As a pro, my argument is "it's good enough now to make me incredibly productive, and it's only going to keep getting better because of advancements in compute".

I'd rather get really good at leveraging AI now than to bury my head in the sand hoping this will go away.

I happen to agree with the saying that AI isn't going to replace people, but people using AI will replace people who don't. So by the time you come back in the future, you might have been replaced already.

Why would anything you learn today be relevant tomorrow if AI keeps advancing? You would need less and less of all your tooling, markdown files and other rituals and just let the AI figure it out altogether.

So I can keep my job now so I can pay for compute in the future when I'm out of a job. The compute will be used to create my own business to make money.

What makes you think you’ll be able to out-compete the purely-AI-led businesses with your business? What skills will give you an edge in the business that won’t also give you an edge in the job?

Maybe I can't. But that's also why I'm invested into AI companies right now.

Plan:

1. Keep my job for as long as I can by leveraging current AI tools to the best of my ability while my non-AI user colleagues lose earnings power or their job

2. Invest my money into AI companies and/or S&P500

3. If I'm truly rendered useless, live off of the investment

You got any better ideas? How would you do this?

I believe that I’ll keep enough of an edge in my job that I’ll continue to be employed. (At present I still have zero pressure to use AI, though I do use it.) It’s of course possible for that to turn out to be wrong, but in that case I also see no chance to start a business, and society will be in a lot of trouble.

  I believe that I’ll keep enough of an edge in my job that I’ll continue to be employed.

I don't believe I can. If I don't use AI tools at work, I'm for sure going to get fired and/or passed up for promotions.

> What makes you think you’ll be able to out-compete the purely-AI-led businesses with your business? What skills will give you an edge in the business that won’t also give you an edge in the job?

Or why do you think your small AI-driven business can survive against richer people who can pay for more compute and thus do better than you?

AI may just turn software into a pay to win game.

  Or why do you think your small AI-driven business can survive against richer people who can pay for more compute and thus do better than you?

I don't know. Maybe because of my creativity?

Anyways, I'm heavily invested in compute companies right now.

>> Or why do you think your small AI-driven business can survive against richer people who can pay for more compute and thus do better than you?

> I don't know. Maybe because of my creativity?

How would you keep that up? I think there's a false belief, especially common in business-inflected spaces (which includes the tech sector), that skills and abilities can be endlessly specialized (e.g. the MBA claim that they're experts at running businesses, any business). The more you outsource to AI the less creative you'll become, because you'll lose touch with the work.

You can only really be creative in spaces where you regularly get your hands dirty. Lose that, and I think your "creativity" will become the equivalent of the MBA offering the same cookie-cutter financial engineering ideas to every business (layoffs, buy back stock, FOMO the latest faddish ideas, etc).

Those are two different things though, and not everyone are stuck at a place enforcing token usage. And why would anyone pay you for something if all it takes is compute to make it? They would just make it themselves.

> The compute will be used to create my own business to make money

tell me you've never seriously attempted starting a software business without telling me

It's like all these people for the last 2 decades "if only I knew how to code I'd make an app and be rich!" yeah sure you would

> I'd rather get really good at leveraging AI now than to bury my head in the sand hoping this will go away.

I don't think those are the only two options, though.

Further, "Getting really good at leveraging AI" is very different to "Getting really good at prompting LLMs".

One is a skill that might not even result in the AI providing any code. The other is a "skill" in much the same way as winning hotdog eating contests is a "skill".

In the latter, even the least-technical user can replace you once they get even halfway decent at min-maxing their agent's input (md files, although I expect we'll switch away from that soon enough to a cohesive and structured UI).

In the former, you had better find some really difficult problems that pay when you solve them.

Either way, I predict a lot of pain and anguish in the near future, for a lot of people. Especially those who expect that prompting skills are an actual "skill".

it sure is possible that One person using AI effectively may replace 10 people like me. it is just as likely that i may replace 10 people who only use AI.