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> My job isn’t replaced because coding is not my job — it’s solving domain specific problems? I would wonder why you are so complacent as to think next year's

> My job isn’t replaced because coding is not my job — it’s solving domain specific problems? I would wonder why you are so complacent as to think next year's models won't be able to solve domain-specific problems? Look at how bad text generation, code generation, audio generation, image generation was five years ago versus how capable it is today. Video generation wasn't even conceivable then. As an equally middle-aged person with children I'm less worried about myself than the next generation. What are people still in school right now, with dreams of being architects or lawyers or artists or writers or doctors or podcasters or youtubers, actually going to do with their lives? How will they find satisfaction in a job well done? How will they make money and feed and house themselves?

wenc 1y ago
> I would wonder why you are so complacent as to think next year's models won't be able to solve domain-specific problems? If your domain is complex enough as well as have a critical people-facing component you generally still have some runway. If it’s not then it’s ripe for disruption anyway, if not by LLMs then by something else. I pivoted at age 32 because of this. I pivoted again at age 40 (I took a two level title drop (principal engineer to midlevel), but I got to learn a new domain - and got promoted back to one level below and now make more money). I always treat my marketability not as a one and done but a perishable quantity. I’ve never taken for granted that I’ll have job security if I don’t strategize — because I grew up in a time of uncertainty and in a society where a high paying job was not guaranteed (some jobs like grocery clerk were however). People talk about “job security” as an entitlement of life are the first ones to be wiped out. That said, not everyone is capable of constantly upgrading their skills and pivoting — we need some cushion for economic disruption for folks who have limited retrainability. But suspect this is not everyone — most people just haven’t had to do it so they think they can’t. Americans have not had to face this en mass in the last 30 years but many people around the world have had to. If you’ve lived in competitive societies where there is job scarcity you get quickly used to this reality. > What are people still in school right now, with dreams of being architects or lawyers or artists or writers or doctors or podcasters or youtubers, actually going to do with their lives? How will they find satisfaction in a job well done? How will they make money and feed and house themselves? I think those jobs will still exist in some form but there will be a painful period where everyone figures out how to be differentiated. I’m a hobbyist YouTuber in my free time (YouTuber was a job that didn’t exist before) and I think it’s hard to replace parasocial relationships — AI slop already exists on YouTube which gets views but few subscriptions. The scope of jobs will also shift, and we will see things moving toward realms requiring human judgment — delivering things that require interpretation. Job scopes today are actually already much more than people think. Again no guarantee against disruption but job security was always an illusion anyway and the sooner we realize this the sooner we can adopt a preparatory mindset. (In a way, Americans are actually well positioned due to our relationship with capitalism) Even the demise of radiologists has been overstated because being a radiologists is much more than just detecting disease from an image. Writers will still be around — they might not be able to charge per word, but they’ll pivot to a new model. The transactional model will be gone but I’m convince something else will replace it. I’m not sure about any of this because I can’t predict the future, but I have seen the past and the doomsday scenario doesn’t seem to me the inexorable one.
- trod1234 1y ago
  You should read Hazlitt. There are things being done which cannot be undone, and there are issues that were long predicted, and ignored, and the consequences are now bearing fruit. If you haven't heard a real doomsday scenario that's likely, you haven't been listening to the right people, and you rely far too much on the fallacy of survivorship bias. If you don't have a plan to replace a fundamental societal model, there are two potential outcomes, someone comes up with something because they've been working on it (and it works, which is rare), or all dependencies that rely upon that system fail, and the consequences occur. In other words, everyone starves. Think about what no exchange being possible suddenly would mean, overnight, for our supply chains with logistics delivering just in time. We've seen it, during the pandemic, but that was just a small disruption, and not a continuing one. Imagine it. Nothing on the shelves. No amount of money that will let you get what you need (toilet paper). No means that would let this occur in the short timetables of need. What happens. Prior to 2020, people would call you crazy if you said those things would happen. Bad things happen if you don't have a plan to make sure they don't happen.
munksbeer 1y ago
The economy only works because people consume goods and services. If they can't do that, then capital can't make any money. So whatever the case is, capital needs to ensure that the ability to consume is ensured. This is the same conversation that happens decade after decade.
- trod1234 1y ago
  I agree with you, but no one listened back then, why would they ever think about listening now. Capital formation comes first before everything else, not the other way around, when you have nothing to trade that's of value it simply can't happen, and inevitable hyper-inflation/deflationary cycles begin which once started can't be stopped. These people think, survival is guaranteed, jobs are guaranteed, the how doesn't matter; it happens because some politician says it does; reality doesn't matter. That's the line and level of thinking we are dealing with here. How do you convince someone that if they do something, they and their children may die as a consequence; if they can't make that connection. Communication ceases being possible in a noisy medium at a certain point according to Shannon. Pretty sure we've crossed that point, and where we may have been able to discern and separate the garbage previously, now through mimicry its all but impossible. Intelligent people don't waste their efforts on lost causes. People make their own decisions, and they and their children will pay for the consequences of those choices; even if they didn't realize that was the choice they were making at the time they made it.
  - munksbeer 1y ago
    > I agree with you, but no one listened back then, why would they ever think about listening now. Because we lead vastly better lives today than 100 years ago, when everyone was also raging about technology stealing jobs. The economy has to adapt to technology changes, there is no other way. It is a self healing system. If technology removes a lot of jobs, then new jobs are created. It has to be this way, don't you see?
    - trod1234 1y ago
      It can be a self-healing system, and capitalism is generally self-healing, but the former is not necessarily the case in all economic systems. There is a critical point where factors, and producers leave the market because requirements cannot be met in profit in terms of purchasing power (invariant to inflation). You might think those parties are all that there is, but that's not the case, there is a third-party, the state and its apparatus. With money-printing, any winner chosen by the state becomes its apparatus. Money printing takes many forms but the most common is debt, more accurately non-reserve debt. That third-entity is not bound by profit constraints and outcompetes rising in the wake of the destruction it causes, and this is not self-healing, its self-sustaining, and slow, and it does collapse given sufficient time. New jobs aren't being created in sufficient volumes to provide for the population. If anything, the jobs have been removed en-masse on the mere perception that AI can replace people. You seem to rely heavily on fallacy in your reasoning. Specifically, survivorship bias. Things are being done that cannot be undone. There are fundamental limits, after which the structures fail. This is what is coming.

wenc 1y ago

> I would wonder why you are so complacent as to think next year's models won't be able to solve domain-specific problems? If your domain is complex enough as well as have a critical people-facing component you generally still have some runway. If it’s not then it’s ripe for disruption anyway, if not by LLMs then by something else. I pivoted at age 32 because of this. I pivoted again at age 40 (I took a two level title drop (principal engineer to midlevel), but I got to learn a new domain - and got promoted back to one level below and now make more money). I always treat my marketability not as a one and done but a perishable quantity. I’ve never taken for granted that I’ll have job security if I don’t strategize — because I grew up in a time of uncertainty and in a society where a high paying job was not guaranteed (some jobs like grocery clerk were however). People talk about “job security” as an entitlement of life are the first ones to be wiped out. That said, not everyone is capable of constantly upgrading their skills and pivoting — we need some cushion for economic disruption for folks who have limited retrainability. But suspect this is not everyone — most people just haven’t had to do it so they think they can’t. Americans have not had to face this en mass in the last 30 years but many people around the world have had to. If you’ve lived in competitive societies where there is job scarcity you get quickly used to this reality. > What are people still in school right now, with dreams of being architects or lawyers or artists or writers or doctors or podcasters or youtubers, actually going to do with their lives? How will they find satisfaction in a job well done? How will they make money and feed and house themselves? I think those jobs will still exist in some form but there will be a painful period where everyone figures out how to be differentiated. I’m a hobbyist YouTuber in my free time (YouTuber was a job that didn’t exist before) and I think it’s hard to replace parasocial relationships — AI slop already exists on YouTube which gets views but few subscriptions. The scope of jobs will also shift, and we will see things moving toward realms requiring human judgment — delivering things that require interpretation. Job scopes today are actually already much more than people think. Again no guarantee against disruption but job security was always an illusion anyway and the sooner we realize this the sooner we can adopt a preparatory mindset. (In a way, Americans are actually well positioned due to our relationship with capitalism) Even the demise of radiologists has been overstated because being a radiologists is much more than just detecting disease from an image. Writers will still be around — they might not be able to charge per word, but they’ll pivot to a new model. The transactional model will be gone but I’m convince something else will replace it. I’m not sure about any of this because I can’t predict the future, but I have seen the past and the doomsday scenario doesn’t seem to me the inexorable one.

trod1234 1y ago
You should read Hazlitt. There are things being done which cannot be undone, and there are issues that were long predicted, and ignored, and the consequences are now bearing fruit. If you haven't heard a real doomsday scenario that's likely, you haven't been listening to the right people, and you rely far too much on the fallacy of survivorship bias. If you don't have a plan to replace a fundamental societal model, there are two potential outcomes, someone comes up with something because they've been working on it (and it works, which is rare), or all dependencies that rely upon that system fail, and the consequences occur. In other words, everyone starves. Think about what no exchange being possible suddenly would mean, overnight, for our supply chains with logistics delivering just in time. We've seen it, during the pandemic, but that was just a small disruption, and not a continuing one. Imagine it. Nothing on the shelves. No amount of money that will let you get what you need (toilet paper). No means that would let this occur in the short timetables of need. What happens. Prior to 2020, people would call you crazy if you said those things would happen. Bad things happen if you don't have a plan to make sure they don't happen.

munksbeer 1y ago

The economy only works because people consume goods and services. If they can't do that, then capital can't make any money. So whatever the case is, capital needs to ensure that the ability to consume is ensured. This is the same conversation that happens decade after decade.

trod1234 1y ago
I agree with you, but no one listened back then, why would they ever think about listening now. Capital formation comes first before everything else, not the other way around, when you have nothing to trade that's of value it simply can't happen, and inevitable hyper-inflation/deflationary cycles begin which once started can't be stopped. These people think, survival is guaranteed, jobs are guaranteed, the how doesn't matter; it happens because some politician says it does; reality doesn't matter. That's the line and level of thinking we are dealing with here. How do you convince someone that if they do something, they and their children may die as a consequence; if they can't make that connection. Communication ceases being possible in a noisy medium at a certain point according to Shannon. Pretty sure we've crossed that point, and where we may have been able to discern and separate the garbage previously, now through mimicry its all but impossible. Intelligent people don't waste their efforts on lost causes. People make their own decisions, and they and their children will pay for the consequences of those choices; even if they didn't realize that was the choice they were making at the time they made it.
- munksbeer 1y ago
  > I agree with you, but no one listened back then, why would they ever think about listening now. Because we lead vastly better lives today than 100 years ago, when everyone was also raging about technology stealing jobs. The economy has to adapt to technology changes, there is no other way. It is a self healing system. If technology removes a lot of jobs, then new jobs are created. It has to be this way, don't you see?
  - trod1234 1y ago
    It can be a self-healing system, and capitalism is generally self-healing, but the former is not necessarily the case in all economic systems. There is a critical point where factors, and producers leave the market because requirements cannot be met in profit in terms of purchasing power (invariant to inflation). You might think those parties are all that there is, but that's not the case, there is a third-party, the state and its apparatus. With money-printing, any winner chosen by the state becomes its apparatus. Money printing takes many forms but the most common is debt, more accurately non-reserve debt. That third-entity is not bound by profit constraints and outcompetes rising in the wake of the destruction it causes, and this is not self-healing, its self-sustaining, and slow, and it does collapse given sufficient time. New jobs aren't being created in sufficient volumes to provide for the population. If anything, the jobs have been removed en-masse on the mere perception that AI can replace people. You seem to rely heavily on fallacy in your reasoning. Specifically, survivorship bias. Things are being done that cannot be undone. There are fundamental limits, after which the structures fail. This is what is coming.