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Comment by pj_mukh | Hacker News Reader

It's not that complicated, if you see all help from the government as a "big government intervention" then yes, the thing you are panicking about will come true.

I don't think most people see it this way, and if we can expand government help to help people transition through career upgrades then the thing people are panicking about need not come true.

This is not going back and forth, there is real tumult, but damage can be avoided. And I think we should communicate that reality clearly instead of offering a public veto on all new technologies.

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I just don't think you're engaging in good faith. You're now calling people getting forced out of their jobs and onto various government assistance programs a 'career upgrade' that's nothing to worry about. That's so absurdly out of touch that I refuse to believe anybody genuinely believes this.

I literally said retraining (you know..to get the upgrade). Don’t think I’m the one arguing in bad faith.

Quoting myself again

“Utility workers are 10x wealthier than lamplighters and that same job transition is coming to cognitive work as well. The real catastrophe would have been banning electricity distribution grids even though that’s what the rioting (see: “panicking”) lamplighters demanded”

PS: 90% sure you’re a troll bot mostly because you’re highly engaged with how I’m arguing as opposed to what I’m arguing. Just FYI for anyone else reading this.

I'm only engaged with what you're arguing. The problem is that it keeps overtly changing from post to post, often in mutually exclusive ways. And now you're leaning heavily into completely absurd euphemisms. Nobody's getting a career upgrade from this, let alone because of government programs. That's akin to telling coal miners go to learn to code. And again I refuse to believe any human would believe this.

Fortunately, unlike you, I have the empathy to understand other people's arguments, I know the concept of upskilling is:

a) counter-intuitive

b) change, and therefore scary.

But historically this has played out the exact same way and there is no evidence that it won't play out the same way with AI.

You're ignoring the examples I'm giving you (lamplighters), so I'll use yours: When automation came to coal mines, the coal miners became coal extraction machine operators.

I'm curious now how you'll claim again that I've "overtly changed" my argument: Change is hard, but can be managed.

Most of every humans knows that the issue for coal miners was not about better tools, but about their job being made obsolete, similar as what LLMs are already starting to do, and will likely do to a much greater degree in the future. Coal miners didn't become 'coal extraction machine operators' - they became unemployed.

Countless lives were completely destroyed in spite of 'government retraining' promises. Those who carried on managed to do through some menial labor and other jobs, many with even worse conditions and for worse pay. For instance trucking was a fairly common new profession - where you're away from family pretty much all the time, and getting paid even less. It's a horrible job, but it's the sort of work that was left for them.

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