I don't know that unions would necessarily negotiate for no use of AI. The SAG-AFRA deals don't preclude all use of AI; they just requre consent and negotiation in certain cases.

A union doesn't give you unilateral power; it just gives you a better seat at the bargaining table. Capital pools its resources to negotiate better as a single bloc; why shouldn't labor as well?

Thats great, although understand that unionizing protects the more vulnerable of also the software engineered. You not advocating for your rights also means weakening others. Is it still self interested to unionized from that perspective?

> Personally, I just can’t find it in me to be that self-interested.

Yes, exactly. Do not advocate for yourself and your colleagues by joining them in a united front. Your voice does not matter. You will continue to adapt to widening wage disparities.

You will accept a pay cut and increased productivity goals and be happy to continue adapting as your cost of living keeps on climbing.

You may be surprised to know that residential areas in San Francisco are height limited, sometimes as short as 4 stories. They're not exactly anti-progress.

I think I sit somewhere between these two descriptions. I've always supported unions and other "for the common good" type machinery. At the same time, I desperately also don't want to end up doing something the equivalent of barring the use of calculators just so I can toil away at a 9-5 crunching numbers more slowly instead. If AI really does replace all of the meaningful jobs we can do... great - I'd rather we make sure the spoils of that production are distributed than try to cling to preventing the technology from being used.

Inexplicably for the current moment, AI has so far actually meant I have even more to do instead of less. I expect that to change eventually... but man, is it a bit of whiplash to go from wondering if my job will be around in 10 years to starting the work day and being more backed up than ever. Doubly so since the rate of change does not seem to be very evenly distributed by tech role.

> it's hilarious to see some people here go on about how they're proud to work so that they can be replaced

To be fair, most of us spent our entire career trying our best to automate ourselves away one way or another, and always seen that as our job description.

What options do you have? If you're the 10x engineer you'll be a 100x one and do just fine. Otherwise what can you do besides holding on as long as you can or start searching for a new career.

Much of computing history has been about replacing humans. If they were proud of their work pre-LLMs, then at least they're being consistent!

It's kind of hypocritical to change just because it's now a different industry being impacted.

It won't happen to me is what I used to think

Many people who promoted DEI when their corporations demanded it were fired later.

Useful idiots always go first after the goal is accomplished.

Here is the obligatory scientific paper for those who cannot observe simple facts without a statistical analysis:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01762...