So many engineers are so excited to work on and with these systems, opening 20 prs per day to make their employers happy going “yes boss!”
They think their $300k total compensation will give them a seat at the table for what they’re cheering on to come.
I say that anyone who needed to go the grocery this week will not be spared by the economic downturn this tech promises.
Unless you have your own fully stocked private bunker with security detail, you will be affected.
If AI makes a virus to get rid of humanity, well we are screwed. But if all we have to fear from AI is unprecedented economic disruption, I will point out that some parts of the world may survive relatively unscathed. Let's talk Samoa, for example. There, people will continue fishing and living their day-to-day. If industrialized economies collapse, Samoans may find it very hard to import certain products, even vital ones, and that can cause some issues, but not necessarily civil unrest and instability.
In fact, if all we have to fear from AI is unprecedented economic disruption, humans can have a huge revolt, and then a post-revolts world may be fine by turning back the clock, with some help from anti-progress think-tanks. I explore that argument in more detail in this book: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1742992
You can farm and fish the entire undeveloped areas of NYC, but it won't be enough to feed or support the humans that live there.
You can say that for any metro area. Density will have to reduce immediately if there is economic collapse, and historically, when disaster strikes, that doesn't tend to happen immediately.
Also humans (especially large groups of them) need more than food: shelter, clothes, medicine, entertainment, education, religion, justice, law, etc.
I agree. I expect some parts of the world will see some black days. Lots of infrastructure will be gone or unsuited to people. On top of that, the cultural damage could become very debilitating, with people not knowing how to do X, Y and Z without the AIs. At least for a time. Casualties may mount.
> Also humans (especially large groups of them) need more than food: shelter, clothes, medicine, entertainment, education, religion, justice, law, etc.
This is true, but parts of the world survive today with very little of any of that. And for some of those things that you mention: shelter, education, religion, justice, and even some form of law enforcement, all that is needed is humans willing to work together.
- Mexico and down are more into informal economies, and they generally lag behind developed economies by decades. Same applies to Africa and big parts of Asia. As such, by the time things get really dire in USA and maybe in Europe and China, the south will be still in business-as-usual.
- Europe has lots of parliaments and already has legislation that takes AI into account. Still, there's a chance those bodies will fail to moderate the impact of AI in the economy and violent corrections will be needed, but people in Europe have long traditions and long memories...They'll find a way.
- China is governed by the communist party, and Russia have their king. It's hard to predict how will those align with AI, but that alignment more or less will be the deciding factor there, and not free capitalism.
If society collapses, there’s nothing to stop your security detail from killing you and taking the bunker for themselves.
I’d expect warlords to rise up from the ranks of military and police forces in a post collapse feudal society. Tech billionaires wouldn’t last long.
Make of that what you will.
For some reason everyone thinks as LLMs get better it means programmers go away. The programming language, and amount you can build per day, are changing. That's pretty much it.
Artists, writers, actors, teachers. Plus the rest where I’m not remotely creative enough to imagine will be affected. Hundreds of thousands if not millions flooding the smaller and smaller markets left untouched.
And we are getting to a point that is us or them. Big tech is investing so much money on this that if they do not succeed, they will go broke.
Aside from what that would do to my 401(k), I think that would be a positive outcome (the going broke part).
Marcuse had a term for this "false consciousness"-when the structure of capitalism ends up making people work against their own interests without realizing it, and that is happening big time in software right now. We will still need programmers for hard, novel problems, but all these lazy programmers using AI to write their crud apps don't seem to realize the writing is on the wall.
I always dreaded this would come but it was inevitable.
I can’t outright quit, no thanks in part to the AI hype that stopped valuing headcount as a signal to company growth. If that isn’t ironic I don’t know what is.
Given the situation I am in, I just keep my head down and do the work. I vent and whinge and moan whenever I can, it’s the least I can do. I refuse to cheer it on at work. At the very least I can look my kids in the eye when they are old enough to ask me what the fuck happened and tell them I did not cheer it on.
There may be people who have nothing to offer others, once technology advances, but I dont think that anyone in current top % role would find themselves there.
