[crop_rotation]

Thank you for penning down your emotional response. HN is mostly in denial of anything ChatGPT (most people haven't used GPT4 and keep pasting results of GPT3.5). The thing is that there is nothing other than denial that people can express. Saying that their jobs will become much less relevant is just too hard for almost anyone to swallow. People in this thread keep talking about productivity improvements, not realising that 2x is an improvement, 10x is a revolution.

There are several important differences in the impact of GPT4 vs the PC, which is being quoted quite a lot as a response in this thread. People talk of other scenarios as well, but even the best case scenarios (UBI) mean the end of social mobility, which means far fewer humans will have the chance of being ambitious and climbing the social ladder. And this is not even mentioning the 2nd and 3rd order effects.

[visarga]

This technology lowers the entry barrier to almost any field. It empowers self education, creative hacking and growth. Why are you making it sound like a disaster? We can scale our ambitions quickly and absorb the new productivity without losing jobs. We have not solved global warming, poverty or colonised the space. We have to scale AI billions of times. We have to survive the demographic crash. There's plenty of scope for AI to fill in without replacing humans.

[crop_rotation]

> This technology lowers the entry barrier to almost any field.

I am not saying it doesn't. But there is some factor n, that if the productivity increase is n times x in a short amount of time, the world will not evolve as rosily as you are thinking.

> It empowers self education, creative hacking and growth.

Again, I never said anything contrary. But making random new products for which there is no market by self education is not a bright prospect for much of humanity.

> Why are you making it sound like a disaster?

You are welcome to counter my points. I am just enumerating my view of the future.

> There's plenty of scope for AI to fill in without replacing humans.

Are you seeing the same pace of improvements I am seeing? One year ago there was no talk of any such thing, and now we have GPT4

AI might be very good for humanity as a whole over a millennium, but for individual human beings it is hard to say the same.

[rg111]

It's so refreshing to see someone recognizing the mass-spread denial of HN commentariat on GPT4.

What HN commentariat doesn't realize is that many of them will be made redundant.

And "many new jobs are created" is such a bloated, empty statement in the wake of GPT4 like techs. We all know that all technological improvements in recent decades have led to more inequality. No questions about that.

LLMs, AI will lead more to that.

[jacquesm]

The interesting bit is that tech people are used to displacing other people's jobs and then telling them to suck it up so it's no wonder that they're in denial: this is the first time that it is their jobs that are at stake and they seem to be about as agile as a deer frozen in the headlights of an oncoming truck. We'll see how it all plays out. Jokes along the line of 'better behave or I'll replace you with a script' are not nearly as funny as they once seemed to be.

[klibertp]

Agreed with both you and GP. The denial is a normal emotional response. It's not strange to cling to your decades of professional experience and skillset. It's just that, now really is not the time for emotional responses. It's time to start running away from the crowd so that you're one of those not made redundant. You can grieve the lost innocence of days past later.

[__rito__]

I myself, am at crossroads.

I do Computer Vision research for a company, and wanted to go to Academia (in US/UK/NA/EU). That's a too risky career choice now, and has always been. What if I am not as brilliant as I think and cannot meaningfully contribute to Science? (Or don't get tenure?) Wanted to do either ML + fundamental Science or Edge AI.

Thinking of going to med school. I am sure I can qualify. So thinking of preparing for that while keeping my industry job.

Another option is going into Administration, i.e. government jobs, by qualifying something called UPSC (I am in India).

I fully understand what's going on and I am under no denial that many jobs in many sectors will be made redundant and competition will skyrocket. Societal turmoil is inevitable.

I am just 23 and weighing in my options. My days are so emotional and full of dilemmas and trilemmas.

I keep myself sane by doing my job, side hustle, dogs, family, and friends. I will be depressed if I ponder too much into these.

[crop_rotation]

Med School takes too long though. UPSC will be great if you can pull it off.

[__rito__]

Yes, but med school has at least hints of technicality. I always have been a problem-solver/analytical kind of guy- my whole life.

You use your brains to solve interesting problems, at least sometimes.

And even if you are an IAS, after your district posting ends, you are just another government servant. Doing repeatative jobs, bound to an office.

Will I even like that life 20 years later?

And the income in UPSC jobs is too low. Lower than doctors or techies (I make close to an entry level IAS now).

Another point to consider is:

Once you learn programming, you are always a programmer.

Once you are a doctor, you are always a doctor.

But your status as IAS is solely tied to your job. You leave or you retire- you are a nobody again.

Honestly, I don't have enough information to decide. I am postponing making this decision as much as I can.

Thank you for your comment, anyway.

[crop_rotation]

You make some very interesting points. I would be very interested to read about your future deliberations, if you post them anywhere (your bio links to your website).

[crop_rotation]

The thing is unlike the rise of the PC based tools, with the rise of LLMs it is too hard to see what the safe careers are. Careers that might be safe and have high income potential are mostly not quick to switch to.

[jacquesm]

Plumber.

[crop_rotation]

Yeah, there is no universe where there is enough demand for plumbers to sustain even the same order of magnitude of number of jobs for even a smaller category of knowledge work. And when you unleash millions of plumbers, the wages won't look better than McDonalds.

[jacquesm]

There are not that many plumbers not because the market isn't there. It is because people don't want to be plumbers to begin with.

[EamonnMR]

UBI is about as likely to happen as OpenAI deleting GPT4 and never training another model, so if we're picking patiently absurd scenarios I pick that one.

[benatkin]

I think the B means it will be enough right? I think that part tends to get ignored since the $1000/mo figure in the US was floated and now is no longer enough for anyone here.

$1000/mo in 2016 purchasing power in a city like Dallas seems very unlikely to me, but I think that some meager version of UBI might happen in response to a humanitarian crisis.

I can also see guaranteed jobs rather than guaranteed income.