[wingless]

What else can they do? With the new wave of AI and automation there will be no jobs left for people with below average intelligence. You will need more and more researchers and programmers but not everyone can do those jobs.

[wyldfire]

> more researchers and programmers but not everyone can do those jobs.

Research is suited to fairly scientific minds but I think programming is totally something anyone who's interested can do.

Software development continues to modernize and become more accessible. If you're motivated, I'd say you can definitely do programming. And the best part is that it applies to virtually any existing job.

[ido]

It's easy to think so if you've been programming for a while, but try to teach programming to kids (or adults) and realize this really does depend on some inherent ability and/or interest (and this is even with a self-selected group who chose to go to a programming course).

You probably can get most everyone programming at a basic level, like we did with reading and writing, by requiring it at a primary school level.

However, a lot of these people will be about as useful as professional programmers as the average person is as a professional author.

[zanny]

Some people cannot think analyticalally enough to maintain the state of a program in their head. This is why freshman CS classes can see retention rates in the single digits. You adapt your brain doing it over a long enough time, and when you start doing it early in life you evolve your brain to suit the task, but for anyone who lacks the critical thinking and logic to think programatically the later in life you are the less likely to be able to ever internalize it you get.

[cstanley]

Make art, educate themselves, read books - but the reward mechanisms of those activities are much less stimulating than those of video games.

[intrasight]

I respectfully disagree that they are less stimulating. Those things are stimulating at a deeper and I think more grounded level.

[cstanley]

Yeah, less stimulating is a bit vague. I was thinking of the effects that playing video games has on the reward center of your brain - the creation of dopamine... more related to addiction than outright stimulation I suppose.

[schrodinger]

I also think art can include things like being a chef, barista, baker, barber, and brewer, distiller, wine maker; not just the things we typically call art. Things that are in more demand than paintings.

[zanny]

Except all those jobs are going away with the automation revolution. You can't have an economy based off the equivalent of getting carriage rides in central park where its just a frivolous humor to experience human powered food production or a haircut done by a barber.

[cstanley]

Don't think automation will get rid of these jobs - have you seen the cronut? Don't think a computer would have been able to derive that creation... (not sarcastic)

Also, as we create more time, we'll have to spend it on these luxurious that currently seem frivolous.

[wott]

Art is already very linked to these alcohol-related jobs :-)

[dharma1]

I'd like to see an AI fix my plumbing. I'd say programming will be automated sooner than that is