Even if your goal is to go out and create value for others, your contribution is proportional to what everyone else can offer. If others with AI will deliver that value cheaper, or if what I am good at can be easily automated, it's getting harder and harder to deliver more value than I consume.

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borski 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Only if you're stuck in the comparison trap. The point isn't to compete about who can offer more value - the point is simply to offer more value (or create more value) than you consume. That's it.

What others do is actually irrelevant to the argument.

If what you are good at can be easily automated... be curious, grow, and get good at other things you can provide more value in. These are usually adjacent to what you're already good at.

Also, the timeline isn't 'the next few years' or 'the past', but 'your entire life.'

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missingdays an hour ago | parent [-]

> What others do is actually irrelevant to the argument.

If I used to provide some value X in a day, and that was enough to cover my consumption for the day, but now others are providing the same value X in 5 minutes, it will not be enough to cover my consumption for the day anymore

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borski an hour ago | parent [-]

Sure, but we are not talking about evaluating your contributions daily. Over a lifetime, people find new ways to provide more value. Life is long, and that is how adapting works.

We don't all sit at typewriters anymore either, but former typists found other ways to provide value, I'm certain, and didn't just disappear and become homeless (the vast majority of them, anyway).

Once upon a time, we had armies of secretaries that secretly (well, not so secretly) were the backbone of every institution. We don't have that anymore either, since computers replaced many of them.

Computers were originally people. They also got bested by new technology.

None of those people disappeared or became destitute; they adapted, and they found new ways to create more value. (Or, it's possible some ended up working for rent-seeking corporations, which is a different point)

	▲	OtherShrezzing 8 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		>Sure, but we are not talking about evaluating your contributions daily. Over a lifetime, people find new ways to provide more value. Life is long, and that is how adapting works. I can't really take that sentiment to my bank when I default on my mortgage while I retrain though. So although you're correct, across a lifetime, this isn't much of an issue, you're minimising people's very real near-term anxieties here.

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choeger 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is it? If "others with AI" deliver what you consume, it should also make it easier to deliver more than you consume because what you consume becomes cheaper.

Maybe a part of the anxiety is the realization that much if what was delivered by well-paid people before AI is actually not something the very same people want to consume?

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Finbel 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Problem is that "others with AI" aren't producing what I consume, i.e food, heat, clothing, housing and health care.

They're just producing what I produce, i.e software.

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root_user 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That’s fine. New opportunities to provide value will emerge. If software becomes oversupplied, fewer people will enter that field and move to other areas where value is needed. If you only want to add value in the software space, then yes, it may be a problem.

	▲	zelphirkalt an hour ago \| parent [-]
		If now only everyone who is talented at crafting software (or any other job that might be replaced), but who is out of a job could magically be as talented at something else, and enjoy doing that other work, then we would have no problem. But one issue is, that often significant time goes into becoming good at what one does. Switching has a very high personal cost in terms of time and having no income for a prolonged time.

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3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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trick-or-treat an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I produce software too but I starting producing food recently. I feel like it really takes edge off my AI-related anxiety. (I also realize I'm more rural than most of HN).

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risyachka 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>> If others with AI will deliver that value cheaper...

That's the most interesting thing - in 99.9% they don't. All their value is negated by lowering code base quality, pushing slop to prod ("but code reviews..." - don't help sorry, unless you spent a long time getting to understand a problem - simply reading a solution gives only false confidence that you understood it - you didn't, not fully). E.g. see all the outages at amazon, cloudflare, etc.

Quick short term wins lead to big longer term losses - and this is already happening.

The issue is - its basically impossible to make decision makers see this as this requires many years of expertise in tech, and it is very not obvious, and sounds like you just don't want to rely on AI to replace you etc etc.

While selling AI is easy - "look! it did this feature in 5 minutes! so much productivity".