hackyhacky

> A lot of this sentiment is based on jealousy or competiton with Musk

Maybe. Another possibility is a feeling of opposition to the idea that the world's richest person continue to accumulate wealth, while using said wealth to dishonestly manipulate elections, support openly fascist and bigoted political parties, and, most recently, tip the scales of international conflict (by limiting Starlink use by Ukraine).

You might love his products, but Elon Musk should not have more power. That's a statement not based in envy, but in a revulsion for what he spends that money on, and how it impacts innocent people.

> I'm sure the same is true of doctors too.

Dentists are doctors.

Not really. The number of photographers doesn't tell you everything about the demand for them. Back then photography was still competing with portraiture as a way for capturing likenesses, both options relatively rare and expensive, but photography certainly cheaper and requiring vastly less skill. It was a very different market than today's where I'd say the work is mostly in weddings.

I find your rosy view of an economic future where the very wealthy become wealthier while the rest become poorer to be detached from historical fact.

> From goods and services they provide to others - now at lower cost.

So why don't they do that today? Why don't today's poor people have access to a wide selection of good and services that they exchange with other poor people?

> It will also create a lot of new jobs.

Specifically, what new jobs will be created? That is, what jobs will be needed that an AI can't do cheaper than a human?

> We are being entitled.

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.

> Stuff will be cheaper to make which means raising life quality for everyone

At the risk of repeating myself: who is going to buy it, when wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the capital-owning elite? If human labor can't compete with AI, what value can a person exchange in the free market for goods?

> This didn't happen with previous technological revolutions,

Yes, it did [1]. Maybe you should study some history before leaping to conclusions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)

Your comment isn't a "harsh truth," and I can assure you that I'm not upset with you. Your comment is actually utterly banal and irrelevant.

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.

> The demand for photographs is fixed. The demand for software is infinite.

A highly dubious assertion. If demand for software is infinite, why don't we have infinite software, since we now have the ability to create infinite software?

> Without checking the code you can't know if it's good enough or not.

And even after checking the code, you still won't know if it's good enough, as evidenced by the large number of bugs that get shipped. I think it's clear that AI can do at least a good job checking code as humans can, so my argument stands.

> good enough isn't good enough

It seems like you are playing word games instead of addressing my argument. Can you please explain the point you were trying to make with this argument?

> They will have more for themselves.

Where will they get those resources for themselves? From the job that they don't have anymore, because of AI?

There is no reason to assume that the AI employment catastrophe will end with coders.

Even if they have resources, what makes you think they get to hoard them? Instead of paying programmers, they'll pay the owners of data centers.

> Technology and "progress" haven't been improving the workers life in a long long time, again: welcome to the club.

That's ridiculous and myopic. Technology have improved many people's lives for a long time. Or would you prefer to stop wearing industrially-manufactured clothes, stop taking scientifically-developed vaccines, and of course stop using the device that you are reading this on now?

The difference is that in the past, technological development victimized only subsets of the work force. Mechanical looms were bad for textile workers, but good for everyone else. Personal computers were bad for "human calculators," but good for everyone else. The people who lost their jobs to technology could, theoretically, retrain and get another job.

But now we're facing technology that is theoretically capable of doing any job, at a price that's cheaper than any human. If you lose your job as a programmer due to AI, you can't just retrain as a lawyer, because those jobs are gone too (or will be soon). You can't just become a barista or a cab driver, those jobs are gone too.

Sniping at fellow working-class members is counterproductive. Ultimately, this is a test of democracy: can our government be forced to serve the people who it represents, or only corporate interests? If the latter, then we're entering a period of neo-feudelism.

If by "distribution will take care of itself" you mean to say that "the owners of AI infrastructure will continue to get rich while literally everyone else gets poorer, because they have to compete in the labor market against machines that never sleep", then I agree with you.

> AI will equalize access to knowledge and intellectual work.

It will be very hard to pay for $200/mo Claude accounts when everyone's job is gone.

> It will be a better world overall for most.

I strongly disagree. AI is coming for programmers' jobs first, but programmers won't be the last victim. Ultimately, any job is in danger. The only way to be safe is to be willing to do the job cheaper than a machine that never sleeps. That's basically an impossible bar to maintain, especially as AI and robotics get better.

Seeing the technorati "elite" as the enemy is a mistake, because ultimately programmers, rubbish collectors, and waitresses are all just "labor." Tech bros were momentarily lucky and enjoyed a level of privilege, but the real enemy is the ownership class: the people who aren't at risk of losing their job because they own the data centers. If you want a fair society and equal distribution of benefits, stop the capitalist class from poisoning democracy.

That's right: as all economic power shifts inexorably into the hands of the billionaire, capital-owning class, with the complicity of the politicians bribed to turn their back on their own constituents, be sure to lay the blame where it belongs: at the feet of the working class, who lost their jobs to forces outside of their control but spend $5 on a soy mochacino instead of making coffee at home, which apparently counts as "splurging" on "nonsense," and which conveniently allows you to ignore the systemic problems causing the world's economic plight,

Really? Ask the Luddites.

What a flippant, unhelpful response.

Rather than encouraging people to accept the misery inflicted on them by a handful of billionaires, why don't you acknowledge the injustice that AI magnifies the gap between capital and labor, and encourage people to fight (through democratic means) for a more just society, i.e. one that distributes the benefits of labor-saving devices among everyone, not just to a tiny fraction at the top.

*TECHNOLOGY* has been automating people out of their jobs for *CENTURIES*.

They "techies" didn't do this. Spare me your self-hating performative guilt trip.

Technology advances (beasts of burden replacing human labor, windmills replacing human labor, firearms replacing melee weapons, automatic looms replacing manual textile workers, electric light replacing manual illumination), and at each step, society as a whole benefits, but some benefit more than others: in particular the capital-owning class reap the immediate benefits, to the detriment of the labor class whose skill is devalued and whose livelihood is ruined.

This isn't new. Blaming "techies" is wrong. Point your finger at the owners who are enriching themselves at the expense of the many. In a just society, the benefits of technological advance should be shared (more) equally. A functioning democratic government would protect those whose livelihoods are at risk, because the instability of mass unemployment is more damaging to society than possibly demotivating a handful of billionaires.

> When no human knows what the machine is doing exactly, how do you know your intent is being followed?

No one is saying that no one will know what the computer is doing, but fewer people will have to. We are moving up the abstraction hierarchy, just as we have done since the stone age. In my grandparents' generation, knowing how to fix an internal combustion engine was a common skill among young men; today, it's been abstracted away. In the same way, I don't know how my clothes are manufactured, where my electricity is generated, or whether my CPU's "management engine" is spying on me. I don't need to know the details, because everything "just works." The same thing is happening with AI.

There's nothing special about me that guarantees "having living parents" but I'm still upset when my parents die. How narcissistic, western, short-sighted of me, I guess?

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.

Can you please explain how anything in my comment could be construed as disrespectful or ad hominem? An ad hominem is "a rhetorical tactic of attacking the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than the substance of the argument itself" [1], not just "a phrase that upsets me."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

> We don't need all of this supposed comfort we only are addicted to it.

This conversation is schizophrenic because we are conflating two different topics:

* from a perspective of mindfulness and gratitude, yes, it is psychologically better to not attach your identity to your career, living space. Eastern philosophy (e.g. Tao te Ching) teaches us about non-materialism; Greek philosophy teaches us about stoicism. All of these perspectives can be useful coping mechanisms when faced with a materially uncertain future.

* from a perspective of economics, law, and politics we can simultaneously acknowledge that when a business built on intellectual property theft (i.e. AI), focused on enriching a small cadre of capital owners, indirectly devalues labor causing material hardship for much of the population of the world, an injustice as occurred. It seems unfair to us, because the skill that we have worked a lifetime to hone has been cheapened by a selfish business that couldn't exist without the work publicly and freely contributed. That is worth being upset about.

I'll point out that Sam Altman also enjoys a very high level of comfort, which he does not need; and that his comfort seems to be predicated on other people losing their livelihood. So why are (intellectual labor class) HNers suffering while (capital owning class) CEOs are not?

> If you can direct AI and produce more value per $/time spent then a non software engineer directing AI to develop software then you still can produce a lot of value.

Sure, in the same way a skilled photographer can take better photographs on an iPhone than I can. Nevertheless, because any twit can take good enough photos on an iPhone, the need for the specialized skills of an expert photographer are much less than in, say, the 1930s.

That's why AI is dangerous. It's not because it makes human skill useless, it's because it makes non-human skill good enough. When was the last time you hired an expert photographer, or skilled dressmaker, or a master cabinetmaker? Maybe once or twice in your life, because the iPhone camera, fast fashion, and Ikea are good enough.

If the threat of becoming homeless and/or starving to death isn't enough to warrant some degree of emotional perturbation on your part, then I don't know what is. You may be taking the whole stoicism thing too far.

> A lot of work happens (or happened) because everyone is in agreement that it kinda should be done.

Lots of things "kinda should be done" but people enjoy enough that payment is not required. You said that food production needs to be done, but food production is useless unless someone eats that food. But although eating is necessary for civilization, eating is considered work. Why not? Because people are willing to eat without being paid for it.

> It just optimizes away redundant stuff.

Yes. "Optimizing away redundant stuff" is another way of saying "making workers more efficient," which means that employers need fewer workers to accomplish the same tasks. That is exactly what devaluing labor means: the work that you do is worth less because more of it can be done by a cheaper competitor, i.e. an LLM.

Weather or not anyone enjoys that work is irrelevant. English textile workers in the 1810s may not have enjoyed spending long hours sewing clothes by hand, but they needed to in order to support their families, so they were understandably upset when their labor was devalued by automated means of production. I am pretty sure exactly none of those unemployed textile workers breathed a sigh of relief and said "Well, thank god, now I can finally stop sewing and pursue my dream to work as a landscape painter."

That won't be a problem after all the white-color jobs have been eaten by AI.

So if I understand you, your point is that we shouldn't be upset about losing a job, because we can always get a job that pays less, is less prestigious, is less creatively fulfilling, requires physical labor, and/or can be done by any four-limbed teenager? Am I interpreting your comment correctly?

That's a nice attitude to have when you know you can get another job. That allows you to support your family. Without moving to another city or drastically altering your lifestyle.

Unfortunately not everyone has that luxury, and as AI continues to devalue intellectual labor, fewer will.

Can you explain why this choice is offensive to you?

> It still sits in a box unused

Can I have it?

If my boss tells me to fix a bug in our database, and I fix it, is it really my boss who fixed it, since he has the agency and I'm just a tool he uses?

I'd say that people's motivation and agency, like their taste, creativity, and opinions, are shaped by external inputs, so saying that their agency is "owned" by them is a stretch.

The alternative would be the proposition that a slave, lacking agency, has no ability to solve problems. I find that idea unpalatable.