[mikkupikku]

You act as if this is the first time in history technology has wiped out a trade and made people scramble to sort out their lives. No, this has been happening over and over again throughout history and at a rapidly accelerating pace since the industrial revolution. Why should we ask it to slow down on behalf of programmers, when it never did for anybody else? Don't pretend you didn't know this was a possibility when you got into tech in the first place. You might have to downsize your life but humanity as a whole will be better off.

[cardanome]

The industrial revolution resulted in children being worked to literal death. Of people toiling 16 hours ad day and living in cramped up spaces without any windows and barely any hygiene. It brought suffering on a scale never seen before.

Organized labor movements managed to fight back and improve conditions somewhat but will we be able to do it this time?

Humanity will not profit from generative AI, tech billionaires will. It is based on the theft of human labor of millions of programmer, artists and writers without any compensation. If left unchecked it will destroy the environment, any form of democracy, our mental health. It will cause mass unemployment at a grand scale.

Could it be in theory used for good? Maybe. As the current political situation stands it will cause massive suffering for the majority of people.

[paulryanrogers]

> You might have to downsize your life but humanity as a whole will be better off

This assumes that there will be other jobs to get. If AI replaces a large enough segment of office jobs then huge portions of the population will be unable to afford essentials like food and healthcare.

[code_for_monkey]

it also assumes humanity will be better off because people can vibe code stuff, which is a massive stretch already.

[mikkupikku]

Walk into a staffing agency, ask for a job. They'll give you a list, pick the one that sounds the least disagreeable. Show up on time, every day, for at least two or three months and you'll convert the temp position into a full time job.

It's literally that easy, showing up reliably is a super power that puts you in the 90th percentile of workers these days. The job probably won't be as comfortable as sitting on a comfortable chair in an air-conditioning office wiggling your fingers at a computer, but so what? Other people make it work, so can you. Man up.

[code_for_monkey]

sorry, no jobs at the staffing agency, those are AI. Feel free to walk into a burger king, show up everyday, and flip those fries for minimum wage until you die. Man up brother, other people make it work. Sleeping on the street, well half the year its not even snowing.

[mikkupikku]

You clearly haven't bothered to even look, so why should I even believe your concern is genuine?

[DrewADesign]

The last study I know of that measured the conversion rate from temp to perm employees showed about 15%-30% success… and that was well before the gig economy really took hold. So you’re looking at 4 or 5 temp placements to reliably get a probably underpaying job when very few white collar workers could survive long enough to make the end of a lease, or sell their house, while on a temp job salary. It’s a viable option for a 25 year old that could couch surf for a few months, but not for a mid-late career professional, or anyone with a family.

You can give any complex problem a simple answer if you ignore enough factors.

[DrewADesign]

Your glib dismissal of the real effects of those technological upheavals shows you haven’t actually looked into this. You should probably tamp down that smugness until you find out.

[mikkupikku]

Did you think about it before you got into the tech industry? You should have, technology has been wiping out jobs since forever but you got into tech anyway. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Except you needn't actually die, just walk into a staffing agency and ask for a new job. I have done so before, and will do so again. I have prepared for what is to come, saw it coming 20 years ago and saw the imminence of it when GPT-2 was released. I have sympathy for other kinds of white collar professionals who never could have anticipated these kind of developments, but technologists? Give me a break. You knew, or should have known, that technological developments in this domain were likely.

[achierius]

Please stop pretending that this is only going to replace "tech workers". Do accountants "live by the sword"? Whose jobs did they replace? What about analysts, journalists, radiologists (one day, if not quite yet)?

And even within the realm of "tech", it's kinda bonkers to expect e.g. a firmware engineer to have some deep understanding of trends in ML/AI.

Altogether your #1 priority seems to be "bashing workers", the justification just being a matter of convenience.

[mikkupikku]

Please stop pretending to read comments before replying to them:

> I have sympathy for other kinds of white collar professionals who never could have anticipated these kind of developments, but technologists? Give me a break.

[DrewADesign]

That’s one big edgelord cop out.

I’m not in the tech industry anymore because in the battle of people who wanted to solve problems with software and money grubbing MBAs, the money grubbing MBAs have won. Now I’m a union machinist, and believe it or not, I’m concerned about the wellbeing of others. In manufacturing, companies are starting to face the consequences of shortsightedly selling out their workforce and are frantically clamoring to use the agonal breaths of its existing manufacturing industry knowledge base to breathe life into a new generation of workers. China becoming a manufacturing powerhouse wasn’t a foregone conclusion: we gave it to them in exchange for short-term profits. Our economy, national security, and the financial viability of a robust middle class is paying the price for their greed and arrogance.

The people running the tech industry can’t see the world past the end of this quarter, so they’ll never learn the lessons our society has learned many times over. Good luck. Unless you’re running a company, you’re going to need it. The soft, arrogant, whiny, maladroit white collar workers coming into the trades are pathetically ill-equipped to do actual work.

[mikkupikku]

You've already done all that I can advise others here do, so congrats, I have nothing to criticize there. You've done it better than me actually, since you're unionized. As for soft white collar wimps washing out, people at the first job I had out of tech were taking bets if I'd show up for the second day, so don't think I don't know what you're talking about. I know it, I did it, and other people can do it too.

The problem with exporting manufacturing to China was this country lost the ability to make shit. I don't think this maps at all to white collar jobs getting gutted by AI; the people who actually make things aren't the white collar workers who should be sweating. Societies paper pushers would effectively be a parasite class leeching off the hard labor of people who actually work, if not for the part where white collar workers are (or have been) necessary to organize the logistics of everything that allows the people who actually do the work to actually do the work. We are on the precipice of dramatic change, and I think we're going to see a radical revaluing across society.

None of this is even new. Computers and other business machines already came for the clerks and secretary pools before most people ITT were born. The loss of these careers was not even remotely a problem for society at large, completely unlike offshoring manufacturing.

[wartywhoa23]

Your argument boils down to good'ol trusty Inquisition trick called Guilt-tripping Over The Original Sin