I hear you, especially as a man, because we're attuned at looking for trouble in the horizon. AI is not some transition from horses to cars, which just meant selling the horse, buying a car, and continue your transport business. It's intelligence that may be able to take over all aspects of our current professional training, thus potentially threatening our livelihoods.
Thats the underlying dread.
The base capitalist premise is if you work, you'll have resources to survive and thrive. The flip-side is that if you cannot or refuse to work, you will starve, be destitute, homeless, without medical care, live under a bridge, and die hopeless.
And societal failings in a capitalist system are always reflected towards the individual no matter what.
Bad monetary policy? Should have saved. Businesses buy state laws to worsen worker laws? Get a better job. Got sick and medical lost your job? Too bad, go die, I guess?
Its never a systemic thing we can identify and fix. But its always always reflected as a personal failing.
Theres a top comment on this article that LLMs are a perfect parieto machine. 80% good, 20% utter shit and lies. That seems to track pretty well with what I'm seeing. If thats generally being accepted, I have to ask if my (and all others professional labor) if we're worth our wages for that 20%. And the question isnt being asked of us, but about us in HR and C levels.
I'm already seeing "make do with what less labor you already have and hope AI helps". I support a national level thing (all 50 states). Used to be 3 engineers for backend. Now its just me. I'm already seeing the stark negative effects, overworking, sloperating as a necessity (no DBA), and hope and prayer stuff doesnt go down.
And combined with the fact we're seeing worse hiring and layoffs since the Great Recession... Something's gotta change.