7 ms·

What worries me is not so much the fear of a certain job becoming obsolete, but the fear of the alternative new jobs becoming inaccessible to those left behind

by juvvel 4y ago

What worries me is not so much the fear of a certain job becoming obsolete, but the fear of the alternative new jobs becoming inaccessible to those left behind by automation. You can have a good and stable career and do everything "right" and still end up a complete beginner a few years later because your skills are worthless now. Especially after a certain age, employers won't choose you over fresh graduates who are knowledgeable in the new tech. The standard advice is to "always keep learning" but not every job will give you the opportunity to do so. Someone's gotta do what has to be done, we can't all just learn new things all the time. Also I wonder how much we'll realistically be able to keep up because the pace of new change has been steadily increasing. We've seen AI breakthroughs over the course of months.

adventured 4y ago
> You can have a good and stable career and do everything "right" and still end up a complete beginner a few years later because your skills are worthless now. Nothing about that is new. It has been a common fear and very real issue since the industrial revolution took hold.
- juvvel 4y ago
  Just that it's happening faster and more ruthlessly than ever before.
  - Robotbeat 4y ago
    Is it? I’d say a lot of stuff around a century or two ago was far worse than what we’re going through.
  - marcusverus 4y ago
    It's more ruthless than the industrial revolution? Are you surfing HN from a workhouse?
    - juvvel 4y ago
      If it has been that bad or worse before, I wonder why we're not learning from it then. Humanity as a whole will be fine but tons of individuals are going to have their lives ruined.
Zetice 4y ago
Is there an “ought” argument that deals with the “left behind” concept? Obviously there are tons of practical considerations to deal with, but in a theoretical, general sense, is “left behind” a problem? Shouldn’t lifelong learning be a thing everyone is indeed capable of?
- Riverheart 4y ago
  In an ideal world but this one isn’t and even if it were the purpose of life is living not keeping up with a endless rat race of employability in a world that doesn’t know when to slow down. Leaving people behind is problematic because not everyone can keep up or has the time and means to do so. Should a single mother be expected to put in hours every week learning some crap on top of working and raising kids or can that person just breathe and deal with their other problems? Full time house parent that loses a spouse and has to start working. Someone in a low income house that can’t afford professional courses/books or even has access to a computer. You ever see those commercials about kids that can’t focus on school because they’re hungry? Yeah it’s not just them. When people are deprived of life essentials or dealing with personal problems studying is the last thing on their minds. Here we have people in tech burning themselves out and we want to export that mentality to everywhere else instead of seeing it as a problem.
  - ChatGTP 4y ago
    I saw an interview with Ray Kurzweil recently who is a huge driver and influencer of a lot of these changes towards AI everything. Ray is a trans humanist who believes we’re on the cusp of eternal life via the singularity. One of the things he is relying on is that people will keep up with technology through computer brain interfaces like Neural Link but faster. We should be seeing this come to market sometime around now. It’s not here so I guess that’s not good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykY69lSpDdo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykY69lSpDdo Worth a watch…
    - klipt 4y ago
      > Ray is a trans humanist who believes we’re on the cusp of eternal life via the singularity. https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1968#comic https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1968#comi...
dangerwill 4y ago
100% and this has ruined millions of lives throughout history, most notably in the Rust Belt. A heck of a lot of auto workers had their job automated away and weren't able to make the jump to white collar work or another trade profession and so fell into unemployment or much less lucrative service employment. And the country ignored the pain and despair of these folks because they were a concentrated group of people, outside of the Coastal bubble. The people on this forum who go on and on about "we have gone through this before and society kept going, people were fine in the end" are half right. Society as a whole did keep going and people outside of the Rust Belt weren't directly affected. But what is different this time is that this is going to annihilate 70-90% of jobs in the "knowledge sector" and it is going to do so very, very quickly. This will knock out most of us comfortable engineers, but also middle management, consultants, journalists, writers, artists, paralegals, influencers, wall street traders, maybe even teachers, lawyers, and doctors to an extent. I don't know what the US will do with the middle/top of the income brackets all across the country suddenly facing mass unemployment and then the subsequent race to fill service or trade jobs. How is a software engineer who got a 30 year mortgage that costs $3k a month going to survive going from a $180k a year salary to being an electrician apprentice at $50k a year? And that is in an environment where this hypothetical former engineer was the top candidate out of 100 other former engineers vying for a spot. GPT-4 will kill many people via unemployment unless it is paired with a UBI, or at least that is my pessimistic view.
- vondur 4y ago
  I believe that most of the rust belt jobs were sent to countries with lower wages/more lax environmental laws.
- phkahler 4y ago
  >> A heck of a lot of auto workers had their job automated away And a lot of the remaining jobs went to Mexico.
- alexpotato 4y ago
  > wall street traders When I started working in FinTech at a big bank, our Managing Director mentioned that he was told: "In 2 years, there will no longer be the job of 'trader'" This quote was from 2005 and he was sharing it with us in 2007. While, yes, there are a LOT less traders than there used to be, it is certainly not zero.

by juvvel 4y ago

adventured 4y ago

> You can have a good and stable career and do everything "right" and still end up a complete beginner a few years later because your skills are worthless now. Nothing about that is new. It has been a common fear and very real issue since the industrial revolution took hold.

juvvel 4y ago
Just that it's happening faster and more ruthlessly than ever before.
- Robotbeat 4y ago
  Is it? I’d say a lot of stuff around a century or two ago was far worse than what we’re going through.
- marcusverus 4y ago
  It's more ruthless than the industrial revolution? Are you surfing HN from a workhouse?
  - juvvel 4y ago
    If it has been that bad or worse before, I wonder why we're not learning from it then. Humanity as a whole will be fine but tons of individuals are going to have their lives ruined.

Zetice 4y ago

Is there an “ought” argument that deals with the “left behind” concept? Obviously there are tons of practical considerations to deal with, but in a theoretical, general sense, is “left behind” a problem? Shouldn’t lifelong learning be a thing everyone is indeed capable of?

Riverheart 4y ago
In an ideal world but this one isn’t and even if it were the purpose of life is living not keeping up with a endless rat race of employability in a world that doesn’t know when to slow down. Leaving people behind is problematic because not everyone can keep up or has the time and means to do so. Should a single mother be expected to put in hours every week learning some crap on top of working and raising kids or can that person just breathe and deal with their other problems? Full time house parent that loses a spouse and has to start working. Someone in a low income house that can’t afford professional courses/books or even has access to a computer. You ever see those commercials about kids that can’t focus on school because they’re hungry? Yeah it’s not just them. When people are deprived of life essentials or dealing with personal problems studying is the last thing on their minds. Here we have people in tech burning themselves out and we want to export that mentality to everywhere else instead of seeing it as a problem.
- ChatGTP 4y ago
  I saw an interview with Ray Kurzweil recently who is a huge driver and influencer of a lot of these changes towards AI everything. Ray is a trans humanist who believes we’re on the cusp of eternal life via the singularity. One of the things he is relying on is that people will keep up with technology through computer brain interfaces like Neural Link but faster. We should be seeing this come to market sometime around now. It’s not here so I guess that’s not good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykY69lSpDdo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykY69lSpDdo Worth a watch…
  - klipt 4y ago
    > Ray is a trans humanist who believes we’re on the cusp of eternal life via the singularity. https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1968#comic https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1968#comi...

dangerwill 4y ago

100% and this has ruined millions of lives throughout history, most notably in the Rust Belt. A heck of a lot of auto workers had their job automated away and weren't able to make the jump to white collar work or another trade profession and so fell into unemployment or much less lucrative service employment. And the country ignored the pain and despair of these folks because they were a concentrated group of people, outside of the Coastal bubble. The people on this forum who go on and on about "we have gone through this before and society kept going, people were fine in the end" are half right. Society as a whole did keep going and people outside of the Rust Belt weren't directly affected. But what is different this time is that this is going to annihilate 70-90% of jobs in the "knowledge sector" and it is going to do so very, very quickly. This will knock out most of us comfortable engineers, but also middle management, consultants, journalists, writers, artists, paralegals, influencers, wall street traders, maybe even teachers, lawyers, and doctors to an extent. I don't know what the US will do with the middle/top of the income brackets all across the country suddenly facing mass unemployment and then the subsequent race to fill service or trade jobs. How is a software engineer who got a 30 year mortgage that costs $3k a month going to survive going from a $180k a year salary to being an electrician apprentice at $50k a year? And that is in an environment where this hypothetical former engineer was the top candidate out of 100 other former engineers vying for a spot. GPT-4 will kill many people via unemployment unless it is paired with a UBI, or at least that is my pessimistic view.

vondur 4y ago
I believe that most of the rust belt jobs were sent to countries with lower wages/more lax environmental laws.
phkahler 4y ago
>> A heck of a lot of auto workers had their job automated away And a lot of the remaining jobs went to Mexico.
alexpotato 4y ago
> wall street traders When I started working in FinTech at a big bank, our Managing Director mentioned that he was told: "In 2 years, there will no longer be the job of 'trader'" This quote was from 2005 and he was sharing it with us in 2007. While, yes, there are a LOT less traders than there used to be, it is certainly not zero.