[thebiglabowski]

Occasionally, I read these types of essays and get awfully depressed. As someone just starting out in the technology field (and I guess white-collar work in general), it feels as if I suddenly have no hope of ever living a fruitful and meaningful life. The means by which I could ever potentially earn a living are slowly destroyed.

I do wonder if others in my age group ever feel the same, if basically everyone under 30 has a general anxiety regarding the future.

[fatherwavelet]

Do you think people were more optimistic about the future during World War 2? Or after WW2 when everyone was worried about nuclear annihilation?

How about before that when your new baby had a 30% chance of death before age 5?

Before that, starvation, plague and war were always real things to worry about for the entirety of human history.

I think everyone reading this has the same problem of needing to figure out hedonics in order to appreciate what you do have instead of focusing on minuscule bullshit that you don't have.

[justonepost1]

There’s nothing for us. The best our generation can hope for is that the vision these people have of the future, and are spending more money than god trying to create, fails, and the economic consequences end up limited.

The second best thing is getting enough time to build a runway. I have a good job right now (mid 20s), and I’m eating progresso soup for dinner most days to save money for whatever is coming. Pretty much every medium or long term goal abandoned, I just want to have the money to hit some bucket list items if the collapse comes.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep on reading the daily article from one of the many people with few gray hairs, a retro blog and a small fortune from the dotcom era telling me this is the best time ever, actually. We’ll see.

[silcoon]

A bit older than you but yes, the feeling is kind of there. Let's try to be a bit more precise:

> no hope of ever living a fruitful and meaningful life

This is wrong. Fruitful and meaningful life can be lived anyway independently from your career and from your financial situation. Since it seems that job opportunity and growth might shrink without "hustling" or "grinding", it's extremely important to learn from a young age what really gives meaning to life, and this task has to be done entirely by you. No quick course, no AI or tutorial can teach you this. You need to learn it by yourself when you're young because it would probably make a real difference for the rest of your life. There are some tools for it, and the best one are probably books, and fiction can be really powerful to shape your thinking. I don't know you but I'll start from this one if you haven't read it before (don't think too much about the title and the tone, concentrate on the topic): The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck

> get awfully depressed

Yes, this is a bit the feeling that over-exposition to social media provokes in a lot of people. Everything seems going shit; politics, climate, wars, nothing is right anymore. Idk you but my life is pretty stable, go out with friends, cook nice meals, traveling, stuff like that. So yes this are real problem in the world, but media currently over-expose us to this things (because it helps them sell articles and make you click). The easiest solution might be detoxing from media, and replace that with learning how things work for real trough books.

> The means by which I could ever potentially earn a living are slowly destroyed.

Unfortunately no-one know this for sure, so it doesn't make sense to overthink it. The technology field is changing but AIs are not near replacing humans yet. Technology has the power to automate and so replace every single job out there, so it's a field that still has work to be done and so investment will come in. It's just the current time that seems not right, and mostly it's because rich entrepreneurs tied themself with politics, to save their ass and make even more money in a period of political instability.

The future doesn't look bright, but learn how not to fall in a negativity trap created by media and internet.

[stego-tech]

The advice I give younger folks is what I wished I’d been taught when I was just starting out myself, and confronting dismal prospects and futures after the 2008 Collapse:

Always consider the justification for the narrative. Dario Amodei has a vested interest in peddling his perspective, as that’s how he gets funding, media interest, publicity, and free advertising. He needs his product to be everything he claims it to be, lest the money supply suddenly dry up. Every startup does this, and while it doesn’t make them wrong, it also doesn’t mean you should take them at their word either.

I’d also say that you’re not alone in this frustration, and it’s not limited to your age demographic. My millennial peers and GenX colleagues share similar concerns about a dismal future, and many point to the same trends that have gradually stripped away our ability to survive or live authentic lives in the name of oligarchy profit motives as causes for our present malaise.

What Dario Amodei can never admit, however, is that he’s wrong; you, and many of us here, can and will acknowledge our faults, but Dario and Sam and Zuck et al have built such a massive confidence game around GenAI being the antithesis to labor that one of them admitting they’re wrong risks destroying the entire game for everyone else - and vaporize the trillions of dollars sunk into this technology “revolution” in the process.

The best cure I’ve found for that sort of depression is simply to do more learning across a wider spectra of topics. There’s a reason you don’t see widespread AI boostering in, say, neuroscience or psychology, outside of the handful of usual grifters and hustlers angling to cash in on the hype: because anyone with knowledge beyond statistical algebra and matrix multiplication can see the limitations of these tools, and knows they cannot displace labor permanently in their current forms. Outside of the “booster bubble”, the concerns we have with AI are less the apocalyptic claims of Mr. Amodei that mass unemployment from AI is just three to six months away (since 2023), and more the rampant misuse and exploitation these systems rely upon and cultivate for profit. Most of us aren’t opposed to having another tool, we’re opposed to perpetually renting this tool indefinitely from oligarchs shoving it down our throats and datacenters hoovering our limited energy and freshwater supplies, instead of being able to utilize it locally in sustainable and sensical ways.

Learning about different topics from different fields helps paint a clearer picture - one that’s admittedly even more bleak in the immediate, but at least arms you with knowledge to effect change for the better going forward.

[j33dd]

Yep.

Man can we just get this hype phase over with? Its very obvious to anyone who truly has "general intelligence" in understanding the nature of the economy and the present labour market and its job classes that LLMs are not going to cause job destruction nor immense leaps in productivity.

To put it another way - who cares if you can write more lines of code - if your taste for project selection lacks? Google has an expansive grave yard for a reason.

[igor47]

I'm not sure what the rhetorical gamble of "anyone with sense agrees with me" is called, but it's lazy. Maybe a no true Scotsman? I believe I have general intelligence and it's not at all obvious to me.

Putting your hopes on taste is cope. At best AI will just let you brute force 1000 projects to discover the delicious ones.

[stego-tech]

You’re trying to analytically argue away an emotion (depression), which means you’ve automatically lost.

Seriously, read the fucking room (and comment thread) before charging in with a holier-than-thou argumentative attitude.

[igor47]

I'm very confused. You're saying that being concerned about AI impact on society makes me depressed? Really not sure what the "read the room" portion means. Did my comment somehow trigger you?