[nemo1618]

"The steamroller is still many inches away. I'll make a plan once it actually starts crushing my toes."

You are in danger. Unless you estimate the odds of a breakthrough at <5%, or you already have enough money to retire, or you expect that AI will usher in enough prosperity that your job will be irrelevant, it is straight-up irresponsible to forgo making a contingency plan.

[overgard]

What contingency plan is there exactly? At best you're just going from an automated-already job to a soon-to-be-automated job. Yay?

I'm baffled that so many people think that only developers are going to be hit and that we especially deserve it. If AI gets so good that you don't need people to understand code anymore, I don't know why you'd need a project manager anymore either, or a CFO, or a graphic designer, etc etc. Even the people that seem to think they're irreplaceable because they have some soft power probably aren't. Like, do VC funds really need humans making decisions in that context..?

Anyway, the practical reason why I'm not screaming in terror right now is because I think the hype machine is entirely off the rails and these things can't be trusted with real jobs. And honestly, I'm starting to wonder how much of tech and social media is just being spammed by bots and sock puppets at this point, because otherwise I don't understand why people are so excited about this hypothetical future. Yay, bots are going to do your job for you while a small handful of business owners profit. And I guess you can use moltbot to manage your not-particularly-busy life of unemployment. Well, until you stop being able to afford the frontier models anyway, which is probably going to dash your dream of vibe coding a startup. Maybe there's a handful of winners, until there's not, because nobody can afford to buy services on a wage of zero dollars. And anyone claiming that the abundance will go to everyone needs to get their head checked.

[Gigachad]

My contingency plan is that if AI leaves me unable to get a job, we are all fucked and society as a whole will have to fix the situation and if it doesn’t, there is nothing I could have done about it anyway.

[chadcmulligan]

As a fellow chad I concur. Though I am improving my poker skills - games of chance will still be around

[selylindi]

You likely already know, but the "Pluribus" poker bot was beating humans back in 2019. Games of chance will be around if people are around, but you'll have to be careful to ensure you're playing against people, unassisted people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluribus_(poker_bot)

[chadcmulligan]

Yeah, thanks, I only play live games. I'm in australia so online poker is illegal here. I was thinking of getting a vpn and having a play online, then I saw this recently https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1qi69...

[Gigachad]

So much of these degenerate online gambling / "investment" platforms are illegal here for good reason. If you are just a normal person playing fairly, you are being scammed. Same for things like Polymarket, the only winners are the people with insider knowledge.

[chadcmulligan]

Even horse racing, it's a solved problem, and if you start winning they'll just cancel your a/c (happened to a friend of mine)

[everettde]

this has been me ever since my philosophy undergrad.

[tired-turtle]

This is a sensible plan, given your username.

[nikkwong]

Yeah seriously. Don't people understand the fact that society is not good at mopping up messes like this—there has been a K shaped economy for several decades now and most Americans have something like $400 in their bank accounts. The bottom had already fallen out for them, and help still hasn't arrived. I think it's more likely that what really happens is that white collar workers, especially the ones on the margin, join this pool—and there is a lot of suffering for a long time.

Personally, rather devolving into nihilism, I'd rather try to hedge against suffering that fate. Now is the time to invest and save money. (or yesterday)

[sarchertech]

If white collar workers as a whole suffer severe economic setback over a short term timespan, your savings and investments won’t help you.

Unless you’re investing in guns, ammo, food, and a bunker. We’re talking worse unemployment than depression era Germany. And structurally more significant unemployment because the people losing their jobs were formally very high earners.

[nikkwong]

That’s the cataclysmic outcome, though. Although I deemed that that’s certainly possible and I would put a double digit percentage probability on it, another very likely outcome is a very severe recession, or a recession, wear a lot of, but not all, white collar work is wiped out. Maybe there’s a significant restructuring in the economy I think in a scenario like that, which also seems to be in the realm of possibility, I think having resources still matters. Speech to text, sorry for the poor grammar.

[sarchertech]

It’s definitely possible that there’s an impact that is bad but not cataclysmic. I figure in thst case though my regular savings is enough to switch to something else. I could retire now if I was willing to move somewhere cheap and live on $60k a year. There’s a lot of things that could cause that level of recession though without the need for AI.

I do also think the mid level bad outcome isn’t super likely because of AI is good enough to replace a lot of white collar jobs, I think it could replace almost all of them.

[nitwit005]

> You are in danger. Unless you estimate the odds of a breakthrough at <5%

It's not the odds of the breakthrough, but the timeline. A factory worker could have correctly seen that one day automation would replace him, and yet worked his entire career in that role.

There have been a ton of predictions about software engineers, radiologists, and some other roles getting replaced in months. Those predictions have clearly been not so great.

At this point the greater risk to my career seems to be the economy tanking, as that seems to be happening and ongoing. Unfortunately, switching careers can't save you from that.

[energy123]

We are the French artisans being replaced by English factories. OpenAI and its employees are the factory.

[snowwrestler]

Checking the scoreboard a bit later on: the French economy is currently about the same size as the UK.

[nitwit005]

That has little to do with what I wrote, and isn't addressing the central issue.

[adamkittelson]

I'm not worried about the danger of losing my job to an AI capable of performing it. I'm worried about the danger of losing my job because an executive wanted to be able to claim that AI has enhanced productivity to such a degree that they were able to eliminate redundancies with no regard for whether there was any truth to that statement or not.

[themafia]

> Unless you estimate the odds of a breakthrough at <5%

I do. Show me any evidence that it is imminent.

> or you expect that AI will usher in enough prosperity that your job will be irrelevant

Not in my lifetime.

> it is straight-up irresponsible to forgo making a contingency plan.

No, I'm actually measuring the risk, you're acting as if the sky is falling. What's your contingency plan? Buy a subscription to the revolution?

[adriand]

> What's your contingency plan? Buy a subscription to the revolution?

I’ve been working on my contingency plan for a year-and-a-half now. I won’t get into what it is (nothing earth shattering) but if you haven’t been preparing, I think you’re either not paying enough attention or you’re seriously misreading where this is all going.

[small_model]

This ^ been a SWE for 20 years the market is the worst I have seen it, many good devs been looking for 1-2 years and not even getting a response, whereas 3-4 years ago they would have had multiple offers. Im still working but am secure in terms of money so will be ok not working (financially at least). But I expect a tsunami of layoffs this and next year, then you are competing with 1000x other devs and Indians who will works for 30% of your salary.

[realusername]

That's called an economic crisis, it has nothing to do with AI, my friends also have trouble to find 100% manual jobs which were easily available 2 years ago.

Yes I said the word that none of these company want to say in their press conference.

[small_model]

Thats because there are more tech/service workers competing for the manual jobs now.

[realusername]

Tech workers aren't numerous enough to have that effect.

Besides that, why aren't we seeing any metrics change on Github? With a supposedly increase of productivity so large a good chunk of the workforce is fired, we would see it somewhere.

[Seattle3503]

A lot of non-AI things have happened though.

[zozbot234]

So AI is going to steamroll all feasible jobs, all at once, with no alternatives developing over time? That's just a fantasy.

[hirvi74]

It'd probably be cold day in Hell before AI replaces veterinary services, for example. Perhaps for mild conditions, but I cannot imagine an AI robot trying to restrain an animal.

[laichzeit0]

All these so-called safe jobs still depend on someone being able to afford those services. If I don't have a job, I can't go see the vet, the fact that no one else can do the vets job is irrelevant at such a point.

I would like to know if there's some kind of inflection point, like the so-called Laffer curve for taxes, where once an economy has X% unemployment, it effectively collapses. I'd imagine it goes: recession -> depression -> systemic crisis and appears to be somewhere between 30-40% unemployment based on history.

[ares623]

Every job deemed "safe" will be flooded by desparate applicants from unsafe jobs.

[jopsen]

> it is straight-up irresponsible to forgo making a contingency plan.

What contingencies can you really make?

Start training a physical trade, maybe.

If this the end of SWE jobs, you better ride the wave. Odds are you're estimate on when AI takes over are off by half a career, anyways.

[sarchertech]

Working in the trades won’t help you at 40-50% unemployment. Who’s going to pay for your services. And even the meager work remains would be fought over by the hundred million unemployed who are all suddenly fighting tooth and nail for any work they can get.

[snowwrestler]

Isn’t it a bit silly to say AI is going to eat the entire economy, but you have a contingency plan?

It seems kind of like saying “I’m smarter than all the AIs in this one particular way.” If someone posted that, you would probably jump in to say they’re fooling themselves.

[watt]

Unless I misunderstand your metaphor, there is nothing you can do about the steamroller, it is going to roll, no matter what.