Technology

Same thing the rest of us replaced by AI are gonna do: live on the dole or starve

As a dev, there's still quite a bit ai can't do and will most likely not be able to do.

AI is good at solving old problems but it's not trained on anything new. Its good at boilerplate and templates, but not good at original material. If it gets tremendously better, and really does get to the point where it's better than we are at development, then the industry will shift into prompt engineering. But I can see a huge reduction of jobs.

Then I'll train my own model to make others lose their jobs, too. I bet an AI will then be able to do all calculations a civil engineer can do. Or manage any project.

Well before that level of complexity is achieved, the jobs of CEOs and Managers will be gone. Question is, will the Ai CEO really want to risk the safety of a review, knowing that it IS the company. Pump and Dump won't do it any more. Then CEOs need to actually work for their money. (Or well... get replaced by an Ai)

Once AI can develop code it can be used to improve itself in a feedback loop that would take short time to reach skynet.

We'd be the last of our species once it would want more resources than we'd be able to give it

Who tells the AI what to create? And how well does the AI understand the exact thing the person is attempting to do?

It would be no different than prompt engineers now knowing exactly what the say/type in order to get the image output they want.

That prompt work would be a kind of programming code in upon itself.

I'll take what money I have stashed away and buy a nice secluded parcel of property with dummy low taxes away from people.

I'll grow my own food, hunt, forage, etc.

I'll do odd jobs to fill in the gaps when needed. anything from tech consulting to roof repairs.

I'll refuse to use any technology unless a job requires it.

and I'll wait for the inevitable collapse of technological society because a vulnerability was baked into the AI every company is using and nobody knows how to fix it.

I refuse to be a part of a system that denies me a seat at the table.

You seem like someone who hasn't really worked in software development.

Software engineering does not simply mean coding. A production grade software application goes through analysis, design, implementation (where coding happens), testing (several phases), release and maintenance. Not to mention infrastructure concerns (storage, databases, microservices, service orchestration, middleware, etc). The whole process is too nuanced and complex to conclude that AI would make the whole career obsolete. It might shake up some areas of software engineering but only a small part of it.

You'll still need people to verify that the AI generated application actually behaves as per the business logic, runs optimally with the hardware you have and scales as your business grows. Which means engineers for testing and reviewing the generated code plus engineers to setup the infrastructure where the application will run.

That will never happen, or at least with how ai currently works. It's basically a glorified autocorrect, it uses the same technology underneath.

But presuming it does, yes. We will have to go to another industry, like AI prompting. Coding is a tiny part of professional software development.

The plan is to rehire them back temporarily to babysit the AI and fix all the AI generated crap. Then realize it was cheaper to actually just have the devs make code. Then hire them back at a reduced rate on a more permanent basis with the understanding that they believe the code will still be partially generated by AI and cleaned up by the same people and they aren't paying top tier for third hand AI slop.

Well if it can replace senior software engineers... Wouldn't it also be able to do almost all of the other jobs? Or are you referring to some specific future where AI advances massively, but robotics does not and handymen are still safe?

I'd say if all humans are unemployed, society would change massively. We can't really tell how that'd work. But if machines / AI do all jobs, get food on the table... I don't really know what other people would be doing. I think I'd relax and pursue a few hobbies and interests. Or it'd be some dystopia where humankind is oppressed by the machines and I'd fight for the resistance.

But regardless... In a world like that, money wouldn't work the way it does now. Neither would salaries for labor mean anything.

I was going to learn how to give a really good handjob but the AI robots will probably take over that too.

Welcome to being a luddite.

It's not actually about hating the progression of technology, it's realizing that your labor has been leveraged against you. You will not bear any of the true fruits, because your bosses will use the fruits of your labor to purchase the AI to replace you.

It's because the labor market is fucked and developers needed unions 20 years ago instead of thinking because they were "rockstars" and "made the big bucks" that they didn't need anybody else.

We wouldn't have to ask these kind of questions if the fruits of our labor were being equitably distributed.

Basically in the scenario described, this is what's happening to developers:

Riot.

Homemade pornography, obviously.

But actually, I'll limit myself to fixing deployment pipelines, correcting business specification mistakes, helping business leaders understand how computers work at all, mitigating moderate security issues, and finding a new job when the unmitigated severe security issues drive my employer bankrupt.

So essentially, exactly how I spend my day today, but with less typing.

And more nude photography, of course.

Ultimately we need to prepare for a future where the majority of jobs have been automated and need a way to keep the economy going. Everyone being employed full time is just something that is not sustainable on the long term as technology progresses. We'll eventually need UBI because otherwise all the money will be transferred to nearly fully automated companies controlling basically everything. We just won't be able to keep everyone employed without creating a massive amount of bullshit jobs nobody really wants to do. The better way is UBI and people going into research or creative works, and aim higher like space travel.

We're not quite ready yet and people are way too invested in capitalism for this to work just yet. But it will become a necessity eventually. It's not just affecting IT, it's affecting all sectors: we can basically 3D print houses now, we're not far off automating farming either. We will reach a point where most of society has been automated, we can feed everyone effortlessly.

They'll get jobs as contractors fixing shitty AI code

That's something that we're probably going to have to figure out quickly. We won't though given the lack of accountability of those in power.

If SWEs are losing their jobs you can imagine a lot of other white collar workers will be as well. This would mean you will be competing with many other people in other fields. The large number of unemployed will reduce demand for goods produced by those companies that are also laying off workers due to automation.

This is a bit of a tragedy of the commons where companies adopt the technology to increase profits but actually disrupt the economy, potentially leading to their own collapse.

It's impossible to really prepare for this scenario because it requires you to simultaneously be ready for retirement in the next few years but also riots. I'm just hoping for the best for now.

Plan? The CEOs plan to buy another yacht. These people are only interested in short term profits, not the long term well-being of their employees.