I don’t think work will go away, it will just change, maybe too quickly for people to keep up.

Post AGI nobody knows. It’s debatable that humans will still have a place in an AGI world. But that’s also much further away than people seem to think. I don’t expect to see it in my lifetime (next 40-60 years).

or those who become unneeded would simply starve to death, or have to compete to get the last vestiges of available jobs.

I know which is more likely, from looking back at history.

I live in a country where the government is actually calling for an INCREASE in work. When in history have we ever decreased the workload with the reason "well we don't need to produce any more"?

Yet all this tech stuff does is create even more. Working hours are up and productivity is down, and purportedly nobody knows why.

I want my 4 hour workday, goddammit

Where is this mass displacement of which you speak?

Which companies are firing en masse and replacing with AI?

More locally, the local McDonalds recently remodeled, reducing the customer counter to something like 1/8th the size and installing terminals (not AI but automation), and I've seen images online of fast food testing AI for ordering, particularly over drive-through.

My friend got a marketing director job using a ChatGPT-generated marketing strategy (they gave her an impossible deadline and so I suggested she try it), and now she uses ChatGPT to generate marketing copy instead of hiring content writers. Someone else I know uses AI to SEOize very technical text to something search engines like at like 10x the rate he used to do by hand.

As a solo and formerly senior SWE, ChatGPT is like having a junior developer on call to do my research and get me preliminary results. Stuff I used to have to rely on my team or google-fu to answer, now I just ask ChatGPT.

You're sticking your head in your sand if you think it isn't coming. Just think about every one of those optimizations that AI offers, typically you had to have a human being do it before.

I dont think the doom and gloom scenario being sold as the AI apocalypse is as bad as it is being portrayed.

Who? Be specific. This displacement is happening rapidly, it should be easy to point out.

> The trucking industry is dumping tons of $$$ into automated AI trucking. Tech companies are experimenting with drone delivery instead of hiring drivers. Rideshares experimenting with self-driving taxis. The list goes on.

How many truck drivers have been laid off from this technology which hasn't been deployed widely / left the experimentation phase?

> she uses ChatGPT to generate marketing copy instead of hiring content writers.

So far the only real competition you've mentioned. And yeah, language models are good at writing low value language. I have yet to hear about mass unemployment of content writers however. These are people who will upskill/shift into other marketing roles easily.

> Someone else I know uses AI to SEOize very technical text to something search engines like at like 10x the rate he used to do by hand.

And this is a bad thing?

> As a solo and formerly senior SWE, ChatGPT is like having a junior developer on call to do my research and get me preliminary results.

You say this as if companies will stop hiring juniors. They won't. The world will simply write more code with more productive people.

> You're sticking your head in your sand if you think it isn't coming.

The same has been said during every technological shift. Mechanization will result in mass unemployment of laborers. Email will result in mass unemployment of mail carriers. Through many cycles of technology, the human race has never allowed slack in the workforce to go unused for very long. We could have stopped at the steam engine and accepted the quality of life we had, instead of repurposing displaced workers and marching forward. This won't change until we have true AGI which we are nowhere near.

AI will take some jobs, but there is another risk. It's far more likely that they "de-skill" a certain aspect of work so it becomes less creative and more mundane, more easily replaceable. The goal is to turn creative work into something like a position on an assembly line.

The problem isn't technology, it's in who it benefits. Productivity gains could benefit everyone. We could all get more time off, for example. Instead, those gains make a small number of people extremely wealthy and everyone else more miserable.

The average person active on HN could do this. They could move somewhere with extremely low cost of living and work a remote job. But almost nobody does this. Instead people choose to live in incredibly high cost areas at well paid jobs, chasing ever higher quality of life.

It's not some boogeyman forcing this. It's just human nature.

I just freakin said who. That is very specific. What are you looking for me to name Jessica, former content lead at AcmeCorp?

> How many truck drivers have been laid off from this technology which hasn't been deployed widely / left the experimentation phase?

None, yet.

But you are missing my point. This stuff is beginning to happen. Much has yet to happen. You are betting that it won't happen, and I am saying you are wrong. Very little of this will empower people where they are, at the lowest rungs of various corporate ladders. But it will empower their taskmasters, who will happily shed them with the same bullshit excuses they've always given: "Not my problem" and "Sorry, it's just business."

Since you're so damn optimistic about the future, what are these jobs that these people will be retraining to? That don't exist yet. Please share just a little bit of your visionary insight.

How about a company or an article?

> But you are missing my point. This stuff is beginning to happen.

I'm not, you're missing mine. You believe they are beginning to happen. But you tell me they haven't happened yet. There is nothing substantive to justify this fear. History certainly doesn't. That's my point.

> Since you're so damn optimistic about the future, what are these jobs that these people will be retraining to? That don't exist yet.

Imagine that, the future creating new jobs for people. Not as if that has ever happened before. We're all still toiling in the fields aren't we.