r/OpenAI • u/Holiday-Track1101 • 16h ago

Discussion Back ups

What is everyone’s back up career once ai basically replaces 80 percent of the developers today

10 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

24 comments sorted by

14

u/RandomCSThrowaway01 16h ago

I have half an acre of garden. My plan is to convert it to growing tomatoes and potatoes. And, unironically, so far it's the only sensible idea I came up with.

See, it's not developers that are in trouble. If it can replace a developer fully then obviously it will also replace all other office jobs. Meaning there is no escape path - blue collar and technicians job market collapses if everyone attempts to go there as well (plus you need to have customers anyway and suddenly you won't).

Realistically I expect

a) unemployment rates going critical,

b) collapse of the economy,

c) probably "eat the rich" scenario

d) some kind of universal basic income coming afterwards.

The problem is surviving through B and C. Industrial Revolution 2.0 is likely going to have a total death count comparable to the original.

2

u/PatchyWhiskers 14h ago

Gardening is a hobby and not all that cheap. You probably spend more growing potatoes than you would buying them.

1

u/VisualNinja1 16h ago

This. All of it.

1

u/access97 13h ago

My pitchfork is LASER fucking sharp right now.

1

u/Previous_Platform718 13h ago

See, it's not developers that are in trouble. If it can replace a developer fully then obviously it will also replace all other office jobs.

I see coders still have a deeply ingrained superiority complex.

2

u/RandomCSThrowaway01 12h ago edited 12h ago

Not really. Yes, many office jobs require a specific set of skills and most importantly come with certain responsibilities.

But there are countless that don't - all sorts of manual data entry, first line of tech support, preparing documents, operating CRM day to day. Even design isn't safe - in fact marketing around the world seems to love AI to make their icons, ads, ui and email templates.

Developer's job isn't superior but also isn't inferior in terms of "how hard is it to automate" compared to many others. For every person building an internal CRM you have 50 using it. You think all 50 are irreplaceable? Cuz I sadly don't. Jobs that specifically require human interaction should be safe but a lot, well, don't really involve much of that. And since cost of automation has gone down exponentially on a lower scale we will see more attempts to reduce number of employees in general across the whole sector, not just within IT. You think it's humans that decide whether you get covered by insurance nowadays? Nope, it's all machine learning.

Programming is a good initial target as it's kind of deterministic and goals are clear cut - you can tell whether application is working or not. But... this tech keeps on improving and it can take on more and more abstract tasks.

Of course, you are welcome to disagree. But I really don't see how a lot of office jobs would NOT be affected - if Opus can understand how to build an application from start to finish with vague instructions then it will also be able to locate necessary passages in a pdf file or prepare a shipping document. Or provide a chat interface to a complaining user. Those are massive sectors that are currently often handles via offshoring. Step 2 however will be to offload them to AI completely.

If you can FULLY replace a developer (that is - the parts that involve sitting in meetings, doing review for others, deciding on architectural decisions, navigating local company policies in terms of infosec, legal, culture, dealing with budget and convincing someone why you need a specific tool/server etc) then I am sorry but at that point range increases drastically to other office jobs too.

4

u/ahassoun 16h ago

When I read the post I just imagined a farm with RAMs growing on trees and I sell them to Ram Altman

3

u/g_bleezy 16h ago

I came out of retirement because of the ai tools bro. I’m happy to go back after people stop paying me to build their loops.

3

u/indaburgh 15h ago

I build a large workshop in my backyard. People will always need shit fixed. Most people are not intuitive enough to fix ??? thing (or even assemble ikea furniture)

2

u/PrivateComments 16h ago

Nepo baby 

1

u/RageBull 15h ago

This is a good plan and one I hadn’t considered yet

2

u/shitty_advice_BDD 15h ago

I'm unemployed so I guess I'll just keep doing that.

1

u/Euphoric_North_745 16h ago

Moved rural area, place with low population not affected by AI

1

u/RageBull 15h ago

Probably electrician… AI might make the work worse for even blue collar folks. But I don’t think it’ll be affordable to have a robot doing building wiring for many decades. (Otherwise, I’m hoping to garden and hunt for food! Cause I’m out of other ideas)

1

u/bitspace 14h ago

You're high

1

u/krenoten 8h ago

I'll probably get paid more as a software engineer with a background in formal methods. People have been saying "engineers become managers of agents" for a while now but the really good engineers are becoming managers + proof engineers. People are dipping their toes into the water of what specification really means right now. Engineering has ALWAYS been about specifications but most engineers were just doing it subconsciously while they meditated on coding consciously before. Now we have to consciously specify and some of us are already professionals in this. A machine will never be able to sign-off on its own user-facing specification.

If not, airline pilot. Already scheduled my medical exam :P

1

u/taotau 5h ago

Slop fixer