[isahers]

I disagree with most of this article. Disclaimer: I'm a junior engineer and I believe both that: 1. AI is going to take my job, 2. AI is going to do incredible good for the world.

I don't see how these are distinct. It's a technology shift, of course it's going to make certain jobs obsolete - that's how technology shifts work.

I'm not going to go through every quote I disagree with, but unlike some AI negativity discourse (some of which I agree with btw, being an optimist doesn't mean being irrational) this just reads as old man yells at cloud. Mainly because the author doesn't understand the technology, and doesn't understand the impact.

The author clearly does not understand model capabilities (seems to be in the camp that these are just "prediction machines") as they claim it's unreasonable to expect models to "develop presently impossible capabilities". This is not at all supported by prior model releases. Most, if not all, major releases have displayed new capabilities. There are a lot more misconceptions on ability, but again not going to go through all of them.

The author also doesn't understand the impact, saying stuff like "Tech doesn’t free workers; it forces them to do more in the same amount of time, for the same rate of pay or less". What? Is the author unaware of what average labor hours were like before the industrial revolution? AI is clearly going to be hugely net positive for white-collar (and with robots eventually blue-collar) workers in the near future (it already is for many).

[elzbardico]

Average labour hours in a year dramatically increased with the Industrial Revolution.

They would only decrease much later, after a long period of social conflict, economic growth, and technological progress.

During the early phase of the Industrial Revolution (roughly 1760–1850):

Agricultural workers who once labored seasonally were pushed into factory schedules of 12–16 hours per day, 6 days per week.

Annual labor hours often exceeded 3,000 hours per year per worker.

This was not because work became harder physically, but because capital-intensive machinery became expensive and had to run continuously to be profitable.

Time discipline replaced task-based work. Before industrialization, a farmer might stop when tasks were done; factory workers had fixed shifts.

This trend persisted into the late 19th century.

[ungovernableCat]

The labour struggle for rights we see as basic today (40h work weeks, free weekends) was bloody and deadly.

And this was without surveillance tech and automated police drones or w/e else Palantir is working on right now. If we're going by historical precedent this transition won't be pretty, even if you're hoping for a nice optimistic end result.

I'm not so sure having a beefy 401k and maybe a couple of rental properties will be enough to insulate some of the more comfortable HN posters from all the potential chaos.

[simianwords]

I'm not sure what your comment is trying to say.

>They would only decrease much later, after a long period of social conflict, economic growth, and technological progress.

The technological process mentioned here as Industrial Revolution, was the necessary step. It was not primarily social conflicts.

The above poster is making exactly the same point.

You are right that there was an aberration in the middle where people worked way more hours but this was when things were consolidating.

But your post implies that the preference of people was to work less hours as opposed to work more hours and earn more money, which is not the case.