To worry that there may be no hope for a good future thanks to AI

[Designless]

I use it, it up skills me a lot, I am at the top of my game but.... I think I'll be lucky to reach retirement age still in work and I despair for young people trying to get entry level jobs. Everything that I did to get on the ladder is done by AI now.

I know the nebulous cope response is "that's what the luddites said - NEW jobs will arise" but I think this is different. AI can think. AI allows a handful of unbelievably wealthy people to control everything.

Someone please post something hopeful before I pop from despair thanks :(

I can see it wiping out middle.managers

I lost my job last year due to AI, that's what the redundancy business case said anyway. I got redeployment to another role luckily, have pivoted from a job I loved into one I'm not at all keen on, but it's paying the bills. Ai absolutely can't do what I was doing and my firm know that, it's just a convenient excuse to reduce headcount.

That's a good article. If you doubt what AI can do, I recommend reading it. It explains how quickly it's improving, what it's impact is likely to be and how you can prepare.

It would wipe out the entry level jobs first and hit grads who then cannot get on the career ladder and didn’t choose AI relevant degrees as it’s so fast moving these days.

It’s already taken lots of junior positions which will eventually have a knock on effect for middle jobs, since no one will have the experience required to do them. It can comfortably do lots of jobs like, for example, copywriting or editing positions.

It is worrying. My DH is obsessed with it and he thinks eventually we’ll barely need humans for anything. I admit I feel concerned by moltbook.

I had to stop reading it halfway through. DC have worked and are working so hard to get jobs in this economy. One of them has been working non stop since A levels.They are already finishing uni. Can't now tell them uni is pointless and encourage them to become builders or plumbers or care workers. Not everyone is even suited to those professions.

The advice the author gives " teach them how to build" is very vague and doesn't help me prepare.

Did you get to this paragraph @RichardOnslowRoper

"Think about where you stand, and lean into what's hardest to replace. Some things will take longer for AI to displace. Relationships and trust built over years. Work that requires physical presence. Roles with licensed accountability: roles where someone still has to sign off, take legal responsibility, stand in a courtroom. Industries with heavy regulatory hurdles, where adoption will be slowed by compliance, liability, and institutional inertia. None of these are permanent shields. But they buy time. And time, right now, is the most valuable thing you can have, as long as you use it to adapt, not to pretend this isn't happening."

V few industries and roles like these, no?
Medicine, perhaps? Litigation? And how are entry level workers supposed to get those responsible roles?

I don't really get the "AI is just a data model" type argument - because aren't we all! I am a product of every thought and experience I've ever had, and AI can assimilate data points on an exponentially bigger scale than I can

Indeed. I don't think that those who decry LLMs as just being "fancy predictive text" have really thought about whether they themselves know how a sentence will end when they begin it.

Other industries include:

• Regulated energy and utilities

• Aviation and transport

• Nuclear and environmental regulation

• Financial audit and compliance

• Infrastructure engineering

• Safeguarding roles

• Public sector decision-making

I work in one of these industries and we're still hiring for entry level roles. If I had children at university now I'd be steering them towards these fields.

I'm not saying it's easy and I really share the OP's concern. But again, burying our heads in the sand won't help. We and our children need to all try to prepare as best we can.

I use the paid version of ChatGTP. It hallucinates and makes up references all the time. I have no doubt it’ll take my writing job eventually, but it really is still pretty bad.

I agree with all this. I'd add industries where the human touch is seen as intrinsically valuable- caring professions, teaching etc. Parts of these roles will fall away but parts will remain (just as eg already public sector decision makers now use AI as a tool but don't and can't delegate the actual decision-making).

AI can't think, for a start. It's just statistics.

I honestly believe, being in the IT industry, that AI is a bubble. It will find use cases, but the use of it every-fucking-where is already facing a huge backlash.

As some examples off the top of my head:
Cut hair

Provide childcare.

Provide personal care.

Put up scaffolding.

Things that involve human hands, interaction and judgement. There are some things where it'll just keep being cheaper and more feasible to employ human labour. And/or where customers and users simply won't trust or don't want an AI-powered machine.

"Just statistics” is technically true, but so is most of modern predictive modelling. Weather prediction is statistics. So is credit scoring. So is much of quantitative medicine. And modern engineering more generally. The point isn’t whether it thinks — it’s whether the outputs are good enough to change workflows and therefore have widespread impacts on the job market (and elsewhere).

The internet was “just packet switching.” Electricity was “just current.” Sometimes the underlying mechanism sounds unimpressive until the applications compound.

AI is like computers. Computers uttterly changed human's lives, and nobody when they started would have been able to predict that we'd be walking around with computers in our pockets. Let alone the internet/web.

We don't know where AI is going to go, or take us. But there will be good, and bad, aspects, just as there are with computers. Would we give up computers and the web, now?

Crossed posts with you there!

I don't believe it's like computers, at all.

Have you met Claude Opus? It's more than like computers.

It couldn't get much worse though could it. A looooong way to go.

My text-based and research job is disappearing because of AI. It won’t last another six months, I reckon. Redundancy and unemployment beckons. Most people I work with have top degrees from top universities and have been doing this job for some time.

You should listen to Cal Newport's podcasts on this, it might give you some perspective. (He's a computer science professor as well as a writer.)

I got Claude Opus to write me a comprehensive action plan for instigating a project. Took it about two minutes to map out my next few weeks, including timelines and benchmarks.

Unfortunately, in my field, whatever it produces is riddled with inaccuracies and errors that take hours to correct. It makes me a lot of extra money doing so though, so I shouldn't complain.😊