[verdverm]

Why is it "AI threatens to..." rather than "AI opens opportunities to..."?

To me, there seems to be way more upside than downside, like pretty much every new tech

[bananapub]

do you live somewhere where having your career eliminated is not a huge deal? where is that?

[verdverm]

Do you know people always say this for every new technology? yet here we are with more jobs than ever and low unemployment

the tl;dr is that more jobs will be created than lost, and those jobs will be more interesting and not of the bs job variety many report they work.

Also, what's wrong with a world where most people don't have to work uninspiring tasks and can rather explore other interests or hobbies?

[bananapub]

what does any of this have to do with my question?

society as a whole is usually better off by such things, are mass-unemployed farriers in 1920?

edit: I do also feel the zeitgeist on HN will be extremely different from this "people will adapt, it's good overall" vibe once it's very-well-paid SWEs that are being affected en masse by this stuff

[Loughla]

Your last sentence - I 100% agree with you. The general theme here is that AI will impact other people in some fashion, but they can re-train and get better jobs!

But it seems to me that software engineers should be very, very nervous about this. Creating things using novel means within well-established and documented/testable boundaries like programming languages seems like something that our current models will absolutely be able to do, if they can't already.

[joelfried]

It may seem that way but I'd argue the hardest part is coming up with the specifications for what the output needs to look like. Even if the best LLMs could write full projects like that, the business side would need to specify far beyond their normal levels what that thing needs to be. Have you ever tried to collect requirements from stakeholders and generate a project plan that meets all of those needs? Even if we're not far from GPT-4 being able to build out a basic component library, that's a long way from being able to architect solutions at a high level.

If I had to pick an analogy it wouldn't yet be farriers going out of business, but instead be more like the advent of the pneumatic nail gun for roofers. Everyone will still need a roof (software) to be built. Every instance is a little different at the design level, but the actual grunt work just got easier and faster if you know what you want out of it.

[verdverm]

> what does any of this have to do with my question?

I would ask the same of your original reply

By contrast, I replied directly to your question with my answer

[dylan604]

If your job just got eliminated because of an AI opening opportunity, then it very much is threatening your livelihood. Or any of the other various methods it might be threatening. How obtuse do you have to be, or how much kool-aid have you been drinking to not be able to see the ways of threatening?

[verdverm]

I just got offered a new job, because AI opened new roles, how does this fit with your world model?

[dylan604]

My whole comment started with "IF", but you clearly just want to be argumentative rather than taking things in the spirit in which they intended. To be so gleeful and happy about whatever topic to be ignorantly, or worse, willingly to not understand that some changes have negative impacts just make you someone I do not wish to continue a conversation

[verdverm]

> you clearly just want to be argumentative

Looking to my original comment, I think that this argumentativeness began with your first reply

> willingly to not understand that some changes have negative impacts

I stated clearly that advancement comes with both positive and negative, it seems perhaps you are not understanding or considering any positives here?