[ares623]

This pisses me off so much.

So many engineers are so excited to work on and with these systems, opening 20 prs per day to make their employers happy going “yes boss!”

They think their $300k total compensation will give them a seat at the table for what they’re cheering on to come.

I say that anyone who needed to go the grocery this week will not be spared by the economic downturn this tech promises.

Unless you have your own fully stocked private bunker with security detail, you will be affected.

[dsign]

Big fan of your argument and don't disagree.

If AI makes a virus to get rid of humanity, well we are screwed. But if all we have to fear from AI is unprecedented economic disruption, I will point out that some parts of the world may survive relatively unscathed. Let's talk Samoa, for example. There, people will continue fishing and living their day-to-day. If industrialized economies collapse, Samoans may find it very hard to import certain products, even vital ones, and that can cause some issues, but not necessarily civil unrest and instability.

In fact, if all we have to fear from AI is unprecedented economic disruption, humans can have a huge revolt, and then a post-revolts world may be fine by turning back the clock, with some help from anti-progress think-tanks. I explore that argument in more detail in this book: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1742992

[ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7]

The issue is there isn't enough of those small environmental economies to support everyone that exists today without the technology, logistics and trades that are in place today.

You can farm and fish the entire undeveloped areas of NYC, but it won't be enough to feed or support the humans that live there.

You can say that for any metro area. Density will have to reduce immediately if there is economic collapse, and historically, when disaster strikes, that doesn't tend to happen immediately.

Also humans (especially large groups of them) need more than food: shelter, clothes, medicine, entertainment, education, religion, justice, law, etc.

[dsign]

> The issue is there isn't enough of those small environmental economies to support everyone that exists today without the technology, logistics and trades that are in place today.

I agree. I expect some parts of the world will see some black days. Lots of infrastructure will be gone or unsuited to people. On top of that, the cultural damage could become very debilitating, with people not knowing how to do X, Y and Z without the AIs. At least for a time. Casualties may mount.

> Also humans (especially large groups of them) need more than food: shelter, clothes, medicine, entertainment, education, religion, justice, law, etc.

This is true, but parts of the world survive today with very little of any of that. And for some of those things that you mention: shelter, education, religion, justice, and even some form of law enforcement, all that is needed is humans willing to work together.

[ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7]

> all that is needed is humans willing to work together

Maybe, but those things are also needed to enable humans to work together

[ares623]

Won’t 8 billion people will have incentive to move to Samoa in that case?

[dsign]

Realistically, in an AI extreme economic disruption scenario, it's more or less USA the only one extremely affected, and that's 400 million people. Assuming it's AI and nothing else causes a big disruption before, and with the big caveat that nobody can't predict the future, I would say:

- Mexico and down are more into informal economies, and they generally lag behind developed economies by decades. Same applies to Africa and big parts of Asia. As such, by the time things get really dire in USA and maybe in Europe and China, the south will be still in business-as-usual.

- Europe has lots of parliaments and already has legislation that takes AI into account. Still, there's a chance those bodies will fail to moderate the impact of AI in the economy and violent corrections will be needed, but people in Europe have long traditions and long memories...They'll find a way.

- China is governed by the communist party, and Russia have their king. It's hard to predict how will those align with AI, but that alignment more or less will be the deciding factor there, and not free capitalism.

[sarchertech]

> Unless you have your own fully stocked private bunker with security detail, you will be affected.

If society collapses, there’s nothing to stop your security detail from killing you and taking the bunker for themselves.

I’d expect warlords to rise up from the ranks of military and police forces in a post collapse feudal society. Tech billionaires wouldn’t last long.

[bongodongobob]

The same argument could be made for actual engineers working on steam engines, nuclear power, or semiconductors.

Make of that what you will.

[afro88]

More like engineers coming up with higher level programming languages. No one (well, nearly) hand writes assembly anymore. But there's still plenty of jobs. Just the majority write in the higher level but still expressive languages.

For some reason everyone thinks as LLMs get better it means programmers go away. The programming language, and amount you can build per day, are changing. That's pretty much it.

[ares623]

I’m not worried about software engineering (only or directly).

Artists, writers, actors, teachers. Plus the rest where I’m not remotely creative enough to imagine will be affected. Hundreds of thousands if not millions flooding the smaller and smaller markets left untouched.

[afro88]

Artists: photography. Yet we still value art in pre photography mediums

Writers: film, tv. Yet we all still read books

Play actors: again, film and tv. Yet we still go to plays, musicals etc

Teachers: the internet, software, video etc. Yet teachers are still essential (though they need to be paid more)

Jobs won't go away, they will change.

[DrewADesign]

I’m not sure I see how: none of those technologies had the stated goal of replacing their creators.

[owebmaster]

> I say that anyone who needed to go the grocery this week will not be spared by the economic downturn this tech promises.

And we are getting to a point that is us or them. Big tech is investing so much money on this that if they do not succeed, they will go broke.

[rootusrootus]

> Big tech is investing so much money on this that if they do not succeed, they will go broke.

Aside from what that would do to my 401(k), I think that would be a positive outcome (the going broke part).

[voidhorse]

Yes. The complete irony in all software engineers enthusiasm for this tech is that, if the boards wishes come true, they are literally helping them eliminate their own jobs. It's like the industrial revolution but worse, because at least the craftsmen weren't also the ones building the factories that would automate them out of work.

Marcuse had a term for this "false consciousness"-when the structure of capitalism ends up making people work against their own interests without realizing it, and that is happening big time in software right now. We will still need programmers for hard, novel problems, but all these lazy programmers using AI to write their crud apps don't seem to realize the writing is on the wall.

[csoups14]

Or they realize it and they're trying to squeeze the last bit of juice available to them before the party stops. It's not exactly a suboptimal decision to work towards your own job's demise if it's the best paying work available to you and you want to save up as much as possible before any possible disruption. If you quit, someone else steps into the breach and the outcome is all the same. There's very few people actually steering the ship who have any semblance of control; the rest of us are just along for the ride and hoping we don't go down with the ship.

[ares623]

Yeah I get that. I myself am part of a team at work building an AI/LLM-based feature.

I always dreaded this would come but it was inevitable.

I can’t outright quit, no thanks in part to the AI hype that stopped valuing headcount as a signal to company growth. If that isn’t ironic I don’t know what is.

Given the situation I am in, I just keep my head down and do the work. I vent and whinge and moan whenever I can, it’s the least I can do. I refuse to cheer it on at work. At the very least I can look my kids in the eye when they are old enough to ask me what the fuck happened and tell them I did not cheer it on.

[flask_manager]

Here's the thing, I tend to believe that sufficiently intelligent and original people will always have something to offer others; its irrelevant if you imagine the others as the current consumer public, our corporate overlords, or the ai owners of the future.

There may be people who have nothing to offer others, once technology advances, but I dont think that anyone in current top % role would find themselves there.