. That trick will only last for a short time. The joke is that people like him and his manager will be the first to be fired.

> Don't need much training data for bank/insurance/retail analyst work - it's just basic reasoning and data retrieval.

For insurances... there's a reason why the three bullets of the plumber's brother were labelled "delay, deny and depose". You don't need a grunt to compose a denial order. Just let AI default-deny everything, most people won't have the energy left to battle the system or they'll die anyway before the claim finally sees an independent judge.

And as long as insurances aren't severely punished for denying claims that are found out to be valid later on, this dynamic will just continue as-is.

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