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Comment by MrAbstract | Hacker News Reader

I have exactly the same thoughts - or perhaps slightly bleaker ones - evry time I read this relentless stream of news about new model releases. I’m tired of all the enthusiastic comments about how excited everyone is about the latest benchmark results and so on.

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.

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Are you doing less work now because of AI? Not sure about you, but I'm doing a lot more work. Not saying I like doing more, or how it's getting done, but nonetheless I don't feel like AI is doing what the CEOs of AI labs want to convince everyone of.

100% in real life where everyone has an AI there are new problems to deal with. There's a lot of correcting AI slop code. There's a lot of having to read AI generated slop docs and posts and PR comments. There's a lot of evals for large AI agent chains and prompts, etc.

It's natural to worry about one's own future but I think it's a bit wild to worry just _your_ job that would be replaced. Not just for those with phone center jobs or art jobs or programming jobs - remember, the whole premise was AI overtakes humans, why would that slow down after _your_ job?

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".

Public opinion and politicians will only notice when the job losses are massive, unfortunately. Right now, unemployment rates are still stable. We can only hope they will notice before things fall off a cliff (if they do).

I feel the same sometimes. I don’t see how this doesn’t lead to massive job losses. The thing we spent our lives/careers learning is now worth basically nothing in comparison.

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.

I see how it won't lead to massive job loss every day, idk. Now every idiot has a massive slop code cannon they can point at any working system and bombard it and we all have to sift through and find the nuggets and gems in the rough

Yes same thoughts. I dont know anyone who are both enthusiastic about those and work for salary. If you dont have any financial concern, this is really great.

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