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Comment by higeorge13 | Hacker News Reader

I believe that the middle ground for this is to keep all these jobs orchestrating agents or whatever the AI future invents for us, but with lower wages. The golden era of dev wages will be gone. There is no incentive for companies paying people 100-500k-1m to write prompts and debug agents, independent of their level.

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This might be how it shakes out but I don't think it's acceptable, and I don't think white collar workers will think it's acceptable. Taking high income people and making them low income people (usually for life) has a tendency to politically radicalise people. Especially in light of the unprecedented productivity and profits which businesses will experience. People will demand a slice of the pie.

One kind of intervention that could work would be licensing, like with some engineering professions. Make it illegal to work on software without a professional license; same as with doctors. Engineers would be free to work with AI, but the final responsibility would fall on them.

This artificial control works to prevent oversupply and protect salaries. Unfortunately, the businesses calling the shots won't ever allow this to happen.

That’s dystopian. I would hope it never happens!

So? They'll be declared domestic terrorists and that'll be that. I mean, you cannot demand something from an entity that doesn't care about you, doesn't need anything from you, and over which you have no leverage.

I would say, be afraid and use the fear (not to ruminate, but to organise and do things), but also be optimistic, and use that, too (not to imagine what people will do then when they're not doing it now, but to believe it's possible helping making it reality, now).

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