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> Instead it will mean that bosses can fire 75-90% of the (very expensive) engineers, with the ones who remain left to prompt the AI and clean up any mistakes/m

> Instead it will mean that bosses can fire 75-90% of the (very expensive) engineers, with the ones who remain left to prompt the AI and clean up any mistakes/misunderstandings. We continually hear anxiety about technology leading to mass unemployment and it keeps not happening. Instead, workers tend to have higher productivity, which drives higher wages. Technological advancements transformed agriculture from being 75% of the workforce to being less than 5% of the workforce over the last 200 years and instead of mass unemployment, everyone found other ways to add value to society and it has been an absolute win, with higher standards of living. (https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Percent-of-the-Labor-Force-Employed-in-Agriculture-United-States-1800-to-2000-Sources_fig1_51117517 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Percent-of-the-Labor-For...)

throwway120385 3y ago
Meanwhile we all spend more of our time working for someone else and living our lives with greater intensity than in the days of agriculture.
HumblyTossed 3y ago
> Instead, workers tend to have higher productivity, which drives higher wages. Wages have not kept up with productivity.
- xena 3y ago
  There's one notable exception! Tech work in the Silicon Valley area. All other jobs should be paid like that to keep up with productivity and inflation since the 70's.
- lkbm 3y ago
  It doesn't need to for productivity gains to be good for workers. Employment and real wages both are up. The fact that profits are also up doesn't change that.
  - dukeyukey 3y ago
    Real wages haven't improved for 15 years where I am :(
pizza234 3y ago
Not sure why this is being downvoted, as it's essentially a description of the lump of labour fallacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dukeyukey 3y ago
It's absolutely a win for society (in the longer term), but in the meantime a lot of people's lives were upended, devasted, and even ended due to the upheavel. Maybe we can avoid that this time, but I doubt it. You can't tell someone who's children are starving that it's all worth it.
- andrewmutz 3y ago
  Were they? Or did their children move to the city and learn different skills, while they bought machines to replace the lost labor? Was the tractor actually bad for the farmer?
- throwaway632 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - dukeyukey 3y ago
    If only I lived in the Bay Area. Or California. Or North America.
    - throwaway632 3y ago
      Where do you live? Are there other economic opportunities there for a smart, motivated ex-programmer? Many programmers are good enough generalists to displace people in other jobs if the work dries up. Just like Teach for America college grads displace and outperform professional classroom teachers.
      - dukeyukey 3y ago
        I'm in London, where I earn enough to rent a 2-bed 700sqft flat. Not exactly retraining for years money. But in any case, I think I'll be fine, it's others I'm worried about. I grew up in a poor rural area - I've seen what sudden unemployment does to people, even if they are smart and motivated.
  - rsanek 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
noncoml 3y ago
You are missing an “in the long run” I thought the “The grapes of wrath” were exactly about the transient effects of the agricultural transformation.
steve_adams_86 3y ago
You've got a good point here. I've wondered about this at times. Like, what if we can't find a way to advance these agents much beyond where Devin is now? What if they can't consume a code base and make meaningfully high quality additions to them reliably, so they're essentially stuck as novice/intermediate developers? This seems nice(ish) for someone like me with a senior title and experience (~15 years), but totally knocks the bottom out of the industry. How do new people enter the industry and become programmers like I did? What's the new entry point into software, and what does that role look like? I can't tell if it would actually be good to knock the bottom out. If seniors become sort of like engineers going into the machine to tune things and build the big new things, who replaces them eventually? Will software get worse because of this? One thing I wonder is if this will birth a new generation of software architecture which is essentially a complete mess which AIs can easily and efficiently manage due to being machines, which will require businesses to "take the leap". Basically you tell the system what you want and it'll generate it on a bespoke system using custom infrastructure which the AI is optimized to implement solutions on. The results might be amazing, but if something goes wrong, humans would have a hell of a time figuring it out. That wouldn't be a nice career for someone like me. It might still leave a category of old fashioned human-engineered software, though. One thing about agriculture worth noting is that we had a LOT of other things we could work on. Agriculture held us back, so to speak. What is software holding back right now? If I'm unemployed by this advance, what would I do instead? I'm not sure how transferable my skills are. It could actually make me quite a bit less productive, not more.
- hellojesus 3y ago
  While it certainly make you, the individual, less productive because you've been replaced by a machine, it still makes society more productive. If replaced, you essentially were the misallocated capital: capital paying your salary was inefficient compared to that same salary paying a more productive AI. This means you will either have to find a way to become more efficient to compete against AI for developer jobs, or you will have to reskill. This reskilling period is what you're referring to as being less productive, but in the long run you will find a job and therefore will become productive again. We can't guarantee that job will pay as much as your former, but costs in the former greatly fell anyway, so it doesn't much matter. In short: you will be reallocated and find your optimal productivity subject to your utility preferences through the reallocation.
rlt 3y ago
Both things can be true. In the short to medium term a bunch of people will be out of a job/career. In the long term society may benefit overall. On the other hand I’m not convinced humans are evolving fast enough to keep up with modern society. There are increasing rates of anxiety, depression, ADHD, etc, especially in young people. https://www.thecut.com/2016/03/for-80-years-young-americans-have-been-getting-more-anxious-and-depressed.html https://www.thecut.com/2016/03/for-80-years-young-americans-...
Retric 3y ago
Not all jobs are the same. The Real Median US income in 2019 was 78,250$/year in 2022 it had fallen to 74,580. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N The only way that happens is if millions of people are significantly worse off. Most people can find work in the big economy, that doesn’t mean replacing a 100k/year job with a 25k/year job is equivalent. Across a long enough time horizon technology tends to make most people better off, but in the short term it can seriously fuck people over.
- zeroonetwothree 3y ago
  A 5% decrease is "significantly worse off"? And it's still higher than 2018--it's not really reasonable to expect an increase every single year, you should look at the longer-term trend.
  - Retric 3y ago
    The median isn’t a simple average. The minimum difference is 5%, people who lost 50+% only count as one more person below the old average. So that 5% represents a great deal of pain for millions not simply a slight haircut. And sure the long term trends reverse things as I mentioned, but it took 15 years to recover where it was in 2019. Most Americans are simply cut off from wider economic growth and recovery.
dw_arthur 3y ago
Things could be different this time. We've pretty much automated our physical labor, what happens when you automate general thinking? Any new job or field will also be able to be done by AI.
petsfed 3y ago
...for instance, by a larger shift towards service-sector jobs (e.g. janitorial work, dining and entertainment, and retail sales). It is the case that productivity has grown with automation, but at the same time, median wages have stagnated, as the number of high-paying jobs have steadily shrank. Considering inflation, median income has been stagnant since about 1965. But productivity is at an all time high. But all the wealth that that generates is not going out into the world, its being concentrated. I'm in automation with physical machines, and there's a part of me that sincerely hopes that the continuing automation of various jobs leads to a golden age where society's basic needs are always met by robots, and we're free to pursue our passions. But I'm honestly not optimistic that that will happen without a series of (likely bloody) revolutions and counter-revolutions until either the species is extinguished or our social system finally achieves a new equilibrium.AI can definitely be understood as an invasive species or a natural disaster in terms of the impact it has to our social ecosystem.
pzo 3y ago
The key phrase is "over the last 200 years". 200 years ago there was just 1 billion people. People had decade(s) to reskill to new profession. Their offspring picked different profession if their parents didn't have good prospect. Changing profession was also not requiring half a decade learning. Now imagine that AI will make 20% people redundant over next 5 years - thats ~1.6 billion people.
- zeroonetwothree 3y ago
  To be fair most of the drop was only over a ~100 year period. BTW there is little AI makes "20% people redundant over next 5 years". I would bet $$$ against this.
  - Pugpugpugs 3y ago
    Agreed it's definitely not 5 years, but probably will be within 12-20
digitalsalvatn 3y ago
[flagged]
Lich 3y ago
> Instead, workers tend to have higher productivity, which drives higher wages. https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
bananapub 3y ago
this of course conflats two entirely different things. 1) technology development has tended to hugely improve society-wide productivity and be a general (though not unmitigated) good. 2) technology development has been absolutely shit for many individuals as their careers disappear. people should be way more worried about good national governance and safety nets to deal with the terrible consequences of 2 while we reap the benefits of 1. > Instead, workers tend to have higher productivity, which drives higher wages. workers are capturing less and less of that, especially over the last twenty years.
- ipaddr 3y ago
  Too many people using the safety nets will cause them to collapse.
  - bananapub 3y ago
    lol. hopefully whoever is in charge of your country has put a lot more thought into the future of work as automation comes for white collar workers.

throwway120385 3y ago

Meanwhile we all spend more of our time working for someone else and living our lives with greater intensity than in the days of agriculture.

HumblyTossed 3y ago

> Instead, workers tend to have higher productivity, which drives higher wages. Wages have not kept up with productivity.

xena 3y ago
There's one notable exception! Tech work in the Silicon Valley area. All other jobs should be paid like that to keep up with productivity and inflation since the 70's.
lkbm 3y ago
It doesn't need to for productivity gains to be good for workers. Employment and real wages both are up. The fact that profits are also up doesn't change that.
- dukeyukey 3y ago
  Real wages haven't improved for 15 years where I am :(

pizza234 3y ago

Not sure why this is being downvoted, as it's essentially a description of the lump of labour fallacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy).

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

dukeyukey 3y ago

It's absolutely a win for society (in the longer term), but in the meantime a lot of people's lives were upended, devasted, and even ended due to the upheavel. Maybe we can avoid that this time, but I doubt it. You can't tell someone who's children are starving that it's all worth it.

andrewmutz 3y ago
Were they? Or did their children move to the city and learn different skills, while they bought machines to replace the lost labor? Was the tractor actually bad for the farmer?
throwaway632 3y ago
[flagged]
- dukeyukey 3y ago
  If only I lived in the Bay Area. Or California. Or North America.
  - throwaway632 3y ago
    Where do you live? Are there other economic opportunities there for a smart, motivated ex-programmer? Many programmers are good enough generalists to displace people in other jobs if the work dries up. Just like Teach for America college grads displace and outperform professional classroom teachers.
    - dukeyukey 3y ago
      I'm in London, where I earn enough to rent a 2-bed 700sqft flat. Not exactly retraining for years money. But in any case, I think I'll be fine, it's others I'm worried about. I grew up in a poor rural area - I've seen what sudden unemployment does to people, even if they are smart and motivated.
- rsanek 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

noncoml 3y ago

You are missing an “in the long run” I thought the “The grapes of wrath” were exactly about the transient effects of the agricultural transformation.

steve_adams_86 3y ago

You've got a good point here. I've wondered about this at times. Like, what if we can't find a way to advance these agents much beyond where Devin is now? What if they can't consume a code base and make meaningfully high quality additions to them reliably, so they're essentially stuck as novice/intermediate developers? This seems nice(ish) for someone like me with a senior title and experience (~15 years), but totally knocks the bottom out of the industry. How do new people enter the industry and become programmers like I did? What's the new entry point into software, and what does that role look like? I can't tell if it would actually be good to knock the bottom out. If seniors become sort of like engineers going into the machine to tune things and build the big new things, who replaces them eventually? Will software get worse because of this? One thing I wonder is if this will birth a new generation of software architecture which is essentially a complete mess which AIs can easily and efficiently manage due to being machines, which will require businesses to "take the leap". Basically you tell the system what you want and it'll generate it on a bespoke system using custom infrastructure which the AI is optimized to implement solutions on. The results might be amazing, but if something goes wrong, humans would have a hell of a time figuring it out. That wouldn't be a nice career for someone like me. It might still leave a category of old fashioned human-engineered software, though. One thing about agriculture worth noting is that we had a LOT of other things we could work on. Agriculture held us back, so to speak. What is software holding back right now? If I'm unemployed by this advance, what would I do instead? I'm not sure how transferable my skills are. It could actually make me quite a bit less productive, not more.

hellojesus 3y ago
While it certainly make you, the individual, less productive because you've been replaced by a machine, it still makes society more productive. If replaced, you essentially were the misallocated capital: capital paying your salary was inefficient compared to that same salary paying a more productive AI. This means you will either have to find a way to become more efficient to compete against AI for developer jobs, or you will have to reskill. This reskilling period is what you're referring to as being less productive, but in the long run you will find a job and therefore will become productive again. We can't guarantee that job will pay as much as your former, but costs in the former greatly fell anyway, so it doesn't much matter. In short: you will be reallocated and find your optimal productivity subject to your utility preferences through the reallocation.

rlt 3y ago

Both things can be true. In the short to medium term a bunch of people will be out of a job/career. In the long term society may benefit overall. On the other hand I’m not convinced humans are evolving fast enough to keep up with modern society. There are increasing rates of anxiety, depression, ADHD, etc, especially in young people. https://www.thecut.com/2016/03/for-80-years-young-americans-have-been-getting-more-anxious-and-depressed.html https://www.thecut.com/2016/03/for-80-years-young-americans-...

Retric 3y ago

Not all jobs are the same. The Real Median US income in 2019 was 78,250$/year in 2022 it had fallen to 74,580. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N The only way that happens is if millions of people are significantly worse off. Most people can find work in the big economy, that doesn’t mean replacing a 100k/year job with a 25k/year job is equivalent. Across a long enough time horizon technology tends to make most people better off, but in the short term it can seriously fuck people over.

zeroonetwothree 3y ago
A 5% decrease is "significantly worse off"? And it's still higher than 2018--it's not really reasonable to expect an increase every single year, you should look at the longer-term trend.
- Retric 3y ago
  The median isn’t a simple average. The minimum difference is 5%, people who lost 50+% only count as one more person below the old average. So that 5% represents a great deal of pain for millions not simply a slight haircut. And sure the long term trends reverse things as I mentioned, but it took 15 years to recover where it was in 2019. Most Americans are simply cut off from wider economic growth and recovery.

dw_arthur 3y ago

Things could be different this time. We've pretty much automated our physical labor, what happens when you automate general thinking? Any new job or field will also be able to be done by AI.

petsfed 3y ago

...for instance, by a larger shift towards service-sector jobs (e.g. janitorial work, dining and entertainment, and retail sales). It is the case that productivity has grown with automation, but at the same time, median wages have stagnated, as the number of high-paying jobs have steadily shrank. Considering inflation, median income has been stagnant since about 1965. But productivity is at an all time high. But all the wealth that that generates is not going out into the world, its being concentrated. I'm in automation with physical machines, and there's a part of me that sincerely hopes that the continuing automation of various jobs leads to a golden age where society's basic needs are always met by robots, and we're free to pursue our passions. But I'm honestly not optimistic that that will happen without a series of (likely bloody) revolutions and counter-revolutions until either the species is extinguished or our social system finally achieves a new equilibrium.AI can definitely be understood as an invasive species or a natural disaster in terms of the impact it has to our social ecosystem.

pzo 3y ago

The key phrase is "over the last 200 years". 200 years ago there was just 1 billion people. People had decade(s) to reskill to new profession. Their offspring picked different profession if their parents didn't have good prospect. Changing profession was also not requiring half a decade learning. Now imagine that AI will make 20% people redundant over next 5 years - thats ~1.6 billion people.

zeroonetwothree 3y ago
To be fair most of the drop was only over a ~100 year period. BTW there is little AI makes "20% people redundant over next 5 years". I would bet $$$ against this.
- Pugpugpugs 3y ago
  Agreed it's definitely not 5 years, but probably will be within 12-20

digitalsalvatn 3y ago

[flagged]

Lich 3y ago

> Instead, workers tend to have higher productivity, which drives higher wages. https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

bananapub 3y ago

this of course conflats two entirely different things. 1) technology development has tended to hugely improve society-wide productivity and be a general (though not unmitigated) good. 2) technology development has been absolutely shit for many individuals as their careers disappear. people should be way more worried about good national governance and safety nets to deal with the terrible consequences of 2 while we reap the benefits of 1. > Instead, workers tend to have higher productivity, which drives higher wages. workers are capturing less and less of that, especially over the last twenty years.

ipaddr 3y ago
Too many people using the safety nets will cause them to collapse.
- bananapub 3y ago
  lol. hopefully whoever is in charge of your country has put a lot more thought into the future of work as automation comes for white collar workers.