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When did I say anything like “it will free me up from so much labor!”? This is not even remotely close to what I believe. You are responding to a caricature of

by johnfn 3mo ago

When did I say anything like “it will free me up from so much labor!”? This is not even remotely close to what I believe. You are responding to a caricature of me you have in your head.

stouset 3mo ago
> I can ask AI to do something and it can… work on it for an hour, and basically do what I want Again, you are excited about the future of a technology that is rapidly making you obsolete. It is not going to go how you think it is going to go.
- johnfn 3mo ago
  To unpack your point a little bit: what does it mean for "me" to be obsolete? Let's take that at face value and engage with it. I consider myself to be a decent SWE, maybe top 5% or so. There are somewhere around 40M SWEs in the world. If I am obsolete, that means AI is doing the work of ~38M people. I don't exactly understand what you mean by obsolete. In this future where AI is doing the work of 38M people, is anyone watching over the AI? How many people? Does it scale with the 40M figure, and if so, does it scale roughly O(n) or O(1)? I think you basically have to accept there will be one of two options -- either it scales at something like O(n), in which case you have some number of highly skilled professional which can use AI to do the work of 100x of a SWE today (that would be a pretty cool job). Or it scales with something like O(1). I think in the second world the only logical conclusion is that AI is so incredibly capable that the world is profoundly and utterly transformed. If AI can do the work of any SWE without oversight, it can basically do anything -- which would mean that any need you have could be satisfied. If you are hungry, food could be grown. If you are thirsty, water could be procured. Or you would need to propose some crazy future where AGI is achieved but for some reason trivial things like this can't be solved. I think the thing that makes me the most nervous is some enemy actor going rogue with AI and killing us all, but somehow we've lived for decades with enemy actors having access to nuclear and bioweapons and somehow we are all still here.
  - stouset 3mo ago
    "There are somewhere around 21 million horses in the United States of America. If I'm made obsolete, that means the automobile is doing the work of 21 million horses. I don't understand what you mean by obsolete." I don't know how to make it any clearer that you are the horse in this analogy. Hoping that you're one of the 5% of horses that gets kept around for racing, dressage, or farm labor when the other 95% of carriage horses are put out to pasture does not make this future any less bleak if you're a horse. If you don’t understand that decimating demand for your profession (and knowledge workers in general) overnight will do the same to wages, you are in for a rude awakening. That you think AI doing the work of any SWE means that "any need you have could be satisfied" is fantasy. Not only are most of the things people want not the result of software engineering, but the notion that the billionaire owners of AIs intend to use them to fully provide for the wants and needs of the masses of humans who have suddenly been rendered economically useless is absolutely wild. For perhaps a more salient example, take a look at what happened to laborers during the industrial revolution. Wages collapsed by 60–80% over four decades. It took something over eighty years (and that's considered a lowball estimate) for things to recover. By all indications AI will be even more disruptive, particularly since it is disrupting high-income professions. Notably, artisans whose jobs evaporated were not suddenly awash in a sea of abundance, as you seem to anticipate.
    - johnfn 3mo ago
      Your view of a post-AI world admits both a fantastical, amazing AI that can do work so well it puts all knowledge workers out of a job for a century, but also a crippled and limited AI that is incapable of solving even our most basic needs. It can't be both ways. It will either be bad enough that most of us will still have jobs, or good enough that most of our needs will be solved.
      - stouset 3mo ago
        Why on earth do you think that AI is going to be set to work solving your needs, when you serve no further economic purpose? AI will certainly be used to enrich the lives of a select few. It’s great to be in that group, assuming you don’t give a shit about the people who aren’t.

by johnfn 3mo ago

When did I say anything like “it will free me up from so much labor!”? This is not even remotely close to what I believe. You are responding to a caricature of me you have in your head.

stouset 3mo ago

> I can ask AI to do something and it can… work on it for an hour, and basically do what I want Again, you are excited about the future of a technology that is rapidly making you obsolete. It is not going to go how you think it is going to go.

johnfn 3mo ago
To unpack your point a little bit: what does it mean for "me" to be obsolete? Let's take that at face value and engage with it. I consider myself to be a decent SWE, maybe top 5% or so. There are somewhere around 40M SWEs in the world. If I am obsolete, that means AI is doing the work of ~38M people. I don't exactly understand what you mean by obsolete. In this future where AI is doing the work of 38M people, is anyone watching over the AI? How many people? Does it scale with the 40M figure, and if so, does it scale roughly O(n) or O(1)? I think you basically have to accept there will be one of two options -- either it scales at something like O(n), in which case you have some number of highly skilled professional which can use AI to do the work of 100x of a SWE today (that would be a pretty cool job). Or it scales with something like O(1). I think in the second world the only logical conclusion is that AI is so incredibly capable that the world is profoundly and utterly transformed. If AI can do the work of any SWE without oversight, it can basically do anything -- which would mean that any need you have could be satisfied. If you are hungry, food could be grown. If you are thirsty, water could be procured. Or you would need to propose some crazy future where AGI is achieved but for some reason trivial things like this can't be solved. I think the thing that makes me the most nervous is some enemy actor going rogue with AI and killing us all, but somehow we've lived for decades with enemy actors having access to nuclear and bioweapons and somehow we are all still here.
- stouset 3mo ago
  "There are somewhere around 21 million horses in the United States of America. If I'm made obsolete, that means the automobile is doing the work of 21 million horses. I don't understand what you mean by obsolete." I don't know how to make it any clearer that you are the horse in this analogy. Hoping that you're one of the 5% of horses that gets kept around for racing, dressage, or farm labor when the other 95% of carriage horses are put out to pasture does not make this future any less bleak if you're a horse. If you don’t understand that decimating demand for your profession (and knowledge workers in general) overnight will do the same to wages, you are in for a rude awakening. That you think AI doing the work of any SWE means that "any need you have could be satisfied" is fantasy. Not only are most of the things people want not the result of software engineering, but the notion that the billionaire owners of AIs intend to use them to fully provide for the wants and needs of the masses of humans who have suddenly been rendered economically useless is absolutely wild. For perhaps a more salient example, take a look at what happened to laborers during the industrial revolution. Wages collapsed by 60–80% over four decades. It took something over eighty years (and that's considered a lowball estimate) for things to recover. By all indications AI will be even more disruptive, particularly since it is disrupting high-income professions. Notably, artisans whose jobs evaporated were not suddenly awash in a sea of abundance, as you seem to anticipate.
  - johnfn 3mo ago
    Your view of a post-AI world admits both a fantastical, amazing AI that can do work so well it puts all knowledge workers out of a job for a century, but also a crippled and limited AI that is incapable of solving even our most basic needs. It can't be both ways. It will either be bad enough that most of us will still have jobs, or good enough that most of our needs will be solved.
    - stouset 3mo ago
      Why on earth do you think that AI is going to be set to work solving your needs, when you serve no further economic purpose? AI will certainly be used to enrich the lives of a select few. It’s great to be in that group, assuming you don’t give a shit about the people who aren’t.