[wvenable]

Programmers are the last people on earth who should complain about job loss due to automation. Our entire jobs since the beginning has been automating people out of jobs and we've done a wonderful job of that for decades. Entire classes of jobs no longer exist. Although I'm not personally responsible for anyone losing their job I'm certainly responsible for less people being hired.

AI is just the next step and not even a particularly large leap. We already needed less law secretaries due to advances of technology. We killed most journalism two decades ago. Art and Music had Photoshop and autotune. Now we've actually achieved something we've literally been striving for since the dawn of computing -- the ability to speak natural language to a computer and have it do what we ask. But it's just one more step.

[iahds9uasd]

I don't think this type of argument is sound at all. There are plenty of programmers whose work doesn't contribute to automating away others' jobs, or those who might not see it in such a way. You are free to disagree with the opinions expressed by the poster above, but making such a sweeping generalization about how we shouldn't hold a supposedly hypocritical opinion based on some kind of imagined consensus seems like an excuse to promote your views over others' as the 'correct' ones.

[wvenable]

I’m not saying individual programmers consciously set out to eliminate jobs, or that every programmer's work directly replaces someone. But the historical and structural reality of the profession is that software development, as a field, has consistently produced automation that reduces the amount of human labor required.

That pattern is bigger than any one of us and it's not a moral judgment. It's simply part of what technology does and has always done. AI is a continuation of that same trend we've all participated in, whether directly or indirectly. My point is that to stop now and say "look at all these jobs being eliminated by computers" is several decades too late.

[encyclopedism]

I understand the sentiment, yet I can still complain ;-)

I do think there is a qualitative difference in AI as compared to previous automation changes. This qualitative difference and its potential impacts beyond the obvious (job losses) is what is more worrying. The societal impact of AI slop, the impact on human intellectual efforts, pursuits, value and meaning are very concerning.