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What work is is always changing. Construction used to involve shoveling shit and dirt. But thanks to technology road workers sit in air conditioned cubicles ma
by cadamsdotcom 9mo ago
What work is is always changing.
Construction used to involve shoveling shit and dirt. But thanks to technology road workers sit in air conditioned cubicles manipulating hydraulic levers, gaining tremendous leverage.
Yes, sometimes they go outside to dig around fragile stuff with a shovel - old pipes, the odd archaeological find..
With AI, we gained “hydraulic levers for knowledge work”.
What will your “comfy air conditioned cabin” look like in that analogy?
I love programming without having to also type. My days involve watching the computer type code, making zero typos and zero mismatched variable names. When it refactors it keeps the comments updated, making that industry truism that “comments lie” obsolete. In my codebase 100% of the comments are true and up to date.
For $100/mo (Anthropic) I don’t have to code by hand and can focus on whether I’m building what customers want and need.
- ImPostingOnHN 9mo agoWhat happened to the 6 people outside the cabin who used to dig the hole?
- margalabargala 9mo agoWhat happened to all the people who used to nail horseshoes to horse hooves?
- SideQuark 9mo agoThey got higher paying jobs as more of mankind could specialize away from grunt labor. How do you think, despite centuries of jobs being automated, that more people work than ever before, and have quality of life few if any could dream of when large parts of the workforce was employed in backbreaking labor?
- samiv 9mo agoDoes this extend to the ones pushed into the gig economy working 16h a week every day without holidays or sick leaves or anything really. No? Didn't think so really. Even the literal slaves in the 1800 century had housing.
- ImPostingOnHN 9mo agoThe same gig economy that is taking even those jobs away in favor of automation.
- ImPostingOnHN 9mo agoWhich higher-paying jobs were those, which have not and are not presently under the same threat of disappearing? When you replace 7 jobs with 1 job, 6 jobs don't magically appear, much less ones which match the qualifications of those 6 people. How many non-AI companies using AI are increasing headcount as a result, compared to those which don't use AI? Did the Washington Post just hire 33% more people, or did they eliminate 33% of their positions?
- beej71 9mo agoIdeally they get snatched up by a competitor with more vision. You know who processes more volume than one guy with AI? Six guys with AI. I think it'll take the market a minute to relearn this. The only thing that makes me happy about that is the fact that our entire economy just might not implode. But I think we'd be better off without LLMs at all. Oh well. Pandora Box is open and here we are.
- missingdays 9mo ago> making zero typos and zero mismatched variable names. What a low bar for quality
- samiv 9mo agoYour boss just called. They're replacing you with someone cheaper who is also able to prompt for half the price.