Because the alternative is admitting the main upside so far is: a few VCs and early employees get yacht money while everyone else gets a gate-kept chatbot and constant fear mongering. But hey, I guess we all have our own opinion of "upside".

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akerl_ 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Isn’t this the same thing every other industry and market has been experiencing with technology, automation, etc. for decades, while tech workers basked in their joy at being safe from being replaced because we were the ones powering the replacing?

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kpcyrd 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This. Capitalism only became problematic the minute it stopped having a cozy spot for software developers~

And even then people prefer blaming the prediction machine instead of recognizing their situation as the logical conclusion of capitalism.

	▲	throwway120385 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I always thought raw, unchecked Capitalism sucked. I've thought that my whole life. "Welcome to the asylum" and all that.

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UqWBcuFx6NV4r 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yep. 100%. Developers are getting a taste of their own medicine for about the first time ever, and it’s seldom acknowledged. This is why you won’t find me begging for sympathy in any of these conversations. Developers have had it so good for so long. The moment SV startup dweebs are exposed to actual market forces for 0.01 seconds and it’s like the sky is falling. Pathetic.

	▲	akerl_ 19 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Don't get me wrong, I think it would be nice if the skillset I happened to hone turned out to be the one field that stays lucrative for my entire career. I just don't think the market owes me or people in my field a job, and if we get displaced and have to learn new roles, we'll be in good company with most other humans alive in our generation.
	▲	scorpioxy 11 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		This isn't about the first time ever though. I've been hearing the phrase "get rid of your developers" for a long time now. Let's see. SaaS is all you need, boot camp devs, no code, low code and buying-off-the-shelf-components and I'm sure I'm missing a few. This time, the automation is coming to most industries and will be felt across the economy(ies).
	▲	stanmancan 14 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The ones most likely to be “exposed to market forces” right now are the junior developers who never got to “have it good for so long”.

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tptacek 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I mean, that very well could be the case. It often is the case with any kind of automation. There's a plausible claim that things will turn out fine, and another plausible claim that it could be a disaster for the profession. But whether or not it's a disaster for professional developers is separable from whether (a) it's a disaster for, like, society, and (b) whether or not it fundamentally is an important new fact about the world --- like, whether we're OK with it or not, it does appear likely that a huge swathe of professional software development work is fully automatable.

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carlosjobim 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It doesn't seem like it, but there are other people in the world besides programmers and venture capitalists. They will benefit from AI, many already are. Some professionals are not.

A computer used to be a person, it was a job title. They worked in giant offices where they calculated important things on paper.