The more likely outcome is that fewer devs will be hired as fewer devs will be needed to accomplish the same amount of output.

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HPsquared 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The old shrinking markets aka lump of labour fallacy. It's a bit like dreaming of that mythical day, when all of the work will be done.

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cogman10 20 hours ago | parent [-]

No it's not that.

Tell me, when was the last time you visited your shoe cobbler? How about your travel agent? Have you chatted with your phone operator recently?

The lump labour fallacy says it's a fallacy that automation reduces the net amount of human labor, importantly, across all industries. It does not say that automation won't eliminate or reduce jobs in specific industries.

It's an argument that jobs lost to automation aren't a big deal because there's always work somewhere else but not necessarily in the job that was automated away.

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imiric 18 hours ago | parent [-]

Jobs are replaced when new technology is able to produce an equivalent or better product that meets the demand, cheaper, faster, more reliably, etc. There is no evidence that the current generation of "AI" tools can do that for software.

There is a whole lot of marketing propping up the valuations of "AI" companies, a large influx of new users pumping out supremely shoddy software, and a split in a minority of users who either report a boost in productivity or little to no practical benefits from using these tools. The result of all this momentum is arguably net negative for the industry and the world.

This is in no way comparable to changes in the footwear, travel, and telecom industries.

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danny_codes 16 hours ago | parent [-]

I was with you till like a month ago. Now I’m not so sure..

	▲	9rx 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Current generation "AI" has already largely solved cheaper, faster, and more reliable. But it hasn't figured out how to curb demand. So far, the more software we build, the more people want even more software. Much like is told in the lump of labor fallacy, it appears that there is no end to finding productive uses for software. And certainly that has been the "common wisdom" for at least the last couple of decades; that whole "software is eating the world" thing. What changed in the last month that has you thinking that a demand wall is a real possibility?

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NewEntryHN 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This implication completely depends on the elasticity (or lack thereof) of demand for software. When marginal profit from additional output exceeds labor cost savings, firms expand rather than shrink.

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slopinthebag 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

When computers came onto the market and could automate a large percentage of office jobs, what happened to the job market for office jobs?

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cogman10 19 hours ago | parent [-]

They changed, significantly.

We lost the pneumatic tube [1] maintenance crew. Secretarial work nearly went away. A huge number of bookkeepers in the banking industry lost their jobs. The job a typist was eliminated/merged into everyone else's job. The job of a "computer" (someone that does computations) was eliminated.

What we ended up with was primarily a bunch of customer service, marketing, and sales workers.

There was never a "office worker" job. But there were a lot of jobs under the umbrella of "office work" that were fundamentally changed and, crucially, your experience in those fields didn't necessarily translate over to the new jobs created.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qman4N3Waw4

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slopinthebag 19 hours ago | parent [-]

I expect something like this will happen to some degree, although not to the extent of what happened with computers.

But the point is that we didn't just lose all of those jobs.

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cogman10 19 hours ago | parent [-]

Right, and my point is that specific jobs, like the job of a dev, were eliminate or significantly curtailed.

New jobs may be waiting for us on the other side of this, but my job, the job of a dev, is specifically under threat with no guarantee that the experience I gained as a dev will translate into a new market.

	▲	slopinthebag 19 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think as a dev if you're just gluing API's together or something akin to that, similar to the office jobs that got replaced, you might be in trouble, but tbh we should have automated that stuff before we got AI. It's kind of a shame it may be automated by something not deterministic tho. But like, if we're talking about all dev jobs being replaced then we're also talking about most if not all knowledge work being automated, which would probably result in a fundamental restructuring of society. I don't see that happening anytime soon, and if it does happen it's probably impossible to predict or prepare for anyways. Besides maybe storing rations and purchasing property in the wilderness just in case.