The exact same thing happened to technical drafters when CAD destroyed the entire (sub-)industry.

And to typesetting, for that matter[1].

Which is a pity in the human sense and the sense that both were forms of artistry and produced things of great beauty, both the product and the machines used to enable them, but they're simply not economical in the face of Solidworks and digital composition. And yet the replacement technologies have also enabled a lot more creativity and further advances. Object with complex geometries are now easy to manufacture, when they previously could not even be accurately drawn, say.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wapping_dispute, where not only could the unions not simply oppose the rising sea-level of technology, but their failure seriously damaged union credibility in general.

I see this in the context of the drawing vs. art analogy. Yes, your typing and maybe syntax skills will be devalued, but your higher level, creative programming skills are probably safe for a good long time yet.

Also, if I'm wrong then I get to be pleasantly surprised.

No, but it means there will probably be less of them, which in turn means most will either be fired or accept a pay cut.

Without the engineering know-how, your "write me an app that displays data from this source in a dashboard" prompt might work, but it won't be robust and when it doesn't work you won't be able to figure out why.

“The machine stops” will seem optimistic in hindsight!

On the more optimistic side. I see an extraordinary explosion in artistic innovation, just look at websites like CivitAI. The massive community all training subcomponents of the models for each other to share. The models rapidly improving every month just through fine-tuning and theoretical innovation, without stabilityAI's involvement (They are distracted by lawsuits now). There are many 3d-artists intensely experimenting with AI art, to say make AI-anime, which has illustration qualities on every frame (A previous impossibility due to the costs involved).

It seems with AI, it'll really cleave communities in two. The ones who eagerly embrace it, seem to enjoy it extraordinarily, and achieve quite a lot of popularity and success. But the rest just want to pretend it doesn't exist, waiting till employers realize that they are no longer needed.

Regarding programming, it doesn't appear that AI programming can replace humans. Programming is very similar to novel writing in terms of complexity for AIs. And AIs are still extremely terrible at long-form storytelling. The lesson is to aggressively use AI tools as much as possible, to understand the long-term weaknesses of AIs, and deliver your values in those areas as a human.

This comment is funny, "I've given the artists fair warning of 6 months that they're careers are over."

But the rest just want to pretend it doesn't exist, waiting till employers realize that they are no longer needed.

So when the employers fire the artists, who will replace them sorry? Will the C-level executives at my company be using DALL-E instead? How does it work? Would they just not hire a "creative assistant" who will probably hire other assistants ?

I've seen artist communities on multiple websites, in multiple languages. At first they tried to laugh at the AI. Now the AI has improved so radically so fast, they universally prefer to stick their head in the sand, and ban discussion of AI altogether, its all denial and rage.

I'd love to see these raging artist discussions? Can you link a few?

A group of individuals who will use AI as an augmentation, even people with inferior drawing skills but able to get better results faster, a man with an excavator replaces several people with a shovel.

I'd love to see these raging artist discussions? Can you link a few?

I'm not OP but Twitter is full, you can start from @kortizart and find all kinds of account of people who are illustrators but now only rage against AI art.

Edit: There is some raging in the replies but it's twitter and everyone is raging on there.

There was some raging about Netflix using "AI" to generate backgrounds for a cartoon, but ultimately everyone will lose, including Netflix if this really is very automated, Almost anyone will soon be able to create a Netflix so I'll just cancel my subscription and watch free generated content uploaded to Youtube I guess?

What’s wrong with that?

I pretty much only watch people doing their thing on YouTube and I’m entertained enough. I have a couple years of tv shows I haven’t gotten around to watching because of YouTube peeps keeping me interested.

To rub it in, they might even call their project...an art project.

I don't think the market for highly technical "computer guys" is going to disappear, but the nature of the job is probably going to change dramatically. But then it wouldn't be the first time - hasn't the job already changed completely since, say, the 1980s? I can't imagine working in this job before the internet existed, but many did. Maybe in another decade or two I'll be saying that I can't remember what it was like to do this kind of work before AI was this good.

If you still want to work as someone who produces code - except your personal code factory has changed from brain and fingers to AI - then yeah, you should probably do both of those things.

Even if you spend 1-2 years and this AI hype doesn't work out, you still have those skills to go back to.

Frankly, this mainstream adoption by Google and Microsoft is, uh, not going great. So you can afford to observe for now, but AI advancements have been made very rapidly, so it's not wise to completely ignore it either.

I believe this is going to happen (and is happening right now, in front of us) not just for programmers but for any role that can be automated.

> How should you prepare for it?

Get equity. I mean ownership stake. If you don't have a legal/financial claim on the output of the machine then you're about to be part of the worthless surplus from the POV of the system.

> Start learning prompting now?

No, the machines will do that well enough in a minute or two.

> Get involved with building these AIs?

No, the machines will do that well enough in a minute or two too.

- - - -

Artificial Intelligence destroys scarcity, which is the fundamental basis of our societies and economies.

Think about it: scarcity is the very problem that societies and economies evolved to solve in the first place.

Now science and capitalism have delivered technology and wealth. There is enough to go around if we just worked out the logistics, and computers can do that for us in a matter of moments. In other words, the "World Game" is not hard! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Game we just have to get over our hangups.

Now here's where it gets really interesting: ChatGPT et. al. don't have glands, they don't have emotional trauma, no PTSD from being humans-on-Earth for generations, etc. We can program them to be sane and perhaps even wise.

We can also attach empirical feedback devices to them, make them scientists...

So we have physical abundance and benevolent, sane, empirically-grounded AI advisors, how much longer will it take to sort things out? I think we could be looking at the start of a Golden Age?

Drawing skills were made redundant for producing most types of high quality image before the motor car but people still pay for hand drawn items

Not sure AI lowering the skill barrier for and speeding up the generation of digital art is really going to change that

Do you believe the number and complexity of software applications will decrease in the next 10 years because of AI, or that it will spawn whole new ecosystems of software and new types of jobs? I believe the second is more reasonable, we will have higher expectations from software in 2033 than in 2023. The easier AI makes it, the more difficult we make the tasks.

Human desires fill the available space like air, AI exponential is slower than our entitlement. So we still need to work.

Short of advocating for artists' unions...

Law is still going to govern anything AI creates, so anyone who develops a skillset in both art and law would be well-positioned to gatekeep as a copyright troll. This carves out a career for yourself and enacts revenge by making it a liability for employers to use AI to replace artists.

HR is the theocratic version of that, since law school isn't cheap. You can still gatekeep, but you'd be playing by more-arbitrary rules ("you can't use that AI because it incorporates images of Women Without Penises," etc.).

Security is pragmatic, but I worry about the long-term stability of it. Every time a breach is announced, there are no consequences, so why even pretend to need it?

I used to suggest pivoting to tangible works and experiences (architecture, sculpture, etc.), but those are easily displaced as well-- I would bet against it now.

Look at porn-- what started as a handful of performers in studios is now done by any college student with a webcam in their bedroom (next up to be replaced with AI-generated content).

For now, you can still add value as a sex worker by offering the GFE, but even that's about to be obsolete. You can get your fix of flirting from a chatbot (TTS or sexting) and 3D print a copy of anybody else's genitalia. Remote-controls, vibrators and fluid pumps add some life to it. And you don't even have to leave the house, which affords you privacy to pursue darker subjects without oversight and save you more time for repeat consumption.

Truly, what a wonderful world...