6 ms·

TBH the last 20-30 years was exactly like that but computers were eliminating other peoples jobs for really good profits for the investors and really good salar

by mrtksn 9mo ago

TBH the last 20-30 years was exactly like that but computers were eliminating other peoples jobs for really good profits for the investors and really good salaries for the workers doing the elimination. Before that people were eliminating blue colar workers with highly productive machines and industrial robots. I don't see how eliminating your co-workers is any different. Software ate the world and now AI will eat the "software professionals". When this is over, just like the rust belts there will be code belts where once highly valued software developers will be living in decaying neighborhoods and the politicians will be promising to create software jobs by banning AI.

carlcortright 9mo ago
this is a very pessimistic take could be, but the universe is odd in so many different ways it's hard to be sure
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- izzydata 9mo ago
  It feels more like a really optimistic take on AI. I won't say it is impossible, but I haven't seen anything that suggests AI is going to do what OpenAI and Nvidia claims it will.
chrysoprace 9mo ago
There might be a time when software developers become obsolete, and I don't pretend to know the future, but if today's models are anything to go by then it won't happen any time soon. At the end of the day, there'll still be a need for highly skilled technical experts, whatever that job looks like.
- geodel 9mo ago
  > At the end of the day, there'll still be a need for highly skilled technical experts, whatever that job looks like. Well, this is kind of obvious right. Highly skilled people of next generation will do fine. The point is millions of highly skilled successful people of today could soon be below average category, jobless and can be called clueless, stuck in old ways who didn't simply see what is happening in the world. And I am not blaming anyone. Despite seeing changes coming even I am not able to do much either. Just hilariously trying to do "cloud technology" courses which folks did decades back, made money and by now even forgot about it.
  - tokioyoyo 9mo ago
    > Highly skilled people of next generation will do fine. I would bet for the opposite. In a huge rush to optimization and job elimination, early career people suffer the most. However it also makes it impossible to switch careers, start from scratch, and etc.
  - chrysoprace 9mo ago
    In my experience, many highly experienced professionals are already below average. That's not to say they don't work hard, but if their solutions are on par or worse than what an LLM can produce, then they might see themselves out of a job if the LLM can work harder. As another commenter said, we'll likely see a big change on the junior end, which will affect the more experienced hire pool as time goes on.
- ChoGGi 9mo ago
  I'll be curious to see how the next generation of highly skilled technical experts will be raised.
  - hkt 9mo ago
    I have a nasty suspicion that far fewer of them will be, that CS and SE based professions will end up collapsing and consolidating into a handful of AI megacorporations and a guild-like elite of AI-herders will be what's left.
    - SgtBastard 9mo ago
      Guilds of Knowledge hoarders and AI adepts are my bet as well.
  - poulpy123 9mo ago
    That's an interesting paradox of the current AI: useful enough to make the industry less competent (either directly by helping students to not learn or indirectly by replacing people in entry level formative jobs) while not being smart enough to replace all the chain to the top
- rayiner 9mo ago
  > At the end of the day, there'll still be a need for highly skilled technical experts, whatever that job looks like. Why? There was a time when there was a need for highly skilled seamstresses. And we never developed the technology to do their jobs as well as they could. But people just learned to deal with mass produced clothes that didn’t fit perfectly because it was so much cheaper.
  - snowwrestler 9mo ago
    Not sure what the point is here because highly skilled seamstress is still a well-paying job, and all the mass-produced clothes are also still sewn by hand.
    - AngryData 9mo ago
      Where do you live that skilled seamstress is such a valuable job? Just because a handful of people make bank doesn't mean there is some large unfilled market for those skills. I can find some highly paid blacksmiths too, but 99% of people who know how to blacksmith well will never make more than a paltry sum if anything at all off of it.
      - hattmall 9mo ago
        Pretty much anywhere being a competent seamstress pays well. The difference between highly skilled and competent is open to interpretation. The difference between being competent and the very basics that can assemble cut and sew patterns is huge though. Pretty much anyone can do cut and sew with like a week of training which is all the mass produced clothes. But someone who is competent and can do quality alterations, mending, customize patterns etc, is going to make decent money. But I'm pretty sure where ever you live there are seamstress working and making good money. I'm not even really sure where automation would have impacted being a seamstress. Sewing machines have been around since the 1700's and if anything the demand for textiles has increased more than the speed of production. Maybe you are thinking more of knitting, which is highly automated and used to be a big job, now it's basically just a hobby. Blacksmiths just evolved to modern day welders, iron workers, boilermakers etc. Still pays well.
- iJohnDoe 9mo ago
  > software developers become obsolete > there’ll still be a need for highly skilled technical experts Two different things. Yes, many, many software developers will become obsolete in certain industries. It’s already happening. Putting on blinders doesn’t make it go away. Yes, highly skilled technical experts will absolutely still be needed.
3acctforcom 9mo ago
I kill jobs for a living, and always wondered when the promise of "Low code" would kill my job. Turns out AI reduces the barrier juuuuuuuust enough for competent managers and clerks to automate their own processes. Thank god most managers aren't competent, I might just make it to retirement.
risyachka 9mo ago
>> AI will eat the "software professionals" you mean AI will eat everyone, because if software professionals will be automated - all other white collar jobs will be too via software. And then all resources will be poured in hardware and blue collar jobs will be automated too, at least those that have more value.
- Buttons840 9mo ago
  Once an AI runs a single company well, all publicly traded companies will have a legal obligation to at least consider replacing the C-suite with AI. In theory. I'll believe it when I see it.
- LPisGood 9mo ago
  That’s the thing here. Software engineering is an intelligence-complete problem. If AI can solve it, then it can solve any sort of knowledge work like accounting, financial analysis, etc
  - sfink 9mo ago
    Only if by "solving it", you mean being able to write any program to do anything. Software engineering is a hubris-complete problem. Somehow, being able to do so much seems to make us all assume that everyone else is capable of so little. But just because we can write 1000 programs to do 1000 different things, and because AI can write 1000 programs to do 1000 different things, it doesn't mean that we can write the million other programs that do a million other things. That would be like assuming that because someone is a writer and has written 1 book, that they are fully capable of writing both War & Peace and an exhaustive manual on tractor repair. Financial analysis is not easier than programming. You don't feed in numbers, turn a crank, and get out correct answers. Some people do only that, and yeah, AI can probably replace them. "Computing" as a field only made sense when computers were new. We're going to have to go back to actually accomplishing things, not depending on the fact that computers are involved and making them do anything is hard so anyone who can make them do things is automatically valuable. (Which sucks for me, because I'm pretty good at making computers do things but not so good at much of anything else with economic value.) "What do you do?" "I use computers to do X." "Why didn't you just say you do X, then?" is already kind of a thing; now it's going to move on to "I use AI to do X." Then again: the AI-dependent generation is losing the ability to think, as a result of leaning on AI to do it for them. So while my generation stuck the previous generation with maintaining COBOL programs, the next generation will stick mine with thinking. I can deal with that. I like thinking. </end-of-weird-rant>
rayiner 9mo ago
They should reboot Silicon Valley with this premise.
Bombthecat 9mo ago
Ha, that was exactly my thoughts to! Code is turning into a commodity. Nothing special anymore or something you need to protect. It's turning into cheap coal.

by mrtksn 9mo ago

carlcortright 9mo ago

this is a very pessimistic take could be, but the universe is odd in so many different ways it's hard to be sure

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
izzydata 9mo ago
It feels more like a really optimistic take on AI. I won't say it is impossible, but I haven't seen anything that suggests AI is going to do what OpenAI and Nvidia claims it will.

chrysoprace 9mo ago

There might be a time when software developers become obsolete, and I don't pretend to know the future, but if today's models are anything to go by then it won't happen any time soon. At the end of the day, there'll still be a need for highly skilled technical experts, whatever that job looks like.

geodel 9mo ago
> At the end of the day, there'll still be a need for highly skilled technical experts, whatever that job looks like. Well, this is kind of obvious right. Highly skilled people of next generation will do fine. The point is millions of highly skilled successful people of today could soon be below average category, jobless and can be called clueless, stuck in old ways who didn't simply see what is happening in the world. And I am not blaming anyone. Despite seeing changes coming even I am not able to do much either. Just hilariously trying to do "cloud technology" courses which folks did decades back, made money and by now even forgot about it.
- tokioyoyo 9mo ago
  > Highly skilled people of next generation will do fine. I would bet for the opposite. In a huge rush to optimization and job elimination, early career people suffer the most. However it also makes it impossible to switch careers, start from scratch, and etc.
- chrysoprace 9mo ago
  In my experience, many highly experienced professionals are already below average. That's not to say they don't work hard, but if their solutions are on par or worse than what an LLM can produce, then they might see themselves out of a job if the LLM can work harder. As another commenter said, we'll likely see a big change on the junior end, which will affect the more experienced hire pool as time goes on.
ChoGGi 9mo ago
I'll be curious to see how the next generation of highly skilled technical experts will be raised.
- hkt 9mo ago
  I have a nasty suspicion that far fewer of them will be, that CS and SE based professions will end up collapsing and consolidating into a handful of AI megacorporations and a guild-like elite of AI-herders will be what's left.
  - SgtBastard 9mo ago
    Guilds of Knowledge hoarders and AI adepts are my bet as well.
- poulpy123 9mo ago
  That's an interesting paradox of the current AI: useful enough to make the industry less competent (either directly by helping students to not learn or indirectly by replacing people in entry level formative jobs) while not being smart enough to replace all the chain to the top
rayiner 9mo ago
> At the end of the day, there'll still be a need for highly skilled technical experts, whatever that job looks like. Why? There was a time when there was a need for highly skilled seamstresses. And we never developed the technology to do their jobs as well as they could. But people just learned to deal with mass produced clothes that didn’t fit perfectly because it was so much cheaper.
- snowwrestler 9mo ago
  Not sure what the point is here because highly skilled seamstress is still a well-paying job, and all the mass-produced clothes are also still sewn by hand.
  - AngryData 9mo ago
    Where do you live that skilled seamstress is such a valuable job? Just because a handful of people make bank doesn't mean there is some large unfilled market for those skills. I can find some highly paid blacksmiths too, but 99% of people who know how to blacksmith well will never make more than a paltry sum if anything at all off of it.
    - hattmall 9mo ago
      Pretty much anywhere being a competent seamstress pays well. The difference between highly skilled and competent is open to interpretation. The difference between being competent and the very basics that can assemble cut and sew patterns is huge though. Pretty much anyone can do cut and sew with like a week of training which is all the mass produced clothes. But someone who is competent and can do quality alterations, mending, customize patterns etc, is going to make decent money. But I'm pretty sure where ever you live there are seamstress working and making good money. I'm not even really sure where automation would have impacted being a seamstress. Sewing machines have been around since the 1700's and if anything the demand for textiles has increased more than the speed of production. Maybe you are thinking more of knitting, which is highly automated and used to be a big job, now it's basically just a hobby. Blacksmiths just evolved to modern day welders, iron workers, boilermakers etc. Still pays well.
iJohnDoe 9mo ago
> software developers become obsolete > there’ll still be a need for highly skilled technical experts Two different things. Yes, many, many software developers will become obsolete in certain industries. It’s already happening. Putting on blinders doesn’t make it go away. Yes, highly skilled technical experts will absolutely still be needed.

3acctforcom 9mo ago

I kill jobs for a living, and always wondered when the promise of "Low code" would kill my job. Turns out AI reduces the barrier juuuuuuuust enough for competent managers and clerks to automate their own processes. Thank god most managers aren't competent, I might just make it to retirement.

risyachka 9mo ago

>> AI will eat the "software professionals" you mean AI will eat everyone, because if software professionals will be automated - all other white collar jobs will be too via software. And then all resources will be poured in hardware and blue collar jobs will be automated too, at least those that have more value.

Buttons840 9mo ago
Once an AI runs a single company well, all publicly traded companies will have a legal obligation to at least consider replacing the C-suite with AI. In theory. I'll believe it when I see it.
LPisGood 9mo ago
That’s the thing here. Software engineering is an intelligence-complete problem. If AI can solve it, then it can solve any sort of knowledge work like accounting, financial analysis, etc
- sfink 9mo ago
  Only if by "solving it", you mean being able to write any program to do anything. Software engineering is a hubris-complete problem. Somehow, being able to do so much seems to make us all assume that everyone else is capable of so little. But just because we can write 1000 programs to do 1000 different things, and because AI can write 1000 programs to do 1000 different things, it doesn't mean that we can write the million other programs that do a million other things. That would be like assuming that because someone is a writer and has written 1 book, that they are fully capable of writing both War & Peace and an exhaustive manual on tractor repair. Financial analysis is not easier than programming. You don't feed in numbers, turn a crank, and get out correct answers. Some people do only that, and yeah, AI can probably replace them. "Computing" as a field only made sense when computers were new. We're going to have to go back to actually accomplishing things, not depending on the fact that computers are involved and making them do anything is hard so anyone who can make them do things is automatically valuable. (Which sucks for me, because I'm pretty good at making computers do things but not so good at much of anything else with economic value.) "What do you do?" "I use computers to do X." "Why didn't you just say you do X, then?" is already kind of a thing; now it's going to move on to "I use AI to do X." Then again: the AI-dependent generation is losing the ability to think, as a result of leaning on AI to do it for them. So while my generation stuck the previous generation with maintaining COBOL programs, the next generation will stick mine with thinking. I can deal with that. I like thinking. </end-of-weird-rant>

rayiner 9mo ago

They should reboot Silicon Valley with this premise.

Bombthecat 9mo ago

Ha, that was exactly my thoughts to! Code is turning into a commodity. Nothing special anymore or something you need to protect. It's turning into cheap coal.