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Comment by hnthrow90348765 | Hacker News Reader

Alright, this is it, this is the AI peak.

>Today we’re announcing Mechanize, a startup focused on developing virtual work environments, benchmarks, and training data that will enable the full automation of the economy.

>Compensation

>$200K – $475K • 1% – 2%

Just imagine for a moment you are a software engineer capable of doing what they say, rivaling the raw intellectual capabilities of every mathematician, economist, and physicist known to man, and you end up actually building something that directly leads to automating the entire fucking economy of the world.

And there's still someone who says to you: "best I can do is only 1% - 2%"

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> And there's still someone who says to you: "best I can do is only 1% - 2%"

1% of the global economy seems fine to me. If you actually believe in their vision, money is going to be worthless anyway.

Isn't it the other way around? The productivity gains would increase overall wealth so you would get more for your money, meaning money would actually be worth more.

Or do you mean it in the sense that everyone would already have everything they could ever want so the net utility of additional money would be 0?

"Run the global economy" doesn't necessarily mean abundance. The current age of relative abundance and decent equality is actually pretty rare in human history. "Running the economy" could instead mean that nothing can happen without the central planning computer, which of course means it gets to set whatever prices it wants, take whatever cut it wants, distribute that surplus however it wants, including to its owners.

It is possible to increase productivity while also centralizing that profit. That's what communists would call "exploitation of labor"

"I automated the entire world and my boss named himself God Emperor of the Universe for having the idea. And he still hasn't changed my title from Product Software Engineer. He cancelled our daily standup for some reason too."

One of the dumbest things a smart person can do is work for an AI company.

At best they don't believe actual AI will be created and they are helping a scam.

At worst, they are actively working to make their own job redundant and when they're fired, they will own nothing of what they built. All the money from their work will go to the owners who fired them.

> At worst, they are actively working to make their own job redundant and when they're fired, they will own nothing of what they built. All the money from their work will go to the owners who fired them.

Except that's the case with literally every meaningful information-work job. Your goal is to obsolete yourself. If you do it well then your success becomes your calling card for your next job. Your career is a series of such jobs.

1) You can and should program yourself out of a _task_, not a _job_. How many companies have a one.time need for a programmer?

2) Even if your claim was correct, then you'd amass experience on one job (task) that you could then leverage on the next job (task). If AI became reality, all that would become irrelevant. Your middle-class self would quickly realize you're only worth as much as your lower class neighbors who swing a shovel or flip burgers for a living, all the while your upper class bosses become richer thanks to your work.

You must live on some fascist oligarchy.

In a well functioning society improvements in economic efficiency and productivity improve the standard of living if everyone in that society. Thus if you innovate yourself out of a job you'd still benefit and would have access to any training needed for your next job.

> You must live on some fascist oligarchy.

Sadly, I am becoming increasingly convinced I do. [1]

You're falling for one simple trap. Yes, even if things are (mostly) improving for everyone, they are improving massively faster for those already rich.

On top of that, I am not even sure they are improving. Some people are paying a third or even a half of their salary just to have a place to live. I even heard the situation in some cities is that people are struggling to feed their kids and keep the heating on.

[1]: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

Oh I thought the peak was going to be based on the forward looking claims, not the standard equity offer.

I'm quite handy at what I do. You will not replace me with AI.

Today I set up a remote network with a couple of switches, a router and the rest. From the outside. The customer had already got the router to the internet (good skills) and a LAN. I had a router (pfSense) with six 2.5 GB connections.

I turned it into a 10 VLAN effort with access and trunks and so on, ports at layer 2, without disconnecting myself.

It's quite hard visualising a network, with VLANS and even harder working out how to pivot from the current setup to another. Anyone who has had to change the default VLAN across a site knows what I'm on about.

Just in case anyone here is in any doubt, networks are quite tricky. On a par with programming.

> You will not replace me with AI

Ever? Forever is a long time. Or do you mean with today's AI, assuming no improvements are made?

Go on, have a go yourself doing a task like that.

I never said never.

Not now

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