> The kinds of jobs that are going to be value in the future are the ones that can't or won't be automated by AI. Responsibility and authority are signs of something that can't be automated (military, police, signing off on something as being true and valid); roles where it's important for it to be done by someone we relate to (art and culture, childcare, religious worker); roles where it's likely that society will force humans to be prefered over AI (medicine; political); roles where it might be impossible to use AI for technical reasons (as scientist might be); roles where the purpose of the role is to guide the AI (AI alignment, ethicist, prompt engineering).
I don't want to say relatable but, yes some is as my identity firmly swirls around my intellect. But, I think I have less concerns about being a nobody as most of my anxiety swirls around being perceived at all! :D
There is much meaning to be found in caring about this world and what is left of it. Whether or not AI saves us from ourselves. The next 30 years will be extraordinary and shocking in good and bad ways. I think none of us, even the most forward looking are ready for any of it.
Whatever comes I do enjoy thinking about it with others. Maybe its just that connection that is important an important enough to keep writing.
I LIVE for my mornings with the husband, enjoying coffee and bagels, and walking the doggos (sometimes the cat, too). I am of the mind that the garden life is for me, though I called it the ‘butterfly life.’ I am near to losing my job due to the changes ‘during these times,’ but there are always walks. Thanks for your writing.
You don’t need to know where you’re going to move your feet. I imagine it’s difficult to be okay with not knowing what you’ll be doing next year? Try to make smaller goals, and be okay with not knowing the beyond. It’s like not wearing a watch, and being okay with flowing through your day without time gates.
Dave, you’re a truly authentic human, it’s why I enjoy reading your thoughts, even when you annoy me with your fixation on neurotypical metrics and status indicators. I get it, I’ve been there and sometimes still am myself ;)
I am really grateful and honored to get to see you confront and move past this crap while sharing your experience in a meaningful and helpful way for many. You are exactly where you’re supposed be, your discomfort with anything inauthentic guided you here, it won’t let you down.
I think it might be time for us to consider new metrics for the identification and valuation of what we call “genius” and “brilliance”. GPT tech is putting a lot of “well trained” individuals in their place, it’s simultaneously unlocking the potential of many who, until now, were excluded and repressed🚀
I totally get where you're coming from - I might be a lot like you. Some of us were fortunate that we could work at what we loved. Most people I know dreaded Monday's, but I looked forward to them. Things certainly are changing, and I feel for the younger folks. It is impossible to know for sure where we will land, but it is clear, like you said, programming as a profession is on the way out, except for highly rarified specialists. And certainly other fields as well, like customer service, commercial writers, artists. You being an internet communicator is probably the best thing for you right now. Tomorrow? Who knows.
TLDR...I didn't even know what that was until you came along. I said, "Wow...here's a guy who says stuff that I can understand (most of it anyway). We are all curious to some extent, some more than others and in certain disciplines very curious. Thank you for your song in the "wilderness". The "wilderness" being the cacophony of the internet.
I worked hard in customer service for a decade after graduating college. I didn't ever get a job in design, where I thought I was meant to be. Then, in early 2020 I started working at Shopify in support. It was grueling for me, but I quickly climbed that ladder up, until I was working in a decently important technical support role. I felt so important and I was solving/diagnosing/triaging technical.issues I would have never dreamt I could comprehend. I always denied my intelligence, instead relying on my creativity.
Soon after, I was diagnosed with Adhd (and likely mold autism). I burnt out on the job, the layoffs, the working from a desk at home.
Now, I am happily working an entry level labour job for a local arborist. I'm learning everyday, and applying my intelligence and creativity while getting the outdoor and physical time I need.
Very thought provoking. Thanks for the read, and for being candid.
I suppose one question is this: though your intelligence is about to be frogleaped by AI (as is all our human intelligence); it is in the domain of 'work' that those skills/attributes will be effectively redundant - however, in the social realm, those skills will still be admired and sought after, due to our social nature. If this is true, then how does that change things?
This is something that is hitting the creative fields really hard right now. I think the "status" aspect is particularly pervasive with authors, and forms the basis of a lot of the anti-AI hate in that community. If we aren't special for being able to write stories -- a skillset many of us have cultivated since childhood -- then who are we? What is our value?
I don't know if you are familiar with Joanna Penn's podcast "The Creative Penn," but she is a very pro-AI author who has been championing AI-assisted authorship for a years now. She talks about this a lot, explaining that the "solution" is for us to lean into our humanity and unique existence as writers. I call it the Handprint Method: make sure your work has your unique handprints on it, rather than writing a generic genre novel that, yes, AI will be able to serve up on demand.
People are scared for their livelihoods, and that's valid in this day and age, but that doesn't change what's coming and we really need to be talking more about these hard issues. I'm lucky to be a part of a couple of writing communities that are AI-supportive, because the fear is driving some authors to be absolutely unhinged.
I don’t think that human intelligence will ever become irrelevant. If we consider that AI is a tool, human intelligence will always remain the baseline factor that gets multiplied by AI, the tool. So less intelligent, less creative people will use AI in less creative ways.
I think that AI will just make the difference in baseline human intelligence so much more obvious.
I can see it even today in a software development industry. Smarter people use AI in smarter ways. Other use it to get by more easily or not at all.
You articulated what has been on my mind for a long time now, and the source of a lot of obvious existential dread. Organic human intelligence will still be valued, but our egos are going to need to collectively adjust.
I don't know if we'll all become nobody, but humanity's adjustment (with being the inferior intelligence in the room) is going to take some time. The denial phase is real.
In a world of magic genies, the most valuable skill is knowing what you want, and teaching others to figure out what they want. It’s actually a profoundly deep practice, and (I think) one that humans will always be better positioned to practice.
I know it's not the main point of your article, but here's what I wrote on the question of what jobs will be left: https://solresol.substack.com/p/advice-to-students-choosing-careers
Quoting myself:
> The kinds of jobs that are going to be value in the future are the ones that can't or won't be automated by AI. Responsibility and authority are signs of something that can't be automated (military, police, signing off on something as being true and valid); roles where it's important for it to be done by someone we relate to (art and culture, childcare, religious worker); roles where it's likely that society will force humans to be prefered over AI (medicine; political); roles where it might be impossible to use AI for technical reasons (as scientist might be); roles where the purpose of the role is to guide the AI (AI alignment, ethicist, prompt engineering).
I don't want to say relatable but, yes some is as my identity firmly swirls around my intellect. But, I think I have less concerns about being a nobody as most of my anxiety swirls around being perceived at all! :D
There is much meaning to be found in caring about this world and what is left of it. Whether or not AI saves us from ourselves. The next 30 years will be extraordinary and shocking in good and bad ways. I think none of us, even the most forward looking are ready for any of it.
Whatever comes I do enjoy thinking about it with others. Maybe its just that connection that is important an important enough to keep writing.
I LIVE for my mornings with the husband, enjoying coffee and bagels, and walking the doggos (sometimes the cat, too). I am of the mind that the garden life is for me, though I called it the ‘butterfly life.’ I am near to losing my job due to the changes ‘during these times,’ but there are always walks. Thanks for your writing.
What is the answer though? I am on the verge of being obsolete. My existence pointless.
Yet I am trying to get somewhere... Why? Where?
You don’t need to know where you’re going to move your feet. I imagine it’s difficult to be okay with not knowing what you’ll be doing next year? Try to make smaller goals, and be okay with not knowing the beyond. It’s like not wearing a watch, and being okay with flowing through your day without time gates.
Dave, you’re a truly authentic human, it’s why I enjoy reading your thoughts, even when you annoy me with your fixation on neurotypical metrics and status indicators. I get it, I’ve been there and sometimes still am myself ;)
I am really grateful and honored to get to see you confront and move past this crap while sharing your experience in a meaningful and helpful way for many. You are exactly where you’re supposed be, your discomfort with anything inauthentic guided you here, it won’t let you down.
I think it might be time for us to consider new metrics for the identification and valuation of what we call “genius” and “brilliance”. GPT tech is putting a lot of “well trained” individuals in their place, it’s simultaneously unlocking the potential of many who, until now, were excluded and repressed🚀
I totally get where you're coming from - I might be a lot like you. Some of us were fortunate that we could work at what we loved. Most people I know dreaded Monday's, but I looked forward to them. Things certainly are changing, and I feel for the younger folks. It is impossible to know for sure where we will land, but it is clear, like you said, programming as a profession is on the way out, except for highly rarified specialists. And certainly other fields as well, like customer service, commercial writers, artists. You being an internet communicator is probably the best thing for you right now. Tomorrow? Who knows.
TLDR...I didn't even know what that was until you came along. I said, "Wow...here's a guy who says stuff that I can understand (most of it anyway). We are all curious to some extent, some more than others and in certain disciplines very curious. Thank you for your song in the "wilderness". The "wilderness" being the cacophony of the internet.
I worked hard in customer service for a decade after graduating college. I didn't ever get a job in design, where I thought I was meant to be. Then, in early 2020 I started working at Shopify in support. It was grueling for me, but I quickly climbed that ladder up, until I was working in a decently important technical support role. I felt so important and I was solving/diagnosing/triaging technical.issues I would have never dreamt I could comprehend. I always denied my intelligence, instead relying on my creativity.
Soon after, I was diagnosed with Adhd (and likely mold autism). I burnt out on the job, the layoffs, the working from a desk at home.
Now, I am happily working an entry level labour job for a local arborist. I'm learning everyday, and applying my intelligence and creativity while getting the outdoor and physical time I need.
Being a nobody feel alright.
You’re one of the few AI producers on YouTube that don’t make me sick, keep it up
Very thought provoking. Thanks for the read, and for being candid.
I suppose one question is this: though your intelligence is about to be frogleaped by AI (as is all our human intelligence); it is in the domain of 'work' that those skills/attributes will be effectively redundant - however, in the social realm, those skills will still be admired and sought after, due to our social nature. If this is true, then how does that change things?
Better to be a nobody than a Nowhere Man, eh! Know thyself.
This is something that is hitting the creative fields really hard right now. I think the "status" aspect is particularly pervasive with authors, and forms the basis of a lot of the anti-AI hate in that community. If we aren't special for being able to write stories -- a skillset many of us have cultivated since childhood -- then who are we? What is our value?
I don't know if you are familiar with Joanna Penn's podcast "The Creative Penn," but she is a very pro-AI author who has been championing AI-assisted authorship for a years now. She talks about this a lot, explaining that the "solution" is for us to lean into our humanity and unique existence as writers. I call it the Handprint Method: make sure your work has your unique handprints on it, rather than writing a generic genre novel that, yes, AI will be able to serve up on demand.
People are scared for their livelihoods, and that's valid in this day and age, but that doesn't change what's coming and we really need to be talking more about these hard issues. I'm lucky to be a part of a couple of writing communities that are AI-supportive, because the fear is driving some authors to be absolutely unhinged.
Great musings! You're relatable and still have the vim of youth.
I don’t think that human intelligence will ever become irrelevant. If we consider that AI is a tool, human intelligence will always remain the baseline factor that gets multiplied by AI, the tool. So less intelligent, less creative people will use AI in less creative ways.
I think that AI will just make the difference in baseline human intelligence so much more obvious.
I can see it even today in a software development industry. Smarter people use AI in smarter ways. Other use it to get by more easily or not at all.
You articulated what has been on my mind for a long time now, and the source of a lot of obvious existential dread. Organic human intelligence will still be valued, but our egos are going to need to collectively adjust.
I don't know if we'll all become nobody, but humanity's adjustment (with being the inferior intelligence in the room) is going to take some time. The denial phase is real.
In a world of magic genies, the most valuable skill is knowing what you want, and teaching others to figure out what they want. It’s actually a profoundly deep practice, and (I think) one that humans will always be better positioned to practice.