...how do you think you got your job? You ever see those old movies with rows of people with calculators manually balancing spreadsheets with pen and paper? We are the automators. We replaced thousands of formerly good paying jobs with computers to increase profits, just like replacing horses with cars or blacksmiths with factories.
The reality of AI, if AI succeeds in replacing programmers (and there's reason to be skeptical of that) is that it will simply be a "move up the value chain". Former programmers instead of developing highly technical skills will have new skills - either helping to make models that meet new goals or guiding those models to produce things that meet requirements. It will not mean all programmers are automatically unemployable - but we will need to change.
A few questions popped in my head. Can you retain the knowledge to evaluate model output required to effectively help and guide models to do something if you do not do it yourself anymore? For humans to flourish, does it mean simply “do as little as possible”? Once you automated everything, where would one find meaningful activity that makes one feel needed by other humans? By definition automation is about scaling and the higher up the chain you go the fewer people are needed to manage the bots; what do you do with the rest? (Do you believe the people who run the models for profit and benefit the most would volunteer to redistribute their wealth and enact some sort of post-scarcity commmunist-like equality?)
paul_e_warner|1 year ago
The reality of AI, if AI succeeds in replacing programmers (and there's reason to be skeptical of that) is that it will simply be a "move up the value chain". Former programmers instead of developing highly technical skills will have new skills - either helping to make models that meet new goals or guiding those models to produce things that meet requirements. It will not mean all programmers are automatically unemployable - but we will need to change.
strogonoff|1 year ago
entropi|1 year ago
So I would argue that this whole thing is a net negative. We are spending tons of energy for net negative gains.
visarga|1 year ago