HACKER Q&A
📣 sjducb

How to survive and thrive in the coming AI transition


LLMs have accomplished feats that I thought were impossible. We are much closer to AI taking most jobs, and possibly the singularity, than I ever expected.

My question is how do I personally survive the AI transition?

There is a big discussion about how society should change, and that is an important discussion. However I want things that I can do on a personal level to protect myself and my family.

I have had a few thoughts:

1) AI is going to allow companies do do a lot more work with far fewer people. This means that companies will become a lot more profitable, and pass that value to shareholders. Actionable insight: Keep investing in the stock market, expecting significant returns.

2) AI improves worker output. Therefore I should adopt it as much as possible to make as much money while humans are still required to be in the loop.

3) If my job (computer programmer) becomes largely obsolete then I could move into a profession that is less susceptible to being replaced by AI.

4) Work on AI, this is good for the same reasons as #2

Can anyone see any problems with the above arguments, or even better propose some better ideas?

  👤 Juliate Accepted Answer ✓
1) that also means companies will have to lower their prices too, because of increased competition - it's not going to just replace jobs - and there's no decent reason shareholders should get most of the value here. Unless there's some monopoly.

2) perhaps - but I think it will both improve and degrade (because it will not necessarily propose the best adjusted solutions to the contexts, notwithstanding some "optimistic" consideration of its capabilities - for instance, will lateral thinking be among its capacities?) - AND it will require more of a collaborative editing mindset to grow, to stay in a programming role. Collaborative both with the AI and the other people in the same roles.

3) the problem is we're not sure at what extent AI will be predictably decent; will it replace only some computer programming tasks, or also researching/consulting/counselling ones (that is, the ones that _drive_ strategy as trying to make sense of the world, to draw a vision and how to implement it)

4) definitely; could well be a booming sector as the Web has been in the 2000's

Plus:

5) AI may very well become an accelerator rather than something else. When a company may find a local maximal niche for its business, it will become even more cheaper and faster to both optimize for this found local maxima and to explore around for even higher/different grounds.

6) we may not completely rule out yet that IP laws or RGPD-like laws could totally break down any commercial viability for LLMs and such AIs as we "fear" them today. Maybe we're just in a "Napster's so amazing" brief moment.

👤 adamhp
> AI is going to allow companies do do a lot more work with far fewer people.

Or just 2-10x the amount of work with the same people? There will be some economic equilibrium, but I don't imagine companies seeing competitors pumping out 10x the amount of work going "Oh we should fire 9/10ths of our staff to accomplish the same amount of work". We're entering unknown territory though, so I'm not sure existing economic models really are going to be able to predict the outcomes and impacts of this enormous technological shift.

I think 2 is correct. I don't think any job falls into category 3, in the long-term at least.

I think all of us should be (a) seeking to add value to the world, (b) seeking to raise the quality of life for all humans. I don't think AI changes that. Once we get over the initial hurdles and hiccups, it will hopefully make it a lot easier. (Some will probably call this idea naive).

I would just continue to learn as much as you can about AI, and not just LLMs.