> The only prediction that I think is robust is: Those who use AI as tool today will replace those that aren't tomorrow.

That's not a robust prediction. Many people who don't use AI today simply don't do so because they've tried it, and found it subtracts value. Those people will not be replaced tomorrow, they will merely reevaluate the tool and start using it if it has started to add value.

If jobs were based on self-perceived value addition there would never be a layoff ever

Your executive team is going to "remove" non-AI folks regardless of their claims about efficiency.

Just like they forced you to return to office while ignoring the exact same efficiency claims. They had realestate to protect. Now they have AI to protect.

"Now they have AI to protect," you're ultimately talking about corporate leadership being susceptible to the sunk cost fallacy here. But AI investment is a particularly easy sunk cost to get out of compared to real estate. Real estate has lease obligations and moving costs; it will cost you a lot more in the short term to get rid of your real estate. AI you could just stop using and immediately see cost reduction.

There are trillions invested innit at this point.

50 year lease write off would be peanuts compared to what's been invested with the expectation of payouts

The entire American tech industry will implode in a bubble pop if AI doesn't pan out.

I argue that real estate was a smaller problem than this AI bubble behemoth they've created. And now everyones retirement is wrapped up in it.

Then the answer isn't to adopt AI it's to unionise.

I upvoted both posts

As always, the answer is that we need to found our own companies and stop letting the vampires suck our blood.

Identifying the 1% of ai use cases that are useful and refusing to have your attention stolen by the 99% that is mild melting garbage will be the key ai skill for the ai future

So same as with the internet

This is both the sickest burn and truest statement I’ve read today.

Here, have a (digital) shortbread cookie: o

> Those who use AI as tool today will replace those that aren't tomorrow.

Unless they let their skills atrophy by offloading them to AI. The things they can do will be commodified and low value.

I suspect there will be demand for those who instead chose to hone their skills.

There always has been, thus far. When I was attending CC for an A+ class in High School, my lab partner was a woman in her early 40s who pulled down a staggering amount of money doing COBOL programming. I learned first hand that for every advancement in technology, there will always be folks who (rightly or wrongly) find no value proposition in upgrading needlessly.

AI as it presently stands is very much one of those things where in the immediate, sure, there’s money to be made jumping on the bandwagon. Even I keep tinkering with it in some capacity from an IT POV, and it has some legitimate use cases that even surprise me sometimes.

However, I aim to build a career like the COBOL programmer did: staying technically sharp as the world abstracts away, because someone, somewhere, will eventually need help digging out of a hole that upgrades or automation got them into.

And at that point, you can bill for the first class airfare, the five-star hotel, and four-figures a day to save their ass.

I think if you have that problem, then you're not using AI as a tool; AI is using you.

Using AI as a tool doesn't mean having it do everything; it means you have the skill and knowledge to know where and how you can use it.

> it means you have the skill and knowledge to ...

sure, but in the real world the overwhelming majority of people loudly proclaiming the benefits of AI don't actually have the skill or knowledge (or discipline) to do so / judge its correctness. it's peak dunning-kruger

Have you considered the inverse?

Those who use AI as tool today will be replaced by those that aren't tomorrow.

Those who know how to fix the messes made by AI today will replace those who don't tomorrow.

This is what I'm seeing currently at work. YMMV.

Everyone uses or will use ai, there is no learning curve so this is not an advantage

I think a better prediction would be that the current (or future?) generation Software Engineers will migrate to building and developing AI systems, basically working for OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.

The future of computing could very well be AI (and related fields) + Robotics + Hardware .. instead of Software + Hardware.

Just open codex or claude code, add md file with basic instructions and tell it what you want. there is no "tooling" or "workflows" around it. "swarm of agents" is not a thing.

And if your agent is running in background for hours then you are doing something wrong and wasting time.

AI tools will get easier and easier to use. There will be no skill level required to use them effectively.

Has this been true for any technology, ever? In that the curve of skill to output quality will be completely flat?

I would be suspicious of this claim.

We can already see it. Take a look at AI image generation a few years ago. People were creating complex prompts, tweaking values, adding overlay models, stringing together several AI tools to get to a decent output. Now you can get a better result typing a simple phrase into one of the many major AI web interfaces. Tools like adobe have simplified all these features to the point where they can be learnt in under 5mins.

This is only going to be the start once AI gets good it will be so easy to use I doubt there will be any human unable to use it. Its the nature of natural language queries and companies working to build a model that can handle "anything" thrown at it.

Skill to effective output quality.

I'm sure there are people who are more skilled at using a cell phone than I am. It doesn't matter.

Similarly, we all have had co-workers or friends who aren't very good at using search engines. They still use them and largely still have jobs.

Now that I think of it, most regularly-used technology is like this. Cars, dishwashers, keyboards, electric shavers. There is a baseline level of skill required for operation, but the marginal benefits for being more skilled than the baseline drop off pretty quickly.

Does everything always need precedence?

I think you mean precedents but in any case the precedent is that often a new tech is heralded with “this time is different! Ignore the precedents” and yet so far that has been wrong every time.

One day the sun won’t rise in the morning but it’s not something I’m going to plan on happening in my lifetime.

Jep, sorry not an native english speaker.

It’s been wrong every time, except for the times it wasn’t. Nobody remembers those though. Something something confirmation bias.

Thank you. AI is different from tools we've seen before. There won't always be a precedent to refer to.

> Has this been true for any technology, ever?

Yes?

Try abacus, slide rules or mechanical calculating machines vs electronic calculators.

Or ancient vs modern computers and software. They didn't even have "end-users" like we understand them now, every computer user was a specialist.

Programming.

Writing. Quill vs. ballpen, but also alphabets vs what you had to write before.

Photography, more than one big jump in usability. Film cameras, projectors/screens.

Transportation: From navigation to piloting aircraft or cars. Originally you had to be a part-time mechanic.

Many advanced (i.e. more complex than e.g. a hammer) tools in manufacturing or at home.

I would argue that for all of these there's still a skill element evolved.

If I give an accountant an electronic calculator and a problem to solve, they'll be more efficient than me

If I give someone who spent thousands of hours on a computer a task on it, they'll be able to do more than my parents

If I give someone that writes a lot a ballpen, their writing will be faster and more legible than someone like me who barely writes on paper.

Okay what we're saying is slightly different, you mean to reach a certain bar. I kind of agree to that

Through the marginal improvement is still pretty high to knowing how the tools work and how to use them more effectively, in a way that people that spend time with the tools will be _more_ effective

And all of these still require skills today. Yes, electronic calculators too.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45983440

Are you really claiming that calculators require no skill?

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45983440

The internet was the same. Didnt stop legacy businesses from getting their lunch eaten by internet native companies.

Some businesses survive without using the internet so this isn’t the strongest argument. And even more use it minimally, eg they just have a Yelp page or something.

Just like internet... completely safe to use, no malicious downloads, no scams to spot, totally safe and easy to use with no skill...oh wait...

That's not what they're saying.

The easier "AI" gets to use (as it is being "promised" it will), the quicker a skilled engineered is going to be able to adapt to it whenever they give up and start using it. They'll likely be ahead of any of those previous adopters who just couldn't resist the allure of simply accepting whatever is spit out without thoroughly reviewing it first.

Using AI as a tool is similar to using a search engine and specific sites in the past. People are using it naturally (for what it works)

> The only prediction that I think is robust is: Those who use AI as tool today will replace those that aren't tomorrow.

And I make the inverse prediction.

I work for a FAANG and I see it, from juniors to senior engineers, the one who use AI generate absolute slop that is unreadable, unmaintainable, and is definitely going to break. They are making themselves not just redundant, but an actual danger to the company.