The AI boom is screwing over Gen Z | ChatGPT is commandeering the mundane tasks that young employees have relied on to advance their careers.::ChatGPT is commandeering the tasks that young employees rely on to advance their careers. That’s going to crush Gen Z’s career path.
The problem is the concept of work hasn’t shifted to keep up with the technological reality that has been created. Jobs should slowly be phased out. We need a new economical concept to take hold that doesn’t rely solely on class and fear to make it trundle along. Jobs should be what you do to grow your own fruit and veggies for fun, while the administration and maintenance of basically everything should be left to technology. Wealth and wealth accumulation should no longer exist or be seen as anything other than childish and irrelevant.
No offense, but this sounds like the pipe dream to end all pipe dreams
Things can change very fast depending on specific circumstances. I hope you’re more wrong than you think.
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“Haha best I can do is lower wages and more homelessness”
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I’m fine with that. I’m not going for a career anyways, most of us aren’t.
Lol it’s not ChatGPT screwing over Gen Z. It’s the rich business owners who care more about profits than people.
Let’s play devil’s advocate: if AI is capable of doing a job for a fraction of the cost, faster, with no mistakes, no “moods”, no sick days, then why would they hire a person? I honestly see no reason for them to do so and that concerns me.
Gen Z getting screwed, well that’s a first. I hope this doesn’t start some kind of trend.
It will
I think AI is a very good example of science advancing much faster than wisdom in society. I think as these large companies continue to implement AI to increase profits while simultaneous driving out the working class, it’s only going to further drive a wedge between the upper and lower class. I foresee a “dark age” of AI characterized by large unemployment and a renewed fight focus on human rights. We might already be seeing the early stages of this in some industries like fast food and with the Hollywood strikes.
We might already be seeing the early stages of this in some industries like fast food and with the Hollywood strikes.
It’s not even a might, we are absolutely seeing the early stages of this. The dark age will also involve vast amounts of misinformation and just plain bad information spewed out by AI writing tools because they’re great at that, which will make it more and more difficult to find true information about anything. We’re going to be snowed in by a pile of AI garbage, and it will happen faster than anyone is prepared for because speed and amplification are the whole point of these tools.
The best outcome so far is that this issue is prompting more workers to unionize.
science advancing much faster than wisdom
I think that pretty much sums up civilization.
It’s not just Gen Z, everyone’s jobs are at risk as AI improves and automates away human labor. People who think that with exponential rate of progress of AI there will continue to be an abundance of good jobs are completely delusional. Companies hire people out of necessity, not some goodness of the heart. If machines can do everything humans can do and better, then companies will hire less people and outsource to machines. Sure there will be people working on the bleeding edge of what AI isn’t yet capable of, but that’s a bar that’s only going to get higher and higher as the performance advantage gap of humans over machines reduces.
Of course none of this would be an issue if we had an economic system that aligned technological progress with improved quality of life and human freedom, but instead we cling on to antiquated systems of the past that just disproportionately accrue wealth to a dwindling minority while leaving the rest of civilization at their mercy. Anyone with any brain or sense of integrity realizes how absurd this is, and it’s been obvious we need a Universal Basic Income for a long time. The hope I have is that Andrew Yang explained it eloquently 4 years ago and it resonated way stronger than I expected with the American population, so I think in a few years when AI is starting to automate any job where one doesn’t need a 160 IQ, people will see the writing on the wall and there will finally be the political capital to implement a UBI.
Yeah we’re quickly approaching a tipping point where people can no longer scoff at the idea of UBI. The more jobs that get automated, the fewer people working and pumping money back into the economy. This can only go on for so long before the economy completely collapses.
It’s the march of progress, but it’s coming for previously “safe” jobs. I make a good living as a consultant, but about 80-90% of my job could be automated by AI. I just went to a conference in my field and everyone in the room was convinced that they couldn’t be replaced by AI - and they’re dead wrong. By the time my small corner of industry gets fully automated I’ll be retired or, at the least, in a position where I’m the human gathering the field data and backchecking the automated workflows before it goes out the door.
political capital to implement a UBI
I applaud your optimism, and genuinely hope you’re right.
I consider myself, at best, a medior profile in my industry (IT). ChatGPT with GPT-4 (at least the initial version of it) was completely capable of doing EVERYTHING I need to do daily for my job. And probably faster and with much fewer mistakes.
That simply tells me it’s a guarantee my job’s gone in a matter of time. Whether that’s one year or five remains to be seen, but it’s inevitable.
Otoh one of my friends is an IT teacher and there are regular issues with students blindly following dumb chatGPT advice.
Recently, one had removed their fstab directory 🤣
ChatGPT is very good at giving advice that sounds good but it still has absolutely no understanding about what it says. The quintessential child of a politician and a manager…
This is not going to turn out well for a lot of people. Soon human beings will be obsolete in the name of AI
could you please elaborate? do you mean in the workplace?
tbf, if 99.9% of the jobs are replaced by ai, there won’t be a reason to work at all anymore. since you don’t have to pay the ai a wage, let it rest, give it vacations, etc. costs of basic needs may go so low that they could be redistributed for free. But that’s communism!!! Cringe!
Check out how it was like during the industrial revolution when automation changed a lot in a short period of time to get an idea of how this generally goes.
My gawd, zoomers are so effed. I have loads of internships but I’m sure getting a job will be so hard. My internship right now encouraged me to apply for a open job but my application was denied due to lack of experience! Granted, I still have a year left of school to do but still its government they take months to hire and by then, I’ll be close to graduating! I dunno, I’m just going to hold out hope and wish someone will hire me.
Not sure your industry, but there’s a much clearer pipeline from corporate intern to offers than government from my experience. I spent a lot of my time early career in government and I ended up wishing I hadn’t because it took so long to hear back on anything and the pay sucked. But I had equivalent jobs available to me outside of the government. If you do as well recommend trying to get another internship in the private sector - I know my company requires us to have a job open you can offer to a successful intern before you can get assigned an intern and we get judged on our conversion metrics.
I’m in urban planning but I’m about to try to use my minor in management information systems instead. There just seems to be more data jobs than planning ones and I’d realize I can volunteer and still be active in public service that way.
It just seems harder to break into tbh. I have been looking at business jobs in insurance, data management/analysis but my degree isn’t the best fit tho. Idk, I’m going to go with the flow if things tbh.
I’m in auto insurance my degree has zero to do with it you just need the story about why your history is a good fit and gives you a unique perspective.
I’d recommend honestly just start looking up some people on LinkedIn in the area you have interest in and in a company you think you want and introduce yourself in a message and tell them your interest because what you need to make sure you get into a program is someone to recommend you as an intern. I’ve had people blind reach out to me that I’ve been willing to help out before especially interns because it shows initiative.
From there, as long as someone continues to show drive and that they can understand the work recommendations to hire are there for you.
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Any recommendations to look at? My brother used to work for a government contractor doing UX and made good money? Is there a job board for government contracting? I did quick search and didn’t find an obvious one…
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Thanks for the tips! I’ll most definitely look newly awarded federal contracts then look for opportunities there.
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Good! We will finally free people of work!
Great, free to starve in a gutter. Such freedom.
I’m always amazed at how people will fight to work like slaves rather than to fight for a home and food. It’s properly insane if you ask me.
Spoken like someone who has never struggled to pay rent, never skipped meals because their bank account was empty, and never actually carried a weapon.
You cannot fight for a home and food, at least, not without being an aggressor. Russia is doing this to Ukraine right now (the war is about only one thing really - farmland).
You can build a home and produce food. You do this by cooperating with other people, not fighting them.
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No one is fighting to work like slaves. I don’t know where you’re getting that idea. People just want to put food on the table and companies are fighting that very thing. Yes, we all SHOULD be fighting for a better standard of living, but since everyone disagrees on how to achieve that, we have to fight for the next best thing.
When people fight against things that destroy jobs, they are fighting to stay slaves.
The state of things is that capitalists stole progress for themselves. Fighting to take it back would be a better fight. Fighting to get food or shelter in exchange for now tech to capitalists would be a better fight. Fighting capitalists would be a better fight. But people fight to keep serving the capitalists, they fight for the status quo in fear that the change will make their miserable life worse. It’s not a winning fight.
Good we are finally free of people at work
Bro service industry jobs and similar are booming. Train under a plumber, electrician or gassist and you will be set for years
Suggesting an alternative industry as an escape from AI doesn’t work. The media tried this with the millions of truck drivers, pushing them to go into software development 5-10 years ago, as we started conversations around the impending automation of their careers.
The thought at the time, and this seemed like an accurate forecast to me, was that the tech industry would continue to grow and software engineers would be extraordinarily safe for decades to come. I was already in this profession, so I figured my career was safe for a long while.
Then a massive AI boom happened this year that I hadn’t anticipated would come for 15ish more years, and similarly AI experts are now pushing up predictions of AGI by literally decades, average estimates being under 10 years now instead of 30 years.
At the same time, the tech industry went through massive layoffs. Outsourcing, massive increases in output with generative AI automating away repetitive copy/paste programming or even slightly more complicated boilerplate that isn’t strictly copy/paste, amongst natural capitalist tendencies to want to restrict high value labor to keep it cheap.
Those people who shifted away from truck driving and towards software engineer 4+ years ago, thinking it was a “safe path” and now being told that it’s impossible to find a junior dev position might become desperate enough to change paths again. Maybe they’ll take your advice and join a trade school, only to find in 4 years we’ll hit massive advancements in robotics and AGI that allows general problem solving skills from robots in the real world.
We already have the tech for it. Boston dynamics has showcased robots that can move more than fluently enough to be a plumber, electrician, etc. Now we just need to combine generative AI with senses and the ability to process information from those senses and react (this already works with images, moving to a video feed and eventually touch/sound/etc is a next step).
While everyone constantly plays a game of chicken, trying to move around this massive reserve army of labor, we’ll see housing scalpers continue to raise rents, and cost of living becoming prohibitive for this growing class of underemployed or unemployed people. The reserve army of labor, when kept around 5-10% of the population, serves as an incentive for people to be obedient workers and not to rock the bed too much. That number growing to 20-50% is enough to rock the bed, and capitalists will advocate for what they’ve already advocated in the third world, a massive reduction or total annihilation of welfare, so millions more can starve to death.
We already have millions of people dying a year due to starvation, and nearly a billion people are malnourished due to lack of food access. Raising this number is a logical next step for capitalists as workers try to fight for a share of the automated economy.
Now we just need to combine
“Just” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Sensor integration is currently the biggest hurdle in AI and one of the most complex but less understood areas of research. Everyone can make a magnetic sensor, anyone can make an image recognition AI, anyone can make an inverse kinematic robotic control arm. But having them integrate and coordinate together to create fluid problem analysis and motion has proven to be elusive and non-trivial. Tesla commits traffic offenses, taxi networks are brought to a halt by shirts with traffic cones on them. For things the most basic human context aware analysis can solve instantly. It has cost Boston Dynamics billions of defense budget money to create a partial solution that still requires the permanent supervision of a human operator. A full solution is not on the table in the short-term.
Not gonna read all that but alternative industries will happen ai or not.
The necessity to look for an alternative industry will happen ai or not.
And it’s not impossible to find junior tech positions what the hell are you talking about.
Also there is not a conspiracy to reduce the planetary population. And if you claim that I want proof.
If you’re not going to spend the 60 seconds it takes to read my comment, don’t bother responding. Nobody mentioned a conspiracy to cull the population, the millions of people who are dying a year from hunger or entirely curable diseases like TB aren’t dying because of some deep state conspiracy, they’re dying because it’s what’s logical in a capitalist economy. These people have no economic power, so they get no resources.
Similarly, as the economy gets further automated, workers lose economic power, and we’ll be treated with the same capitalist logic that anyone else in the world is treated with, once we have no economic power we are better off dead, and so that’s what will happen.
The position that “alternative industries will always exist” is pretty foolish, humans aren’t some exceptional supreme beings that can do something special artificial beings cannot. Maybe you’re religious and believe in a soul, and you think that soul gives you some special powers that robots will never have, but you’d be simply mistaken.
Once the entire economy is automated, there will still be two classes, owners and non-owners, instead of owners and workers. Non-owners will either seize the means of production or die per the logic of capitalism (not some conspiracy).
Where I’m from even those jobs pay shitty salaries that haven’t kept up with the cost of living. I know electricians who can barely afford rent.
Ok fair enough. Where is that? Most of the world has less than enough people for those service jobs so unless you live just in the right place or the planet where almost everyone is a plumber, I’d call that extreme bad luck haha
Oh we definitely don’t have enough tradespeople, but their unions have not kept them up to the cost of living. It’s causing a huge problem here. The only way to make real money is to start your own business, and most people aren’t interested in that or can’t afford to.
But that’s exactly what I meant can’t you go independent? That’s weird, tradesmanship here even has unions but they have so much work they can’t handle the load ( ayyy lmao) and they are trying to stimulate people to take into this trades.
Go where the future is…HVAC. Soon everyone is going to need AC just to survive.
Which will accelerate the destruction of the planet. Yay!
Whether you have ac or not, the planet is set on course to be destroyed unless big oil countries suddenly find their kindness to all mankind and stop drilling oil. Which is impossible.
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I’m aware of that, hence why I said accelerate
Maybe. But if they stop drilling for petroleum, I wonder where the electricity to make the solar panels and wind turbines will come from. Oh and the polymers and plastics used to make those things. While ue use the available electricity for charging our electric cars.
What’s the alternative? Just die?
Yup
Pumping all my fun money into trane stock…
And the funny part is that ChatGPT isn’t good enough at anything to be trusted with doing it alone. You still need an expert on the subject matter to proofread anything that will be seen by the public or used to make a business decision.
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You can say the same for entry level employees though. I’m not trusting anyone new to post without review.
Granted I rather the company pay someone so they can be taught and eventually become autonomous over time.
And presumably a human who works has some intention to get it right so they can prove their worth or learn or any of a million reasons to want to succeed at work.
ChatGPT is just math in a black box that spits out random language stems filtered and organized by the input parameters you choose.
presumably a human who works has some intention … to succeed at work
Which is the one in ten who really love what they do and want to go into management or oversee the process for professional fulfillment. Of the other nine, three are waiting to move to a company that pays better, two will decide they don’t like it and change careers entirely, and four really are terrible at it but HR decided they met the minimum requirements and would work for entry level wages so they’ll be in that job for the foreseeable future with zero upward growth, eventually getting bitter and doing a worse and worse job while complaining about their lack of promotion.
Not sure what industry you’re in but that sounds like a fair wages and training problem, not an ambition problem. Most people are content to advance in an industry for the sake of job security and professional development, even if they don’t have a particular passion for the specific job role, as long as they are being compensated fairly and see a path for advancement or transferable skills.
I’m architecture-adjacent, so I’m working with clients across a bunch of different market sectors, many are business owners, but my avocations are heavily into performing arts so many people I know in that group are a pretty substantial cross section of low to moderate wage, often entry level workers. I also own my business so I’ve been in the hiring and training side of things.
It was already happenning in things like Software Developmnt with outsourcing: all the entry level stuff was sent away to be done by people who cost a fraction of what even a Junior Dev would cost in the West, and that’s exactly the stuff that one starts one’s career with.
As someone who lives in the east where these jobs are outsourced to, it’s not like junior devs here get to work on them either. Most outsourced stuff is assigned to people higher up. The talented juniors are left sitting on the bench as retainer manpower, others are in an endless string of unpaid internships.
The job situation is more similar then you think all over the world
Can you explain what you mean by retainer manpower? I’ve never worked anywhere where there was an extra person. Usually a job that requires 20 people would be set up for 20, 3 would leave the company, one would go out on disability and you have 16 doing the job of 20. They make a new middle management role with little to no raise but a sense of pride that you are now in charge and they stick that person with ensuring the 16 people don’t fall behind. Which really means you now have 15 workers, and 1 person stuck in meetings all day explaining why we are barely keeping our heads above water.
Companies hire junior devs (and other cheap labour) as “reserves”, in the off chance that you get more projects (sometimes this is negotiated as a bonded contract, which you can’t break for 3-5 years, but I hear that abusive practice is dying slowly).
They are paid abysmally low salaries, but youre not allowed to work, or find work elsewhere while you’re on this type of contract. If a project comes and you’re needed, you’re put on a regular contract that is comparatively not as low paying.
All the factors you mentioned are still at play, these people are almost never put on existing projects, so you end up with less people doing more work, with more people just sitting around doing nothing waiting for new projects.
This type of environment is extremely negative and depressing to be in, and it promotes a lot of office politics to get yourself off that list and into a better salary etc.
