Unfortunately not everyone has that luxury, and as AI continues to devalue intellectual labor, fewer will.
I still feel the same way.
Even the article itself: they care about "having a job", not having that specific job. And they care about it in order to "make a living".
Perspective... there are people crossing the entire world to come and be trashmen or food delivery slaves in our western countries, there are other jobs, you just don't want to do most of them
Don't live like your cushy $$$ desk job is a god given right and you'll be fine
EDIT typo
Sure, you can go work in a warehouse, coffee shop, bakery, etc.
I know a dude who's part time picking veggies in a bio farm part time surgeon. Another who's part time baker part time financial advisor. If you have four limbs and half a brain you certainly can find a job outside of tech. It might not pay as well or be as convenient but let's not pretend we're in a "$500k at FAANG or homelessness" situation.
I really wish I could ascend to your level and never be upset about anything bad that happens, no matter how pointless and obviously unjust.
To be fair, parent and grandparent are never being upset about anything bag that happens to other people. I've met plenty of this type and you can be assured they'll be outraged when it happens to them....though often they're the type born into wealth so all problems are other people's problems.
Being a software engineer professionally in call it 1990 thru 2020 is an incredibly privileged position. We were only able to enjoy such an easy position in life because of supply and demand and the math has changed. We had these positions not because we were special but because investors could make money off of it and needed us.
Suddenly they don't. Or believe they don't. Should we be pissed. Probably. But it doesn't change the fact that we got cozy with things that were revokable.
Yes, I agree, programmers got lucky, and that luck is coming to an end. This has happened to many professions in the past. It's not new.
What is new is two things:
* that it's not just programmers that will be displaced, although we are among the first. Many people, possibly all of them, will have their labor value diminished by AI. This is a systemic issue that requires a systemic solution, not just a pep talk and "Get tough, buttercup,"
* that the success of AI is built on illegitimate grounds, as the training data is built by the people it's displacing; and is serving to enrich a fantastically small number of capital holders, at the expensive of literally everyone else.
So in view of that, I think it's silly and beside the point to say "Hey, tough luck" or to accuse programmers of being entitled, which is certainly the subtext in your comment. Programmers should be upset, but so should everyone else.
We are being entitled. We shouldn't have been sucking at the investors class teet thinking we are special. We along with most white collar workers on the west were being entitled and complacent. My point of view is very far from tough luck.
Who is "we"? Every labor-providing human on the planet? When that many people are economically disenfranchised and you call them "entitled", the problem is you.
> thinking we are special.
Again, it's not clear who you are talking about. Who thought they are special? Human beings who exchange their labor for money, i.e. have a job? I think I've made clear that programmers are not the end of this trend so to the extent your comment focuses on programmers, it is misguided.
> My point of view is very far from tough luck.
In that case, I don't understand your view at all, because it sure sounds like you are blaming the victim here.
I'm speaking specifically about white collar workers in western countries. I don't believe they are economically disenfranchised at least not yet. We were behaving entitled-ly by not acting in unison with the other laborers who are economically disenfranchised. If you are some sort of exception forgive me but I doubt you were spending your money to build shared parks and teach programming to the children of Amazon drivers. Most white collar workers here are buying pickup trucks and living it up. Myself included. And now we are in the finding out phase of why that was bad.
Well you don't, the person I'm replying to say they won't find ANY job.
If you lose your job and truly need money to feed yourself of pay your bills you will find a job, any job, that's how the bottom 80% of the population live, welcome to the club lmao
Rather than encouraging people to accept the misery inflicted on them by a handful of billionaires, why don't you acknowledge the injustice that AI magnifies the gap between capital and labor, and encourage people to fight (through democratic means) for a more just society, i.e. one that distributes the benefits of labor-saving devices among everyone, not just to a tiny fraction at the top.
Technology and "progress" haven't been improving the workers life in a long long time, again: welcome to the club.
That's ridiculous and myopic. Technology have improved many people's lives for a long time. Or would you prefer to stop wearing industrially-manufactured clothes, stop taking scientifically-developed vaccines, and of course stop using the device that you are reading this on now?
The difference is that in the past, technological development victimized only subsets of the work force. Mechanical looms were bad for textile workers, but good for everyone else. Personal computers were bad for "human calculators," but good for everyone else. The people who lost their jobs to technology could, theoretically, retrain and get another job.
But now we're facing technology that is theoretically capable of doing any job, at a price that's cheaper than any human. If you lose your job as a programmer due to AI, you can't just retrain as a lawyer, because those jobs are gone too (or will be soon). You can't just become a barista or a cab driver, those jobs are gone too.
Sniping at fellow working-class members is counterproductive. Ultimately, this is a test of democracy: can our government be forced to serve the people who it represents, or only corporate interests? If the latter, then we're entering a period of neo-feudelism.
>>the owners of AI infrastructure will continue to get rich while literally everyone else gets poorer
This didn't happen with previous technological revolutions, isn't happening now and won't happen as long as we don't mess it up with preventing competition and access to technology.
At the risk of repeating myself: who is going to buy it, when wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the capital-owning elite? If human labor can't compete with AI, what value can a person exchange in the free market for goods?
> This didn't happen with previous technological revolutions,
Yes, it did [1]. Maybe you should study some history before leaping to conclusions.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)
Post AI they will not need to spend so much resources for your job. They will have more for themselves. It's good for vast majority of people.
Where will they get those resources for themselves? From the job that they don't have anymore, because of AI?
There is no reason to assume that the AI employment catastrophe will end with coders.
Even if they have resources, what makes you think they get to hoard them? Instead of paying programmers, they'll pay the owners of data centers.
From goods and services they provide to others - now at lower cost.
>>There is no reason to assume that the AI employment catastrophe will end with coders.
It will not. It will also create a lot of new jobs. Stuff will get cheaper which means you will need to work less on average to sustain the same standards of living.
>> Instead of paying programmers, they'll pay the owners of data centers.
Yes but less. Paying less means more is left.
> From goods and services they provide to others - now at lower cost.
So why don't they do that today? Why don't today's poor people have access to a wide selection of good and services that they exchange with other poor people?
> It will also create a lot of new jobs.
Specifically, what new jobs will be created? That is, what jobs will be needed that an AI can't do cheaper than a human?
I live in Finland, the country with highest unemployment rate in OECD. Over here hundreds of applications for one cashier, warehouse, coffee shop, bakery job is perfectly normal. It's not realistic for some random unemployed IT guy with no field specific experience to find a job in them right now. In case of AI job apocalypse, I would imagine the situation would look similar elsewhere as well.
Supply and demand will be very different from today, for the worse.
"Yeah, I've never had a job or an education before the year 2026."
The longer it has been since you've turned 18, the less believable this is. And even if they believe you, it's probably not in your favour that they think you've been sitting at home for 10 years.
It's not "some people", it's the bottom 80%. You're an anomaly, the anomaly is going away, it sucks (for you) but that's what it is.
Techies have been automating people out of their jobs for decades and we're supposed to feel sorry for them now that it's their turn, cry me a river...
You might finally understand that these problems aren't technical but political, in the meantime get in line and suck it up
They "techies" didn't do this. Spare me your self-hating performative guilt trip.
Technology advances (beasts of burden replacing human labor, windmills replacing human labor, firearms replacing melee weapons, automatic looms replacing manual textile workers, electric light replacing manual illumination), and at each step, society as a whole benefits, but some benefit more than others: in particular the capital-owning class reap the immediate benefits, to the detriment of the labor class whose skill is devalued and whose livelihood is ruined.
This isn't new. Blaming "techies" is wrong. Point your finger at the owners who are enriching themselves at the expense of the many. In a just society, the benefits of technological advance should be shared (more) equally. A functioning democratic government would protect those whose livelihoods are at risk, because the instability of mass unemployment is more damaging to society than possibly demotivating a handful of billionaires.
Not at that rate, or anything close.
>>A functioning democratic government would protect those whose livelihoods are at risk, because the instability of mass unemployment is more damaging to society than possibly demotivating a handful of billionaires.
Unemployment is still very low and there are tons of jobs we are not doing right now because of lack of people and capital. Those just won't be cushy high paying desk jobs.
It will be very hard to pay for $200/mo Claude accounts when everyone's job is gone.
> It will be a better world overall for most.
I strongly disagree. AI is coming for programmers' jobs first, but programmers won't be the last victim. Ultimately, any job is in danger. The only way to be safe is to be willing to do the job cheaper than a machine that never sleeps. That's basically an impossible bar to maintain, especially as AI and robotics get better.
Seeing the technorati "elite" as the enemy is a mistake, because ultimately programmers, rubbish collectors, and waitresses are all just "labor." Tech bros were momentarily lucky and enjoyed a level of privilege, but the real enemy is the ownership class: the people who aren't at risk of losing their job because they own the data centers. If you want a fair society and equal distribution of benefits, stop the capitalist class from poisoning democracy.
- It is reasonable to expect a nice comfy desk job with little stress where they get paid well to explore an interest they have. We are all moderns Thomas Edisons no?
- It is unexpected, undesirable and perhaps objectively bad to not live a life without struggle. I bet most westerners would not sit home in poverty and then fly after years to be with their loved one who has struggled to become a cook or delivery person.
For context I say this all as a westerner who tries to shake this mentality. We don't need all of this supposed comfort we only are addicted to it.
This conversation is schizophrenic because we are conflating two different topics:
* from a perspective of mindfulness and gratitude, yes, it is psychologically better to not attach your identity to your career, living space. Eastern philosophy (e.g. Tao te Ching) teaches us about non-materialism; Greek philosophy teaches us about stoicism. All of these perspectives can be useful coping mechanisms when faced with a materially uncertain future.
* from a perspective of economics, law, and politics we can simultaneously acknowledge that when a business built on intellectual property theft (i.e. AI), focused on enriching a small cadre of capital owners, indirectly devalues labor causing material hardship for much of the population of the world, an injustice as occurred. It seems unfair to us, because the skill that we have worked a lifetime to hone has been cheapened by a selfish business that couldn't exist without the work publicly and freely contributed. That is worth being upset about.
I'll point out that Sam Altman also enjoys a very high level of comfort, which he does not need; and that his comfort seems to be predicated on other people losing their livelihood. So why are (intellectual labor class) HNers suffering while (capital owning class) CEOs are not?
So none of his unneeded comforts are predicated on other people losing their livelihood.
This is the key. Many people find out too late that they shouldn't have splurged on nonsense. Some never realize it.
Try applying for those jobs when you have a history of high paying white collar jobs on your resume. You won't get called. I know this from firsthand experience.
If I manage people who collect trash, why would I hire the person who is clearly down on their luck, who will certainly jump at an opportunity for another white collar position, when I have lots of people to choose from who won't have other opportunities?
This is the best rationalization I've been able to find for why I got zero calls when I was, in effect, unemployable due to a years-long period of joblessness. Within one month of completing a temp job that was back in a white collar position, I had phone interviews and a job offer.
Hot take, but I don't think it actually does, tbh.
Setting aside the temporary delusions of management, the tech itself doesn't devalue anything. It just optimizes away redundant stuff. That was always kinda redundant, but it wasn't "intellectual labor" just because it was done by white-collar workers.
We only have to go back to pre-AI days and look at what kind of mindless nonsense tasks said workers back then complained to see what I mean.
No people ever wanted to do this kind of work anyway, so it is fantastic that they in the future will not have to. The only thing we need to ensure is that the benefits of that will not be harvested by the same rich few. But that was also the mantra before AI, so nothing changed there either.
We can do so, because anything made out of carbon can also be reduced to carbon. Nothing and no one is untouchable, but, ideally, words are the tool. Anything else has unforeseen side-effects.
No one ever wants to do most of the work they do. That is the literal definition of work, as opposed to a hobby. You do it because otherwise you and your children starve. Job satisfaction is optional (and may cut into your salary).
A lot of work happens (or happened) because everyone is in agreement that it kinda should be done.
Like for example, you do need food so someone will probably have to do the things that lead to there being food.
These things of course aren't always fun. Who wants to collect cow manure after all. But they pay into something where everyone agrees that it should be happening and it should do so as the result of a collective effort.
The stuff I was talking about either has no such meta layer or has so many layers of meta, that it is incomprehensible for normal human minds, which, evidently, makes people miserable.
Lots of things "kinda should be done" but people enjoy enough that payment is not required. You said that food production needs to be done, but food production is useless unless someone eats that food. But although eating is necessary for civilization, eating is considered work. Why not? Because people are willing to eat without being paid for it.
Yes. "Optimizing away redundant stuff" is another way of saying "making workers more efficient," which means that employers need fewer workers to accomplish the same tasks. That is exactly what devaluing labor means: the work that you do is worth less because more of it can be done by a cheaper competitor, i.e. an LLM.
Weather or not anyone enjoys that work is irrelevant. English textile workers in the 1810s may not have enjoyed spending long hours sewing clothes by hand, but they needed to in order to support their families, so they were understandably upset when their labor was devalued by automated means of production. I am pretty sure exactly none of those unemployed textile workers breathed a sigh of relief and said "Well, thank god, now I can finally stop sewing and pursue my dream to work as a landscape painter."