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adverbly

There needs to be a "what stage of grief are you in" question.

• Denial

• Anger

• Bargaining

• Depression

• Acceptance

Here is what I see(and common thought patterns)

• Denial (models will never be able to replace the majority of important work)

• Anger (angry at data centers, energy use, IP theft)

• Bargaining (people thinking that their personalized agentic dev setup or self-hosting is gonna somehow leave them with meaningful work long-term)

• Depression (people who are being honest about what it will mean to day-to-day lives of many workers in the industry over the next decade)

• Acceptance (people who are focused on the problems that get worse as AI gets better - social disruption, x-risk, government/corporate control)

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So, I struggle a bit with this comparison… it’s CLOSE to what I’ve been feeling, but with grief the “loss” seems more abrupt. This feels like fluctuating between stages.

For example I just saw a 2.5KLOC PR that was rubber stamped by someone else that should have been a 50LOC script, and that brought me back to somewhere between anger and depression.

Our dead loved ones never resurrect and bring down prod, or something.

> Our dead loved ones never resurrect and bring down prod, or something.

The hype rollercoaster is unique for sure.

If people did resurrect, I can just imagine the hype people coming back and saying "We're so back baby!", at which point I'd probably just try and bury them again...

Spot on, modulo grief is a spiral: we revisit each of these phases in order over and over as different aspects and experiences within the overall loss reveal themselves.

> Acceptance (people who are focused on the problems that get worse as AI gets better - social disruption, x-risk, government/corporate control)

You can consider all of these problems in the other stages as well, even if you still doubt the impact on your own field. Most devs in the stage of acceptance, however, will be increasingly preoccupied with how to keep paying their bills instead of such lofty questions.

Regular people are best kept focused on their own issues. I have bills to pay. My children. This is just about me.

The old refrain that regular people don’t have time for politics. (So let the psychos with money and means arrange everything for you.)

I reached acceptance Spring 2025. That's when I accepted I will eventually be outsourced, and I need to pivot. 1.5 years later, I'm a commercial pilot, and as I continue training, will hopefully be able to pivot here soon.

How is it possible to go zero to commercial pilot in 1.5 years!?

Self-flying planes

This list works best coming from AI Apologists. Because Acceptance is surely about accepting reality, like how a person is dead. There is simply nothing to do. However given this pessimistic framing of yours, Acceptance means what? Willingly getting discarded? With peace of mind and tranquility I go to the Universal Potato Allowance Office.

> Acceptance means what? Willingly getting discarded? With peace of mind and tranquility I go to the Universal Potato Allowance Office.

Part of the acceptance stage recognizing and internalizing:

1. life will be different

2. life will go on

3. there are still many good things in life

To me, the #1 priority here is ensuring that life DOES go on.

I don't think we can ignore x-risk or the other problems like social disruption or government/propaganda control which get worse as AI improves.

Acceptance is pointless if we're all dead.

If you think being dead is fine, you're still in the depression phase.

The reality is that life can be awesome, and it is within the realm of possibility for us to make it so, but it requires us to get up, take action, push for changes, mobilize, organize. Don't just go to the potato office. We only really get one shot at "landing" AI safely. Now is the time for action, and to make sure that we get it right or as right as we can get it on behalf of all future generations.

Yes it's part of an inevitability framework.

What level would you say "oscillating between wanting to jump off a bridge or become the unabomber 2" is? Bouncing between depression and anger like a yo-yo right now

I haven't touched on bargaining even once, and I don't know if I will ever be able to truly reach acceptance

> I don't know if I will ever be able to truly reach acceptance

Gotta be patient before making claims like that.

Its a hard thing, but time is ultimately what helps the most here, so making a claim like that without having given it a few years is premature.

>"There needs to be a "what stage of grief are you in" question."

There's a different level of acceptance that embraces this stuff and just leans into it. The grief is still there, but I'm working through the depression and into this stage. Accepting that you've been pushed from a craftsman to a machine operator really sucks. But machine operator is still a job, even after machines get really efficient. Maybe some people can still hang on to their artisanal workshop existence for high value small batch goods. But most of us will just have to make that move to the industrialized model or fall into redundancy.

> Maybe some people can still hang on to their artisanal workshop existence for high value small batch goods.

Hate to nitpick, but that's classic bargaining - not acceptance.

I do think it will continue on in a sense. Think of how Ferrari or Bentley employees are highly skilled technicians who work on one car at a time to completion, versus the auto line worker at GM screwing down a panel over and over. There is still room for both for different reasons, just at vastly different scale.

Yes, that's definitely a possibility.

This is where the analogy to the stages of grief breaks down.

If you're talking about the stages of grief as being stages of dealing with death, there is no uncertainty or going back.

In the case of AI disruption, there is still uncertainty. Denialists might be right in the end still. Bargaining or getting angry might work.

You can only really progress through the stages if you're emotionally bought in to the reality of a future event that has not yet happened. It's quite a roller coaster emotionally speaking.

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