7 ms·

I just graduated college, and this was a major blow. I studied Mechanical Engineering and went into Sales Engineering because cause I love technology and people

• post-it 2y ago
  As long as your chosen profession isn't completing AI benchmarks for money, you should be okay.
• eidorb 2y ago
  Do what you enjoy. (This is easier said than done.) What else could you do, worry?
• antihipocrat 2y ago
  Your performance on these tests would be equivalent to the highest performing model, and you would be much cheaper. Investment in human talent augmented by AI is the future.
  • kenjackson 2y ago
    That’s the least reassuring phrasing I could imagine. If you’re betting on costs not reducing for compute then you’re almost always making the wrong bet.
    • antihipocrat 2y ago
      If I listened to the naysayers back in the day I would have never entered the tech industry (offshoring etc). Yes, that does somewhat prove you're point given that those predictions were cost driven. Having used AI extensively I don't feel my future is at risk at all, my work is enhanced not replaced.
      • fjdjshsh 2y ago
        I think you're missing the point. Offshoring (moving the job of, say, a Canadian engineer to an engineer from Belarus) has a one time cost drop, but you can't keep driving the cost down (paying the Belarus engineer less and less). If anything, the opposite is the case, since global integration means wages don't keep diverging. The computing cost, on the other hand, is a continuous improvement. If (and it's a big if) a computer can do your job, we know the costs will keep getting lower year after year (maybe with diminishing returns, but this AI technology is pretty new so we're still seeing increasing returns)
        • danparsonson 2y ago
          The AI technology is new but the compute technology is not; we're getting close the physical limits of how small we can make things, so it's not clear to me at least how much more performance we can squeeze out of the same physical space, rather than scaling up which tends to make things more expensive not less.
• AI_beffr 2y ago
  even if you had a billion dollars and a private island you still wouldnt be ready for whats coming. consider the fact that the global order is an equilibrium where the military and economic forces of each country in the world are pushing against each other... where the forces find a global equilibrium is where borders are. each time in history that technology changed, borders changed because the equilibrium was disturbed. there is no way to escape it: agi will lead to global war. the world will be turned upside down. we are entering into an existential sinkhole. and the idiots in silicon valley are literally driving the whole thing forward as fast as possible.
• keenmaster 2y ago
  You have so much time to figure things out. The average person in this thread is probably 1.5-2x your age. I wouldn’t stress too much. AI is an amazing tool. Just use it to make hay while the sun shines, and if it puts you out of work and automates away all other alternatives, then you’ll be witnessing the greatest economic shift in human history. Productivity will become easier than ever, before it becomes automatic and boundless. I’m not cynical enough to believe the average person won’t benefit, much less educated people in STEM like you.
  • marricks 2y ago
    Back in high school I worked with some pleasant man in his 50's who was a cashier. Eventually we got to talking about jobs and it turns out he was typist (something like that) for most of his life than computers came along and now he makes close to minimum wage. Most of the blacksmiths in the 19th century drank themselves to death after the industrial revolution. the US culture isn't one of care... Point is, it's reasonable to be sad and afraid of change, and think carefully about what to specialize in. That said... we're at the point of diminishing returns in LLM, so I doubt any very technical jobs are being lost soon. [1] [1] https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/20/ai-scaling-laws-are-showing-diminishing-returns-forcing-ai-labs-to-change-course/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/20/ai-scaling-laws-are-showin...
    • deeviant 2y ago
      > That said... we're at the point of diminishing returns in LLM... What evidence are you basing this statement from? Because, the article you are currently in the comment section of certainly doesn't seem to support this view.
    • conesus 2y ago
      > Most of the blacksmiths in the 19th century drank themselves to death after the industrial revolution This is hyperbolic and a dramatic oversimplification and does not accurately describe the reality of the transition from blacksmithing to more advanced roles like machining, toolmaking, and working in factories. The 19th century was a time of interchangeable parts (think the North's advantage in the Civil War) and that requires a ton of mechanical expertise and precision. Many blacksmiths not only made the transition to machining, but there weren't enough blackmsiths to fill the bevy of new jobs that were available. Education expanded to fill those roles. Traditional blacksmithing didn’t vanish either, even specialized roles like farriery and ornamental ironwork also expanded.
• throw83288 2y ago
  This is me as well. Either: 1) Just give up computing entirely, the field I've been dreaming about since childhood. Perhaps if I immiserate myself with a dry regulated engineering field or trade I would perhaps survive to recursive self-improvement, but if anything the length it takes to pivot (I am a Junior in College that has already done probably 3/4th of my CS credits) means I probably couldn't get any foothold until all jobs are irrelevant and I've wasted more money. 2) Hard pivot into automation, AI my entire workflow, figure out how to use the bleeding edge of LLMs. Somehow. Even though I have no drive to learn LLMs and no practical project ideas with LLMs. And then I'd have to deal with the moral burden that I'm inflicting unfathomable hurt on others until recursive self-improvement, and after that it's simply a wildcard on what will happen with the monster I create. It's like I'm suffocating constantly. The most I can do to "cope" is hold on to my (admittedly weak) faith in Christ, which provides me peace knowing that there is some eternal joy beyond the chaos here. I'm still just as lost as you.
  • TheRizzler 2y ago
    Yes, some tasks, even complex tasks will become more automated, and machine driven, but that will only open up more opportunities for us as humans to take on more challenging issues. Each time a great advancement comes we think it's going to kill human productivity, but really it just amplifies it.
    • throw83288 2y ago
      Where this ends is general intelligence though, where all more challenging tasks can simply be done by the model. The scenario I fear is a "selectively general" model that can successfully destroy the field I'm in but keep others alive for much longer, but not long enough for me to pivot into them before actually general intelligence.
  • nisa 2y ago
    Honestly how about stop stressing and bullshitting yourself to death and instead focus on learning and mastering the material in your cs education. There is so much that ai as in openai api or hugging face models can't do yet or does poorly and there are more things to cs than churning out some half-broken JavaScript for some webapp. It's powerful and world changing but it's also terrible overhyped at the moment.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• csomar 2y ago
  Just give it a year for this bubble/hype to blow over. We have plateaued since gpt-4 and now most of the industry is hype-driven to get investor money. There is value in AI but it's far from it taking your job. Also everyone seems to be investing in dumb compute instead of looking for the new theoretical paradigm that will unlock the next jump.
  • why_only_15 2y ago
    how is this a plateau since gpt-4? this is significantly better
    • kenjackson 2y ago
      People act as if GPT-4 came out 10 years ago.
    • csomar 2y ago
      First, this model is yet to be released. This is a momentum "announcement". When the O1 was "announced", it was announced as a "breakthrough" but I use Claude/O1 daily and 80% of the time Claude beats it. I also see it as a highly fine-tuned/targeted GPT-4 rather than something that has complex understanding. So we'll find out if this model is real or not by 2-3 months. My guess is that it'll turn out to be another flop like O1. They needed to release something big because they are momentum based and their ability to raise funding is contingent on their AGI claims.
      • XenophileJKO 2y ago
        I thought o1 was a fine-tune of GPT-4o. I don't think o3 is though. Likely using the same techniques on what would have been the "GPT-5" base model.
    • Jensson 2y ago
      > how is this a plateau since gpt-4? this is significantly better Significantly better at what? A benchmark? That isn't necessarily progress. Many report preferring gpt-4 to the newer o1 models with hidden text. Hidden text makes the model more reliable, but more reliable is bad if it is reliably wrong at something since then you can't ask it over and over to find what you want. I don't feel it is significantly smarter, it is more like having the same dumb person spend more thinking than the model getting smarter.
• creer 2y ago
  You are going through your studies just as a (potentially major) new class of tools is appearing. It's not the first time in history - although with more hype this time: computing, personal computing, globalisation, smart phones, chinese engineering... I'd suggest (1) you still need to understand your field, (2) you might as well try and figure out where this new class of tools is useful for your field. Otherwise... (3) carry on. It's not encouraging from the point of view of studying hard but the evolution of work the past 40 years seems to show that your field probably won't be your field quite exactly in just a few years. Not because your field will have been made irrelevant but because you will have moved on. Most likely that will be fine, you will learn more as you go, hopefully moving from one relevant job to the next very different but still relevant job. Or straight out of school you will work in very multi-disciplinary jobs anyway where it will seem not much of what you studied matters (it will but not in obvious ways.) Certainly if you were headed into a very specific job which seems obviously automatable right now (as opposed to one where the tools will be useful), don't do THAT. Like, don't train as a typist as the core of your job in the middle of the personal computer revolution, or don't specialize in hand-drawing IC layouts in the middle of the CAD revolution unless you have a very specific plan (court reporting? DRAM?)
  • jart 2y ago
    Yes but it’s different this time. LLMs are a general solution to the automation of anything that can be controlled by a computer. You can’t just move from drawing ICs to CAD, because the AI can do that too. AI can write code. It can do management. It can even do diplomacy. What it can’t do on its own are the things computers can’t control yet. It has also shown little interest so far in jockying for social status. The AI labs are trying their hardest to at least keep the politics around for humans to do, so you have that to look forward to.
    • creer 2y ago
      I hear what you are saying. And still I dispute "general solution". I argue that CAD was a general solution - which still demanded people who knew what they wanted and what they were doing. You can screw around with excellent tools for a long time if you don't know what you are doing. The tool will give you a solution - to the problem that you mis-stated. I argue that globalisation was a general solution. And it still demanded people who knew what they were doing to direct their minions in far flung countries. I argue that the purpose of an education is not to learn a specific programming language (for example). It's to gain some understanding of what's going on (in computing), (in engineering), (in business), (in politics). This understanding is portable and durable. You can do THAT - gain some understanding - and that is portable. I don't contest that if broader AGI is achieved for cheap soon, the changes won't be larger than that from globalisation. If the AGIs prioritize heading to Mars, let them (See Accelerando) - they are not relevant to you anymore. Or trade between them and the humans. Use your beginning of an understanding of the world (gained through this education) to find something else to do. Same as if you started work 2 years ago and want to switch jobs. Some jobs WILL have disappeared (pool typist). Others will use the AGIs as tools because the AGIs don't care or are too clueless about THAT field. I have no idea which fields will end up with clueless AGIs. There is no lack of cluelessness in the world. Plenty to go around even with AGIs. A self-respecting AGI will have priorities.
• martin82 2y ago
  buy bitcoin. when the last job has been automated away, millions of AIs globally will do commerce with each other and they will use bitcoin to pay each other. as long as the human race (including AIs) produces new goods and services, the purchasing power of bitcoin will go up, indefinitely. even more so once we unlock new industries in space (settlements on the Moon and Mars, asteroid mining etc). The only thing that can make a dent into bitcoin's purchasing power would be all out global war where humanity destroys more than it creates. The only other alternative is UBI, which is Communism and eternal slavery for the entire human race except the 0.0001% who run the show. Chose wisely.
  • HDThoreaun 2y ago
    Bitcoin is a horrible currency. Its a fun proof of concept but not a scalable payment solution. Currency needs to be stable and cheap to transfer.
  • conception 2y ago
    This must be a joke since you must know how many people control the majority of bitcoin.
• baron816 2y ago
  What I keep telling people is, if it becomes possible for one person or a handful of people to build and maintain a Google scale company, and my job gets eliminated as a result, then I’m going to go out and build a Google scale company. There’s an incredibly massive amount of stuff the world needs. You probably live in a rich country, but I doubt you are lacking for want. There are billionaires who want things that don’t exist yet. And, of course, there are billions of regular folks who want some of the basics. So long as you can imagine a better world, there will be work for you to do. New tools like AGI will just make it more accessible for you to build your better future.
• cheriot 2y ago
  I graduated high school in '02 and everyone assured me that all tech jobs were being sent to India. "Don't study CS," they said. Thankfully I didn't listen. Either this is the dawn of something bigger than the industrial revolution or you'll have ample career opportunity. Understanding how things work and how people work is a powerful combination.
• textlapse 2y ago
  Imagine graduating in architecture or mechanical engineering around the time PCs just came out. There were people who probably panicked. But the arc of time intersects quite nicely with your skills if you steer it over time. Predicting it or worrying about it does nothing.
  • sigbottle 2y ago
    Side note: Why do I keep seeing disses to mechanical engineering here? How is that possibly a less valuable degree than web dev or a standard CRUD backend job? Especially with AI provably getting extremely smart now, surely engineering disciplines would be having a boon as people want these things in their homes for cheaper for various applications.
    • hatefulmoron 2y ago
      Was he dissing mechanical engineering? I thought he was saying that they might have been panicked but were ultimately fine.
• YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
  I suppose now that we have the technology to automatically solve coloured grid puzzles, mechanical engineering is obsolete.
• hoekit 2y ago
  As engineers, we solve problems. Picking a problem domain close to your heart that intersects with your skills will likely be valued - and valuable. Engage the work, aim to understand and solve the human problems for those around you, and the way forward becomes clearer. Human problems (food, health, safety) are generally constant while tools may change. Learn and use whatever tools to help you, be it scientific principles, hammers or LLMs. For me, doing so and living within my means has been intrinsically satisfying. Not terribly successful materially but has been a good life so far. Good luck.
• aussieguy1234 2y ago
  Full on mechanical engineering needs a body. While there are companies working on embodiment, were not there yet. It'll be some time before there is a robot with enough spatial reasoning to do complicated physical work with no prior examples.
• antman 2y ago
  I think we are pretty far. I am not devaluing the o3 capability but going through actual dataset the definition of "handling novel tasks" is pretty limited. The curse of large context of llms is especially present engineering projects and does not appear it will not end up producing the plans of a bridge, or an industrial process. Sone of tasks with smaller contexts sure can be assisted, but you cant RAG or Agent a full solution for the foreseeable future. O3 adds capability towards agi, but in reality actual infinite context with less intelligence would be more disrupting at a shorter time if one was to choose.
• conception 2y ago
  I feel like more likely a lot of jobs (CS and otherwise ) are going to go the way of photography. Your average person now can take amazing photos but you’re still going to use a photographer when it really matters and they will use similar but more professional tools to be more productive. Low end bad photographers probably aren’t doing great but photography is not dead. In fact the opposite is true, there are millions of photographers making a lot of money (eg influencers) and there are still people studying photography.
  • adabyron 2y ago
    We've had this with web development for decades now. Only makes sense it continues to evolve & become easier for people, just as programming in general has. Same with photography (like you mentioned) & especially for producing music or videos.
  • snozolli 2y ago
    photography is not dead It very nearly is. I knew a professional, career photographer. He was probably in his late 50s. Just a few years ago, it had become extremely difficult to convince clients that actual, professional photos were warranted. With high-quality iPhone cameras, businesses simply didn't see the value of professional composition, post-processing, etc. These days, anyone can buy a DSLR with a decent lens, post on Facebook, and be a 'professional' photographer. This has driven prices down and actual professional photographers can't make a living anymore.
    • LightBug1 2y ago
      My gut agrees with you, but my evidence is that, whenever we do an event, we hire photographers to capture it for us and are almost always glad we did. And then when I peruse these photographers websites, I'm reminded how good 'professional' actually is and value them. Even in today's incredible cameraphone and AI era. But I take your point for almost all industries, things are changing fast.
  • euvin 2y ago
    It doesn't comfort me when people say jobs will "go the way of photography". Many choose to go into STEM fields for financial stability and opportunity. Many do not choose the arts because of the opposite. You can point out outlier exceptions and celebrities, but I find it hard to believe that the rare cases where "it really matters" can sustain the other 90% who need income.
• ApolloFortyNine 2y ago
  >Seems like we’re headed toward a world where you automate someone else’s job or be automated yourself. This has essentially been happening for thousands of years. Any optimization to work of any kind reduces the number of man hours required. Software of pretty much any form is entirely that. Even early spreadsheet programs would replace a number of jobs at any company.
• tripletao 2y ago
  I feel like many people are reacting to the string "AGI" in the benchmark name, and not to the actual result. The tasks in question are to color squares in a grid, maintaining the geometric pattern of the examples. Unlike most other benchmarks where LLMs have shown large advances (in law, medicine, etc.), this benchmark isn't directly related to any practically useful task. Rather, the benchmark is notable because it's particularly easy for untrained humans, but particularly hard for LLMs; though that difficulty is perhaps not surprising, since LLMs are trained on mostly text and this is geometric. An ensemble of non-LLM solutions already outperformed the average Mechanical Turk worker. This is a big improvement in the best LLM solution; but this might also be the first time an LLM has been tuned specifically for these tasks, so this might be Goodhart's Law. It's a significant result, but I don't get the mania. It feels like Altman has expertly transformed general societal anxiety into specific anxiety that one's job will be replaced by an LLM. That transforms into a feeling that LLMs are powerful, which he then transforms into money. That was strongest back in 2023, but had weakened since then; but in this comment section it's back in full force. For clarity, I don't question that many jobs will be replaced by LLMs. I just don't see a qualitative difference from all the jobs already replaced by computers, steam engines, horse-drawn plows, etc. A medieval peasant brought to the present would probably be just as despondent when he learned that almost all the farming jobs are gone; but we don't miss them.
  • esafak 2y ago
    I think you did not watch the full video. The model performs at PhD level on maths questions, and expert level at coding.
    • tripletao 2y ago
      This submission is specifically about ARC-AGI-PUB, so that's what I was discussing. I'm aware that LLMs can solve problems other than coloring grids, and I'd tend to agree those are likely to be more near-term useful. Those applications (coding, medicine, law, education, etc.) have been endlessly discussed, and I don't think I have much to add. In my own work I've found some benefits, but nothing commensurate to the public mania. I understand that founders of AI-themed startups (a group that I see includes you) tend to feel much greater optimism. I've never seen any business founded without that optimism and I hope you succeed, not least because the entire global economy might now be depending on that. I do think others might feel differently for reasons other than simple ignorance, though. In general, performance on benchmarks similar to tests administered to humans may be surprisingly unpredictive of performance on economically useful work. It's not intuitive at all to me that IBM could solve Jeopardy and then find no profitable applications of the technology; but that seems to be what happened.
• prpl 2y ago
  In 2016 I was asked by an Uber driver in Pittsburgh when his job would be obsolete (I’d worked around Zoox people quite a bit and Uber basically was all-in at CMU. I told him it was at least 5 years, probably 10, though he was sure it would be 2. I was arguably “right”, 2023-ish is probably going to be the date people put down in the books, but the future isn’t evenly distributed. It’s at least another 5 years, and maybe never, before things are distributed among major metros, especially those with ice. Even then, the AI is somehow more expensive than human solution. I don’t think it’s in most companies interest to price AI way below the price of meat, so meat will hold out for a long time, maybe long enough for you to retire even
  • esafak 2y ago
    Just don't have kids?
    • prpl 2y ago
      you can have kids, but they can’t be salesman. Maybe carpenters
• m3kw9 2y ago
  Always need to believe AI needs to be operated by humans, when it can go end to end to replace a human, you will likely not need to worry about money.
• AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  The future belongs to those who believe there will be one. That is: If you don't believe there will be a future, you give up on trying to make one. That means that any kind of future that takes persistent work becomes unavailable to you. If you do believe that there will be a future, you keep working. That doesn't guarantee there will be a future. But not working pretty much guarantees that there won't be one, at least not one worth having.
• chairmansteve 2y ago
  Think of AI as an excavator. You know, those machines that dig holes. 70 years ago, those holes would have been dug by 50 men with shovels. Now it's one guy in an excavator. But we don't have mass unemployment. The excavator just creates more work for bricklayers, carpenters etc. If AI lives up to hype, you could be the excavator driver. Or, the AI will create a ton of upstream and downstream work. There will be no mass unemployment.
  • euvin 2y ago
    If AGI is the excavator, why wouldn't it become the driver, bricklayer, and carpenter as well?
    • throwaway2037 2y ago
      Jokes aside, I think building a useful, strong, agile humanoid robot that is affordable for businesses (first), then middle class homes will prove much harder than AGI.
  • realce 2y ago
    Is there any possible technology that could make labor, mastery, or human expirence obsolete? Are there no limits to this argument? Is it some absolute universal law that all new creations just create increasing economic opportunities?
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  • zmgsabst 2y ago
    Horses never recovered from mechanization.
    • postsantum 2y ago
      They have been promoted to pets. Oh wait..
    • 2y ago
• Art9681 2y ago
  It's a tool. You learn to master it or not. I have greybeard coworkers that dissed the technology as a fad 3 years ago. Now they are scrambling to catch up. They have to do this while sustaining a family with pets and kids and mortgages and full time senior jobs. You're in a position to invest substantial amounts of time compared to your seniors. Leverage that opportunity to your advantage. We all have access to these tools for the most part, so the distinguishing factor is how much time you invest and how much more ambitious you become once you begin to master the tool. This time its no different. Many Mechanical and Sales students in the past never got jobs in those fields either. Decades before AI. There were other circumstances and forces at play and a degree is not a guaranteed career in anything. Keep going because what we DO know is that trying wont guarantee results, we DO know that giving up definitely won't. Roll the dice in your favor.
  • callc 2y ago
    > I have greybeard coworkers that dissed the technology as a fad 3 years ago. Now they are scrambling to catch up. They have to do this while sustaining a family with pets and kids and mortgages and full time senior jobs. I want to criticize Art’s comment on the grounds of ageism or something along the lines of “any amount life outside of programming is wasted”, but regardless of Art’s intention there is important wisdom here. Use your free time wisely when you don’t have much responsibilities. It is a superpower. As for whether to spend it on AI, eh, that’s up to you to decide.
    • Art9681 2y ago
      It's totally valid criticism. What I meant is that if an individual's major concern is employment, then it would be prudent to invest the amount of time necessary to ensure a favorable outcome. And given whatever stage in life they are at, use the circumstance you have in your favor. I'm a greybeard myself.
• infinite-hugs 2y ago
  Hey man, I hear you, I’m not that much older but I graduated in 2011. I also studied industrial design. At that time the big wave was the transition to an app based everything and UX design suddenly became the most in demand design skill. Most of my friends switched gears and careers to digital design for the money. I stuck to what I was interested in though which was sustainability and design and ultimately I’m very happy with where I ended up (circular economy) but it was an awkward ~10 years as I explored learning all kinds of tools and ways applying my skills. It also was very tough to find the right full time job because product design (which has come to really mean digital product design) supplanted industrial design roles and made it hard to find something of value that resonated with me. One of the things that guided me and still does is thinking about what types of problems need to be solved? From my perspective everything should ladder up to that if you want to have an impact. Even if you don’t keep learning and exploring until you find something that lights you up on the inside. We are not only one thing we can all wear many hats. Saying that, we’re living through a paradigm shift of tremendous magnitude that’s altering our whole world. There will always be change though. My two cents is to focus on what draws your attention and energy and give yourself permission to say no to everything else. AI is an incredible tool, learn how to use it and try to grow with the times. Good luck and stay creative :) Hope something in there helps, but having a positive mindset is critical. If you’re curious about the circular economy happy to share what I know - I think it’s the future.
• anshulbhide 2y ago
  You're actually positioned to have an amazing career. Everyone needs to know how to either build or sell to be successful. In a world where the ability to the former is rapidly being commoditised, you will still need to sell. And human relationships matter more than ever.
• myko 2y ago
  LLMs are mostly hype. They're not going to change things that much.
• kortilla 2y ago
  Don’t worry. This thing only knows how to answer well structured technical questions. 99% of engineering is distilling through bullshit and nonsense requirements. Whether that is appealing to you is a different story, but ChatGPT will happily design things with dumb constraints that would get you fired if you took them at face value as an engineer. ChatGPT answering technical challenges is to engineering as a nailgun is to carpentry.
• obirunda 2y ago
  Yeah, it may feel scary but the biggest issue yet to be overcome is that to replace engineers you need reliable long horizon problem solving skills. And crucially, you need to not be easily fooled by the progress or setbacks of a project. These benchmark accomplishments are awesome and impressive, but you shouldn't operate on the assumption that this will emerge as an engineer because it performs well on benchmarks. Engineering is a discipline that requires understanding tools, solutions and every project requires tiny innovations. This will make you more valuable, rather than less. Especially if you develop a deep understanding of the discipline and don't overly rely on LLMs to answer your own benchmark questions from your degree.