This is the "AI soon becomes good enough" scenario.
Where is the version of this story where retail clerks enthusiastically learned the UPC scanner system and then leveraged that knowledge into better careers?
The inspiring tales of workers who "embraced the future" and thrived?
The technology was specifically designed to eliminate the need for worker expertise, not enhance it. They were learning to operate a system whose entire purpose was to make them replaceable.
I'm sure some clerks were skeptics back then. When technology did take over and replaced them, they probably got a big fat "I told you so." But everyone got the exact same outcome as everyone else: lower wages, fewer opportunities, less job security.
But imagine stores in the late 1980s realising their fancy new systems kept scanning steaks as bananas and designer jeans as dish soap. If databases crashed regularly and people were clueless as to what cost what.
Companies would have been desperately trying to retain and recruit back the very workers whose skills they'd just dismissed as outdated. The ones who knew every price would have become essential.
Unlike retail work, software engineering has multiple layers of skill. What happens if/when AI coding tools fail? Code can fail in subtle and catastrophic ways. Or what if it simply fails to live up to the hype and doesn't deliver?
The very tools that devalue coding skills might actually increase the value of deep engineering knowledge.
If AI replaces me, I'll be sad. I'll have to retrain, acquire new skills and find a new career. But at least that's a clean break, a clear transition point.
My nightmare scenario is that it turns me into a button-pusher who prompts AI without understanding what it's producing, making me as replaceable as those scanner-operating clerks.
Today, I have to make a choice. I can decide to become the best clerk I possibly can, or I can learn how to use the scanner. What I would like to know is: people who think the scanner will be good enough, why bother and not plan your career change instead?
Where is the version of this story where retail clerks enthusiastically learned the UPC scanner system and then leveraged that knowledge into better careers? The inspiring tales of workers who "embraced the future" and thrived?
The technology was specifically designed to eliminate the need for worker expertise, not enhance it. They were learning to operate a system whose entire purpose was to make them replaceable.
I'm sure some clerks were skeptics back then. When technology did take over and replaced them, they probably got a big fat "I told you so." But everyone got the exact same outcome as everyone else: lower wages, fewer opportunities, less job security.
But imagine stores in the late 1980s realising their fancy new systems kept scanning steaks as bananas and designer jeans as dish soap. If databases crashed regularly and people were clueless as to what cost what.
Companies would have been desperately trying to retain and recruit back the very workers whose skills they'd just dismissed as outdated. The ones who knew every price would have become essential.
Unlike retail work, software engineering has multiple layers of skill. What happens if/when AI coding tools fail? Code can fail in subtle and catastrophic ways. Or what if it simply fails to live up to the hype and doesn't deliver?
The very tools that devalue coding skills might actually increase the value of deep engineering knowledge.
If AI replaces me, I'll be sad. I'll have to retrain, acquire new skills and find a new career. But at least that's a clean break, a clear transition point. My nightmare scenario is that it turns me into a button-pusher who prompts AI without understanding what it's producing, making me as replaceable as those scanner-operating clerks.
Today, I have to make a choice. I can decide to become the best clerk I possibly can, or I can learn how to use the scanner. What I would like to know is: people who think the scanner will be good enough, why bother and not plan your career change instead?