4 ms·
No job is forever. Tomorrow isn’t promised, and automation already did this—albeit more slowly—throughout the second half of the 20th century. Some people watch
by mrdootdoot 1mo ago
No job is forever. Tomorrow isn’t promised, and automation already did this—albeit more slowly—throughout the second half of the 20th century. Some people watched their jobs disappear and accepted that they’d become obsolete. Plenty of others pivoted.
The counterargument today is that we can pivot much faster. I’m typing this on a $2,000 Mac that can run Blender, render scenes, write code, edit video, and access tools that would have required a studio or a room full of specialized hardware not that long ago.
GenAI is empowering people to do things they simply could not do before. It’s here. The interesting question is: what are you going to do with it?
I think movie production may be approaching its YouTube moment. If the barriers to making something collapse, then make something worth watching. I’d rather see a small team with an actual idea than another $300 million spider man multiverse hot garbage sequel or guardians of the slop 600 assembled by committee, approved by a board after a slide deck, and polished into expensive slop.
- jasonjayr 1mo agoThe really interesting question is: What are we going to do when a technology so quickly and thoroughly displaces the need for human labor, in a society that constantly demands you trade your labor for the right to exist and participate in society?
- qsera 1mo agoI said in another comment. It is not the labor that is being destroyed. It is the destruction of art, of good taste, originality, beauty etc etc. Everything that humans derive joy from, that is being replaced by repetitions of past self. It is the revenge of the LCD of humanity. It will win, and will go insane shortly due lack of real happiness...It is not something that LLMs started or enabled, it is just a catalyst. Much like internet, but a lot worse...
- mrdootdoot 1mo agoIf you patronize all these garbage movie studios and multimedia companies by all means - taste disappears. But if you've used meshy, sora and enough coding models you see the mediocrity is laughable - nobody will consume it. Any media that is worth watching still has a human with plenty of irreplaceable talent.
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- mrdootdoot 1mo agoI think capital will always be looking for better returns, and as long as human beings can add marginal value somewhere in that equation, there will be demand for human labor. Working in tech has taught me to stay vigilant. I've seen the cycles and seen people survive each one. Perhaps that's why I feel better prepared for this. Anyone whose job primarily consists of manipulating bits should probably assume that significant parts of it are going to be automated. Where I disagree is the assumption that we're approaching some kind of escape velocity where automation eliminates useful human labor faster than people can adapt. People need to eat, firms want to make money, and both create enormous pressure to find the next place where human effort has value. That doesn't mean the transition will be painless, or that everyone displaced will successfully pivot. But there's a very large leap between "AI destroys a lot of existing jobs" and "human labor no longer has economic value." I don't think we've demonstrated the latter.
- Gud 1mo agoPerhaps, but the value of labour has been declining for along time, while the markets are booming. Probably some wunderkind, well financed by his capital rich parents, can "make it". For the people tightening nuts and bolts and wiping floors, life will be lacklustre.