[hectorlorenzo]

I'm still organising my thoughts on the subject so please feel free to push back.

This ongoing discussion feels classist. I've never seen such strong emotions about AI (and automation) taking blue-collar jobs, some shrugs at most. It's considered an unavoidable given, even though it has been happening for decades. The only difference now is that AI is threatening middle-upper class jobs, which nobody saw coming.

I do not see the difference between both. Can somebody that does explain to me why now is "critical" and not so much before?

[zjp]

I have to wonder whether there's a relationship between the stage you're at in your career and your level of panic over AI. There's a lot of hope among students that a job in the technology sector will pull a person into the middle class -- and with significantly less weird antiquated institutional classism than in other lines of work like law.

Personally, I'm new in my career, and I'd like to not have the rug pulled out from under me. If I were a student again, I would have to consider whether the university debt was going to be worth it in the long term or if I should look at a more traditional field to be in.

[ccanassa]

My job as a dev is literary to automate human work.

My first job was to write C code for industrial machines that replaced humans doing manual work. Sometimes I even had to go watch them work so I could fully understand what they were doing.

In my second job as a developer, I wrote a Django application that automated away a whole department in the company. I saw 100 people getting fired due to a script that I wrote.

That was all happening in the third world country were I came from. These were real people getting fired, with families that depend on them. Most of them were already in poverty even before being fired.

These artists complaining sound like a very 1st world problem to me. I doubt that anyone actually "lost a job" because of this technology so far.

[automatoney]

It probably has to do with the desirability of the replaced jobs. There's definitely an element of classism, but also people /really/ want to be artists and make a living doing that specific thing. There's the "starving artist" who will take little pay just as long as they can do art, but I don't think we have a similar idea for lots of blue collar work. How much do factory workers have passion for their work, vs it being the best paying option for them? Not to say there aren't any, but there's for sure a desirability difference.

Also I'm not sure most artist jobs are middle-upper class.

[hectorlorenzo]

That is true: that's why certain industries endure more mistreatment than others (acting, fashion, design in general). Passion can be a pain in the ass when it gets in the way of just making a living.

However, these are individual reactions, not behaviours as a community/society. If you read comments around HN or some other liberal circles, you have the feeling that is our human-ness is being threatened, one of our core defining traits. It seems like "artistic creativity" is being enshrined as a circular argument (also I'm wary of calling startup-landing-page illustrators "artists" – more like craftpeople, although this distinction might hurt the conversation).

My broader point is that ChatGPT is not "the beginning of the end", but another chapter in a history of automation and replacement that will pose serious challenges for humankind. That treating it as more critical than factory automation is demeaning to blue-collar workers and also untrue. Everything we do is what defines us as people: cherry-picking some skills is a relic from Enlightenment we should get rid of.

> Also I'm not sure most artist jobs are middle-upper class.

I do not have any data at hand, only my circle of friends and former colleagues (I was formerly a graphic designer). Few people endure being a "starving artist" without a little financial safety coming from above. Also, it is a profession that only provides status to a certain socio-economic milieu.

[pram]

You never heard of the Luddites?

[hectorlorenzo]

Yes I have, care to explain?