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Lower-skilled people will be able to “do the job” with the new tooling (on a level that management believes to be good enough), and doing more job with less res

by layer8 1y ago

Lower-skilled people will be able to “do the job” with the new tooling (on a level that management believes to be good enough), and doing more job with less resources also means with less human resources. There is no win-win, similar to how there is no win-win for artists who in principle can now produce more “art” with less resources.

chii 1y ago
only if the assumption of a static world, with static demand is true. the past has shown that this is not the case.
- layer8 1y ago
  You aren’t addressing the lower-skill part of the argument. In addition, there are fewer farmers than there used to be, despite demand not having been static.
  - chii 1y ago
    some people who used to have a high-skill job will have their skill be devalued as AI takes over - this is a consequence of technological improvement. It is not a right that society maintains a level of value in an acquired skill. They will have to adapt. As for fewer farmers, that is exactly it - those who would have been farmers would be required to acquire new skills or pursue something other than farming. Bringing this back to AI - artists, writers and programmers who get displaced will need to adapt. In the long term, the massive decrease in costs of production of various "creative" endeavours will produce new industries, new demand and increase overall wealth - even if it is not shared evenly (in the same sense that past technological leaps are also not shared evenly).
    - pixl97 1y ago
      >There isn’t a rule of economics that says better technology makes more, better jobs for horses. It sounds shockingly dumb to even say that out loud, but swap horses for humans and suddenly people think it sounds about right.
bootsmann 1y ago
I don’t think this is true at all, its very evident when you see how quickly ai assistants break down if they meet established, complex codebases that do a little more than your average todo list app.
Cthulhu_ 1y ago
That's not new though, the bar for software development has been continuously dropping - at least on paper - since the profession started. I don't know assembly or manual memory management in C, but I do know languages and tools that allow me to do the job. Do I steal jobs from assembly / C developers? Don't get me wrong, I don't like AI either and it's only a matter of time before my day job goes from "rewrite this (web) app from 5-10 years ago" to "rewrite this AI assisted or generated (web) app from 5-10 years ago". But I don't think it's going to cost that many jobs in the long run.
- autoexec 1y ago
  > it's only a matter of time before my day job goes from "rewrite this (web) app from 5-10 years ago" to "rewrite this AI assisted or generated (web) app from 5-10 years ago". That seems optimistic. It all goes according to plan you won't get to write or rewrite anything anymore. You'll just be QA reviewing AI output. If you find something wrong you don't get to correct it, nobody will pay for coders, you'll just be telling AI about the problem so it can try to correct it until the code passes and the hallucinations are gone. That way they can pay you much less while you help train AI to get better and better at doing your old job.

by layer8 1y ago

chii 1y ago

only if the assumption of a static world, with static demand is true. the past has shown that this is not the case.

layer8 1y ago
You aren’t addressing the lower-skill part of the argument. In addition, there are fewer farmers than there used to be, despite demand not having been static.
- chii 1y ago
  some people who used to have a high-skill job will have their skill be devalued as AI takes over - this is a consequence of technological improvement. It is not a right that society maintains a level of value in an acquired skill. They will have to adapt. As for fewer farmers, that is exactly it - those who would have been farmers would be required to acquire new skills or pursue something other than farming. Bringing this back to AI - artists, writers and programmers who get displaced will need to adapt. In the long term, the massive decrease in costs of production of various "creative" endeavours will produce new industries, new demand and increase overall wealth - even if it is not shared evenly (in the same sense that past technological leaps are also not shared evenly).
  - pixl97 1y ago
    >There isn’t a rule of economics that says better technology makes more, better jobs for horses. It sounds shockingly dumb to even say that out loud, but swap horses for humans and suddenly people think it sounds about right.

bootsmann 1y ago

I don’t think this is true at all, its very evident when you see how quickly ai assistants break down if they meet established, complex codebases that do a little more than your average todo list app.

Cthulhu_ 1y ago

That's not new though, the bar for software development has been continuously dropping - at least on paper - since the profession started. I don't know assembly or manual memory management in C, but I do know languages and tools that allow me to do the job. Do I steal jobs from assembly / C developers? Don't get me wrong, I don't like AI either and it's only a matter of time before my day job goes from "rewrite this (web) app from 5-10 years ago" to "rewrite this AI assisted or generated (web) app from 5-10 years ago". But I don't think it's going to cost that many jobs in the long run.

autoexec 1y ago
> it's only a matter of time before my day job goes from "rewrite this (web) app from 5-10 years ago" to "rewrite this AI assisted or generated (web) app from 5-10 years ago". That seems optimistic. It all goes according to plan you won't get to write or rewrite anything anymore. You'll just be QA reviewing AI output. If you find something wrong you don't get to correct it, nobody will pay for coders, you'll just be telling AI about the problem so it can try to correct it until the code passes and the hallucinations are gone. That way they can pay you much less while you help train AI to get better and better at doing your old job.