Ask HN: Adjusting to a Future with Near-AGI
Ever since trying out ChatGPT I've been getting increasingly anxious and even depressed. I have found my interaction with it to be more insightful, creative and knowledgeable than with the majority of people I've met. Even when it comes to software engineering, ChatGPT has shown more understanding, patience and insight than most of my colleagues (maybe that's more descriptive of the people I've encountered throughout my career, YMMV). I've done "pair programming" with it with great success. It doesn't matter whether it has consciousness or "understanding" (whatever that might be) of its input and output, the results it produces isn't that different from that of a junior developer's (again, from my experience).
Now, I don't want to argue about ChatGPT's merits and its future potential – I'm not an ML researcher and neither are probably the vast majority of people on HN. I'm genuinely convinced that there's far more to come in the nearest future, and ChatGPT is just an inflection point on our path to AGI.
My question is: what action should I take, right now, an undergrad, a CRUD "engineer", to prepare myself for the near future where I have to compete with not only my fellow flesh-and-bone software engineers, but now also a gigantic language model trained on the entire human body of knowledge by hundreds of smartest minds in the world? Should I run headlong into ML research and just try to join the minds behind the AGI of the future? Should I get into some esoteric niche software engineering area which is unlikely to be automated away in the near future (and if so, which)? Maybe I should quit software engineering altogether and aim for something hands-on, lab-based, like electrical engineering or physics research?
Thanks for any advice.