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> Freystaetter and Gottlieb both say that instead of their own generation, they are more worried about Gen Alpha and other young people that come after them, wh
by anianz 6mo ago
> Freystaetter and Gottlieb both say that instead of their own generation, they are more worried about Gen Alpha and other young people that come after them, who lose their chance to develop healthy relationships with technologies when they become mandatory and ubiquitous.
I remember similar concerns from Millennials about Gen-Z with the Internet and social media. In the end the Internet and Social Media Gen-Z grew up with was quite different from the one Gen-Y was worried about and the reaction of the new generation to it of course not uniform. Similar developments might happen with Gen Alpha and AI, which seems even more polarizing to me.
- isoprophlex 6mo agoI have three (gen A) kids, of which two are of the age to have opinions on this. They tell me I don't have a real job because I just tell the computer what to do, and I don't do the thing myself (to which I can't help but respond that they're absolutely right). If I try to spin them a bullshit story, they tell me how can that be true and maybe I got brainwashed by AI. Also they hate ads with a passion. If anything, I'm incredibly hopeful for newer generations. They'll probably mostly be fine, like most of us were. --- Edit: many responses, and I'll add that in isolation "x is not real work" coming from a kid is maybe equally endearing as it is divisive. I'll add that of course my kids are a product of their upbringing, and I make no secret of my existential confusion about what it is to program a computer when most of the time i'm just steering the clanker away from obviously dumb mistakes. My wife is a psychologist working with underprivileged kids, so we always joke that she has the real job and I'm just doing a hobby that pays well. Much of this is them simply parroting that, maybe. We do try to teach them to think beyond dogma and the cultural bias they grow up in, but who can tell. Everyone is in the end to a great extent a product of their environments, and parents. Finally. They (their generation) will probably be fine, but they might equally well not be. Vapes, tiktok, souped up ebikes, sexting, designer drugs, climate change, refugees, extremism. So many challenges, but you could argue every generation had that. So i choose not to have too much of an opinion and try to stick with gleeful, desperate optimism.
- burnte 6mo ago> They tell me I don't have a real job because I just tell the computer what to do, and I don't do the thing myself (to which I can't help but respond that they're absolutely right). For most of computing history this has been the case, too!
- glhaynes 6mo agoCan't be doing rEaL woRk unless you're flipping front panel switches to input machine code instructions.
- lesuorac 6mo agoI mean what is real work anyways? Like take finance where people just email broken spreadsheets around all day. If they stop doing that then farmers can't get loans to buy crops which means crops don't get planted and so on-so-forth. Certainly emailing spreadsheets doesn't seem very "real" but there's actual value in providing liquidity it's just not physically demanding. On the flip side, professional sports is very physically demanding but can you really call what kids do for fun "real work"?
- ryanmcbride 6mo agoFrom the perspective of these kids real work probably involves working with your hands. I don't think we need to get too upset over what people who have yet to enter the workforce have to say about "real work". They need to be employed for a few years before they learn the lesson that almost ALL work is fake work.
- bombcar 6mo agoMy definition of real work is - can I point at something and be proud of it? It might not even be something physical (but often is) and my involvement may not be obvious (say, managing the spreadsheets for a building project), but there it is, the thing I worked on.