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If I'm Gen Z, especially someone who is graduating or just graduated, I'd be very angry at AI too. Even in our own organization, we've almost stopped hiring ju

If I'm Gen Z, especially someone who is graduating or just graduated, I'd be very angry at AI too. Even in our own organization, we've almost stopped hiring juniors and interns completely. We just leverage AI more and more. So I can understand how most Gen Zs feel threatened by AI. There are basically 2 groups who are loving AI: * Seniors who have deep knowledge so AI is just there to help make them accomplish their goals cheaper and faster * Gen Zs who are starting their own businesses and have embraced AI My advice to young people is to embrace AI as fully as you can. Learn to be extremely productive with it. Learn to use it to create businesses. Burying your head in the sand hoping AI will collapse is not going to work in their favor. PS. You can get a pretty good idea of how young people view AI on Reddit. Reddit users tend to be younger, less affluent. Save for a few subs, most of Reddit is very anti-AI. I'd guess most of them wish AI will collapse soon so they can go back to a world where human intelligence matter more.

DaSHacka 7mo ago
Meh, there are still fields AI can't touch, going into those is a much better idea than trying (in vain) to use the Job Replacer 5000 in such a manner that won't eventually leave you without a job. We've always had offshoring too, and the same concerns exist there. The more corporate companies use it, and either eventually get burned and revert back, or just hold on for dear life as they circle the toilet. Curious how these companies will fare when there are no senior-level candidates left to replace the ones that are retiring in a few years. I guess everyone's hoping AI will be good enough to just replace the entire field, as one final "fuck you" to the generations that follow, from the generations that had everything and pulled up the ladder.
- dismalaf 7mo ago
  The fields that "AI can't touch" are shit fields that have already been decimated by globalism and immigration. Like cool, farmers, cooks, baristas, plumbers and manual labourers are safe from AI for now. But most paths to a middle class lifestyle are being closed off...
  - HappyHacker731 7mo ago
    You're right and it's actually even worse than that. If X% of the white collar jobs get replaced by ai that means there are X% more people competing for the "safe" jobs. Over time the "safe" jobs will pay less and less adjusted for inflation because the job displacement is increasing the labor supply making your labor less valuable.
    - georgemcbay 7mo ago
      The "safe" jobs will get squeezed in two ways. Like you said there will be more people trying to do those jobs causing devaluation on the supply side, but at the same time overall demand will drop because there will be less people with comfortable white-collar jobs that make up a lot of the demand for the work those jobs perform.
      - HappyHacker731 7mo ago
        Exactly. I've been thinking about the demand issue for a while now too. It makes me think either the frontier labs are really "move fast and break things" cultists that truly don't care about any second order effects, or they're 100% convinced "asi" will subsume all forms of labor. If you permanently remove a massive chunk of labor from the white collar sector that will cause a massive drop in consumer spending, which will impact company revenue, which will in turn put pressure on their ability to spend on the ai causing the displacement in the first place. Unless they monopolize all labor and cause a paradigm shift in how economies fundamentally work I don't see how they're not just shooting themselves in the foot.
        bluefirebrand 7mo ago
        > It makes me think either the frontier labs are really "move fast and break things" cultists that truly don't care about any second order effects, or they're 100% convinced "asi" will subsume all forms of labor Either one of these shows they are anti social, anti human sociopaths that only care about enriching themselves at the cost of anything else
- PaulHoule 7mo ago
  Well I post a lot of articles about grippers and agricultural robots that almost never get upvoted so if you don't know about these things I blame y'all. I think if you want to change the world robots that can pick strawberries and change bedpans are it. People like to gush about "more Nobel prize research" an such but Nobel prizes are valuable because a limited number are given out, not because the research is valuable in and of itself. (e.g. Kuhn would tell you normal science is "apply for grant - write paper - repeat")
  - antonvs 7mo ago
    Kuhn wouldn't tell you that because that cycle wasn't yet fully dominant when he wrote SSR, although the framework was in place for it.
justonepost2 7mo ago
The "businesses" created are thin wrappers that will get absorbed by the model companies faster than you can come up with them.
- bad_haircut72 7mo ago
  Yeah "start a business with AI" is the new "learn to code". Like what does that even mean, do you just go to Claude "hey what business should I start?" If starting a business was so easy, almost all of us who work salary would go do it. This advice is like, if your local football club gets shut down, just work hard enough to make into Manchester United
  - 9rx 7mo ago
    > If starting a business was so easy, almost all of us who work salary would go do it. Would we? Starting a business is easy. Building a profitable business isn't even that hard. Wanting pleasure in our work is what stops us. Running a business generally isn't much fun. We work salary because it means we can focus on the enjoyable parts of the business, letting someone else deal with the crap.
    - bombcar 7mo ago
      Starting and running a business is an entirely different skillset from "doing the work" - even someone who could easily "be on their own" (think: plumbers, doctors, etc) really often prefer the salaried position where they don't have to think about "the business". It's an older book, but The E-Myth Revisited is worth a read for everyone, a business is not a job. It's related, but it's not the same.
    - thankyoufriend 7mo ago
      > We work salary because it means we can focus on the enjoyable parts of the business, letting someone else deal with the crap. I can understand why a specialist would feel this way. Personally, I believe that most people who work salary do it because of the job security and the health insurance.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
throwaway290 7mo ago
> My advice to young people is to embrace AI as fully as you can It's game theory. If you betray ASAP you get to monetize others who hold out. It works until you yourself get ousted the same way. So the most enthusiastic people are old enough that they leverage their status and won't face the consequences in their lifetime OR young enough that they don't understand the proposition, have nothing to lose and when they look around and see everybody doing it they have no other choice except to do the same If everybody took a stance against corps stealing our work and reselling it to us then we would 100% prevail but what are principles against personal profit... "we need to work more and help train the llms of superrich to make the same money" became the new "we will have more free time and more money thanks to AI" but everybody is too busy trying to outrace the next guy so no one noticed.
parliament32 7mo ago
How could your "business" ever make money if any idiot with a $20 CC subscription can recreate it in a weekend? And no, "I can prompt better than them" is not a differentiator.
- daemonologist 7mo ago
  The idea is the opposite - "nobody" can make money selling software anymore, because software can be cheaply created by an LLM, so you want to start a business that previously would have had to buy software/software engineers in order to support some other product. However, even if that holds true (which is a big if - right now I wouldn't want to run a business backed by vibe software), and even if there are enough such business ideas to go around, there's going to be quite a lot of turmoil in the meantime.
  - RealityVoid 7mo ago
    I don't think that's true. SW that works is still expensive to produce. SW that kind of works is super easy to do. The money is in making SW that works. You still need expertise for that.
  - parliament32 7mo ago
    There's a fallacy here around how software is fungible. WordPress hasn't made web developers obsolete, despite everybody having access to a $5/mo WYSIWYG-and-domains-and-hosting-bundle environment; quite the opposite, in fact. I'm seeing the parent's point along these lines: "me and all my friends are starting businesses being the middlemen between WordPress and (people who want websites)". It's not that it won't work, it's just a shit business model.
- Herring 7mo ago
  Gyms still make money even though you can stay quite fit with just a good set of adjustable dumbbells, a bench, and a jump rope.
  - parliament32 7mo ago
everdrive 7mo ago
> My advice to young people is to embrace AI as fully as you can How will this help them? If LLMs are going to replace workers and reduce the number of available jobs, how will fully embracing an LLM help an individual? To it seems the most it could do is put them ahead of people who won't embrace LLMs ... but if everyone took this advice then the advice would certainly do nothing.
- bogzz 7mo ago
  Conversely, it's possible that honing your actual skills by minimizing reliance on LLMs could become a very valuable trait in the coming future. But in that case, you'd be burning fewer tokens and you wouldn't be contributing to LLM company userbase growth which is a bad thing to do.
kylehotchkiss 7mo ago
Local models are going to be pretty useful by the time the current companies have to face their finances. The cost of entry will be higher end hardware though.

DaSHacka 7mo ago

Meh, there are still fields AI can't touch, going into those is a much better idea than trying (in vain) to use the Job Replacer 5000 in such a manner that won't eventually leave you without a job. We've always had offshoring too, and the same concerns exist there. The more corporate companies use it, and either eventually get burned and revert back, or just hold on for dear life as they circle the toilet. Curious how these companies will fare when there are no senior-level candidates left to replace the ones that are retiring in a few years. I guess everyone's hoping AI will be good enough to just replace the entire field, as one final "fuck you" to the generations that follow, from the generations that had everything and pulled up the ladder.

dismalaf 7mo ago
The fields that "AI can't touch" are shit fields that have already been decimated by globalism and immigration. Like cool, farmers, cooks, baristas, plumbers and manual labourers are safe from AI for now. But most paths to a middle class lifestyle are being closed off...
- HappyHacker731 7mo ago
  You're right and it's actually even worse than that. If X% of the white collar jobs get replaced by ai that means there are X% more people competing for the "safe" jobs. Over time the "safe" jobs will pay less and less adjusted for inflation because the job displacement is increasing the labor supply making your labor less valuable.
  - georgemcbay 7mo ago
    The "safe" jobs will get squeezed in two ways. Like you said there will be more people trying to do those jobs causing devaluation on the supply side, but at the same time overall demand will drop because there will be less people with comfortable white-collar jobs that make up a lot of the demand for the work those jobs perform.
    - HappyHacker731 7mo ago
      Exactly. I've been thinking about the demand issue for a while now too. It makes me think either the frontier labs are really "move fast and break things" cultists that truly don't care about any second order effects, or they're 100% convinced "asi" will subsume all forms of labor. If you permanently remove a massive chunk of labor from the white collar sector that will cause a massive drop in consumer spending, which will impact company revenue, which will in turn put pressure on their ability to spend on the ai causing the displacement in the first place. Unless they monopolize all labor and cause a paradigm shift in how economies fundamentally work I don't see how they're not just shooting themselves in the foot.
      - bluefirebrand 7mo ago
        > It makes me think either the frontier labs are really "move fast and break things" cultists that truly don't care about any second order effects, or they're 100% convinced "asi" will subsume all forms of labor Either one of these shows they are anti social, anti human sociopaths that only care about enriching themselves at the cost of anything else
PaulHoule 7mo ago
Well I post a lot of articles about grippers and agricultural robots that almost never get upvoted so if you don't know about these things I blame y'all. I think if you want to change the world robots that can pick strawberries and change bedpans are it. People like to gush about "more Nobel prize research" an such but Nobel prizes are valuable because a limited number are given out, not because the research is valuable in and of itself. (e.g. Kuhn would tell you normal science is "apply for grant - write paper - repeat")
- antonvs 7mo ago
  Kuhn wouldn't tell you that because that cycle wasn't yet fully dominant when he wrote SSR, although the framework was in place for it.

justonepost2 7mo ago

The "businesses" created are thin wrappers that will get absorbed by the model companies faster than you can come up with them.

bad_haircut72 7mo ago
Yeah "start a business with AI" is the new "learn to code". Like what does that even mean, do you just go to Claude "hey what business should I start?" If starting a business was so easy, almost all of us who work salary would go do it. This advice is like, if your local football club gets shut down, just work hard enough to make into Manchester United
- 9rx 7mo ago
  > If starting a business was so easy, almost all of us who work salary would go do it. Would we? Starting a business is easy. Building a profitable business isn't even that hard. Wanting pleasure in our work is what stops us. Running a business generally isn't much fun. We work salary because it means we can focus on the enjoyable parts of the business, letting someone else deal with the crap.
  - bombcar 7mo ago
    Starting and running a business is an entirely different skillset from "doing the work" - even someone who could easily "be on their own" (think: plumbers, doctors, etc) really often prefer the salaried position where they don't have to think about "the business". It's an older book, but The E-Myth Revisited is worth a read for everyone, a business is not a job. It's related, but it's not the same.
  - thankyoufriend 7mo ago
    > We work salary because it means we can focus on the enjoyable parts of the business, letting someone else deal with the crap. I can understand why a specialist would feel this way. Personally, I believe that most people who work salary do it because of the job security and the health insurance.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

throwaway290 7mo ago

> My advice to young people is to embrace AI as fully as you can It's game theory. If you betray ASAP you get to monetize others who hold out. It works until you yourself get ousted the same way. So the most enthusiastic people are old enough that they leverage their status and won't face the consequences in their lifetime OR young enough that they don't understand the proposition, have nothing to lose and when they look around and see everybody doing it they have no other choice except to do the same If everybody took a stance against corps stealing our work and reselling it to us then we would 100% prevail but what are principles against personal profit... "we need to work more and help train the llms of superrich to make the same money" became the new "we will have more free time and more money thanks to AI" but everybody is too busy trying to outrace the next guy so no one noticed.

parliament32 7mo ago

How could your "business" ever make money if any idiot with a $20 CC subscription can recreate it in a weekend? And no, "I can prompt better than them" is not a differentiator.

daemonologist 7mo ago
The idea is the opposite - "nobody" can make money selling software anymore, because software can be cheaply created by an LLM, so you want to start a business that previously would have had to buy software/software engineers in order to support some other product. However, even if that holds true (which is a big if - right now I wouldn't want to run a business backed by vibe software), and even if there are enough such business ideas to go around, there's going to be quite a lot of turmoil in the meantime.
- RealityVoid 7mo ago
  I don't think that's true. SW that works is still expensive to produce. SW that kind of works is super easy to do. The money is in making SW that works. You still need expertise for that.
- parliament32 7mo ago
  There's a fallacy here around how software is fungible. WordPress hasn't made web developers obsolete, despite everybody having access to a $5/mo WYSIWYG-and-domains-and-hosting-bundle environment; quite the opposite, in fact. I'm seeing the parent's point along these lines: "me and all my friends are starting businesses being the middlemen between WordPress and (people who want websites)". It's not that it won't work, it's just a shit business model.
Herring 7mo ago
Gyms still make money even though you can stay quite fit with just a good set of adjustable dumbbells, a bench, and a jump rope.
- parliament32 7mo ago

everdrive 7mo ago

> My advice to young people is to embrace AI as fully as you can How will this help them? If LLMs are going to replace workers and reduce the number of available jobs, how will fully embracing an LLM help an individual? To it seems the most it could do is put them ahead of people who won't embrace LLMs ... but if everyone took this advice then the advice would certainly do nothing.

bogzz 7mo ago
Conversely, it's possible that honing your actual skills by minimizing reliance on LLMs could become a very valuable trait in the coming future. But in that case, you'd be burning fewer tokens and you wouldn't be contributing to LLM company userbase growth which is a bad thing to do.

kylehotchkiss 7mo ago

Local models are going to be pretty useful by the time the current companies have to face their finances. The cost of entry will be higher end hardware though.