They seem to have not yet come to believe the "is" part.
AI as it is now and as it will be projected into the future WILL automate many skills. But not all skills. MANY MANY people will retain skills that cannot be replaced by AI. One career track that will be replaced is definetely the SWE. Or at least massively reduced in capacity if not eliminated all together.
That being said metal based robots can replace many human jobs (like server) but something like a plumber or construction worker is extremely hard to do.
Coding is the easiest thing for the ai to do, the rules are strict, there are plenty of working code to use as example and training data. The most important is that even an ai can decide immediately if the output is good or bad (working vs not working) and try again.
All other white collar jobs does not seem to have this immediate, automatic response loop, so the ai can only rely on a human's judgement on the quality of the work. Which is slow and unreliable. The human is not going to throw an exception while reading the ai generated scientific paper. It is inconsistent, two humans can make the opposite decisions about the same output. No way for the ai to measure auccess.
It is going to change a lot of things for everyone, no question about that, but nothing like this. Coding is obsolete. Actually writing the stuff into an editor does not make any sense.
We are now shepherds, we make sure the agents are well fed and not doing anything stupid.
For me it is amazing to watch it in action, I don't mind being a shepherd :) I'm not interested in the syntax of the languages or code formatting. Tabs or spaces? Who cares, neither. I also don't like shell scripts, batch files, yaml configs, json, xml. Watching the agent going through this shit like a tank is amazing.
The problem that I see with a black box approach is a lot of uncertainty about how long it will take to get the initial system reliably producing the correct output with acceptable performance. I could deal with that, but the bigger problem I see is the unpredictability of future effort to make changes to the system as my company grows (more traffic to the system, more/changed territory specific laws, more features). This uncertainty could be mitigated by an experienced software engineer guiding what gets built inside of the box. This guiding would include a familiarity with how the code is structured.
Even if one assumes a black box approach, what the box should actually do still requires the mindset of a good software engineer. Many product managers or non-technical parties requesting software won't think through and find problematic inconsistencies or gaps in the business rules they asked for. They won't anticipate how to frame the problem in a way that makes expanding upon the capabilities later easier.
So, I think the role would look like a blend of software/system architect + product manager + dev/LLM ops + QA. At least this would be true at a company that I would want to work for. I've always preferred working in small, strong teams where everyone has a lot of ownership. There will always be the LLM day equivalent of software produced by offshore teams in the early 2000s. I'm sure their modern-day ilk will excrete something that's good enough. I don't want to work for this type of company.
job depends on how CEO feeling about cutting NN% of headcount because of AI advancement
I have a strong suspicion that many of those comments are written by people who are already financially independent, have millions in stocks, and can just sit back, coast around and watch this whole spectacle unfold while using LLMs to vibe-code their next fun side projects without a shadow of anxiety about their own future.
I’ll most likely be labelled a helpless doomer and downvoted into oblivion for saying this, but I genuinely struggle to see any silver lining here.
AI is only going to get better and do more with less humans in the loop over time.
That said, I do also relate to the "coding was never the hard part"-type arguments, and much of my day is spent on the stuff in between writing code.. but still.
Because of this, I don't think many are thinking "90% of the world won't have a source of livelihood but that just means I chill at my lake house for the next 20 years like a normal retirement". Instead, it's usually either "I think AI is overhyped", "I think humanity will figure something out", or "I think this is the end of humanity".
Thought experiment: If no thought workers are needed to design or engineer a Ferrari, what is needed? My answer is time and natural resources (include energy).
[0] that said, population in developed countries is naturally declining so maybe it won't be a problem in the long term either; or maybe, with less need to work, people will be more inclined to raise other people, leading us to both more machines and more humans.
Don't be selfish. Think first of all the jobs that are already dead. A friend of mine she's a translator: like translating financial documents between french/english/spanish. It's over for her: she doesn't get 10% of the gigs she used to get and the 10% she gets is... Verifying AI output.
Think of the artists: I'm sorry for those too, for for many it's already game over today.
> How will we make a living?
A friend of mine who's got his own software-consultancy SME is now advertising on LinkedIn that he'll also help your company fix the mess LLMs created.
That's how you'll make a living: by learning, in addition to all you've already learned, how you work with harnesses and LLMs to be more productive, by learning what they're good at and what they suck big fat balls at.
No it's not??? People want human made art. Abstract artists didn't paint anything technically challenging and they sold art for millions because art is about human connection and human inventiveness, not whatever prompt you could feed into an AI.
> he'll also help your company fix the mess LLMs created.
Hugely valuable. I keep a list of every PR I halted which was AI generated with AI commit summaries and AI tests and no human reviewer till me. It's very easy to convince people to keep me around. AIs are smarter than ever but the people using them and putting the prompts in and not reading the output are still as dumb as before
This is such a childish take I hear getting thrown around all the time on the internet. If you really have just been listening to whoever is telling you how to be successful, then you were always doomed to fail at some point. Like, have some self-respect and own your own life, for better or worse.
>Those of us who made the mistake of studying anything other than machine learning. How will we make a living?
Take it from someone who studied machine learning specifically: nobody is safe if you assume these companies are going to produce a product that will put everybody else out of business. If AI is going to take your job, then it's gonna take enough jobs that your problems will not be personal but systematic.
Yes, these problems are systematic. That is what I am saying. That doesn't make it any nicer.
most swes don't work in jobs where they only work on bounded measurable tasks. there will probably be more "engineers" than ever
> How will we make a living?
My backup plan is being a personal trainer.
> There are a bunch of companies actively working in bringing AI into robots, so they can make your dishes.
> Also, if enough people are going for the same backup plan it might not work out.
> Why should anyone book you as a personal trainer instead of the other 500 guys in town.
But my wife and I have been homeless before, so living on a shoestring budget in anything nicer than a tent is acceptable living conditions to me.
I am sure I will be plenty comfy no matter how the world changes.
AIs are really good at being personal trainers and seem to be far more educated and informed than most I know.
You're the taste and decision maker. The AI is like a really precise, fast Google, Wikipedia, codegen tool
It’s an interesting moment in history, people 35+ yrs old seem to be less afraid if tech because we learned that things change in the way we work. People below this age got used to fact that the work and tech doesn’t change - just because for the last 10-15 years it didn’t.
The threat is that the very kernel of value you had is gone forever. There is no more differential leverage.