This is going to be gnarly and bad for many many people. Sam Altman will be the richest person on the planet in less than 5 years from today.
- My bet is that a lot of software applications and companies are going to be obsolete in 5 years time. All those apps that cost a few K per year, are going to be worth zero per year soon enough.
- Jr. Developers are already getting fucked. I know Sr. Devs feel they're safe. They're not.
- Productivity for office workers is going to jump, but pay per worker is going to decrease. It will take less skill and less knowledge to produce just as much stuff at the same quality. Think of fast food workers, they produce of lot of hamburgers, but still get paid as little as legally possible.
- Some might say, "Well AI does a bad job." Well, a lot of workers do a bad job too. I think recruiters are the best example of this. They are the first battle in the war of getting a job, most don't know shit about what they're hiring for.
George Ritzer discusses Weber's notion of the irrationality of rationality in simple terms in his McDonaldization/De-McDonalidziation work. Weber pointed out that the very pursuit of efficiency and logic in modern societies (rationalization) can lead to unintended, unreasonable, and dehumanizing consequences, such as bureaucracy, inefficiency, and the loss of human values. This is going to be peak efficiency with insane costs.
And, I saw some dipshit on Business Insider (a garbage "news" site) that was trying to say, "Oh all the AI doom and gloom is wrong because a few companies in SF are getting office space leases." Yes, 15 people in SF will help reduce the number of paralegals from 366,000 to 100,000. Or the number people working the drive though from 400,000 to 4,000 (if that). A few people are going to come out on top. And, while AI can support a start-up now as they wrap a better interface around it, ChatGPT will reduce the need for that interface in 3 years time.
At my previous job, I was supposed to be on a team of 7, it is a team of 0.3 as one person checks in on the bot every now and again.