What I do not understand is why is it that software engineers are so afraid? I have heard from so many other white collar people that AI already changed their job entirely (technical salesmen, translators, designers, government researchers, the list goes on), yet it is the software engineers that I hear the most noise from.

Software engineering is one of the most intellectually demanding categories of white collar work. I’m not saying it is invincible, but I do not see why SWEs should worry more.

> The pessimistic one is that most of what needed building gets built, and the remaining work fits in fewer hands.

I don't think that's true, mainly because if it were true it would have happened a long time ago. We will never settle on one version of a thing (let it be messaging, recipes, notes, image galleries, etc...). New variants emerge over time, the only thing AI does is accelerate this.

>build things we never would have attempted

I think there is something here but not much. The majority of business are carrying some SAS products that are an entire marching band when all they want are a drummer and guitar player. Making bespoke efficient tools will surge for sure.

The problem is that the building of these tools is all the same end. Increasing industry control to few players and further widening wealth inequality. Which leads us back to where does everyone go to work at that point?

We are at some sort of societal inflection point where we need new industries but only 20% of degrees are in some sort of science. 80% of degrees are in what is becoming nothing more than resume checkboxing for jobs that no longer will exist. Who is going to make the next big industry breakthough with 20% of degrees in business management? I don't see any push to get people in college for actual meaningful progress.

It seems it did happen, humans have hit post scarcity in survival terms(unevenly distributed). However we have in no way planned for what happens here, fairness has never been a priority. The cuthroat capitalism that made this possible is now eating itself with no plans to change.

>>>AI will replace humans in performing every cognitive task, unless you believe that there is something about biology that makes it categorically better for certain kinds of computation.

Why will they want to?

    AI will replace humans in performing every cognitive task

It's fun to go back to the newspapers of the 1920, 30s, and 40s, and see how absolutely CERTAIN they were this was going to happen to them. I'm sure there are examples from the 19th and 18th centuries as well.

Advancement happens in fits, and then tends to hibernate until another big breakthrough.

And even when it does happen, humans love to do things, just for the sake of them. So I highly doubt art, music, literature, or any other thing humans love to intrinsically do are going away, even if they can be done by AI. If anything, they'll be done MORE as AI enables wider participation by lowering the cost and skill barriers.

> AI will replace every humans in performing every cognitive task

Maybe? I guess the better question is "when?"

>unless you believe that there is something about biology that makes it categorically better for certain kinds of computation.There's no reason to believe that's the case.

How about the fact that we don't actually know enough about the human mind to arrive at this conclusion? (yet)

Combine tractors deleted jobs. You can't say there are as many combine tractor drivers as there were crop pickers. Anyway they don't need drivers now as they're fully robotic.

The only reason society didn't collapse: there were enough other jobs to absorb those displaced workers. Will there always be?

Tech was a tool. Historically. This doesn't mean it'll stay that way.

> It may be that like clothes, there's only so much need for software.

Clothing demand has increased greatly in the past decade due to fast fashion. Much of this clothing is designed to cost a few bucks, last a few wears, then get thrown out. It's an ecological disaster.

Maybe we'll see something similar happen with software — as production costs fall, trends will shift toward few-use throwaway software. I highly suspect this is already happening.

The Jevon's Paradox argument is not wrong but they're blanket applying it. Geoff Hinton has talked a lot about this, and he notes that while some things do benefit from Jevon's Paradox, there are a lot of things that AI is automating that won't. In terms of thoughtfulness and credibility I'll trust Geoff over YC.

The argument here is basically, let’s say a particular widget requires 3 human steps to make. If we replace the most expensive step with a cheaper automated alternative, the overall cost of the widget will fall and so demand for the widget will rise. And so even though the human effort to create one widget will reduce, the increase in demand will mean the reduced work per widget * new widget demand is often >= old work per widget * old widget demand.

The problem with this argument is that AI, or at least the vision of AI companies and governments are spending trillions of dollars on, purports to replace the human itself. Put another way it intends to automate all the 3 steps (as well as any ancillary services in marketing the widget, legal services in protecting the company, etc). So any increase in demand does not lead to any additional labor since the labor per unit is 0.

This video’s argument simply collapses the debate back to whether AI can largely replace human intelligence or not.

That argument is so broken it's not even funny. A lot of assumptions would have to hold for that particular outcome to be true. There are many more and most of those simply result in corporations employing fewer workers and having higher profits. I'm sure that the next argument you'd get is 'trickle down economics' but that doesn't work either.

Yes, but then many young people today won't pursuing a career in SW development because of the doomsday stories... which - if your case turns out to be true - will lead to an even higher shortage of SWEs.

Sorry to hear your situation. As a full stack Dev, I miss the days of having a UX expert on the team. Now we are just expected to create something good enough. Also your question of will there be interfaces like today makes me more nervous than anything else.

Voice is going to become more important, but I doubt it's going to be that much of a threat to websites. I can already ask Gemini in my last generation smart watch for latest news, but I much prefer reading them myself. IMO AI will be simply integrated to smart watches and phones. Maybe you'll also have more devices like Amazon Alexa at home, but I see no demand for an entirely new kind of a device/user interface.

That said, I don't have much faith in the future of my programming career either. Unless robotics gets exponentially better, registered nurses are going to be way safer from automation (at least the ones doing physical treatment).

At the macro level shifting workers to RN makes complete sense. It is the coup de grâce of the boomer generations: tax the young’s earnings, cancel SS, force them to work as nurses.

What’s preventing AI from taking on the role of an architect?