Im going with this... scifi stuff still requires engineers. Its laughable and insulting to think these billionaire owners are going to make robots and llm loops to get real shit done
https://rcsnyder.github.io/open-frontier-curriculum/
Ya "claude can you build me the next cern Thanks"
From what I’ve seen of what AI can do for coding, the part of software engineering that I like is going to be automated out of existence, much like the ability to do serious calculations by hand got automated out of existence with the development of computing. Writing code by hand will be as marketable as factoring 5-digit numbers in your head.¹
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1. I enjoy doing both, but I doubt that anyone will pay me what I’ve been paid in the past for this five years from now.
If you want AI-proof careers it seems risky to go into knowledge work at all. Robotics lag behind mere computation, so something where you do awkward work in places designed around human bodies seems a lot safer. Plumbing, landscaping or something like that perhaps.
This is a romantic and very appealing idea that flies in the face of reality. The market for skilled trade workers like plumbers, electricians, landscapers and so on is more or less in equilibrium, and the demand side of it is relatively inelastic. Dumping hundreds of millions of new workers into these trades will not increase demand sufficiently to let anyone earn a viable living from them.
There is nothing that can absorb millions of new workers. If AI destroys jobs to that degree pitchfork manufacturers will be the only ones left in business.
Where I live at least right now it is quite hard to find contractors for anything and many are close to retirement age and have a hard time finding replacements.
How many CERNs are there? Enough to build careers on?
No, what do you think about the book Four Futures?
I have not read it but I can't imagine a book written before the current explosion of AI can be accurate. What do you think of it?
Why not?
So far, every "AI will never be able to do X" is aging like fine milk. Or do you think that engineering is somehow more special than software development or math?
Engineers know what needs to be tested, how, to what degree, with which materials, and with what safety margin.
AI can be trained on that body of work. But then AI has enough issues in output that it needs to be verified.
Otherwise we'll live in a world of titan submersibles ordered by CEOs running on hopes&dreams.
Replace "AI" with "humans" and you get the same exact issues.
Believe it or not, engineers don't zero shot skyscrapers either. Which is why their work gets reviewed by more engineers. Which catches the issues before they materialize. Sometimes!
What's the dreaded impossible-to-replicate human advantage? Because I'm not seeing any.
I think we might be largely in agreement.
LLM's should be used to speed up the drudgery, explore creative/evolutionary ideas, but....
> What's the dreaded impossible-to-replicate human advantage?
Responsibility.
Ultimately LLM's are a tool. Someone has to be responsible for the output. You don't get to use it to create a car/plane/submarine/bridge/building/childs-toy/whatever and then if it bursts into flame, blame the LLM and walk away.
Ideally, the person signing off would "know" what they are signing off on. Which requires an engineer.
What happens when the thing they have to be responsible for takes multiple lifetimes to understand on even the most basic level, let alone know deeply enough to feel comfortable taking responsibility for it?
Again, engineers know what needs to be tested, how, to what degree, with which materials, and with what safety margin.
Your widget that mankind may never understand. Well, that's just like anything else in the world. Engineers didn't understand building foundations to anywhere like the degree we do now. Or how to build earthquake proof buildings for a long time. It didn't stop stuff getting built. But it sure affected the confidence in it.
And when they honestly don't know, they don't have to approve it.
I cited the Titan sub example because one engineer refused to sign off on it and was fired for it. Whoever signed off on it has deaths to weigh on their conscience/reputation - for whatever societal good that is worth.
If the latest electric vehicle car never needs to charge but might catastrophically explode randomly between 2-15 years, then the car company doesn't get to take money for the car but handwave away the deaths caused. Legally someone is on the hook. In this case, the engineer who signed off on the magic involved - whether they understood it or not - is at fault.
But honestly, people sign off on shit they don't understand all the time. It's a matter of:
1. did their gamble not pay off?
2. were they negligent?
If your answer to 2. is "the LLM made a mistake I never checked for in regulation approved ways", then you are negligent.
Agency.
Humans don't seem to need a markdown to decide what to do next.
Without agency, it's all tools. I guess that's why a 'tool' is sometimes used derogatorily.
Did you read what he posted, or do you place widgets on a webpage
oh hah! that one got my attention.