OTOH if what you're really talking about is the long-term collapse in our ludicrous carbon footprint when we finally run out of fossil fuels and we didn't invest in renewables or nuclear to replace them, well, I'm with you there.
I don't even know what this means.
The worst unemployment during the Weimar Republic was 25-30%. Unemployment in the Great Depression peaked at 25%.
So yeah if we get to 45% unemployment and those are the highest paying jobs on average then yeah it's gonna be bad. Then you add in second order effects where none of those people have the money to pay the other 55% who are still employed.
We might get to a UBI relatively quickly and peacefully. But I'm not betting on it.
>finally go through some things just like the aristocracy in France once did.
Yeah that's probably the most likely scenario, but that quickly devolved into a death and imprisonment for far more than the aristocrats and eventually ended with Napoleon trying to take over Europe and millions of deaths overall.
The world didn't literally end, but it was 40 years of war, famine, disease, and death, and not a lot of time to think about starting businesses with your laptop.
The good news is that America is ~5% of the world. And the more we keep punching ourselves in the face, the better the chance someone else pulls ahead. But still, we have nukes, so we're still the town bully for the immediate future.
Fortunately, the other 95% of humanity is far less doomer about their prospects. So if America wants to be the new neanderthals, they'll be happy to be the new cro magnons.
I think that if CEOs can replace us soon, it's because AGI got here much sooner than I predicted. And if that happens we have 2 options Mad Max and Star Trek and Mad Max is the more likely of the 2.
If doom porn is your thing, try watching Threads or The Day After, especially Threads. That said, I don't think Star Trek is possible, maybe The Expanse but more likely we run out of cheap energy before we get off world.
As for the AGI, it all depends on your definition. We're already at Amazon IC1/IC2 coding performance with these agents (I speak from experience previously managing them). If we get to IC3, one person will be able to build a $1B company and run it or sell it. If you're a purist like me and insist we stick to douchebag racist Nick Bostrom's superintelligence definition of AGI, then we agree. But I expect 24/7 IC3 level engineering as a service for $200/month to be more than enough and I think that's a year or two away. And you can either prepare for that or scream how the sky is falling, your choice.
Is this a joke or do you have a learning disability?
>But I expect 24/7 IC3 level engineering as a service for $200/month to be more than enough and I think that's a year or two away. And you can either prepare for that or scream how the sky is falling, your choice.
Or I could do neither and write you off as a gasbag who doesn't know what he's talking about like all the other ex-amazon management I've had the pleasure to work with over the years.
But that aside, how's all that self-righteousness working out for you?
I know a few older people who started posting like this when they hit their 50s. I’ve only got a few years left. Hopefully I can avoid it, but maybe it’s inevitable.
People like myself in their 50s to 60s who had the experience of banging the metal on imperfect buggy hardware late into the night to mine gems before Python made the entire software engineering community pivot to a core competency of syntax pedanting plus stringing library calls together are having a real party with AI agents effectively doing the same thing they did 30 years ago. I personally never stopped coding even through my one awful experience as an engineering manager.
But you do you, and hear me now, dismiss me later. There won't be 45% unemployment because the minute AI starts replacing current engineering skills for real is the minute the people it targets wake up and start learning how to work with AI coding agents that will be dramatically better than today. People resist change until there are no other options, just look at fossil fuels. The free market will work that one out too eventually.
And no amount of some nontechnical guy vibe scienceing his way to a working mRNA vaccine for his cancer-ridden dog or an engineer unlocking mods to Disney Infinity just from the binary and Claude Code or an entire web browser ported to rust will ever convince you these things are not the enemy. And that's going to put you through some things down the road. So of course, since this will never happen I'm an elaborate troll or a nutcase just like the people who pulled all those things off, never mind all the evidence mounting that these things can be amazing in the right hands. That's CRAZYTALK! Stochastic Parrot! Glorified Autocomplete! Mad Max! Mad Max! DLSS 5!
> There won't be 45% unemployment because the minute AI starts replacing current engineering skills for real is the minute the people it targets wake up and start learning how to work with AI coding agents that will be dramatically better than today.
You are the epitome of the tech bro.
Look how Musk treated the Twitter devs or Bezos any of his workers or Trump anybody.
You can be very intelligent but have a blind eye on some trivial things.
I’m certain that some of them think they are untouchable (or even just are well prepared). We will only see if that’s really true if shit hits the fan.
And then the survivors who band together to rebuild community instead of chasing some idiotic Mad Max scenario will ultimately prevail. And yes, they are blind to that other option because they wouldn't end up on top.