alt Hacker NewsWhat is going to become of life for those of us who do not work at AI labs and are unlikely to be hired by AI labs, despite all the years we put into learning coding, math, etc, as we were told to do? Those of us who made the mistake of studying anything other than machine learning. How will we make a living? (We don't live in a world that seems likely to distribute gains widely instead of largely to the handful of already mega-rich.)
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The answer to this is: countries with the most natural resources will build robots to farm all their food, mine all their minerals, and build all their products. It will be up to governments to enforce that outputs are equitably distributed to the populace. Countries without natural resources, or ones with corrupt governments, will continue to have serious, and likely worsening, problems.
Thought experiment: If no thought workers are needed to design or engineer a Ferrari, what is needed? My answer is time and natural resources (include energy).
AGI-level model is perpetually 18 months away. Your job will be fine.
>as we were told to do?
This is such a childish take I hear getting thrown around all the time on the internet. If you really have just been listening to whoever is telling you how to be successful, then you were always doomed to fail at some point. Like, have some self-respect and own your own life, for better or worse.
>Those of us who made the mistake of studying anything other than machine learning. How will we make a living?
Take it from someone who studied machine learning specifically: nobody is safe if you assume these companies are going to produce a product that will put everybody else out of business. If AI is going to take your job, then it's gonna take enough jobs that your problems will not be personal but systematic.
I am going to take my 401k and open up a coffee or bike shop. If I am going to be broke, might as well enjoy what I do.
I have exactly the same thoughts - or perhaps slightly bleaker ones - evry time I read this relentless stream of news about new model releases. I’m tired of all the enthusiastic comments about how excited everyone is about the latest benchmark results and so on.
I have a strong suspicion that many of those comments are written by people who are already financially independent, have millions in stocks, and can just sit back, coast around and watch this whole spectacle unfold while using LLMs to vibe-code their next fun side projects without a shadow of anxiety about their own future.
I’ll most likely be labelled a helpless doomer and downvoted into oblivion for saying this, but I genuinely struggle to see any silver lining here.
large parts of ai research likely to be automated first
most swes don't work in jobs where they only work on bounded measurable tasks. there will probably be more "engineers" than ever
“As we were told to do” girl you gotta be responsible for yourself
> How will we make a living?
My backup plan is being a personal trainer.
> How will we make a living?
Don't be selfish. Think first of all the jobs that are already dead. A friend of mine she's a translator: like translating financial documents between french/english/spanish. It's over for her: she doesn't get 10% of the gigs she used to get and the 10% she gets is... Verifying AI output.
Think of the artists: I'm sorry for those too, for for many it's already game over today.
> How will we make a living?
A friend of mine who's got his own software-consultancy SME is now advertising on LinkedIn that he'll also help your company fix the mess LLMs created.
That's how you'll make a living: by learning, in addition to all you've already learned, how you work with harnesses and LLMs to be more productive, by learning what they're good at and what they suck big fat balls at.
Just learn how to use it to do your job better.
It’s an interesting moment in history, people 35+ yrs old seem to be less afraid if tech because we learned that things change in the way we work. People below this age got used to fact that the work and tech doesn’t change - just because for the last 10-15 years it didn’t.
You can cash your UBI check that Sam Promised and do poetry daily or something , welcome to our glorious future (/s).
You can calm down, even those with machine learning knowledge and most of those working for the AI labs won’t be needed anymore if models are capable to improve themselves. In the end, having a machine replacing the work of a human is a good thing - in most of the cases we don’t work because of the work but to make a living. If too many people can’t make a living anymore the system is going to change. For the better or the worse.