[intended]

If upskilling is your hope - you have no hope.

Without any modifications - MOOCs have single digit completion rates. This is high quality, free, publicly available educational material.

The vast majority of people do not simply have the time, money, or undivided attention - to get a new domain under their belt.

This is “help miners learn code” territory.

[sateesh]

What other option you can propose. This article [1] says preferred suggestions by economists is: retraining, regulation, or social insurance and for most of the people surveyed "retraining" was the preferred approach.

Not sure MOOCs can be taken as an useful alibi to measure success of upskill. Most (employers) won't honor the MOCC certs, and people do MOOC while working. Taking a MOOC doesn't inherently ensure that the learner has mastered the course they took, hence there is less incentive in completing too.

1. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/coming-ai-backl...

[intended]

Then There are NO options. We will have to live with that world and having no future.

I’m aware that this level of nihilism is difficult for many to stomach - but it’s only nihilism if you believe in fairy tales.

If we are talking about reality then we have to deal with the impossible challenges we are facing.

The fact is that retraining will not work - nor is this the first time it’s been named as a hope up in the past 25 years. (“teaching miners how to code” comes from the last time this was a big hope in America.)

If it helps you feel better - I said unmodified MOOCs.

With some changes, you can increase MOOC completion rates - but there isn’t enough lift even after that.

I used to be a champion for education initiatives to up skill workers - from a time before MOOCs.

The failure of MOOCs was the end of that hope because it showed there was a gape between the ideal and reality.

People simply can’t retrain like that.

[sateesh]

Not that I completely disagree with you, yes indeed with excellent training not sure how many can be retrained to be good enough for new kind of job roles, skills. Also it isn't certain that there will be far more new jobs than what would get shed, in which case there won't be enough demand to absorb even the retrained (and skilled) labor.

[cudgy]

Serious question. What should people retrain in? What jobs or training will provide long-term income potential? You don’t want to spend four years retraining for a job or career that only lasts for two years or seven years. My point is that let’s say a new technology comes out or new occupation. How long will it take for the AI and the robots to be able to perform that occupation? Can people train and actually work in that career before the robots take it over?

Is AI the proverbial apple in Adam and Eve? Are we justifying taking a bite of it just because it’s there? Are we helpless and unable to defend ourselves against it? My worry is that thoughts like these and questions like these are going through young people and their decisions about how to provide and proceed into a career. Are we headed towards learned helplessness?

[intended]

Sadly my friend, the fact is that we are hosed.

Retraining is a pipe dream which will be sold for another 5 years, till most people are underemployed.

This is what happened to factory workers, and to an extent is going to happen to knowledge workers.

The real menace is hidden in the details though - knowledge work is assumed to have one core component - information. Accurate information.

In reality it has two - emotional salience and informational accuracy.

LLMs generate content- I foresee a future where people are underemployed as output verifiers. So a PhD in physics helps you QC an LLM.

The only job left is to own a firm, but even that will be closed because you will either be selling to capital owners or the majority of humanity.

The only hope of technology is that it creates a revolution which upends the preexisting incumbents. But the issue here is the under employment.

[hackable_sand]

Can I also get a PhD in Hacker News Commenting?

[intended]

Well, considering that your comments are used to feed these systems, I think its more of creating a hacker news commenters union.