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by crop_rotation 1178 days ago
I have had similar reaction as you. It makes a lot of skills obsolete. I myself have been pondering the implications on the wider society. And I have found it to be great for almost all the problems I threw at it.

To those saying it will enable them to solve more problems, yes that is correct. It will give everyone "wings", but once everyone has wings the industry will be so different in terms of wage and employment.

To people saying GPT gives incorrect code, please try GPT4.

If your age and circumstance allow, you should think whether a career change is possible. Not a hard change right now, but atleast explore what options might be available. I am exploring the same myself.

To those talking of chess, that is not a correct comparison since people want to watch (and connect with) human players playing chess (thus the pro scene survives), and play it for their own joy. Due to tools like stockfish, it has become far easier for people to explore moves. If the aim in chess was to finish more and more games from random given positions, and people were paid per game (and some value was created finishing it), stockfish would easily drive it to 0. Chess survives not because humans do better than AI, but because nobody is interested in playing against AI or watching Stockfish v Stockfish (By nobody I mean a very small number). Most people want to play against real people and watch real people play.

3 comments

> If your age and circumstance allow, you should think whether a career change is possible. Not a hard change right now, but atleast explore what options might be available. I am exploring the same myself.

I’ve been doing this for years, and I have the least confidence I’ve ever had that I’ll ever pull it off. Credentials are expensive as hell and time consuming to obtain, and if massive wage loss is a concern, there aren’t many careers you’ll be safe starting over in. Anything “interesting”, but low paying will likely be affected in the same way software is.

I don't think employment is a good option at this point. It's more about producing something valuable (or just popular) by leveraging the AI tools.
What careers are you thinking of?
Being an HN pundit obviously, posting the spiciest of hot takes

user: crop_rotation

created: 4 days ago

karma: 305

Government jobs for instance (if you live in a country where that is an option). Medical profession would also be immune for some time but med school is too hard of a switch in terms of time.
What makes medical profession immune? I see this area as ripe for AI disruption. Analyzing symptoms and providing suggested medicine, tailoring dosage based on your individual vitals, analyzing data/imagery to diagnose you with diseases, all kinds of automation and speed ups for processing patient data, etc.
The same thing that has prevented self driving cars from taking the roads, i.e. that errors can be fatal. That and doctors are better unionised and won't easily let a machine practice medicine. There are all kinds of laws which necessitate the presence of a licensed medical professional in various steps of treatment. Software has neither of these cushions.