5 ms·

IBM study: 40% of workers will have to reskill in the next three years due to AI

34 points by teleforce 3y ago

o1y32 3y ago
So the number comes from survey of opinions of C-level executives. I'll believe it when I see it.
shoulderfake 3y ago
[dead]
austin-cheney 3y ago
The challenge is in determining who is about to become obsolete and that is not clear. For example OOP remains the most popular and requested programming paradigm even though it has gradually slid into functional obsolescence more than a decade ago[1]. Even still legacy code will remain in use and talent to maintain legacy systems will remain in demand. My university still teaches COBOL because there still exists demand for people to maintain these legacy applications even if new applications are no longer written in that language. [1] https://github.com/prettydiff/wisdom/blob/master/Object_Oriented_Programming.md https://github.com/prettydiff/wisdom/blob/master/Object_Orie...
- proamdev123 3y ago
  > OOP remains the most popular and requested programming paradigm even though it has gradually slid into functional obsolescence more than a decade ago… I read your link. It was an interesting essay. But how is OOP functionally obsolete?
  - austin-cheney 3y ago
    https://www.accountingtools.com/articles/functional-obsolescence https://www.accountingtools.com/articles/functional-obsolesc... The economic incentive for OOP is absolutely gone and cannot be recovered. The technical purpose of OOP is mostly gone and no longer desirable. The continued desirability of OOP is some variable combination of aesthetic and social. While those qualities are not without value they aren't functional, thus OOP remains popular but certainly not for reasons of utility or necessity. Other approaches now achieve superior desirability when considered only from a utility perspective. That means OOP is functionally obsolete.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
Is that before or after Watson has put a bunch of doctors out of work? My feeling is that the level of changes in 3 years will be more akin to introducing a new version of software with some new capabilities rather than something more radical.
ChatGTP 3y ago
The reason is that now tools like ChatGPT allow workers to do more with less knowledge, as noted by the report. I've seen people use ChatGPT in my team, this statement isn't really inline with my observations. Those using it are not really more productive than anyone else, if anything I've noted they became a bit frustrated and just back off usage? Anyone else? I'm quite keen to use it more in my side projects, I just don't really see the time pay off to invest learning it yet so I've not bothered to upgrade from 3.5 to 4. I just dabble with 3.5 occasionally. Also, this seems like a bit of a downgrade, 40%?
- proamdev123 3y ago
  > I'm quite keen to use it more in my side projects, I just don't really see the time pay off to invest learning it… I think using it for side projects is where it shines, especially if you’re talking about coding side projects. In my N=1 experience with coding, it can save me a ton of time by iteratively providing code and saving me time looking up documentation to find correct functions and syntax. ChatGPT frequently shows me functions that I wasn’t aware existed. It also can give me cleaner and/or more idiomatic code. So a function or class that may have previously taken me 45 - 60 minutes to build, now takes 5-10 minutes. This is a huge productivity increase. It’s not some magic pill that builds whole applications, but it’s like having an experienced (but not expert) programmer by your side with unlimited patience for your questions. (This also applies to non-programming tasks as well.) And it hasn’t taken me any time investment in learning it. I just have an iterative conversation with it, including asking it clarifying questions and requesting it to modify the code it provides. Are you experiencing something different than what I’ve described?
  - milesvp 3y ago
    My experience is that chatgpt consistently showed me API functions that don’t exist. But I tend to do very obscure things in embedded, that googling for can be tricky or impossible. At first I had high hopes, because the shape of the code is good, and the logic looks good, but when I go to look up details of the parts I actually need help with, they’re just made up functions, like placeholders I might write until I can go back and implement them. Where it’s shined for me was writing code where I couldn’t be bothered to put together ideas from several distinct tutorials. It’s fantastic for writing code that you can basically google for, even if you have to read several disperate pages to get a clear picture of what to do.
credit_guy 3y ago
People doubt this, and maybe the percentage is too high, or the time horizon too low. But it's coming without a doubt. Remember the times about 15-20 years ago when people were dishing good money on DSLR. Professional photographers were complaining that amateurs come in and lower both the quality and the prices charged. Well, after everyone now has a camera in their pocket that rivals a professional DSLR from 20 years ago, everyone can make decent photos. Not Ansel-Adams-levels, but usable photos. AI will be like iPhone cameras on steroids. A lot of people will be able to do a lot of things, not at professional level, but at passable level. Very soon live speech translation will be a thing on a smartphone. How many professional translators will still have a job?
- jimmychoozyx 3y ago
  TLDR (b/c AI predictions are overhyped): "Fluctuation Exists" in systems (including economic systems, societies, mechanical systems, etc.) A modern, industrialized, knowledge-centric economy is constantly having to re-skill. (It seems to be largely due to innovation, but I am just guessing.) e.g. A new technology comes in-- creating a rise demand for skills to use it, and a decline in demand for skills to use what it replaces. The dichotomy of skills entering into and leaving importance & scarcity is apparent via the following lists of occupations: Fastest __Declining__ occupations in the USA: https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/fastest-declining-occupations.htm https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/fastest-declining-occupations... Fastest __Growing__ occupations in the USA: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/fastest-growing.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/fastest-growing.htm
  - JuanPosadas 3y ago
    Sad to see Nuclear power reactor operators, Nuclear technicians, Power plant operators in the fast decline list, hopefully that's from improved automation and maybe green energy and not from anything truly regressive.
  - goostavos 3y ago
    Surely this list isn't accurate? "Motion picture projectionist" is one of the top 5 occupations with the highest projected growth..? In 2023? Color me doubtful! Both lists have items that really make one scratch their head. The movie one specifically really feels like someone started plotting a line from 2020, during the height of the pandemic, to right now, with Barbenheimer, and is treating that tiny window as the trend line representing meaningful growth (rather than looking at theater performance as a whole, which is still about half of what it was at its peak in 2018/2019.
RyanAdamas 3y ago
Societies across the world need to start focusing on Eternal Automation. The goal is for everyone to benefit from collective advances. So what if someone doesn't want to work and has 10 kids; if even half of those kids end up working to contribute to the worldwide implementation of systematized structures which free us from corporate control; though that struggle will be very real, then it's worth paying people not to work and instead incentivizing those who do with advanced access to new structural creations. There is no reason to continue as we have. What gets you to where you're going isn't generally needed once you get there. We don't hike to the park only to hike up the mountain; we drive, then hike, then picnic or have sex (generally both). We must not let corporations or the greedy define what work and prosperity means.
- mypastself 3y ago
  The unstated suggestion here seems to be to impose such a system through governmental structures, putting great trust into another system of control…
  - shrimp_emoji 3y ago
    The unstated suggestion here seems to be that the government is not already THE (and best) system of control. The market didn't outlaw slavery (because it loved the profits); the government did. The market didn't limit the work week to 40 hours (because it loved the profits); the government did. The government is the moral conscience of the people. The market is a mindless paperclip maximizer. You can't expect it to care about anything individuals care about, like not being slaves or being healthy or having a life.
    - mypastself 3y ago
      The government also encoded slavery into law in the first place, and the move to the 40-hour workweek was driven by the automotive industry. The “moral conscience” of a people might well get us to a much worse state, if we permit it too much control.
redhale 3y ago
I literally lol'd at the irony of the next headline on the same page: "75% of businesses are implementing or considering bans on ChatGPT"
norwalkbear 3y ago
I'm seeing game dev hit extremely hard right now. Voice acting, art generation, NPC creation, even storyline writing. In less than 5 years games will be different almost endless games and game dev as a field will be dramatically different with a lot less people.
- galleywest200 3y ago
  Do you think it could lead to more smaller game dev teams? Larger games produced by smaller teams could lead to another indie game boom.
jmpman 3y ago
This is IBM. I read this as - we plan to justify laying off our most senior employees due to not reskilling due to AI. This is just another MBA planning their own promo doc.
- itsoktocry 3y ago
  I can hardly imagine being as afraid of "MBAs" as some HN users.
  - lioeters 3y ago
    It's not fear, it's scorn.
    - FreshStart 3y ago
      Yes, some of us work hard for a living, work smart for the company and get left overs from incompetent party crashing conmans
- Sylamore 3y ago
  Speaking as an ex-IBMer, even if you reskill they'll still resource action you in favor or someone younger and less well compensated because experience isn't on the list of check boxes they care about. All the talk about reskilling is just so you stay calm and comfortable while the cows in front of you get a bolt to the head. Reskilling is useful to help you find an external job more than an internal one in my experience.
  - jgalt212 3y ago
    > someone younger and less well compensated IBM has more employees in India that the US. Given the how much USG contracts they have, that's shameful.
    - andrei_says_ 3y ago
      A legislation requiring US workforce for government contracts would be quite sensible. Wondering if unions could lobby for something like this.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

34 points by teleforce 3y ago

o1y32 3y ago

So the number comes from survey of opinions of C-level executives. I'll believe it when I see it.

shoulderfake 3y ago

[dead]

austin-cheney 3y ago

The challenge is in determining who is about to become obsolete and that is not clear. For example OOP remains the most popular and requested programming paradigm even though it has gradually slid into functional obsolescence more than a decade ago[1]. Even still legacy code will remain in use and talent to maintain legacy systems will remain in demand. My university still teaches COBOL because there still exists demand for people to maintain these legacy applications even if new applications are no longer written in that language. [1] https://github.com/prettydiff/wisdom/blob/master/Object_Oriented_Programming.md https://github.com/prettydiff/wisdom/blob/master/Object_Orie...

proamdev123 3y ago
> OOP remains the most popular and requested programming paradigm even though it has gradually slid into functional obsolescence more than a decade ago… I read your link. It was an interesting essay. But how is OOP functionally obsolete?
- austin-cheney 3y ago
  https://www.accountingtools.com/articles/functional-obsolescence https://www.accountingtools.com/articles/functional-obsolesc... The economic incentive for OOP is absolutely gone and cannot be recovered. The technical purpose of OOP is mostly gone and no longer desirable. The continued desirability of OOP is some variable combination of aesthetic and social. While those qualities are not without value they aren't functional, thus OOP remains popular but certainly not for reasons of utility or necessity. Other approaches now achieve superior desirability when considered only from a utility perspective. That means OOP is functionally obsolete.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

Is that before or after Watson has put a bunch of doctors out of work? My feeling is that the level of changes in 3 years will be more akin to introducing a new version of software with some new capabilities rather than something more radical.

ChatGTP 3y ago

The reason is that now tools like ChatGPT allow workers to do more with less knowledge, as noted by the report. I've seen people use ChatGPT in my team, this statement isn't really inline with my observations. Those using it are not really more productive than anyone else, if anything I've noted they became a bit frustrated and just back off usage? Anyone else? I'm quite keen to use it more in my side projects, I just don't really see the time pay off to invest learning it yet so I've not bothered to upgrade from 3.5 to 4. I just dabble with 3.5 occasionally. Also, this seems like a bit of a downgrade, 40%?

proamdev123 3y ago
> I'm quite keen to use it more in my side projects, I just don't really see the time pay off to invest learning it… I think using it for side projects is where it shines, especially if you’re talking about coding side projects. In my N=1 experience with coding, it can save me a ton of time by iteratively providing code and saving me time looking up documentation to find correct functions and syntax. ChatGPT frequently shows me functions that I wasn’t aware existed. It also can give me cleaner and/or more idiomatic code. So a function or class that may have previously taken me 45 - 60 minutes to build, now takes 5-10 minutes. This is a huge productivity increase. It’s not some magic pill that builds whole applications, but it’s like having an experienced (but not expert) programmer by your side with unlimited patience for your questions. (This also applies to non-programming tasks as well.) And it hasn’t taken me any time investment in learning it. I just have an iterative conversation with it, including asking it clarifying questions and requesting it to modify the code it provides. Are you experiencing something different than what I’ve described?
- milesvp 3y ago
  My experience is that chatgpt consistently showed me API functions that don’t exist. But I tend to do very obscure things in embedded, that googling for can be tricky or impossible. At first I had high hopes, because the shape of the code is good, and the logic looks good, but when I go to look up details of the parts I actually need help with, they’re just made up functions, like placeholders I might write until I can go back and implement them. Where it’s shined for me was writing code where I couldn’t be bothered to put together ideas from several distinct tutorials. It’s fantastic for writing code that you can basically google for, even if you have to read several disperate pages to get a clear picture of what to do.

credit_guy 3y ago

People doubt this, and maybe the percentage is too high, or the time horizon too low. But it's coming without a doubt. Remember the times about 15-20 years ago when people were dishing good money on DSLR. Professional photographers were complaining that amateurs come in and lower both the quality and the prices charged. Well, after everyone now has a camera in their pocket that rivals a professional DSLR from 20 years ago, everyone can make decent photos. Not Ansel-Adams-levels, but usable photos. AI will be like iPhone cameras on steroids. A lot of people will be able to do a lot of things, not at professional level, but at passable level. Very soon live speech translation will be a thing on a smartphone. How many professional translators will still have a job?

jimmychoozyx 3y ago
TLDR (b/c AI predictions are overhyped): "Fluctuation Exists" in systems (including economic systems, societies, mechanical systems, etc.) A modern, industrialized, knowledge-centric economy is constantly having to re-skill. (It seems to be largely due to innovation, but I am just guessing.) e.g. A new technology comes in-- creating a rise demand for skills to use it, and a decline in demand for skills to use what it replaces. The dichotomy of skills entering into and leaving importance & scarcity is apparent via the following lists of occupations: Fastest __Declining__ occupations in the USA: https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/fastest-declining-occupations.htm https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/fastest-declining-occupations... Fastest __Growing__ occupations in the USA: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/fastest-growing.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/fastest-growing.htm
- JuanPosadas 3y ago
  Sad to see Nuclear power reactor operators, Nuclear technicians, Power plant operators in the fast decline list, hopefully that's from improved automation and maybe green energy and not from anything truly regressive.
- goostavos 3y ago
  Surely this list isn't accurate? "Motion picture projectionist" is one of the top 5 occupations with the highest projected growth..? In 2023? Color me doubtful! Both lists have items that really make one scratch their head. The movie one specifically really feels like someone started plotting a line from 2020, during the height of the pandemic, to right now, with Barbenheimer, and is treating that tiny window as the trend line representing meaningful growth (rather than looking at theater performance as a whole, which is still about half of what it was at its peak in 2018/2019.

RyanAdamas 3y ago

Societies across the world need to start focusing on Eternal Automation. The goal is for everyone to benefit from collective advances. So what if someone doesn't want to work and has 10 kids; if even half of those kids end up working to contribute to the worldwide implementation of systematized structures which free us from corporate control; though that struggle will be very real, then it's worth paying people not to work and instead incentivizing those who do with advanced access to new structural creations. There is no reason to continue as we have. What gets you to where you're going isn't generally needed once you get there. We don't hike to the park only to hike up the mountain; we drive, then hike, then picnic or have sex (generally both). We must not let corporations or the greedy define what work and prosperity means.

mypastself 3y ago
The unstated suggestion here seems to be to impose such a system through governmental structures, putting great trust into another system of control…
- shrimp_emoji 3y ago
  The unstated suggestion here seems to be that the government is not already THE (and best) system of control. The market didn't outlaw slavery (because it loved the profits); the government did. The market didn't limit the work week to 40 hours (because it loved the profits); the government did. The government is the moral conscience of the people. The market is a mindless paperclip maximizer. You can't expect it to care about anything individuals care about, like not being slaves or being healthy or having a life.
  - mypastself 3y ago
    The government also encoded slavery into law in the first place, and the move to the 40-hour workweek was driven by the automotive industry. The “moral conscience” of a people might well get us to a much worse state, if we permit it too much control.

redhale 3y ago

I literally lol'd at the irony of the next headline on the same page: "75% of businesses are implementing or considering bans on ChatGPT"

norwalkbear 3y ago

I'm seeing game dev hit extremely hard right now. Voice acting, art generation, NPC creation, even storyline writing. In less than 5 years games will be different almost endless games and game dev as a field will be dramatically different with a lot less people.

galleywest200 3y ago
Do you think it could lead to more smaller game dev teams? Larger games produced by smaller teams could lead to another indie game boom.

jmpman 3y ago

This is IBM. I read this as - we plan to justify laying off our most senior employees due to not reskilling due to AI. This is just another MBA planning their own promo doc.

itsoktocry 3y ago
I can hardly imagine being as afraid of "MBAs" as some HN users.
- lioeters 3y ago
  It's not fear, it's scorn.
  - FreshStart 3y ago
    Yes, some of us work hard for a living, work smart for the company and get left overs from incompetent party crashing conmans
Sylamore 3y ago
Speaking as an ex-IBMer, even if you reskill they'll still resource action you in favor or someone younger and less well compensated because experience isn't on the list of check boxes they care about. All the talk about reskilling is just so you stay calm and comfortable while the cows in front of you get a bolt to the head. Reskilling is useful to help you find an external job more than an internal one in my experience.
- jgalt212 3y ago
  > someone younger and less well compensated IBM has more employees in India that the US. Given the how much USG contracts they have, that's shameful.
  - andrei_says_ 3y ago
    A legislation requiring US workforce for government contracts would be quite sensible. Wondering if unions could lobby for something like this.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]