I really wish I could ascend to your level and never be upset about anything bad that happens, no matter how pointless and obviously unjust.
To be fair, parent and grandparent are never being upset about anything bag that happens to other people. I've met plenty of this type and you can be assured they'll be outraged when it happens to them....though often they're the type born into wealth so all problems are other people's problems.
Being a software engineer professionally in call it 1990 thru 2020 is an incredibly privileged position. We were only able to enjoy such an easy position in life because of supply and demand and the math has changed. We had these positions not because we were special but because investors could make money off of it and needed us.
Suddenly they don't. Or believe they don't. Should we be pissed. Probably. But it doesn't change the fact that we got cozy with things that were revokable.
Yes, I agree, programmers got lucky, and that luck is coming to an end. This has happened to many professions in the past. It's not new.
What is new is two things:
* that it's not just programmers that will be displaced, although we are among the first. Many people, possibly all of them, will have their labor value diminished by AI. This is a systemic issue that requires a systemic solution, not just a pep talk and "Get tough, buttercup,"
* that the success of AI is built on illegitimate grounds, as the training data is built by the people it's displacing; and is serving to enrich a fantastically small number of capital holders, at the expensive of literally everyone else.
So in view of that, I think it's silly and beside the point to say "Hey, tough luck" or to accuse programmers of being entitled, which is certainly the subtext in your comment. Programmers should be upset, but so should everyone else.
We are being entitled. We shouldn't have been sucking at the investors class teet thinking we are special. We along with most white collar workers on the west were being entitled and complacent. My point of view is very far from tough luck.
Who is "we"? Every labor-providing human on the planet? When that many people are economically disenfranchised and you call them "entitled", the problem is you.
> thinking we are special.
Again, it's not clear who you are talking about. Who thought they are special? Human beings who exchange their labor for money, i.e. have a job? I think I've made clear that programmers are not the end of this trend so to the extent your comment focuses on programmers, it is misguided.
> My point of view is very far from tough luck.
In that case, I don't understand your view at all, because it sure sounds like you are blaming the victim here.
I'm speaking specifically about white collar workers in western countries. I don't believe they are economically disenfranchised at least not yet. We were behaving entitled-ly by not acting in unison with the other laborers who are economically disenfranchised. If you are some sort of exception forgive me but I doubt you were spending your money to build shared parks and teach programming to the children of Amazon drivers. Most white collar workers here are buying pickup trucks and living it up. Myself included. And now we are in the finding out phase of why that was bad.