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A lot of dismissive comments in here already by people who aren’t trying to make a living doing writing, art, or voiceover. It will be music soon too. Tutoring

A lot of dismissive comments in here already by people who aren’t trying to make a living doing writing, art, or voiceover. It will be music soon too. Tutoring is probably heavily affected already too “But those weren’t real jobs,” some might say. So it doesn’t count until it replaces programmer jobs? Because that’s coming soon too. Would you really encourage your kids to go into this field, expecting them to still have good prospects in 15 years? Also, we used to have a middle class with lots of authors and musicians and artists before the internet commoditized everything

bdcravens 3y ago
We also used to have a middle class consisting of horseshoers, elevator operators, and gas station attendants. Many programmers do little more than glue together framework code, and make an excellent living doing it. Little sets them apart other than how fast they jump to the framework of the week. There's not a lot of separation from rent-seeking. What would you do to change the direction of things? Make AI illegal, and hope there aren't companies that will just use it anyways?
- mistrial9 3y ago
  yeah except serious people in governance and AI science are raising alarm bells.. so "what about the horse carriage drivers" gets pretty thin, like instantly..
- randysalami 3y ago
  And being able to interface with computers. It’s crazy how many people are unable to use a computer efficiently. Don’t take that skill for granted.
- addicted 3y ago
  Whether we can or cannot do something about is a wholly different question from whether it’s an issue at all. I see so many people basically say “there’s nothing we can do about it therefore there’s no problem at all”. I don’t think this is a coincidence. This is a very deliberate effort by those in the tech space who want to capture and privatize all the benefits for themselves to make it seem like there are no alternatives to the current trajectory of a handful of companies hoarding all the benefits of AI. Once you accept that there are possible problems one can do stuff to address those problems, such as maybe democratizing AI so it benefits anybody and not just a handful of people who happened to be at the right place at the right time. Heck, even if you accept that there isn’t a problem you can still recognizing that the current trajectory may not be a good one.
paxys 3y ago
> “But those weren’t real jobs,” some might say. No one is saying that. What people are saying is that technology has routinely made certain jobs irrelevant since the beginning of human civilization, and no one can do anything about it other than accept it and move on. Soon enough new ones will spring up to take their place. Sharing and commenting on variations of the same article every single day is certainly not helping anyone's jobs.
- cute_boi 3y ago
  > Soon enough new ones will spring up to take their place 10 new jobs cannot be sufficient to replace 100 replaced jobs. What are other 90 going to do?
  - paxys 3y ago
    Who says it will be 10 new jobs? Why not a thousand? Or a million? Did the world end when weavers lost their jobs because of automated looms or elevator operators lost their job because of buttons? Just like all the times before, we will figure it out. The only thing that will make the outcome worse is forced government action based on a few loud voices and populist demands.
    - TFYS 3y ago
      The closer to human abilities AI gets, the less space there will be for new jobs to appear. Just because new jobs appeared before doesn't mean they always will. It does make sense to slow down this progress if we don't have answers to what happens if jobs start disappearing faster than we can replace them.
      - paxys 3y ago
        Who is going to "slow down this progress"? Some mythical world government? The Illuminati? You can't legislate human thought and human ingenuity. Progress is happening, whether you like it or not. You either embrace it or get left behind.
musicale 3y ago
For most businesses, AI works basically the same as any other kind of automation: 1) increasing output for the same labor costs 2) reducing labor costs by replacing humans with machines or smaller numbers of humans that operate the machines The interesting difference is that AI can automate a wide range of "creative" and "knowledge worker" jobs that formerly resisted automation, so many tech workers (and others) may have their jobs automated out of existence, much as cloud computing automated the work of human system and network administrators.
slibhb 3y ago
What's the alternative here? Make laws so that people aren't allowed to use AI to replace X job? If AI replaces my job, I'll accept it. I don't want to do a job that could better be done by a machine.

bdcravens 3y ago

We also used to have a middle class consisting of horseshoers, elevator operators, and gas station attendants. Many programmers do little more than glue together framework code, and make an excellent living doing it. Little sets them apart other than how fast they jump to the framework of the week. There's not a lot of separation from rent-seeking. What would you do to change the direction of things? Make AI illegal, and hope there aren't companies that will just use it anyways?

mistrial9 3y ago
yeah except serious people in governance and AI science are raising alarm bells.. so "what about the horse carriage drivers" gets pretty thin, like instantly..
randysalami 3y ago
And being able to interface with computers. It’s crazy how many people are unable to use a computer efficiently. Don’t take that skill for granted.
addicted 3y ago
Whether we can or cannot do something about is a wholly different question from whether it’s an issue at all. I see so many people basically say “there’s nothing we can do about it therefore there’s no problem at all”. I don’t think this is a coincidence. This is a very deliberate effort by those in the tech space who want to capture and privatize all the benefits for themselves to make it seem like there are no alternatives to the current trajectory of a handful of companies hoarding all the benefits of AI. Once you accept that there are possible problems one can do stuff to address those problems, such as maybe democratizing AI so it benefits anybody and not just a handful of people who happened to be at the right place at the right time. Heck, even if you accept that there isn’t a problem you can still recognizing that the current trajectory may not be a good one.

paxys 3y ago

> “But those weren’t real jobs,” some might say. No one is saying that. What people are saying is that technology has routinely made certain jobs irrelevant since the beginning of human civilization, and no one can do anything about it other than accept it and move on. Soon enough new ones will spring up to take their place. Sharing and commenting on variations of the same article every single day is certainly not helping anyone's jobs.

cute_boi 3y ago
> Soon enough new ones will spring up to take their place 10 new jobs cannot be sufficient to replace 100 replaced jobs. What are other 90 going to do?
- paxys 3y ago
  Who says it will be 10 new jobs? Why not a thousand? Or a million? Did the world end when weavers lost their jobs because of automated looms or elevator operators lost their job because of buttons? Just like all the times before, we will figure it out. The only thing that will make the outcome worse is forced government action based on a few loud voices and populist demands.
  - TFYS 3y ago
    The closer to human abilities AI gets, the less space there will be for new jobs to appear. Just because new jobs appeared before doesn't mean they always will. It does make sense to slow down this progress if we don't have answers to what happens if jobs start disappearing faster than we can replace them.
    - paxys 3y ago
      Who is going to "slow down this progress"? Some mythical world government? The Illuminati? You can't legislate human thought and human ingenuity. Progress is happening, whether you like it or not. You either embrace it or get left behind.

musicale 3y ago

For most businesses, AI works basically the same as any other kind of automation: 1) increasing output for the same labor costs 2) reducing labor costs by replacing humans with machines or smaller numbers of humans that operate the machines The interesting difference is that AI can automate a wide range of "creative" and "knowledge worker" jobs that formerly resisted automation, so many tech workers (and others) may have their jobs automated out of existence, much as cloud computing automated the work of human system and network administrators.

slibhb 3y ago

What's the alternative here? Make laws so that people aren't allowed to use AI to replace X job? If AI replaces my job, I'll accept it. I don't want to do a job that could better be done by a machine.