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I suspect AI is going to make today's teenagers feel a lot worse. How can you imagine a future for yourself when any skill you might learn might be obsolete by

by roca 4y ago

I suspect AI is going to make today's teenagers feel a lot worse. How can you imagine a future for yourself when any skill you might learn might be obsolete by the time you learn it?

another_story 4y ago
For the kids I teach this is a reality. Was asked this week what types of engineering jobs I thought wouldn't be automated.
- Utkarsh_Mood 4y ago
  what was your answer?
  - another_story 4y ago
    I told them it was a difficult question to answer and that they shouldn't be wholly basing their decisions on what they see today. Job markets shift and so will their interests as they go into university. Be flexible and build up skills and they'll find something which works well for them. As an example I told them I studied biology and chemistry before moving into CS, and then after being a developer for years I went into teaching.
- api 4y ago
  Tell them the AI is a tool because it is. Engineers of the future will use that tool to automate what are in fact the most boring parts of the process. This will allow engineers to create far more elaborate and advanced designs in less time just like CAD and simulation did. If the AI starts actually replacing the most important things engineers do then we are talking about sentient general intelligence and that will be a whole different ballgame. That wouldn’t be AI replacing people but a culture war about whether AI are people and whether it is wrong to use them like slaves. Right now what we have a large generative models, not sentient machines.
usrusr 4y ago
And the bleak general environmental prospects: I believe that much of what we consider regular youth behavior rests on the baseline assumption that unless something exceptional happens, their future lives will be like their parents lives, with some hope for upwards sprinkled in for the particularly ambitious. These days, even those who aren't really aware of unsustainability will at least have some suspicion that the pessimists might not be completely wrong.
29083011397778 4y ago
The same way my brother learned to play guitar, despite the phrase "No matter what you do or how hard you try, odds are good a 10 year old in China can do it better".
dotnet00 4y ago
Presumably not that different from how it has always been where unless you're literally the first person ever to develop a certain skill, you've always had to contend with the fact that someone much better than you exists.
- roca 4y ago
  It's actually quite different. That "someone much better than you" has limited time and is probably expensive to hire, therefore there can still be opportunities for less-skilled people. When that "someone" is an AI, we expect it to be easily replicated to satisfy all demand, at much lower cost than the wages needed to support a human.

by roca 4y ago

I suspect AI is going to make today's teenagers feel a lot worse. How can you imagine a future for yourself when any skill you might learn might be obsolete by the time you learn it?

another_story 4y ago

For the kids I teach this is a reality. Was asked this week what types of engineering jobs I thought wouldn't be automated.

Utkarsh_Mood 4y ago
what was your answer?
- another_story 4y ago
  I told them it was a difficult question to answer and that they shouldn't be wholly basing their decisions on what they see today. Job markets shift and so will their interests as they go into university. Be flexible and build up skills and they'll find something which works well for them. As an example I told them I studied biology and chemistry before moving into CS, and then after being a developer for years I went into teaching.
api 4y ago
Tell them the AI is a tool because it is. Engineers of the future will use that tool to automate what are in fact the most boring parts of the process. This will allow engineers to create far more elaborate and advanced designs in less time just like CAD and simulation did. If the AI starts actually replacing the most important things engineers do then we are talking about sentient general intelligence and that will be a whole different ballgame. That wouldn’t be AI replacing people but a culture war about whether AI are people and whether it is wrong to use them like slaves. Right now what we have a large generative models, not sentient machines.

usrusr 4y ago

And the bleak general environmental prospects: I believe that much of what we consider regular youth behavior rests on the baseline assumption that unless something exceptional happens, their future lives will be like their parents lives, with some hope for upwards sprinkled in for the particularly ambitious. These days, even those who aren't really aware of unsustainability will at least have some suspicion that the pessimists might not be completely wrong.

29083011397778 4y ago

The same way my brother learned to play guitar, despite the phrase "No matter what you do or how hard you try, odds are good a 10 year old in China can do it better".

dotnet00 4y ago

Presumably not that different from how it has always been where unless you're literally the first person ever to develop a certain skill, you've always had to contend with the fact that someone much better than you exists.

roca 4y ago
It's actually quite different. That "someone much better than you" has limited time and is probably expensive to hire, therefore there can still be opportunities for less-skilled people. When that "someone" is an AI, we expect it to be easily replicated to satisfy all demand, at much lower cost than the wages needed to support a human.