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Everyone’s worried about AI taking their software jobs, yet humanity faces existential problems around climate change, poverty, failed states, etc. And huge opp
by softwaredoug 4y ago
Everyone’s worried about AI taking their software jobs, yet humanity faces existential problems around climate change, poverty, failed states, etc. And huge opportunities like space exploration and better health care.
Maybe this has more to do with our ego - losing perceived status as masters of the universe, when in reality hard, intractable problems exist more than ever. Why aren’t we changing to work on them?
Maybe the cost of software development has been actually a barrier to solving many of these problems, and society may be better off without that cost?
Are we the baddies?
- JohnBerryman 4y agoI think that ego/status is a big part of it. And the loss aversion bias. Our thought process is "This thing is going to be able to do software as well as a human, therefor it is going to take my job." When a more optimistic and probably more realistic take is "This thing is going to do the boring parts of software, so I can spend my time building out the more interesting, big-picture parts of code. I'm going to be so much more productive." But the fear of loss is so much more distracting than the potential gain. ... And what is it that we fear losing? Status! Software development is in high demand, it's a sought after role, we feel "special".