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by meebob 1284 days ago
I would point out that many (most?) people are in programming to make money, rather than get things done per se.

If an AI were to make it impossible to make a living doing programming, would that be an improvement for most readers of this site?
1 comments
ZetaZero 1284 days ago
It should be an improvement for people to get a career in something they enjoy, instead of what pays the most money.
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meebob 1284 days ago
What we're talking about here is the immanent arrival of it being impossible for a very large number of people to get a career in something they enjoy (making images by hand).

It's fair to suppose (albeit based on a very small sample size, i.e., the last couple hundred, abnormal years of history) that all sorts of new jobs will arise as a result of these changes- but it seems to me unreasonable to suppose that these new jobs of the future will necessarily be more interesting or enjoyable than the ones they destroyed. I think it's easy to imagine a case in which the jobs are all much less pleasant (even supposing we all are wealthier, which also isn't necessarily going to be true)- imagine a future where the remaining jobs are either managerial/ownership based in nature or manual labor. To me at least, it's a bleak prospect.

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Kalium 1283 days ago
At the risk of demonstrating a total lack of empathy and failure to identify, we long ago passed the arrival of it being impossible for a very large number of people to get a career in something they enjoy (making images by hand). Art has been a famously difficult career path for quite a long time now. This does not really seem like a dramatic shift in the character of the market.

Now, I have empathy. I paused a moment before writing this comment to identify with artists, art students, and those who have been unable to reach their dreams for financial reasons. I emphatically empathize with them. I understand their emotional experiences and the pain of having their dreams crushed by cold and unfeeling machines and the engineers who ignore who they crush.

Yet I must confess I am uncertain how this is supposed to change things for me. I have no doubt that there used to be a lot of people who deeply enjoyed making carriages, too.

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ajmurmann 1284 days ago
Yes, and there will be much fewer of those jobs and they might not pay.

Ultimately though this isn't a technical problem but an economic one about how we as a society decide to share our resources. AI growth the pie, but removes leverage from some to claim their slice. Automation is why we'll inevitably need UBI at some point

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