4 ms·

Nothing subverts my defense of human creativity more than the cliched human defenses of AI.

monero-xmr 1y ago
For those of us who exceed the AI, it raises our value enormously. You see it in the pay of the AI engineers. But in the high interest rate world, those of us who continue to be employed, are commanding higher wages, as far as I can tell. It is a culling of the lesser-than. One unfortunate side-effect is the junior engineers who cannot immediately exceed the AI are not being hired as often. But this era echos the dotcom boom, where very low-skilled people commanded very-high wages. Universities, which have always been white collar job training but pretended they weren't, are being impacted greatly. https://registrar.mit.edu/stats-reports/majors-count https://registrar.mit.edu/stats-reports/majors-count 24% of undergraduate MIT students this year have Computer Science in the title (I asked chatgpt to calculate this from the difficult-to-parse website). 1/4 of all MIT undergraduates are not being trained to be future PhD researchers - they, like all other schools, are training the vast majority of their students for private sector workforce jobs. The culling is happening all over. We will likely go down to < 1000 colleges in America from 4000 now over the next 15 years. This is a good thing. The cost of university degrees is far too high. We are in the midst of a vast transition. College should return to being the purview of the truly intelligent and the children of the rich, as it was for all time before WW2. This very weird experiment in human history is ending, and it cannot happen soon enough
- nhinck3 1y ago
  [flagged]
- sciencejerk 1y ago
  > College should return to being the purview of the truly intelligent and the children of the rich, as it was for all time before WW2. You're likely correct that we're witnessing a reconsolidation of wealth and the extinction of the middle class in society, but you seem happy about this? Be careful what you wish for...
  - monero-xmr 1y ago
    Alternatively, all middle class jobs do not require a college degree. Perhaps a college degree is primarily a signalling mechanism for adherence to a bygone era of societal norms. But the price is far too high to justify it, and the market will create alternative proof of societal norms, at a far cheaper price. Which is happening as we debate. My concern now is a large number of under-employed college graduates who are indebted to worthless degrees, feeling pinched because the debt far surpasses their market value. This has been the case for a long time, but has now reached the upper-echelons of academia where even Ivy league grads cannot get employment. You need to re-calibrate your ire to the correct target
    - novemp 1y ago
      Yeah, sure, not every job should require a degree, but that doesn't justify keeping The Poors from pursuing education. Some of us value education for its own sake, not as a prerequisite for employment.
      - monero-xmr 1y ago
        You are assuming the only avenue to "education" is through the university experience
        novemp 1y ago
        Some people learn best in structured class settings.
    - sciencejerk 1y ago
      If AI and other societal shifts eliminate many white-collar jobs in developed countries, degree-seekers will eventually notice and the demand and perceived value of a college education may greatly diminish. I got my degree at a time when it was actually useful as a signalling mechanism. Now students might not benefit much from a college degree and internships might be hard to find. This is too bad and grossly unfair. I hope that new societal avenues are created to help young people start their careers, even if those careers are in fields like plumbing, nursing and hospitality. I also hope efforts are made to help white collar workers transition into other (lesser-paying) careers when AI really starts to permanently reduce the size of the white-collar workforce.
- card_zero 1y ago
  35%, ignoring "secondary majors" which may or may not coincide with primary majors that also have CS in the title. (Also ignoring the thousand first years at the end of the list.) The various 0.5 half-student quantities throw some doubt on the measurement too.
- teiferer 1y ago
  > College should return to being the purview of the truly intelligent and the children of the rich, as it was for all time before WW2. Yeah, the world was a better place when it was mostly white males having that chance. /s

For those of us who exceed the AI, it raises our value enormously. You see it in the pay of the AI engineers. But in the high interest rate world, those of us who continue to be employed, are commanding higher wages, as far as I can tell. It is a culling of the lesser-than. One unfortunate side-effect is the junior engineers who cannot immediately exceed the AI are not being hired as often. But this era echos the dotcom boom, where very low-skilled people commanded very-high wages. Universities, which have always been white collar job training but pretended they weren't, are being impacted greatly. https://registrar.mit.edu/stats-reports/majors-count https://registrar.mit.edu/stats-reports/majors-count 24% of undergraduate MIT students this year have Computer Science in the title (I asked chatgpt to calculate this from the difficult-to-parse website). 1/4 of all MIT undergraduates are not being trained to be future PhD researchers - they, like all other schools, are training the vast majority of their students for private sector workforce jobs. The culling is happening all over. We will likely go down to < 1000 colleges in America from 4000 now over the next 15 years. This is a good thing. The cost of university degrees is far too high. We are in the midst of a vast transition. College should return to being the purview of the truly intelligent and the children of the rich, as it was for all time before WW2. This very weird experiment in human history is ending, and it cannot happen soon enough

nhinck3 1y ago
[flagged]
sciencejerk 1y ago
> College should return to being the purview of the truly intelligent and the children of the rich, as it was for all time before WW2. You're likely correct that we're witnessing a reconsolidation of wealth and the extinction of the middle class in society, but you seem happy about this? Be careful what you wish for...
- monero-xmr 1y ago
  Alternatively, all middle class jobs do not require a college degree. Perhaps a college degree is primarily a signalling mechanism for adherence to a bygone era of societal norms. But the price is far too high to justify it, and the market will create alternative proof of societal norms, at a far cheaper price. Which is happening as we debate. My concern now is a large number of under-employed college graduates who are indebted to worthless degrees, feeling pinched because the debt far surpasses their market value. This has been the case for a long time, but has now reached the upper-echelons of academia where even Ivy league grads cannot get employment. You need to re-calibrate your ire to the correct target
  - novemp 1y ago
    Yeah, sure, not every job should require a degree, but that doesn't justify keeping The Poors from pursuing education. Some of us value education for its own sake, not as a prerequisite for employment.
    - monero-xmr 1y ago
      You are assuming the only avenue to "education" is through the university experience
      - novemp 1y ago
        Some people learn best in structured class settings.
  - sciencejerk 1y ago
    If AI and other societal shifts eliminate many white-collar jobs in developed countries, degree-seekers will eventually notice and the demand and perceived value of a college education may greatly diminish. I got my degree at a time when it was actually useful as a signalling mechanism. Now students might not benefit much from a college degree and internships might be hard to find. This is too bad and grossly unfair. I hope that new societal avenues are created to help young people start their careers, even if those careers are in fields like plumbing, nursing and hospitality. I also hope efforts are made to help white collar workers transition into other (lesser-paying) careers when AI really starts to permanently reduce the size of the white-collar workforce.
card_zero 1y ago
35%, ignoring "secondary majors" which may or may not coincide with primary majors that also have CS in the title. (Also ignoring the thousand first years at the end of the list.) The various 0.5 half-student quantities throw some doubt on the measurement too.
teiferer 1y ago
> College should return to being the purview of the truly intelligent and the children of the rich, as it was for all time before WW2. Yeah, the world was a better place when it was mostly white males having that chance. /s