[Archipelagia]

That seems a bit like wishful thinking.

People don't have unlimited ability to learn new skills. Training takes time, and someone who spent several years honoring their craft won't be able to pick up a new skill overnight.

On top of that, people have preferences regarding their work – even if someone has the ability to do a different work, they might find it less meaningful and less satysfing.

Finally, don't ignore the speed at which AI capabilities improve. Compare GPT-1 with the current model, and how quickly we got here. Eventually we'll get to a point where humans just won't be able to catch up quickly enough.

[alvah]

Agree 100%. When I was young and idealistic I believed in the "learn new skills" mantra, but learning completely new skills would look a lot different at 50 than it did at 20. When career choices were being made 30 years ago it would have been hard to predict the current & upcoming AI-driven destruction of lower-end "thinking" jobs. Attempting to retrain after ~30 years puts you at a massive disadvantage vs a new graduate (I mentor some of our companies graduates & trainees & I've been assigned a guy in his mid-40s, after a few months I just don't see how he'll get to a point where he's adding value). Not really a personal whinge, as my skillset isn't under immediate threat from any AI I've heard about, though the rate of change in the field is something to behold.

[astrange]

I agree that intentional retraining doesn’t really work, but I don’t think it matters. As I said, all that matters for whether you have a job is the Federal Reserve. If you hire random people to do a computer job, some of them will just turn out to magically learn everything on the job.