[rglover]

Really enjoyed this post.

> Putting aside existential risks, I don't see a future where a lot of jobs don't cease to exist.

I'm personally betting on the plateau effect with LLMs. There are two plateaus I see coming that will require humans to fix no matter what we do:

1. The LLMs themselves plateau. We're already seeing new models get worse, not better at writing code (e.g., Sonnet 3.5 seems to be better than 3.7 at coding). This could be a temporary fluke, or, an inherent reality of how LLMs work (where I tend to land).

2. Humans will plateau. First, humans themselves will see their skills atrophy as they defer more and more to AI than struggling to solve problems (and by extension, learn new things). Second, humans will be disincentivized to create new forms of programming and write about them, so eventually the inputs to the LLM become stale.

Short-term, this won't appear to be true, but long-term (on the author's 10+ year scale), it will be frightening. Doubly so when systems that were primarily or entirely "vibe coded" start to break in ways that the few remaining humans responsible for maintaining them don't understand (and can't prompt their way out of).

And that's where I think the future work will be: in fixing or replacing systems unintentionally being broken by the use of AI. So, you'll either be an "AI mess fixer" or more entrepreneurial doing "artisan, hand-crafted software."

Either of those I expect to be fairly lucrative.

[mooreds]

Reminds me of these stories (the Asimov one I've posted before):

- "Profession", by Isaac Asimov: http://employees.oneonta.edu/blechmjb/JBpages/m360/Professio...

- "Pump Six" by Paolo Bacigalupi (the story of that title)

[sarreph]

On your second point - I don’t agree that humans in general will plateau. I think instead the _gap_ between humans who crave to create and learn, and those who are ostensibly potatoes, will be magnified.

I see it a bit like the creator economy, where you have these maker vs consumer tranches of people.

[abdullahkhalids]

Humans are fundamentally creators of tools and art and imaginary world - this is one of the factors that distinguishes us from animals. For most of human history, most humans spent a lot of their time creating. The very recent phenomena of a large fraction of humans creating almost nothing in their adult life is caused by modern economic systems, almost all of which force people to work so much every day that all their creative energies are sapped.

Go to a 4 day 24 hour work week and you will find almost everyone creating again.

[hnhn34]

Throughout all stages of my schooling from kindergarten to college, there were always artists, tinkerers and builders, but they were never the majority.

I can't think of any time in history, under any economic system, where humans who create tools and art were the majority. Most people just want to have families and enjoy life.

[lucyjojo]

talk to people, pretty much everybody around you wants to make stuff.

be it music, cooking, drawing, house arrangement, get better at fishing, etc.

people with long gaps of "pure consumption" get depressed... (which is why i think it's important to protect kids from mobile phones, they're depression machines)

[Havoc]

> eventually the inputs to the LLM become stale.

Seems plausible to me that they could just keep writing python 3.13 till the end of time.

If you take say assembly - we didn’t stop writing it because it stopped working.

As a functional building block programming seems feature complete

[neom]

"As a functional building block programming seems feature complete"

This might be one of the more fascinating things I've read in a long time. Care to expand upon? Would be genuinely curious.

[Havoc]

Afraid there is no deep revelation lurking there.

All I meant is that programming seems reasonably protected against going LLM stale by virtue of being low level and malleable

[7speter]

The thing about being an “AI mess fixer” will be that you’ll still need experience that fuels the creativity to solve problems generated by the AI.

[rglover]

Yup. The people who fit this role well will be the types that do this work for fun anyways, purely out of enjoyment or curiosity. I don't expect those types to completely disappear, they'll just be incredibly rare (i.e., the Pareto Principle or some bastardization of it).

[abletonlive]

This feels like a "if i say it enough, people will agree and it will be true" kind of comment. Almost none of these propositions check out or even make sense. I literally can't distinguish between reddit commenters and HN commenters. An unoriginal HN complaint but frustrating to witness over time.

1. Plateau != Regress. Why point to regressions as evidence of plateau? Why only look at a single model and minor version? we are clearly still at AI infancy, regressions are to be expected from time to time.

2. Where's the evidence of this? Humans are using AI to branch out and dip their toes into things that they wouldn't have fathomed doing before. How would that lead you to "disincentivized"?

> Doubly so when systems that were primarily or entirely "vibe coded" start to break in ways

So in this fantasy everybody is vibe coding resilient code/systems that lasts for 10+ years and everybody stops learning how to code, and after a decade or so, they start breaking and everybody is in trouble? This world you're creating wouldn't stand up to the critique of sci-fi readers.

I'm sorry but if we can vibe code systems that last 10+ years and nobody is learning anything because they are performing so well, then that's a job well done by OpenAI and co. We're probably set as a civilization.

[eacapeisfutuile]

That’s an uninformed perspective. We can’t be ”set as a civilization” by locking in whatever our current progress is. ML models don’t inherently progress anything. So yes if we stop doing that then in 10 years people will not have stopped learning how to code, but possibly stopped actually thinking for themselves which in turn would lead to not progressing neither our ML models or civilization.

[rglover]

Like I said, in the short-term this will sound false, but in the long-term I expect it to be frighteningly accurate.

> I literally can't distinguish between reddit commenters and HN commenters.

No need to condescend. I have a fair amount of experience building with and using these tools daily. I'm not just some "reddit idiot."

> So in this fantasy everybody is vibe coding code that lasts for 10+ years and everybody stops learning how to code

I'm extrapolating. Look at what happened in the wake of the industrial revolution. Most people don't know how to fix or create anything today, and instead, rely on fast-and-cheap products or services made by or offered by other people. Hence the panic over China and tariffs. The AI-ification of everything is just another, modern version of a similar thing.

I could absolutely be wrong (and hope I am). But when you track human laziness over time, it leads to deterioration and incompetence. I view this as a gradually than all of a sudden type of problem. One that will be incredibly difficult to dig ourselves out of later.

[abletonlive]

> I'm extrapolating. Look at what happened in the wake of the industrial revolution. Most people don't know how to fix or create anything today

Most people didn't know how to fix or create anything back then either. Except now we have more productivity than ever, more people working than ever, more output than ever.

People are fixing and creating out the ass in this society. We might not all be factory workers but people are making a ton of things in general. There is more music being made than ever, more movies being made than ever, more small businesses etc.

There is more information about how to fix things disseminated to the general population now than ever. It's just that what we build now is often so incredibly complex that fixing it is non-trivial or impractical. That's not a regression of society or our abilities or interests. There are videos on tiktok about fixing electric toothbrushes that have over 100k views and over a thousand comments. https://www.tiktok.com/@thetruestreviews/video/7458130570321...

None of what you say checks out and starting off with what is basically "it doesn't make any sense now but i predict in 10 years it will make sense" is a lazy way to defend your point.

> But when you track human laziness over time, it leads to deterioration and incompetence.

Again, none of this tracks with reality. Who is tracking laziness? In your world the general population is lazy and incompetent yet we are generally producing more and still advancing STEM

[eacapeisfutuile]

You are not wrong and that is a rational and a plausible forecast.

[abletonlive]

Lazy comments like this shouldn't be accepted in this community. If you're going to post something at least explain why you think it is such. What is rational, what is plausible about their comment?