A lot of people seem to be realizing that knowledge work is mostly pointless. AI might give us the pleasure of finding out what happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers.
I used to teach Computer Science at university, long before the “AI boom”. Even back then, we were overloaded with students who had no true passion for technology or science but were there only because they had been told it’s a good career move. They were convinced by their parents or schoolteachers that tech is a high paying, high status job like law or medicine.
When they graduated and actually went to get a job they realized the market was already saturated with others like them - who had rushed into an IT degree and a career that they didn’t really enjoy.
Some will say: good, fuck ‘em. In the 2010s, Knowledge Workers told everyone to learn to code while they sipped kombucha and played Xbox in beanbag chairs. Then, Knowledge Workers sat inside during the pandemic while frontline workers risked their health to make Amazon and Uber Eats deliveries. Now, those same Knowledge Workers are building AI that threatens to eliminate work for humans across industries and make a very few people wealthy beyond imagination. And these same assholes want pity now?
No coders I knew in the 2010s were telling others to “learn to code” because they already knew the above - tech was already oversaturated with graduates in the 2000s. We were telling students to do what you are talented and/or passionate about. It’s only pundits and posers like Musk who tell people to “learn to code”.
On the other hand, the people who actually do have a passion for science and technology are burnt out because of the commercialization of tech. They want to work on interesting tech that makes people’s lives better, not add features to products that will sell more licenses. The article’s discussion of “Workism” encapsulates some of this, but all the problems it describes were still there many years ago before the “threat of AI”.
Still true. I’m a recent-ish CS grad and I started programming when I was a tween so I could mod games. So many people in my classes were former business majors who switched cause apparently CS is trendy. These people had no idea what they were doing and even when using AI to cheat, they still had a hard time completing undergrad CS assignments. I know because I would often finish early and the professor would ask me to help cause so many people kept needing help like constantly. I’m still unemployed and honestly becoming a farmer is seeming more and more enticing to me these days.
he article’s discussion of “Workism” encapsulates some of this, but all the problems it describes were still there many years ago before the “threat of AI”.
Yes, that is kinda the point of the article, no? All these problems are not new, but the AI situation might boil it over to the point where people quit all together and never look back in mass (as opposed to the occasional burnout that caused this so far).
No coders I knew in the 2010s were telling others to “learn to code”
Maybe it’s just because I’m on the west coast, or maybe it’s because I’m not that into tech, but I’ve seen it.
I went into bio/psych during college (graduated HS in '06 for reference), but never finished, and I eventually specced into caregiving for developmentally disabled adults. It only paid a dollar more than minimum wage, but it was highly rewarding until the agency decided they were going to start doing end-of-life care for some of our older clients. Even though science has known for a while that the gene that codes for the plaques and tangles of Alzheimer’s is on the duplicated gene that causes Down’s Syndrome, which causes 100% of people with Down’s Syndrome to develop early-onset Alzheimer’s, there was zero professional guidance on how to help them through it. I was working 60hr weeks, the insurance provided wouldn’t pay for more than a dozen trips to therapy each year, and was being physically assaulted at work by a 50yo guy who was seeing the hat man because Lewy Bodies.
Some “friends” were less than sympathetic, because if I wanted a good job, I should have just learned how to code like them instead of “caring about r****ds”. I hope they’ve all lost their nice jobs. If they’d said this to my face, I would have punched them and not stopped punching until my arms got tired.
I quit being a caregiver in 2018 after a car accident, and was just getting back into the workforce when the pandemic hit, but even through COVID, I couldn’t log into social media without seeing people patting themselves on the back for being smart enough to learn programming so they didn’t have to be be on the front lines.
I used to teach Computer Science at university, long before the “AI boom”. Even back then, we were overloaded with students who had no true passion for technology or science but were there only because they had been told it’s a good career move. They were convinced by their parents or schoolteachers that tech is a high paying, high status job like law or medicine.
When they graduated and actually went to get a job they realized the market was already saturated with others like them - who had rushed into an IT degree and a career that they didn’t really enjoy.
No coders I knew in the 2010s were telling others to “learn to code” because they already knew the above - tech was already oversaturated with graduates in the 2000s. We were telling students to do what you are talented and/or passionate about. It’s only pundits and posers like Musk who tell people to “learn to code”.
On the other hand, the people who actually do have a passion for science and technology are burnt out because of the commercialization of tech. They want to work on interesting tech that makes people’s lives better, not add features to products that will sell more licenses. The article’s discussion of “Workism” encapsulates some of this, but all the problems it describes were still there many years ago before the “threat of AI”.
Still true. I’m a recent-ish CS grad and I started programming when I was a tween so I could mod games. So many people in my classes were former business majors who switched cause apparently CS is trendy. These people had no idea what they were doing and even when using AI to cheat, they still had a hard time completing undergrad CS assignments. I know because I would often finish early and the professor would ask me to help cause so many people kept needing help like constantly. I’m still unemployed and honestly becoming a farmer is seeming more and more enticing to me these days.
Yes, that is kinda the point of the article, no? All these problems are not new, but the AI situation might boil it over to the point where people quit all together and never look back in mass (as opposed to the occasional burnout that caused this so far).
Maybe it’s just because I’m on the west coast, or maybe it’s because I’m not that into tech, but I’ve seen it.
I went into bio/psych during college (graduated HS in '06 for reference), but never finished, and I eventually specced into caregiving for developmentally disabled adults. It only paid a dollar more than minimum wage, but it was highly rewarding until the agency decided they were going to start doing end-of-life care for some of our older clients. Even though science has known for a while that the gene that codes for the plaques and tangles of Alzheimer’s is on the duplicated gene that causes Down’s Syndrome, which causes 100% of people with Down’s Syndrome to develop early-onset Alzheimer’s, there was zero professional guidance on how to help them through it. I was working 60hr weeks, the insurance provided wouldn’t pay for more than a dozen trips to therapy each year, and was being physically assaulted at work by a 50yo guy who was seeing the hat man because Lewy Bodies.
Some “friends” were less than sympathetic, because if I wanted a good job, I should have just learned how to code like them instead of “caring about r****ds”. I hope they’ve all lost their nice jobs. If they’d said this to my face, I would have punched them and not stopped punching until my arms got tired.
I quit being a caregiver in 2018 after a car accident, and was just getting back into the workforce when the pandemic hit, but even through COVID, I couldn’t log into social media without seeing people patting themselves on the back for being smart enough to learn programming so they didn’t have to be be on the front lines.