[tivert]

> 2. I no longer feel the need to hire juniors. This is a short-term positive and maybe a long-term negative.

> A lot of stuff I used to delegate to fellow humans are now being delegated to ChatGPT. And I can get the results immediately and at any time I want. I agree that it cannot operate on its own. I still need to review and correct things. I have do that even when working with other humans. The only difference is that I can start trusting a human to improve, but I cannot expect ChatGPT to do so. Not that it is incapable, but because it is restricted by OpenAI.

I think this point bears repeating.

The threat of these models isn't that they'll go all Skynet and kill everyone, it's that they'll cause a lot of economic devastation to people who make a living through labor requiring skill and knowledge, especially future generations of skilled labor. Then there will be a decision point: either the senior-level people who thought they were safe get replaced by a more-advanced model, or they don't and there's a future society-level shortage because the pipeline to produce more senior-level people has been shut down (like the OP is doing).

The only people who will come out (relatively) unscathed are the ownership class, like always.

Of course, this is inevitable because it's impossible to question or change our society's ideological assumptions. They must be played out until they utterly destroy society.

[dragonwriter]

> Then there will be a decision point: either the senior-level people who thought they were safe get replaced by a more-advanced model, or they don't and there's a future society-level shortage because the pipeline to produce more senior-level people has been shut down (like the OP is doing).

Or, for every junior that isn't hired by a business that can't expand its portfolio to exploit greater productivity or can’t figure out how to effectively use LLMs across the experience spectrum, two will be hired in shops that can do those things, and, as with previous software dev productivity increases, greater productivity in the field will mean a broader range of viable applications and more total jobs across all experience levels.

[coldtea]

>Or, for every junior that isn't hired by a business that can't expand its portfolio to exploit greater productivity or can’t figure out how to effectively use LLMs across the experience spectrum, two will be hired in shops that can do those things

And everybody also gets a pony! Win-win-win situation!

Previous "software dev productivity increases" happened as computing saturation itself increased from a hanful of mainframes to one in every office, then at every desk, then a few in every home, and later one in every hand. Now it's at 100% or close.

It also still required computer operators. LLM are not mere increased productivity of a human computer operator, but automation of productivity so that it can happen without an operator (or with much fewer).

Moreover, all this "increased productivity" still left wage stagnant for 40 years (with basic costs like housing, education, healthcare skyrocketing). It's not like more of it, in the same old corporatism context, bodes better for the future...

[dragonwriter]

> LLM are not mere increased productivity or the computer operator, but automation of productivity so that it can happen without an operator (or with much fewer).

Enabling the same production with fewer workers (or, equivalently, greater production with the same number of workers) is the definition of a productivity increase, not something that constitutes a difference in kind from a normal productivity increase.

> Moreover, all this "increased productivity" still left wage stagnant for 40 years

Not in computing it didn't. Same job category pay rose in real terms over almost any window you choose in the last 50 years, and in most cases the distribution of jobs also moved over time from lower-paid to higher-paid categories within computing.

Also, even general real wages didn't really stagnate for 40 years, average (mean) wages dropped slowly for 20 — mid-70s to mid-90s, and mostly have slowly climbed since, crossing over about 30-ish years after the past peak, but the same effect isn't seen in median wages (though that also was low in the early 1980s and most of the 1990s, before mostly rising strongly) or median personal income (which, despite short drops around recessions, has been rising consistently strongly since the 1981 trough.)

[coldtea]

>Enabling the same production with fewer workers (or, equivalently, greater production with the same number of workers) is the definition of a productivity increase, not something that constitutes a difference in kind from a normal productivity increase.

Of course. But "greater production with the same number of workers" vs "the same production with fewer workers" is already a difference in quantity (of both production, and, the thing pertinent to the discussion, of workers).

And there's also "greater production with fewer workers" - where you get to have your employer pie (fewer workers) and eat it too (still get greater production).

[philwelch]

Yes, but you’re just reiterating the basic Luddite argument, and taking IMO a blinkered perspective by looking at it from the perspective of a single firm rather than the economy as a whole. Often, increasing labor productivity in a given category actually increases the total quantity of such labor demanded in the economy due to the Jevons effect. If you increase output per worker by 10x, sometimes the product becomes cheap enough that the quantity demanded goes up by 100x and the economy ends up needing 10x as many workers. (Numbers for purpose of illustration of course.)

In other words, sure, there’s a limiting factor in terms of how much software the world actually wants, but the more software we can produce per programmer, the cheaper software gets and the more software the world wants. There is still eventually a limit here, but it is a lot farther away than it looks.

[TrueSlacker0]

I'm not sure why your getting down voted so much. This is literally what Henry Ford and others did. He raised wages for staff to be the highest in manufacturing, then improved their throughout by streamlining and removing wastes, then he lowered the cost of cars to customers making the market for them change from a few per year for only the ultra wealthy to what it is today. Thus expanding the needed workers.

[mistermann]

Did you run this by the risk, global relations, and legal guys/gals?

[kragen]

> Previous "software dev productivity increases" happened as computing saturation itself increased from a handful of mainframes to one in every office, then at every desk, then a few in every home, and later one in every hand. Now it's at 100% or close.

previous 'computing saturation is at 100% or close' pronouncements go back to 01953 https://geekhistory.com/content/urban-legend-i-think-there-w...

this human body weighs about 100 kg and occupies about 100 liters. it contains about 30 trillion cells, each of which contains something like 10 million ribosomes, 300 quintillion in all, which are programmable machines that construct proteins by executing a digital program on a dna tape, although the program is quite limited, more like a player piano roll than a computer program

current sram bits are on the order of 20 nanometers in diameter, about the same size as a ribosome. this is clearly feasible because these devices are already in mass production. you need on the order of 4096 of these, plus a roughly equivalent number of transistor-like switching elements (which are smaller), to get something we would recognize as a computer (i.e., you can program it in c or basic or assembly rather than verilog or abel or something). multiplying by a safety factor of two, we're talking about 32768 20-nanometer-sized elements, which is a cube 640 nanometers on a side

obviously (?) such a computer can't be manufactured by current manufacturing techniques, but also obviously it will work once you figure out how to make it. quite likely you can improve on that by orders of magnitude; ribosomes, after all, are considerably more capable than a 1-bit memory cell

you can fit 400 quadrillion such computers into the space of the human body, a bit over ten thousand per cell

so quite plausibly we are still 20 orders of magnitude away from personal computing saturation, and after another 12 orders of magnitude people will be saying things like 'then a few in every home, later one in every hand, and finally one in every cell. now it's at 100% or close'

even this is overly pessimistic, though. the obviously-workable computer outlined above weighs about 2e-16 kg, and jupiter weighs about 2e27 kg, so if you convert jupiter into computronium, you can get about 1e43 computers, roughly 1e33 computers per currently living person. and the milky way is about 1e12 solar masses, which works out to 2e42 kg, so a milky way of computronium would be roughly 1e58 computers

converting most of the milky way to computronium is less obviously feasible or desirable than putting anticancer robots in every cell but it suggests that we're closer to 48 orders of magnitude from computing saturation

as for corporatism, corporatism seems very unlikely to become established in the current political environment outside of backwaters like argentina. of course, the future is enormously unpredictable, but to me corporatism seems like an idiosyncratic response to the political conditions of the 01920s

[coldtea]

>previous 'computing saturation is at 100% or close' pronouncements go back to 1953

Yes, pronouncements can come early. They can also come at the point in time that they hold. Previous pronouncements having come early doesn't mean the same pronouncement will never hold.

In any case, those pronouncements didn't match an 1:1 (or even 3:1, considering laptop+work computer+smartphone) ratio of computer to person.

>obviously (?) such a computer can't be manufactured by current manufacturing techniques, but also obviously it will work once you figure out how to make it.

In any case, fitting "400 quadrillion such computers into the space of the human body", even if possible, doesn't require 400 quadrillion programmers. Or even necessarily that much programmer. After all programmers genereally don't increase based on the count of cpus (that's a less strong correlation), but based on the number of individual software programs.

Such a development might not even require more programmers than there are today. In fact, if LLMs improve similarly as original GPT to GPT 4, or (even worse) if AGI is achieved before those nanocomputers, their software might require exactly 0 programmers.

In any case, the eventual (?) achievement of those "400 quadrillion such computers into the space of the human body" (while still waiting for flying cars, robot servants, and cold fusion) would be so far ahead to make the point moot regarding the job prospects on programmers in the industry given the raise of LLM in the next 30-40 years.

>as for corporatism, corporatism seems very unlikely to become established in the current political environment outside of backwaters like argentina.

Outside of backwaters? Corporatism has been the status quo in the US for several decades now...

[kragen]

i don't see how saying that 20-nanometer-diameter sram cells and switching elements will work could be any farther from handwaving; they're already in mass production, forming the bulk of shipped processors for cellphones and laptops this year

the only handwaving in the bit you quoted consists of saying that it's not possible to build computers where the entire computer is less than a micron across with current manufacturing techniques

it's certainly true that computers don't require programmers. i think it's easier to reason correctly about the issue the other way around; programmers can do anything, but they require computers to do it

50 years ago, if you wanted to cycle the current in a voltammetry lab setup or make your windshield wipers intermittent, you designed a circuit. if you wanted to get a screw machine to cut a new kind of screw, you probably cut some new cams out of steel sheet. if you wanted to retard the spark timing on your engine ignition, you adjusted a screw

now in all those cases you just write a program, or perhaps even change some parameters to a program, because all those things are controlled by computers now. so suddenly you have lots of programmers working in these areas

today, if you want a ditch dug, you don't write a program; you rent a backhoe or pick up a shovel. but that's just because your dirt isn't programmable yet

the flying cars problem is well documented to be a question of regulatory obstacles and governance, not technical capabilities. lots of people do fly ultralights today, you can find videos on youtube

will the same problem force you to move your dirt with a shovel 50 years from now instead of just telling it where to go? yeah, plausibly, but that's just a question of amish-style or tokugawa-style rejection of technology, not a question of saturating the possibilities

as for corporatism in the usa, it definitely isn't a thing. possibly you just don't know what corporatism is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism

[jprete]

Are you by any chance a paperclip factory? /s

[kragen]

ask again in 53 years

[pixl97]

Typically that's not how these things work at least in the time frame that you don't starve to death.

Leading up to 2008 you'd think the market would optimize for lenders that checked who they were giving loans to. But that's not what happened. The idiots kept giving out shit loans until the entire market burned down taking out good and bad lenders alike in the aftermath.

[cheschire]

You can witness this happening in the trades right now. A whole generation of people were told to goto college and to avoid the trades, and now here we are in possibly the most significant manpower drought the trades have ever experienced. And this has a ripple effect as the older generations retire out, and take their hard won experiences with them with nobody to pass their knowledge onto. Can't tell a carpenter to go type that shit into Confluence, let alone tell the kid to look in the knowledge base first.

[StevePerkins]

And yet the trades still have uneven access (or none at all) to health coverage, retirement planning options, etc.

As an American parent of young children, I keep being told that college is a scam and I should steer my kids toward the trades. 90+% of the time, I am being told this by a white-collar worker who went to college themselves, and is just bloviating.

When we reach a real crisis point, severe enough to actually consider granting skilled tradespeople access to a fraction of the privilege enjoyed by white-collar workers, then I might consider nudging my kids toward electrician or plumbing work. But under the current social caste system, of course I am going to do everything possible to give my kids access to college and steer them that way.

I believe that virtually everyone, white-collar and blue-collar alike, quietly feels likewise. We make a pretense of giving contrary advice, but mostly just in hopes that other people will move in that direction for us. To take the bullet and help with this imbalance, and also to relieve the intense competition our own kids face.

[the_only_law]

> I am being told this by a white-collar worker who went to college themselves, and is just bloviating.

Exactly. When I talk to plumbers, electricians, etc. many of them express the desire to leave because the hours and environments are hellish. Meanwhile some full of themselves tech bro is babbling on about how everyone (not them of course) should go into the trades. Or they pull some vague anecdote out of their ass about how someone they know makes a gazllion dollars in the trades after 20 years and starting their own business, which is about as valid as telling someone to go into software development because they can become a billionaire, and throwing out some anecdote about a startup founder they know who got aquired.

[dghlsakjg]

My read is that the people who do well in trades are smart, hard-working and ambitious. That combination of traits tends to do well no matter where they are applied.

While there is plenty of money to be made in the trades, one thing that gets ignored is, as you said, the working conditions. Further, those working conditions compound over the years and absolutely wreck bodies.

[ChatGTP]

Sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day will wreck your body too, don’t worry about that.

The happiest I’ve been in my life is spending about 2-3 hours a day at a desk. It’s a shit life but we don’t see it like that coz we love sitting on our ass.

[tivert]

> Sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day will wreck your body too, don’t worry about that.

But not anything like 8+ hours a day of manual, repetitive, physical labor!

Come on, there's no comparison to desk work.

[dagw]

Sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day will wreck your body too, don’t worry about that.

Except that can be trivially counteracted by get up to stretch every hour, taking a 20 minute walk at lunch and hitting the gym a couple of times a week.

[applied_heat]

>wreck bodies.

I think how hard the trades can be on your body is under appreciated

[generativenoise]

It is an interesting game we are playing as a civilisation since without people skilled at making our material environment the quality of life we enjoy will most likely drop.

We seem to have structured things in a way where what is individually optimal and desired is very opposed to what we need at larger scales. It does seem like the system is maintained only by inertia at this stage.

[UncleMeat]

My brother in law is an electrician.

He does not have paid vacation, good sick leave policies, or good health insurance through his employer. He has witnessed a bunch of on-the-job injuries and one near-fatality, largely caused by his employer pushing hard for the team to complete jobs as fast as possible. He is paid alright, but less than the norm for the people I know with college degrees even after we exclude everybody in software. His job is also physically demanding and may cause problems later in life.

Not exactly a "hey, pick this job and you'll have a great career" story.

[sharts]

The only solution is to rapidly scale these up so that they can disrupt every aspect of everyone's life until we all decide to throw our hands up and decide it's time for a new social construct.

I'm surprised someone hasn't replace politicians with an LLM. Imagine not having to pay their salaries when ChatGPT can send "thoughts and prayers" to Maui over Twitter 24/7.

[slg]

>until we all decide to throw our hands up and decide it's time for a new social construct.

In my opinion this is the most optimistic of the realistic possible outcomes. In the past when automation put a factory worker out of a job, they were just told to go back to school or "learn to code" which isn't actually a solution for most people. These LLMs disproportionately impact people further up the socioeconomic ladder than prior waves of automation. Maybe our uneven society means that this wave of distribution of a more powerful group of people will be more likely to cause an actual change to how we organize society.

[tsunamifury]

I am absurdly and instinctually confident that LLM personas will replace at least the public face of politicians almost instantly. The problem is the back end work.

[over_bridge]

Politicians are just a perfect role to disrupt. Problem is of course they are a monopoly so can't be competed with and are protected by law/constitution so can't be changed directly.

Their whole job is to 'represent' their constituents. A LLM can poll the sentiments of the people far more effectively than they can. I'm sure it could be programmed to accept bribes too to weigh rich people's opinions higher. I'd love to see votes done by 100 different LLMs instead of Senators (a hyperbolic, non literal statement but interesting as a thought experiment I hope)

Politicians should still propose new and altered legislation but actually voting, and being informed to vote, could be massively improved.

[mistermann]

https://www.reellifewisdom.com/proactive_i_ve_always_believe...

[zarzavat]

It’s not a new social construct. It’s a very old one: a thin layer of rich people, and a large number of poor people fighting to survive because they don’t have anything to contribute beyond their own manual labour.

Head out of the developed world and you can see this type of society everywhere.

This meme of AI -> upheaval -> basic income utopia has got to die. It’s wishful thinking. It’s “clean coal” for programmers.

[satvikpendem]

What do you suggest instead? Because without UBI or redistribution of profit when everything is automated, I don't see any other solution.

[AtlasBarfed]

"The privileged will risk absolute destruction over the surrender of any advantage"

[falloutx]

Is this satire? If you think politicians can be replaced, then you must be dreaming quite hard sir. They are running the show.

[bpye]

This was a plot point in Avenue 5. The office of the other president.

[JohnFen]

> The threat of these models isn't that they'll go all Skynet and kill everyone, it's that they'll cause a lot of economic devastation to people who make a living

Yes. This is pretty much my only concern about these models, and I'm powerfully concerned about this. It's hard to see how this will lead to a good place. It seems more likely that this will lead to increased poverty and multiple socioeconomic crises.

I am even more concerned that very few people are talking about this, and none of the power players in this space are, except for occasional mentions in passing of fantasies like UBI.

[bloppe]

> I am even more concerned that very few people are talking about this.

People have been talking about the threat of automation since the very beginning of the industrial revolution. It just never plays out nearly that badly, and short-term disruptions are always outweighed by long-term efficiency gains within ~5 years or so; even those who experience the worst career disruption tend to end up better off within that time frame.

I certainly would not like for my career to be disrupted for ~5 years, but the alternative would be worse.

[JohnFen]

> even those who experience the worst career disruption tend to end up better off within that time frame.

That hasn't been my observation at all. In the US, there are large swaths of the nation that still haven't recovered from the last similar event.

To add additional worry, the last time, everyone was told that the way out was to "upskill" into knowledge and service industries. Which a lot of people did, and those people were fine. But what are people to do this time? "Upskilling" back to physical jobs can only absorb so many workers, particularly since there aren't as many such jobs as there used to be.

This is all why I'm so concerned. I don't think history gives us any real reason to be optimistic here. In the very long term -- a couple of generations, say -- perhaps. But in the meantime? Even ignoring the ethics of some people deciding that others are expendable, the people being kicked to the curb will still have to find a way to eat, keep a roof over their head, etc.

If even 10-20% of the population can't do that, we're in big trouble.

All that said, nothing would make me happier than for you to be right and me to be wrong.

[natechols]

> People have been talking about the threat of automation since the very beginning of the industrial revolution.

And the prediction that only the ownership class would benefit from technological improvements is at least as old as Marx.

[tstrimple]

And it's proven to be unequivocally true hasn't it? Just take a look at the accumulation of wealth since 1970.

[fl0ki]

I am very curious about what pre-1970 hardware and software you posted this from.

[Animats]

I've been asking for years, if we have all these computers, why do we need so many people in offices? Now we seem to have passed "peak office", with much help from the pandemic.

If everything you do for money goes in and out over a wire, be very afraid.

[waffletower]

From my vantage, short-term (3-5 year) fear seems unfounded. As a software engineer, I can clearly see what ChatGPT and its LLM ilk can and can't do that I can easily do myself. LLMs clearly accelerate my access to API documentation and provide excellent outline code. But hallucinations are omnipresent and can often necessitate additional iteration and rethinking of development approaches. I think the productivity boost due to LLM usage is smaller than many credit them for. The intensity of employment displacement fear comes from an illusion that LLMs have agency. AutoGPT is not much more than an experimental repo and there isn't a viable alternative yet. "WHEN YOU COMMAND AN LLM, YOU ARE THE AGENCY", LLMs are mere extensions. Don't sell yourself short, prompt crafting/engineering is where the agency lies and requires real knowledge and context to empower you effectively use them for successful software engineering.

[JohnFen]

> The intensity of employment displacement fear comes from an illusion that LLMs have agency.

I don't think so. My concerns have nothing to do with agency, anyway. Nor are my concerns limited to (or even primarily about) impact on software engineering specifically.

Even if LLMs perform worse, if using them will save companies money over employing people, then those people are gone.

[Animats]

LLMs have agency when given a goal and connected to an API that can do something. This is likely to be a problem now and then.

[obblekk]

I don't think so. Junior engineers will learn much much faster than the past (think about how much more effective GPT4 is as a learning tool than the "rubber ducky method" or manpages or even stackoverflow).

And a part of their role will morph into prompting GPT4 (much like this senior engineer has started doing).

If GPTx ends up in the narrow area where it's universally smarter than junior engs but definitely not capable of being a senior eng, then junior engs will just shift to the little remaining work for senior engs, shadow them for months to years like an apprenticeship.

Of course in that case the total number of eng needed will also decrease (already only a small percent ever get good enough to be considered truly senior), so there will be selection bias toward more intelligent engineers who are a step above GPTx. If none are left, then the profession will be gone and there will be no problem.

[tivert]

> I don't think so. Junior engineers will learn much much faster than the past (think about how much more effective GPT4 is as a learning tool than the "rubber ducky method" or manpages or even stackoverflow).

That's bunk. The OP is literally "feel[s] the need to hire junior" engineers because he can ChatGPT that work. How are they going to learn a job they won't be given the opportunity to have much faster?

> If GPTx ends up in the narrow area where it's universally smarter than junior engs but definitely not capable of being a senior eng, then junior engs will just shift to the little remaining work for senior engs, shadow them for months to years like an apprenticeship.

That doesn't make much sense. That kind of apprenticeship would be pure charity, so it's not going to happen. No one is going to learn to be a senior engineer in "months," and no one (except someone's rich parents) is going to pay for someone to sit around unproductively in and office for years while they learn. Even interns are required to produce output that adds value. They do that by successfully completing junior-level tasks that need to be done well.

[obblekk]

It's not charity, it's capacity planning but at a lower scale than before.

There's always a set of junior eng with high growth potential who are being trained to become senior. They will continue be hired, albeit with less simple work than before, because most companies do run scenario planning like "what if X left who is our backup".

The juniors who are not expected to ever grow to that level would no longer be sought out for simpler tasks as those tasks will be automated away.

Net impact is fewer total engineers, but those who remain are at a higher level of average skill.

[andrei_says_]

When I hire juniors it is because I’m placing them on a path to independent decision making and autonomous work, as fast as possible.

They are to become an independent person, taking independent actions, aligned with the current vision and goals.

I don’t want a permanent increase of my own workload which is what working with chatgpt feels like.

[tivert]

> I don't think so. Junior engineers will learn much much faster than the past (think about how much more effective GPT4 is as a learning tool than the "rubber ducky method" or manpages or even stackoverflow).

That's bunk. The OP is literally "feel[s] the need to hire junior" engineers because he can ChatGPT that work. How are they going to learn a job they won't be given the opportunity to have much faster?

> If GPTx ends up in the narrow area where it's universally smarter than junior engs but definitely not capable of being a senior eng, then junior engs will just shift to the little remaining work for senior engs, shadow them for months to years like an apprenticeship.

That doesn't make any sense. That kind of apprenticeship is pure charity, so it's not going to happen.

[CameronNemo]

You think GPT4 is more effective than learning how to read a manual? Or some of the best SO answers?

[duccinator]

Yes, even GPT3.5 is better. I am in uni, and LLMs are probably the best teachers I have had the experience to learn from(and I have had some great teachers and professors). They work even better if you feed them the content of a book/manual/documentation as a reference.

They do suck at solving problems correctly, however if you give them an incorrect solution and ask them to spot mistakes, or just ask for a general method to do a problem, it works out.

However, they might not yet compare to the best of humans. The best SO answers probably represent 0.01% of the answers, which is a high bar. I am certain very amazing teachers and professors exist out there in the world whom LLMs can't beat yet but the average can't compete.

[smcin]

> Yes, even GPT3.5 is better. I am in uni, and LLMs are probably the best teachers... They do suck at solving problems correctly...

The discussion was specifically about LLMs to write software. Not about university essays or articles or exams. Are you claiming GPT3.5 is better at writing bug-free software than the average software engineer?

[duccinator]

No, please read my response again. My claim is that GPTs are better than human teachers, for most* domains, including software.

However, I do think a framework needs to be developed for formally learning any particular topic. If you are self learning using just chatgpt, you might miss out on a few key things. I haven't used it much personally but the khan academy bot is close.

[jokethrowaway]

Yes, mainly because of the work of experts which went into GPT4.

For example, Llama is nowhere close (even if it's pretty good).

You can think of GPT4 as a way to flexibly access a lot of knowledge from domain experts. Sure, sometimes that flexibility hallucinates things, but it mostly works and we can verify a large part of it.

[thejackgoode]

GPT explains things in a personalised way, it's in no way in the same league as manuals. It's each user's native language.

[_lnwk]

Why would you take a junior then as an apprentice if they won't generate any value at all?

[bawolff]

Computers have been putting people out of jobs since back when "computer" was a human job title and not a machine. Its always ended up creating more jobs than it eliminated in the end, i don't see why the future will be any different than the past.

[jstx1]

Seems like a logical fallacy to assume that the past extrapolates cleanly into the future. "It was okay last time" isn't a good enough argument.

[bawolff]

Well i mean unless someone comes up with a theory why this time is different from last time, then isn't my argument just modus tollens? That's pretty much the opposite of a logical fallacy.

This time may very well be different, but there would have to be some additional factor and nobody has given a compelling answer as to what that might be.

[tivert]

> Well i mean unless someone comes up with a theory why this time is different from last time, then isn't my argument just modus tollens? That's pretty much the opposite of a logical fallacy.

History isn't math, dude. This time is always different from last time. The fallacy is making the claim that it's the same (conveniently ignoring all the differences that make it different).

Another mistake is taking an aloof perspective. A lot of changes that "turned out OK" from that perspective were pretty terrible for the people who actually had to live through them.

[bawolff]

> (conveniently ignoring all the differences that make it different)

If someone wants to bring up some of those differences by all means. The reason i am unconvinced is because nobody ever does.

> Another mistake is taking an aloof perspective. A lot of changes that "turned out OK" from that perspective were pretty terrible for the people who actually had to live through them.

Sure, i'd agree. But this is moving goal posts quite a bit. If the claim was simply that some industries might experience some levels of short term disruption due to an emerging technology like AI and it will probably suck for the individuals being disrupted - I don't think anybody would disagree. It also wouldn't make AI exactly unique - short term disruptions in various industries due to changing conditions happen all the time.

[confidantlake]

Every time there was technological advancement the number of jobs for horses increased. For example the invention of the railroad meant they no longer carried the mail long distances, but still the greater economic activity lead to greater demand for horse labor. There may have been some shifts in what jobs they did, but the trend was clear. More technology lead to more horse labor.

And then the automobile was invented. And over the next few decades the demand for horse labor tanked. Now the demand for horse labor is a tiny fraction of what it was a century ago.

[Animats]

> I no longer feel the need to hire juniors.

I hear that from a friend in the legal business. Less need for paralegals. Unclear yet if the need for new lawyers will be reduced.

[slt2021]

maybe paralegals could be replaced by even cheaper clerks with ChatGPT ?

why pay Law school graduate as paralegal, when you can hire associate degree grad with ChatGPT to do the same work?

[sircastor]

>> it's that they'll cause a lot of economic devastation to people who make a living through labor requiring skill and knowledge, especially future generations of skilled labor.

Occasionally I would see clips from or read reactions to Idiocracy, and be left scratching my head, because somehow, somewhere, there have to be the people who are thinking. The whole conceit of the film is that there are no smart, curious people because it's being bred out of the population. That never made sense to me because you still have to have some smart, curious, creative people somewhere to keep things moving. Our society is quite dependent on the people who silently keep things running in the background.

I can however envision a world where early curiosity is discouraged, and supplanted by a technology that can fill the holes of the entry-level smart people. When everyone is discouraged from starting, and the existing participants age out, then maybe you can get a world where there are no new smart, curious people.

[tivert]

> That never made sense to me because you still have to have some smart, curious, creative people somewhere to keep things moving. Our society is quite dependent on the people who silently keep things running in the background.

Regarding Idiocracy, once of the background conceits of the film is those kinds of people set up automation to keep things going before they died out (for the reasons clearly explained at the start of the movie). If you pay attention everything in that world is automated: a diagnostic machine with a playskool interface (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmUVo0xVAqE) is what's actually doing the doctor's job, a major company is run by a computer the CEO doesn't understand (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBFREFtFEgs), etc.

[FpUser]

I use ChatGPT very actively for programming among the other things and at no point feel threatened, rather empowered. No burnout either as I just work as usual. It just replaced Google Search and lots of typing.

[guluarte]

> more senior-level people has been shut down (like the OP is doing).

I am already seeing this, companies are desperate for senior developers but at the same time they don't want to hire juniors.

[Dalewyn]

>it's that they'll cause a lot of economic devastation to people who make a living through labor requiring skill and knowledge, especially future generations of skilled labor.

If a task can be completed satisfactorily by an automated computer program, was the task really "skilled labor"?

I ask this sincerely, because some of the occupations being replaced/evicted (eg: copywriting) were clearly given more skill value than they should have.

[xnx]

You could've said this about calculators

[strikelaserclaw]

It is endgame when AGI comes to fruition (which it will, it is just a matter of time, either in 10 years, 50 years, etc...), robots with AGI will be the ultimate life form in the universe and the final evolution of "life" on earth. It is laughable to think something so much more intelligent than people will somehow become a slave to us and do our bidding.