[keenmaster]

You have so much time to figure things out. The average person in this thread is probably 1.5-2x your age. I wouldn’t stress too much. AI is an amazing tool. Just use it to make hay while the sun shines, and if it puts you out of work and automates away all other alternatives, then you’ll be witnessing the greatest economic shift in human history. Productivity will become easier than ever, before it becomes automatic and boundless. I’m not cynical enough to believe the average person won’t benefit, much less educated people in STEM like you.

[marricks]

Back in high school I worked with some pleasant man in his 50's who was a cashier. Eventually we got to talking about jobs and it turns out he was typist (something like that) for most of his life than computers came along and now he makes close to minimum wage.

Most of the blacksmiths in the 19th century drank themselves to death after the industrial revolution. the US culture isn't one of care... Point is, it's reasonable to be sad and afraid of change, and think carefully about what to specialize in.

That said... we're at the point of diminishing returns in LLM, so I doubt any very technical jobs are being lost soon. [1]

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/20/ai-scaling-laws-are-showin...

[conesus]

> Most of the blacksmiths in the 19th century drank themselves to death after the industrial revolution

This is hyperbolic and a dramatic oversimplification and does not accurately describe the reality of the transition from blacksmithing to more advanced roles like machining, toolmaking, and working in factories. The 19th century was a time of interchangeable parts (think the North's advantage in the Civil War) and that requires a ton of mechanical expertise and precision.

Many blacksmiths not only made the transition to machining, but there weren't enough blackmsiths to fill the bevy of new jobs that were available. Education expanded to fill those roles. Traditional blacksmithing didn’t vanish either, even specialized roles like farriery and ornamental ironwork also expanded.

[deeviant]

> That said... we're at the point of diminishing returns in LLM...

What evidence are you basing this statement from? Because, the article you are currently in the comment section of certainly doesn't seem to support this view.

[intelVISA]

Good points, though if an 'AI' can be made powerful enough to displace technical fields en masse then pretty much everything that isn't manual is going to start sinking fast.

On the plus side, LLMs don't bring us closer to that dystopia: if unlimited knowledge(tm) ever becomes just One Prompt Away it won't come from OpenAI.

[cjbgkagh]

There is a survivorship bias on the people giving advice.

Lots of people die for reason X then the world moves on without them.

[intuitionist]

> if it puts you out of work and automates away all other alternatives, then you’ll be witnessing the greatest economic shift in human history.

This would mean the final victory of capital over labor. The 0.01% of people who own the machines that put everyone out of work will no longer have use for the rest of humanity, and they will most likely be liquidated.

[Nition]

I've always remembered this little conversation on Reddit way back 13 years ago now that made the same comment in a memorably succinct way:

> [deleted]: I've wondered about this for a while-- how can such an employment-centric society transition to that utopia where robots do all the work and people can just sit back?

> appleseed1234: It won't, rich people will own the robots and everyone else will eat shit and die.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/k7rq8/are_jobs_...

[dyauspitr]

They’ll have to figure out how to give people money so there can keep being consumers.

[jackcosgrove]

Capital vs labor is fighting the last war.

AGI can replace capitalists just as much as laborers.

[raydev]

> if it puts you out of work and automates away all other alternatives, then you’ll be witnessing the greatest economic shift in human history

This is my view but with a less positive spin: you are not going to be the only person whose livelihood will be destroyed. It's going to be bad for a lot of people.

So at least you'll have a lot of company.

[danenania]

Exactly. Put one foot in front of the other. No one knows what’s going to happen.

Even if our civilization transforms into an AI robotic utopia, it’s not going to do so overnight. We’re the ones who get to build the infrastructure that underpins it all.

[visarga]

If AI turns out capable of automating human jobs then it will also be a capable assistant to help (jobless) people manage their needs. I am thinking personal automation, or combining human with AI to solve self reliance. You lose jobs but gain AI powers to extend your own capabilities.

If AI turns out dependent on human input and feedback, then we will still have jobs. Or maybe - AI automates many jobs, but at the same time expands the operational domain to create new ones. Whenever we have new capabilities we compete on new markets, and a hybrid human+AI might be more competitive than AI alone.

But we got to temper these singularitarian expectations with reality - it takes years to scale up chip and energy production to achieve significant work force displacement. It takes even longer to gain social, legal and political traction, people will be slow to adopt in many domains. Some people still avoid using cards for payment, and some still use fax to send documents, we can be pretty stubborn.