Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[Warpiglet-7]

So uh...follow up after getting this configured and running some tests?

There will be mass layoffs at my company at some point this year.

I am genuinely concerned for my kids and as one enters college and the world
Of work I don’t know how to direct anymore.

Keep asking them if they would be interested in the trades…turning a wrench, pipe fitting etc.

Some
Of us geeks about to get geeked.

 

[Scribe]

I am genuinely concerned for my kids and as one enters college and the world
Of work I don’t know how to direct anymore.

Keep asking them if they would be interested in the trades…turning a wrench, pipe fitting etc.

Some
Of us geeks about to get geeked.

Yeah, if it was me, doing it all over? I'd be in construction without a doubt.

Hopefully I can squeeze out a few more years before I need to start looking at a new career but this is not where the tools were last year.

Say goodbye to entry level positions.

 

[Ryujin]

Yeah, if it was me, doing it all over? I'd be in construction without a doubt.

Hopefully I can squeeze out a few more years before I need to start looking at a new career but this is not where the tools were last year.

Say goodbye to entry level positions.

Just glad that I've hit the point where I can officially retire, though I'm in the group that's generally needed to keep the rest of that crap functioning at this point.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Some
Of us geeks about to get geeked.

I think any repetitive task that workers have quietly thought a trained monkey could do is ripe for automation. The white collar world has been immune to that for a long time, but that time is ending.

The folks I see trying to get into narrating audiobooks, for instance, are probably 10 years too late.

The stuff that only humans can currently do is the stuff we should be focusing on. The hard part is knowing what machines will be able to do two, five, 10 years from now.

I do think the AI boosters are right in that not every job in every field will be gobbled up. The kernel of "only humans can currently do this" jobs will remain, while automated tasks will either be supervised by humans or in some cases completely off-loaded. But the amount of manhours that leaves is pretty small, in many cases, which will mean fewer humans employed.

It will be a nice moment for a lot of us when the c-suite people realize that they're expensive and doing something that AI management software can do cheaper and without sexual harassment lawsuits. I expect we'll see a bunch of think pieces about "has AI gone too far?!" when this moment finally comes for the millionaires.

The challenge with blue collar work is that automation is still getting cheaper and better and the day will come when many plumbing jobs can be done by one guy supervising a handful of robots he pulls out of the back of his truck to, say, snake a drain or fix a broken septic line. Any shockingly pricy work, as plumbing is, for instance, is ripe for someone at Silicon Valley looking to "disrupt" it. So even blue collar jobs aren't safe.

 

[overgeeked]

I think any repetitive task that workers have quietly thought a trained monkey could do is ripe for automation. The white collar world has been immune to that for a long time, but that time is ending.

The folks I see trying to get into narrating audiobooks, for instance, are probably 10 years too late.

The stuff that only humans can currently do is the stuff we should be focusing on. The hard part is knowing what machines will be able to do two, five, 10 years from now.

I do think the AI boosters are right in that not every job in every field will be gobbled up. The kernel of "only humans can currently do this" jobs will remain, while automated tasks will either be supervised by humans or in some cases completely off-loaded. But the amount of manhours that leaves is pretty small, in many cases, which will mean fewer humans employed.

It will be a nice moment for a lot of us when the c-suite people realize that they're expensive and doing something that AI management software can do cheaper and without sexual harassment lawsuits. I expect we'll see a bunch of think pieces about "has AI gone too far?!" when this moment finally comes for the millionaires.

The challenge with blue collar work is that automation is still getting cheaper and better and the day will come when many plumbing jobs can be done by one guy supervising a handful of robots he pulls out of the back of his truck to, say, snake a drain or fix a broken septic line. Any shockingly pricy work, as plumbing is, for instance, is ripe for someone at Silicon Valley looking to "disrupt" it. So even blue collar jobs aren't safe.

Exactly. Anything that can be automated will be.

 

[overgeeked]

Not related to the above, but some days are like that.

 

[Scribe]

I think any repetitive task that workers have quietly thought a trained monkey could do is ripe for automation. The white collar world has been immune to that for a long time, but that time is ending.

With zero effort, I was able to generate something I had waited days for, in seconds.

Now, I knew exactly what I wanted, and what it should look like, but it was an eye opener to the point I called my wife over to show her.

It's going to be a blood bath.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I think any repetitive task that workers have quietly thought a trained monkey could do is ripe for automation. The white collar world has been immune to that for a long time, but that time is ending.

The folks I see trying to get into narrating audiobooks, for instance, are probably 10 years too late.

The stuff that only humans can currently do is the stuff we should be focusing on. The hard part is knowing what machines will be able to do two, five, 10 years from now.

I do think the AI boosters are right in that not every job in every field will be gobbled up. The kernel of "only humans can currently do this" jobs will remain, while automated tasks will either be supervised by humans or in some cases completely off-loaded. But the amount of manhours that leaves is pretty small, in many cases, which will mean fewer humans employed.

It will be a nice moment for a lot of us when the c-suite people realize that they're expensive and doing something that AI management software can do cheaper and without sexual harassment lawsuits. I expect we'll see a bunch of think pieces about "has AI gone too far?!" when this moment finally comes for the millionaires.

The challenge with blue collar work is that automation is still getting cheaper and better and the day will come when many plumbing jobs can be done by one guy supervising a handful of robots he pulls out of the back of his truck to, say, snake a drain or fix a broken septic line. Any shockingly pricy work, as plumbing is, for instance, is ripe for someone at Silicon Valley looking to "disrupt" it. So even blue collar jobs aren't safe.

My wife and I hold several degrees each. My job is pretty safe for a while. I worry about hers more but really my kids the most.

I say to my wife “plumbers shall inherit the earth.” We will need to build places to house the computers…and infrastructure to live.

When we pass heavy equipment I ask the kids “wouldn’t it be cool to operate a crane that large?” Or “wouldn’t you like to learn how to fix electrical stuff?” Guess we will see how it shakes out. Low level clerks and I fear programmers (some in my family) will have hard choices to make before too many years.

 

[The Firebird]

I remember an argument out there that went something like: humans are very good at physical tasks because millions of years of evolution has optimized for running, climbing, jumping, that sort of thing. But intelligence and abstract thought is comparatively recent and much less optimized. This explains why it is easy to train a computer to be good at chess but very hard to teach it to walk.

Moravec's paradox was the name. I don't know if it is true. But I found it interesting.

Anyway, until Claude can beat pokemon in a few hours I'm doubtful the management jobs will be replaced. And even then--they are as much about knowing people than knowing things. I'd feel more confident in the trades that you will be doing the same type of thing in 20 years. But in the knowledge fields, as your skills become automated you can take advantage of automation to have more of an impact.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

With zero effort, I was able to generate something I had waited days for, in seconds.

Now, I knew exactly what I wanted, and what it should look like, but it was an eye opener to the point I called my wife over to show her.

It's going to be a blood bath.

Some of this stuff has been quietly happening for years, without real notice.

In the late 1990s, the Associated Press quietly started having baseball scores and stock market price stories, which once were generated by hand by journalists, automated. They did the same with breaking news about Olympic scores as well a few years later.

Fast forward to today, and the Washington Post is "experimenting" with more and more AI-generated podcasts reading the stories their print journalists have done, which means they will eventually need fewer people to create podcasts. And while you can tell it's AI if you're listening, you already have to be listening pretty closely to catch it. In 18 months, it's going to be fooling everyone.

Just look at how good the AI slop videos are now -- there's no more extra fingers on display and unless it's a video of a known person, it's often hard to tell it's a fake person in those videos. Most of the time, the telltale signs are that the person is just too freaking hot and is too well-lit. Once those tells are taken care of, commercial actors are largely out of work for good.