[firasd]

It's puzzling to me that all this theorizing doesn't just look at the actual effects of AI. It's very non-intuitive

For example the fact that AI can code as well as Torvalds doesn't displace his economic value. On the contrary he pays for a subscription so he can vibe code!

The actual work AI has displaced is stuff like: freelance translation, graphic illustration, 'content writing' (writing seo optimized pages for Google) etc. That's instructive I suppose. Like if your income source can already be put on upwork then AI can displace it

So even in those cases there are ways to not be displaced. Like diplomatic translation work can be part of a career rather than just a task so the tool doesn't replace your 'job'.

[omnicognate]

> AI can code as well as Torvalds

He used it to generate a little visualiser script in python, a language he doesn't know and doesn't care to learn, for a hobby project. It didn't suddenly take over as lead kernel dev.

[the_af]

I think AI displacing graphics illustrators is a tragedy.

It's not that I love ad illustrations, but it's often a source of income for artists who want to be doing something more meaningful with their artwork. And even if I don't care for the ads themselves, for the artists it's also a form of training.

[ares623]

It’s ok those illustrators can upskill to being devs. I heard it’s a very easy field now thanks to AI.

[bojan]

> freelance translation

As someone who has to switch between three languages every day, fixing the text is one of my favourite usages of LLMs. I write some text in L2 or L3 as best as I can, and then prompt an LLM to fix the grammar but not change anything else. Often it will also explain if I'm getting the context right.

That being said, having it translate to a language one doesn't speak remains a gamble, you never know it's correct so I'm not sure if I'd dare use it professionally. Recently I was corrected by a marketing guy that is native in yet another language because I used a ChatGPT translation for an error message. Apparently it didn't sound right.

[andersmurphy]

Biggest displacement has to be commenting on HN.

[i2km]

Re displacing freelance translation, yes - it can displace the 95% of cases where 95% accuracy is enough. Like you mention though, for diplomatic translations, court proceedings, pacemaker manuals etc you're still going to need a human at least checking every line since the cost of any mistake is so high