If software developers wind up replaced by AI, I think it's safe to say every industry's labor will be replaced. Trade jobs won't be far behind, because robotics will be nipping at their heels.

If software falls, everything falls.

But as we've seen, these models can't do the job themselves. They're best thought of as an exoskeleton that requires a pilot. They make mistakes, and those mistakes multiply into a mess if a human isn't around. They don't get the big picture, and it's not clear they ever will with the current models and techniques.

The only field that has truly been disrupted is graphics design and art. The image and video models are sublime and truly deliver 10,000x speed, cost, and talent reductions.

This is probably for three reasons:

1. There's so much straightforward training data

2. The laws of optics and structure seem correspondingly easier than the rules governing intelligence. Simple animals evolved vision hundreds of millions of years ago, and we have all the math and algorithmic implementations already. Not so, for intelligence.

3. Mistakes don't multiply. You can brush up the canvas easily and deliver the job as a smaller work than, say, a 100k LOC program with failure modes.

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bc569a80a344f9c 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> If software developers wind up replaced by AI, I think it's safe to say every industry's labor will be replaced. Trade jobs won't be far behind, because robotics will be nipping at their heels. If software falls, everything falls.

I don’t think that follows at all. Robotics is notably much, much, much harder than AI/ML. You can replace programmers without robotics. You can’t replace trades without them.

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echelon 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Robotics is notably much, much, much harder than AI/ML.

Are you so sure?

Almost every animal has solved locomotion, some even with incredibly primitive brains. Evolution knocked this out of the park hundreds of millions of years ago.

Drosophila can do it, and we've mapped their brains.

Only a few animals have solved reasoning.

I'm sure the robotics videos I've seen lately have been cherry picked, but the results are nothing short of astounding. And there are now hundreds of billions of dollars being poured into solving it.

I'd wager humans stumble across something evolution had a cake walk with before they stumble across the thing that's only happened once in the known universe.

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bc569a80a344f9c 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, robotics is harder. Here’s some links. Wiki as an intro, and a reasonably entertaining write up that explains the concept in some depth, specifically comparing the issue to LLM progress as of 2024

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox

https://harimus.github.io/2024/05/31/motortask.html

Edit: just to specifically address your argument, doing something evolution has optimized for hundreds of millions of years is much harder than something evolution “came up with” very recently (abstract thought).

	▲	echelon 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> Edit: just to specifically address your argument, doing something evolution has optimized for hundreds of millions of years is much harder than something evolution “came up with” very recently (abstract thought). You've got this backwards. If evolution stumbled upon locomotion early -- and several times independently through convergent evolution --, that means it's an easy problem, relatively speaking. We've come up with math and heuristics for robotics (just like vision and optics). We're turning up completely empty for intelligence.

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Avshalom 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Well a large chunk of HN thinks the existing generation of AI is capable of doing 80% of their job, this has not translated at all to robotic stevedores and even less to robotic plumbers so yeah all current evidence supports "Robotics is notably much, much, much harder than AI/ML"

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bryanrasmussen 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>Almost every animal has solved locomotion, some even with incredibly primitive brains. Evolution knocked this out of the park hundreds of millions of years ago.

>Only a few animals have solved reasoning.

the assumption here seems to be that reasoning will be able to do what evolution did hundreds of millions of years ago (with billions of years of work being put into that doing) much easier than evolution did for.. some reason that is not exactly expressed?

logically also I should note that given the premises laid out by the first quoted paragraph the second quoted paragraph should not be "only a few animals have solved reasoning" it should be "evolution has only solved reasoning a few times"

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ares623 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

There will be millions of meat based robots lining up to flood the market when every knowledge based worker is displaced.

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esseph 2 days ago | parent [-]

Driving down the value of their labor, but still not competitive enough globally because it's just so much cheaper in other countries for that labor.

	▲	grumple a day ago \| parent [-]
		A laborer in Asia can't install plumbing in America, install electrical systems in America, etc... We also should end the exploitative nature of globalization. Outsourced work should be held to the same standards as laborers in modern countries (preferably EU, rather than American, standards).

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tombert 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think this is making an assumption that the number of potential jobs is fixed. I don't agree with that assumption. I think as people learn how to use these tools then more industries pop up to use those tools.

ETA:

You updated your post and I think I agree with most of what you said after you updated.

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BobbyTables2 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

If AI robots can replace labor, then they’ll figure out humanity only gets in their way.