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lelanthrantoday at 1:09 PM6 repliesview on HN

To me looks like, if we're not collectively careful, civilisation will soon be on a path to an evolutionary dead-end.

Anything that can replace a deeply experienced s/ware engineer can replace anyone in the employment stack, meaning that only the owners of capital will be left, and they too will soon fade as the economy falls off a cliff and money has no value, because the only value that money has is the value of a human backing that, with thought, with ideas, with human output.

Whether you like it or not, "Economic output" is just a different phrase for "Human output that is valuable". When all human output is valued at the fractions of a penny per month of work, there is no future.


Replies

hax0ron3today at 4:59 PM

>Anything that can replace a deeply experienced s/ware engineer can replace anyone in the employment stack

Well, except for roles where being human is an inherent part of the value for customers: bartender, prostitute, certain kinds of boutique sales, professional athlete, stage actor, etc. And for roles that have to be human for legal reasons.

Of course such roles make up a small part of the entire job market.

ilovecake1984today at 2:02 PM

This is so blinkered and egocentric.

Just because LLMs are good at translating English to code, doesn’t imply they are good at many other jobs.

Coding isn’t that hard, it’s just not enjoyable to most people. The enjoyment has always been the barrier to entry.

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trumpdongtoday at 3:11 PM

No lelanthran, software engineering and plumbing are not the same job. No lelanthran, LLMs can't be plumbers.

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p-e-wtoday at 1:15 PM

> Anything that can replace a deeply experienced s/ware engineer can replace anyone in the employment stack

Nope, just knowledge workers. We’re decades away from automating many manual labor professions, even “unskilled” ones.

Turns out brains just aren’t as special as we thought.

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juleiietoday at 1:51 PM

That sounds more like a problem of close minded narrow focus on economic output instead of culture, virtue and spiritual traditions.

AI is fundamentally an equivalent to slave economy. Cheap, plentiful workforce. This time ethically neutral. You either get Greece or Rome. I’d prefer Greece but it will probably be Rome. From the past we can predict the future.

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darkstarsystoday at 1:13 PM

Owners of capital, yes, but also owners of the means of production (which now means AI companies). See https://blog.oberbrunner.com/blog/ai-risks-taxonomy/#economi...

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