It's a bit disorienting to see this, and on the same day threads elsewhere in HN, with the HN collective wisdom that automation and AI is soon to bring an end to most kinds of human work
I don't think that's the consensus at all. I don't think there is a consensus, honestly. The only people who would say such a thing are the same overenthusiastic (bless them, but still) CS undergrads and/or aspiring social media climbers who also post about how self-driving cars are already a solved problem that will be universal by 2020, or that we'll reach the singularity by 2035, or that Linux will inevitably devour Windows on consumer desktop PCs by 2005, or that by the 1960s every large first-world city will have a single skyscraper-sized computer with resources shared by all residents via teletypes in every home.
Futurism is an extremely useful exercise as long as it's treated as a thought experiment based on current trends rather than actual prognostication.
The median HN post is probably wiser or better informed than the median post to Slashdot or /r/programming or whatever, but at the end of the day it's still an Internet forum for anonymous tech enthusiasts, with all of the potential for bias and tunnel vision that that implies. You still have to wade through mountains of garbage to find gems of insight, there's just sometimes a little less garbage and a little more insight here than elsewhere. I don't say that to cast shade on HN, rather I think accomplishing something like "a little less garbage than proggit" is a freaking miracle and that's why I read HN every day.
While I agree, I think the general consensus here is that automation will sooner impact factory and manufacturing work than helping someone order groceries via chat. As far as jobs are concerned.
Problem is how to part rich people from the lion share of the money they are used to take. You can't have automation utopia without redistribution of wealth.
