3 ms·

In my mind, AI is making a lot of engineers, including Carmack, seem fairly thoughtless. At the other moments in recent history where technology has displaced w

In my mind, AI is making a lot of engineers, including Carmack, seem fairly thoughtless. At the other moments in recent history where technology has displaced workers, labor has either had to fight some very bloody battles or had stronger labor organization. Tech workers are highly atomized now, and if you have to work to live, you're negotiating on your own. It seems like Carmack, like a lot of tech people, have forgotten to ask the question: who stands to benefit if we devalue the US services economy broadly? Who stands to lose? It seems like a lot of these people are assuming AI will be a universal good. It is easy to feel that way when you are independently wealthy and won't feel the fallout. Even a small % of layoffs of the US white collar work force will crash the economy, as our economy is extremely levered. This is what happened in 2008: like 7% of mortgages failed, and this caused a cascade of failures we are still feeling today.

nomel 7mo ago
> in recent history where technology has displaced workers, labor has either had to fight some very bloody battles or had stronger labor organization what examples are you thinking of?
- _doctor_love 7mo ago
  Most of 19th and early-20th century history, which is very much recent history. Look up: - The Haymarket Affair - The Homestead Strike - The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire - The Ludlow Massacre - The Battle of Blair Mountain You could also simply have taken the quote you were responding to and run it through a few LLMs to acquire those examples.
  - _doctor_love 7mo ago
    lol this got downvoted - sorry that I studied history!
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
    - nomel 7mo ago
      > You could also simply have taken the quote you were responding to and run it through a few LLMs to acquire those examples. Wasn't me, but probably because this was unnecessary and rude. An example, or a link, when a claim is made, is always nice, turns a hollow claim into something informative. Better signal to noise is nice.
      - _doctor_love 7mo ago
        That’s funny. I find it pretty rude to ask a question on a fairly well-documented historical topic that you could also very easily have found out with a simple Google search. Back in the day, we used to reply to people, “Let me Google that for you,” when someone asked such a low-effort question. Your original reply strongly indicated that you were skeptical and questioning the user’s claim. There is a very large body of historical research documenting all of these things.
        gnabgib 7mo ago
        nomel couldn't have downvoted you (HN constraint), stop the attack. LMGTFY has a terrible rep on HN (I'd link a search, but you can easily find).
        _doctor_love 7mo ago
        I think my definition and your definition of what constitutes an attack are fairly different. I’m offering feedback, not an attack.
        YeGoblynQueenne 7mo ago
        This is a conversation forum, so it's natural for people to ask questions of each other. Sure, we could, in principle, ask Google, or ChatGPT for everything, but then why have an online conversation at all?
ryandvm 7mo ago
I guess 25 years of "unions are for under-performers" is finally going to bite us in the ass.
SlinkyOnStairs 7mo ago
> Even a small % of layoffs of the US white collar work force will crash the economy, as our economy is extremely levered. A major economic crash as the only consequence would be the good ending. The real societal risk here is that software development is not just a field of primarily white men, it was one of the last few jobs that could reliably get one homeownership & an (upper) middle class life. And the current US government is not, shall we say, the most liberal. There is a substantial risk that when forced with the financial destitution of being unemployed while your field is dying, people will radicalize. It takes a good amount of moral integrity to be homeless under a bridge and still oppose the gestapo deporting the foreigners who have jobs you'd be qualified for. And once the deportations begin, I doubt they'll stop with only the H1Bs. The Trump admin's not exactly been subtle about their desire to undo naturalizations and even birthright citizenship.
- SirensOfTitan 7mo ago
  I totally agree. I've written about this topic a lot on this site, probably most recently here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47115597 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47115597 The US is built on-top of a high value service economy. And what we're doing is allowing a couple companies to come in, devalue US service labor, and capture a small fraction of the prior value for themselves on top of models trained on copyrighted material without permission. Of course, to your point: things can get a lot worse than that. I honestly don't think a lot of executives even know how much they're shooting themselves in the foot because they seem unable to think beyond the first order. I also see a lot of top 1% famous or semi-famous engineers totally ignoring the economic realities of this tech, people like: Carmack, Simon Willison, Mitchell Hashimoto, Steve Yegg, Salvatore Sanfilippo and others. They are blind to the suffering these technologies could cause even in the event it is temporary. Sure, it's fun, but weekend projects are irrelevant when people cannot put food on the table. It's been really something to watch them and a lot of my friends from FAANG totally ignore this side. It is why identity matters when people make arguments. I also think I'm insulated partially from the likely initial waves of fallout here by nature of a lucky and successful career. I would love it if the influential engineers I mentioned above stopped acting like high modernists and started taking the social consequences of this technology seriously. They could change a lot more minds than I could. And they could ensure through that advocacy for labor that we see the happiest ending with respect to rolling out LLMs. Unfortunately I don't really believe labor has much teeth anymore, and tech will wake up too late to do anything about it.
nitwit005 7mo ago
I'm not aware of any labor efforts that have successfully fought automation long term. There's been plenty of temporary victories, but even the unions often acknowledge it's temporary.
- markus_zhang 7mo ago
  The point is not to fight automation. The point is to fight for a better distribution model. Well you are still right though. There were only temporary wins.
skybrian 7mo ago
Software engineers have been automating away workers' jobs from the beginning. "Computer" was once a job title. There were armies of switchboard operators at the phone company. Companies had typing pools, mail clerks, and file clerks. We write shell scripts and development tools to automate our own jobs.
- sph 7mo ago
  Most of us got into engineering for the means (programming computers) rather than the ends (automating away jobs). I guess the people that have been rejoicing from the AI revolution are of the latter type.
  - esperent 7mo ago
    Or maybe they find the idea of computers that can think just as exciting as you found programming at the start of your career?
    - sph 7mo ago
      I never found the idea of a thinking computer exciting, just as I don’t find the idea of a thinking screwdriver exciting. These days I see the ultimate goal to create a super-intelligence to be blasphemous, if not existentially dangerous and I am afraid by how nonchalant everybody is about it. I quite enjoy a reality where humans and biological life are in control of their destiny, but it’s apparently become a taboo opinion around these parts.
      - esperent 7mo ago
        Good for you. But other people are allowed to find things exciting that you don't. Personally I'd find the idea of thinking screwdriver... Well, weird. But definitely amazing and exciting.
        tpoacher 7mo ago
        A thinking screwdriver: "You know what ... screw this."
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
poopbutt22 7mo ago
> the US is built on a high value service economy The purist forms of capitalism I’ve seen are places with low prices, a large working class, practical marketing, and high competition - often they’re considered “3rd world” places. The US economy, if it wants to remain “1st world” must have high prices. It has to contain an element of scarcity (however faux) in order to be sold at a premium, or be able to impart some privileged (institutional) knowledge as a firm - which should be as esoteric as it is scarce. It can’t be quality alone since all building and manufacturing is effectively outsourced. It has to have a premium brand recognition or monopolistic aspects to it that necessitate a high price. So the challenge for the first world, during the rise of China (Mexico, etc.), is to find new ways to justify the privileged position using this new technology as a lever to do so.

nomel 7mo ago

> in recent history where technology has displaced workers, labor has either had to fight some very bloody battles or had stronger labor organization what examples are you thinking of?

_doctor_love 7mo ago
Most of 19th and early-20th century history, which is very much recent history. Look up: - The Haymarket Affair - The Homestead Strike - The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire - The Ludlow Massacre - The Battle of Blair Mountain You could also simply have taken the quote you were responding to and run it through a few LLMs to acquire those examples.
- _doctor_love 7mo ago
  lol this got downvoted - sorry that I studied history!
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - nomel 7mo ago
    > You could also simply have taken the quote you were responding to and run it through a few LLMs to acquire those examples. Wasn't me, but probably because this was unnecessary and rude. An example, or a link, when a claim is made, is always nice, turns a hollow claim into something informative. Better signal to noise is nice.
    - _doctor_love 7mo ago
      That’s funny. I find it pretty rude to ask a question on a fairly well-documented historical topic that you could also very easily have found out with a simple Google search. Back in the day, we used to reply to people, “Let me Google that for you,” when someone asked such a low-effort question. Your original reply strongly indicated that you were skeptical and questioning the user’s claim. There is a very large body of historical research documenting all of these things.
      - gnabgib 7mo ago
        nomel couldn't have downvoted you (HN constraint), stop the attack. LMGTFY has a terrible rep on HN (I'd link a search, but you can easily find).
        _doctor_love 7mo ago
        I think my definition and your definition of what constitutes an attack are fairly different. I’m offering feedback, not an attack.
      - YeGoblynQueenne 7mo ago
        This is a conversation forum, so it's natural for people to ask questions of each other. Sure, we could, in principle, ask Google, or ChatGPT for everything, but then why have an online conversation at all?

ryandvm 7mo ago

I guess 25 years of "unions are for under-performers" is finally going to bite us in the ass.

SlinkyOnStairs 7mo ago

> Even a small % of layoffs of the US white collar work force will crash the economy, as our economy is extremely levered. A major economic crash as the only consequence would be the good ending. The real societal risk here is that software development is not just a field of primarily white men, it was one of the last few jobs that could reliably get one homeownership & an (upper) middle class life. And the current US government is not, shall we say, the most liberal. There is a substantial risk that when forced with the financial destitution of being unemployed while your field is dying, people will radicalize. It takes a good amount of moral integrity to be homeless under a bridge and still oppose the gestapo deporting the foreigners who have jobs you'd be qualified for. And once the deportations begin, I doubt they'll stop with only the H1Bs. The Trump admin's not exactly been subtle about their desire to undo naturalizations and even birthright citizenship.

SirensOfTitan 7mo ago
I totally agree. I've written about this topic a lot on this site, probably most recently here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47115597 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47115597 The US is built on-top of a high value service economy. And what we're doing is allowing a couple companies to come in, devalue US service labor, and capture a small fraction of the prior value for themselves on top of models trained on copyrighted material without permission. Of course, to your point: things can get a lot worse than that. I honestly don't think a lot of executives even know how much they're shooting themselves in the foot because they seem unable to think beyond the first order. I also see a lot of top 1% famous or semi-famous engineers totally ignoring the economic realities of this tech, people like: Carmack, Simon Willison, Mitchell Hashimoto, Steve Yegg, Salvatore Sanfilippo and others. They are blind to the suffering these technologies could cause even in the event it is temporary. Sure, it's fun, but weekend projects are irrelevant when people cannot put food on the table. It's been really something to watch them and a lot of my friends from FAANG totally ignore this side. It is why identity matters when people make arguments. I also think I'm insulated partially from the likely initial waves of fallout here by nature of a lucky and successful career. I would love it if the influential engineers I mentioned above stopped acting like high modernists and started taking the social consequences of this technology seriously. They could change a lot more minds than I could. And they could ensure through that advocacy for labor that we see the happiest ending with respect to rolling out LLMs. Unfortunately I don't really believe labor has much teeth anymore, and tech will wake up too late to do anything about it.

nitwit005 7mo ago

I'm not aware of any labor efforts that have successfully fought automation long term. There's been plenty of temporary victories, but even the unions often acknowledge it's temporary.

markus_zhang 7mo ago
The point is not to fight automation. The point is to fight for a better distribution model. Well you are still right though. There were only temporary wins.

skybrian 7mo ago

Software engineers have been automating away workers' jobs from the beginning. "Computer" was once a job title. There were armies of switchboard operators at the phone company. Companies had typing pools, mail clerks, and file clerks. We write shell scripts and development tools to automate our own jobs.

sph 7mo ago
Most of us got into engineering for the means (programming computers) rather than the ends (automating away jobs). I guess the people that have been rejoicing from the AI revolution are of the latter type.
- esperent 7mo ago
  Or maybe they find the idea of computers that can think just as exciting as you found programming at the start of your career?
  - sph 7mo ago
    I never found the idea of a thinking computer exciting, just as I don’t find the idea of a thinking screwdriver exciting. These days I see the ultimate goal to create a super-intelligence to be blasphemous, if not existentially dangerous and I am afraid by how nonchalant everybody is about it. I quite enjoy a reality where humans and biological life are in control of their destiny, but it’s apparently become a taboo opinion around these parts.
    - esperent 7mo ago
      Good for you. But other people are allowed to find things exciting that you don't. Personally I'd find the idea of thinking screwdriver... Well, weird. But definitely amazing and exciting.
      - tpoacher 7mo ago
        A thinking screwdriver: "You know what ... screw this."

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

poopbutt22 7mo ago

> the US is built on a high value service economy The purist forms of capitalism I’ve seen are places with low prices, a large working class, practical marketing, and high competition - often they’re considered “3rd world” places. The US economy, if it wants to remain “1st world” must have high prices. It has to contain an element of scarcity (however faux) in order to be sold at a premium, or be able to impart some privileged (institutional) knowledge as a firm - which should be as esoteric as it is scarce. It can’t be quality alone since all building and manufacturing is effectively outsourced. It has to have a premium brand recognition or monopolistic aspects to it that necessitate a high price. So the challenge for the first world, during the rise of China (Mexico, etc.), is to find new ways to justify the privileged position using this new technology as a lever to do so.