[refactor_master]

> The real move for the autoworker was sideways, not upward: industrial maintenance, tool and die work, welding, industrial electrical work, construction trades, trucking, or logistics.

But in an AI post-work future, all the sideways moves have also been taken over by AI and robots. After all, “knowledge work” as a discipline will not be there, right? Whether I can write code, manage teams or copywrite. All of them automated.

When the complexity vs cost of automation tips in the favor of humans, that’s where I’ll have to skill to. You said it, trucking, welding, … That I have a PhD in knowledge work is just worthless paper now.

[bayarearefugee]

> When the complexity vs cost of automation tips in the favor of humans, that’s where I’ll have to skill to. You said it, trucking, welding

Even the 'safe' jobs are going to suffer a lot relative to today because it'll be a race to the bottom as more and more people try to shift into a reduced number of jobs with less demand.

Eg. Being a welder is safe from AI at least until the robots are perfected, but even they have two huge problems to contend with in the nearer term: reduced demand for their services as ~40% of the current workforce loses their income, plus an influx of competition for their own job as these same displaced workers look to shift jobs to a safer one.

People who assume everything will be alright post-AI because everything (mostly) worked itself out in the past are underestimating the extent to which the scale of so much changing so fast will negatively impact every aspect of our economy for anyone who isn't already a wealthy asset owner.

The economy can absorb buggy whip makers being obsoleted, or car factory workers being offshored, but even though those situations sucked for the people impacted by them, the scale of them was tiny (and the time to adjust was so much longer) compared to what is coming with AI displacement.

[tartoran]

On top of that, this could trigger social unrest on a scale most of us have never seen in our lifetimes. But who benefits from AI is still politically negotiable. It is possible to build policies that spread the gains more broadly. Otherwise, the economy hollow out, society starts to fracture, and nobody wins, including the ultra-wealthy. Their wealth is not insulated from collapse; it depends on the stability of the system itself.

[jonnycoder]

It’s shifting for knowledge workers too, we just need to pivot. I have had many app ideas for a while and now ai lets me build them quickly. Access to education and knowledge led to your advanced eduction, now access to cheap/fast building leads to products execution. Use your phd brain to come up with a well researched idea/plan and then go execute.

[markus_zhang]

Just a note that everyone is doing that, at 10x speed, and very good people can now output 100x thanks to AI.

[OutOfHere]

Those who are essentially vibe coding will find their code large, brittle, and unmaintainable beyond a size, contingent on its organization. They will be able to make 100x the toys but toys aren't what make the world work.

[markus_zhang]

Yeah, but those are amateurs. But every developer like you and me are going to do the same, or be whipped to do the same. But the world only needs that many games, that many TODO apps, that many...so, either you are already a top developer, which ofc means you shouldn't worry, or else.