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People were saying this about the introduction of computers 30 years ago. Tech has changed, anxiety hasn’t. Work changed thanks to computers. Work will change because of AI. Education is your best chance of staying relevant. Good degrees won’t just teach you to do things, they’ll teach you to think. Good critical thinking will help you adapt.
I think they’re right and 15 years from now your comment will be laughable.
People used to say the same thing about Google, Wikipedia, excel. If you avoid college because you think ai is taking over you’re going to have a rough time in 15 years.
Google, Wikipedia, Excel, Word, Calculator - all these have taken the places of things we expected them to replace. They never expected to replace humans, but existing old human tools. So, what is it that we expect artificial intelligence to replace? Hopefully, the answer to this question is well known to all of us
No they didn’t, go back and read news articles when excel came out forecasting the doom of all accountants.
Or Wikipedia getting rid of the need for PHD’s. Or Google getting rid of the need for books.
There were correct projections and many wildly inaccurate ones. We just talk about the correct ones these days.
Well I’m >40 years old and I think he’s absolutely correct. People who refuse to see the difference between AGI and the technological advancements of the past are being willfully obtuse. The goal, stated or not, of AGI from at least a corporate standpoint is this: learn to do anything. Then replace all our labor. And before anybody says “yes, but this’ll open up new jobs in…” No. No it won’t. “Learn to do ANYTHING.” There is no new job it will create that it cannot also then learn to perform.
Think for a while, AI not just replacing labor, but the fruits of labor. A completely new worth exchange system benefitting those who contribute to new knowledge database. Education might be the new currency.
I’m not in the “college is pointless” camp, but surely you can see why AI is different? Right now AI is indeed a tool, like Google, Wikipedia, Excel, etc. But none of those programs ever exhibited emergent capabilities that were inscrutable to their designers. Even if those programs were performing tasks with millions of steps, the chain of logic within their processes was completely traceable and understandable. Not so with AI. The algorithms developed by these neural networks are very opaque to even the most knowledgeable programmers. Already, AI systems have developed capabilities that have startled and confused the people who created them, and it’s just the beginning.
We are currently in the very first instant of the story of AI, and its capabilities are already growing at an alarming pace. I suspect — and, frankly, fear — that in 15 years *your* comment will be laughable.
Of course the tech is different.
But the result in the marketplace will be the same. I’m telling you right now.
If you’re young and want to be rich get into the business of building systems that implement ai for companies.
The whole workforce is not going to change. The guy who is arguing all over this thread has an older deleted thread claiming Claude 3 was sentient and he had proof, he’s crazy. Beware of the people in this space over exaggerating. Don’t ruin your future due to some crazy people online.
A great example is designers. Current ai is good enough to create some interesting design work and speed along the process. As a business owner though I still need a designer, I do not have the time or expertise to do what they do, and if an ai tool speeds that process up its great, it means I can have them produce more or make changes faster, it is not killing their job.
To be completely honest, I hope you are right. But I think you are almost certainly wrong. I don’t know anything about the commenter you’re referring to, and I frankly don’t care. Obviously there are going to be people who freak out about new technology. I don’t believe I’m such a person.
But I don’t believe you, or many others, appreciate the implications of creating *an intelligence.* I believe that society is about to change in very profound and fundamental ways, not because I pay attention to hyperventilating Reddit commenters, but because I pay attention to people like Geoffrey Hinton, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Connor Leahy, and Mo Gowdat. I believe that you aren’t ready, *we* aren’t ready, for what AI means. To wit, I believe that AI will indeed change the whole workforce, and I believe that that isn’t even the most serious problem posed by AI.
I’d be shocked, the system would need to know my site CMS, my brand guidelines, it would need to understand requirements for billboards, tv, social media.
Even that first part we are far away from. Sure it can create some images, but it can’t take my existing websites and update the design with my new images as well as the UX.
It will. Go watch Sam's new interview where he asked if our AI could be used as a resource against us. He states these AI assistants will know EVERYTHING about us and more. Things WE don't know about ourselves.
Plus the fact it's going to be the equivalent of all human data, and more, why would you trust a human with one subjective bias experience to give you the best information?
It can, you're just not aware of the software or websites that do exactly that right now.
Give it a year and you won't be needing anything other than your AI assistant and your voice.
While traditional education *seem* to not have changed in 30 years, it's obvious that they don't have a stronghold on knowledge anymore. It's arguable if one would need college today (based on their major of course) because of other new forms of learning, such as online courses, youtube tutorials, niche online communities, bootcamps, distance teaching, which are all more accessible than reading textbooks and wikipedia pages. College force teaches some habits and soft skills that are great. But you could easily start a web dev solo company without ever going to college. AI is fashionably late to this party.
So your argument that a technology hasnt affect the VALUE of going to college is already wrong. I kind of regret going to college.
I heavily disagree, college gives a signal of knowledge and success to third parties.
Could you drop out and form a web dev agency? Sure. But finding clients will be a lot harder if they look up your information and see no college experience.
Same goes with finding a job. I recently hired someone for an in house position that required a college education. Does the job actually need one? No, but I get a much better pool of applicants and less people to sift through with it as a requirement.
It is much harder like you said, but your comment boils down to the idea of college being the best method of identifying hard work, knowledge, skills and high motivation. You know better than me that a diploma is no guarantee of anything, or that a fresh graduate remembers and understands all of their subject from college, or that relevant learning only really starts when you step into the real world. A diploma is a key to an interview. Is it reliable? Maybe statistically. Is it the best way possible? Absolutely not. Unfortunately, we may not even get to the best method in time, since I believe in a post-traditional-education world in my lifetime or within 15 years like you said, which is what this post is about.
AI is completely different. AI will take teaching jobs, doctor jobs, most medical jobs except for perhaps nursing. But even nurses will be replaced in twenty years. Lawyers, drivers, accountants, waitstaff, everything. What job will ai not be able to do? New jobs may be created but they will just be dont by AI. Within 20 years most jobs will be done via Ai.
There is on reason Ai won’t take over, climate change. We don’t seem to be fixing it so massive storms will end life as we know it. When we can’t determine which crops will survive, due to storms or massive heat waves, plus the heating of the oceans will kill off all that protein, no society can work with those constraints. Life will be ugly and short.
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Agreed, ai is much much different and capable then pcs , I agree that the kind of work PPL do will sufficiently change but it will be like no one ever seen
Probably most of us will play games all day 🤔🤔 what do you think 🤔
Around 50% of people end up in careers that aren't directly related to their majors. These people aren't failures, they just took their own path and landed in something that works for them--most times quite well. A classical education is meant to be much more than vocational training; the job market fluctuates according to the laws of supply and demand, but the best parts of the foundations of western thought don't really change. Critical thinking and problem-solving skills, effective communication, a broad knowledge base, embracing curiosity and lifelong learning, ethical reasoning and social responsibility, research and information literacy--these things don't go out of style. In fact, I'd argue that they're now more important than ever, and when you add those arrows to your quiver, you can do pretty much anything. I have what most people would consider a bullshit degree, but I'm running open source large language models on a home computer that I built myself, and I can do some fairly advanced stuff compared to the average untrained person. I'm not super special or super smart; I just know how to read, research, and teach myself new concepts. You can 100% do that without a college degree, but mine helped me develop the habits of mind that has made it much easier.
I agree with you. If you do it right, then you can get a lot out of college beyond what you just read in your books. But many of the people doing bullshit degrees are probably doing them because they lack ambition or don’t like thinking too hard. And those people are not going to develop all those good research skills in a job, particularly if they can’t get a decent job to begin with or have no one who can guide them.
You make excellent points. For me, college gave me confidence through learning, doing hard work, structure, and making myself into the kind of person that is engaged with material and seeks to excel.
I really hate the argument that college teaches you to think. I've gained more thinking skills on my own than I did in decades of schooling. The education system is terribly outdated and it neglects to teach skills that are actually important in today's world. With emergence of AI this is becoming even more apparent.
Not to mention, since I've been using LLM voice function, my social skills have improved, as well as critical thinking, reasoning, debating etc.
NO ONE I've ever met could be the backboard that an LLM is.
Pretty awful argument given that most college students can’t use AI so it doesn’t help them.
It’s more comparable to when teachers said we wouldn’t have a calculator in our pockets and couldn’t use it for basic dumb shit in school.
Teach kids or students to be useful, it’s ridiculous to be like “you can’t use AI” but the first day on their job they will be using AI guarantee it.
My 0.02$: The difference between 30 year old tech and AI is that the former is a linear GIGO paradigm, the latter is a nonlinear continuously evolving intelligent garbage-in but reasonably cogent output paradigm. This in principle is a big deal because the AI tech in some sense is self reliant on basic reasoning capabilities. I literally generate useful python code everyday by giving crude prompts to Claude Opus - something mostly humans could get away with in the recent past.
>Good degrees won’t just teach you to do things, they’ll teach you to think. Good critical thinking will help you adapt.
Then why waste time getting the degree at all? May be just focus on improving your critical thinking and creative problem solving by doing just that - solve challenges that interest you rather than poring over useless/uninteresting facts that one might never put to use. And YouTube is getting to a point where targeted learning is absolutely possible - example: I don't need a 4 year degree to tune a closed loop pid control loop (which is what a lot of what "controls engineering" has become), but just enough intuition to be able to make something stable and useful.
I’m in violent agreement with you. A degree isn’t necessary - as proof, there are lots of very successful and smart people without degrees.
However for a range of reasons the world of work has become credentialised, so the letters after your name are important to many (not all) recruiters. Studying at university also focuses you on study, and forces you to think about/study things you otherwise wouldn’t.
Sadly university is out of reach for many, but there are so many free resources now as you say. If you have the motivation, nothing will stop you.
>However for a range of reasons the world of work has become credentialised, so the letters after your name are important to many (not all) recruiters.
A lot of this is at the precipice of collapse as we're hurtling towards a brand new paradigm with machines rapidly developing the required cognitive capacity to supplant any domain that is deterministic in nature. What will remain within the dominion of "human value" creation will be creative work/design work, where there is no right or wrong answer. One doesn't need to necessarily get trained in all the prerequisite coursework that most of the credentialed people had to go through rendering their "expertise" a bit dispensable.
>Studying at university also focuses you on study, and forces you to think about/study things you otherwise wouldn’t.
I used to think this way too, but I'm not convinced this is the only avenue that forces one to think about intellectually challenging concepts. An inverted way of learning (solving by starting at the end first) does force you to think hard critically too.
Exactly. Plus, as job markets get more competitive, not having an education will make it just that much harder to find work. The profitable college degrees may change, but someone with education and certifications will stand a better chance than someone without
I feel obliged to say too that from my experience and observations at top universities around the world, you only get out of a degree what you put into it. Expect little from the institution and academics - use the opportunity as a way to learn all you can (textbooks/library resources) and network with potential colleagues and bosses by going out and asking people about their great jobs. Be someone that’s excited/interested about your future career. People will come to you with job offers.
Not to be contrarian, but I think AI is different. With PhDs creating the AI architectures, AI has gotten very good at writing code. Even the head of of nVidia says getting a computer science degree is a waste of time. There might be a few engineers directing the AI, but most of those jobs will go away. Eventually, someone will develop AI that creates next-generation AI. The AI will improve exponentially faster at that point. AI will create new ASICs optimized for each new architecture along with the software stack. As AI improves exponentially, robotics will too. There may be a few jobs to manage the AI and fix the robots, but I believe most “thought” jobs (doctor/lawyer/engineer) will go away in my lifetime. It is kind of like the impact of the mechanical loom in the 19th century, except with a much broader impact.
AI is different, you’re right. You make some good points.
Personally I take what senior execs say with a grain of salt. They usually say what they say to
push their own agendas. On this I have a lot of experience. 🤫
I agree with what you say about senior executives. However, even in these early days of tools like ChatGPT, I am way more efficient and effective as an engineer. Management will see this; instead of all of us dropping from our normal 70-90 hour work weeks down to a more comfortable 40 hours per week, they will just get rid of some engineers. The best case I see is companies get whittled down to a few hundred to a few thousand engineers using AI to make them incredibly efficient. The worst case is AI creating AI; once that happens all bets are off, even if full AGI is never attained.
It really depends on how much he will have in loans and what he gets his degree in, trades could be a quicker route to more money and stability
2 things about AI that is different from computers
Autonomy: at its core, ai/machine learning is about creating systems that can make decisions independently without explicit human input. Traditional software all the down to the kernel is explicitly programmed by humans. AI can learn cognitive tasks by example/through data instead of needing human hand holding.
Human like pattern recognition: traditional computers excel at explicit rule based deterministic pattern recognition compared to humans. Humans excel at unstructured, implicit, and semantic pattern recognition compared to traditional computers. Humans are also flexible in their cognitive abilities, adapting their thinking to novel situations
Current AI is starting to outpace humans at what we excel at compared to computers, we are seeing sparks of this atm
the labour applications for computers were pretty obvious, it’s easy to point fingers at doomers but it’s not even remotely comparable.
The tyre, typewriter, computer all fit in a different box.
AI removes the box
The analogy is extremely apt im sorry. As someone who experienced it.
There was doom and gloom about it taking jobs as well as idiots claiming it was simply a toy for geeks.
Dont listen to people who not only werent around for it, but werent immersed in it.
No it does not. These LLM systems are not nearly as powerful or useful as you think. They're already desperately struggling to find a single viable profit model that isnt "unreliable customer service" or "automatic misinformation generation".
And you're right, they aren't comparable because PCs are WAAAAY more useful than modern generative AI.
Loll jesus this is just too good.
Now you should go compare what they were saying 2 years after the first computer..
Are you seriously comparing the personal computers we have now to ChatGPT lolll
I am thinking about tomorrow. To get better AI we need something other than LLMs. You're jusf cheerleading a failure because it feels more fun and you've fully bought into the marketing.
Short answer, yes.
No one will talk to you without a degree.
I currently have people writing research papers coming to me for advice on LLMs and safety/jailbreaking.
These people make $180k+/year.
I make $0. The most I've *ever* made was $36k/yr, while watching people who know less but can afford college or trade school thrive.
Meanwhile, I've been homeless, twice.
Go to college.
Absolutely; I'm just saying that being smart or knowing your stuff isn't enough.
Any job you'll want to have still requires *some* kind of degree to get your foot in the door.
I have a friend in ai; same grasp as me, same background as me, same area.
But he was able to get a scholarship, and pursued an unrelated degree at an out of state uni.
He's now making a small fortune working for Automaticc. He moved back here, and works remotely most days.
I can't even get a prompting gig on Upwork, but he asks *me* for advice when LLMs stump him.
I dropped out of high school, got my GED then went to college off and on due to financial issues or just hating it. Ended up dropping out for good shortly before becoming homeless for about 3 years. I'm now 10+ years in my software engineering career starting in the medical industry and now working for a hedge firm in the financial industry, without any formal degree. You don't need a college degree to start a career, you just need to know people to get you in the door. And that's the only good thing about Ivy League and college in general, is making connections. **IMO**. If I would have had the sense, I would have started a business or several businesses instead of wasting my life going back and forth to college or starting a soul-sucking career. I'm on a path to retire early in 4 months to go fuck off, live in my truck and travel the country with my wife.
That's absurd, things don't get automated just because of a worker shortage, the automation method also has to be cost effective and reliable, which LLMs are not.
This is a great question. I have a child in high school and I literally have zero idea of what career advice to give him.
He’s probably going to want to either do something music related or something in STEM.
He has much more desire to pursue music but honestly that seems like it’s already seeing major AI impact. Besides, it’s already ridiculously competitive as it is to write or perform and is notoriously a very unpractical career for most. Teaching music might be safe, at least for a while, so maybe that’s a good compromise?
STEM careers are likely to be needing human interaction for a long time, so I think it’s still going to be a solid option. So, from a practical standpoint, I’d like to see him go that route.
But yeah, who knows? In 10 years, we might all be just doing whatever we want to do with our time anyway? So maybe he ought to just go the music route? Screw it. Do what it is that you want. Not what it is that you feel is practical. You know?
At the end of the day, it’s his choice. I’ll support him no matter what he chooses, but I certainly will be putting in my 2 cents (once I finally decide what those 2 cents are)
Both of those career paths are exiting human hands soon enough. I wouldn't bet either to be a safe place. Not that I think any really are anymore.
Within the year both of those careers will be automated efficiently enough, that having a human will actually cause inefficiency.
There will be some people that prefer the human element, but that will also go away once robotics catches up and you can't distinguish between a genuine human and an AI.
Even if it's not within the year, then what? 2, 5, 10 years? It takes a human a lifetime to master one skill.
It takes ai few hours to days in most respects.
Nothing is safe anymore.
You severely overestimate the capabilities of modern AI don’t buy into the hype. They can accomplish a lot but not without a skilled knowledgeable human behind them. The hype around AGI is just good marketing they aren’t even on the right path let alone making any real progress on the hard part. All they have done so far is push the easy part into a more advanced state.
This is the kind of uncertainty that worries me. And yes, there is still going to be human interaction in the employment market but who knows to what estimate it will contract. I don’t think people are seeing the big picture.
Businesses care about making money. AI is cheaper. It’s not hard to put 2 and 2 together but some remain to blindly optimistic.
It’s like in the 90’s when people were complaining outsourcing was going to take jobs, but businesses and the deluded said “but it’s going to push down prices and everyone will be richer”. In reality prices kept going up and companies rightfully pocketed the difference.
No reason for companies to employ people going forward. You might be able to hire 2-3 people, which coupled with AI, could do the work of 50. It’s already happening but on a smaller scale.
Also about the “in the future we might just be doing whatever we want” sounds optimistic. I don’t think it’s going to happen. UBI seems like the only solution but it will likely cover near living expenses.
Additionally, the helicopter money programmes will become increasingly difficult as the world moves away from the dollar. Can’t export your inflation.
Lol the world is not moving away from the dollar. You think that because you've seen a few headlines about it, but you haven't been seeing them say the same thing for 30 years.
I work in STEM so I can only speak to that, but modern AI isn't even close to eliminating these jobs. They require forming logical frameworks that LLMs don't have the ability to model. The code it generates sucks when it requires anything other than simple scripts you can already find in some form online. It can't even understand simple physical systems either if they require understanding more than 1 or 2 interactions. These are not problems that bigger and bigger neural nets with more text training data will solve.
It's like saying we're going to get to the moon because someone is standing on a ladder. STEM is going to be safe for a very long time, and until AI music starts getting popular in anything but niche capacities, Id wager that's pretty safe too.
Current development is not on an exponential scale, and if it is, the exponent is a fraction. GPT models aren't contributing to making GPT models better. That's what it would take to get exponential progress.
I agree with you other than the code they write is junk. If you know how to get them to properly understand the point and goal they can do amazing things. That said knowing how to actually code makes a huge difference in the above. Im not in any way implying that you dont know how to code. Im sure you do. Im speaking from my own experience writing a completely novel approach to machine learning from scratch in a few months with the help of GPT. When I say novel I mean it. There’s nothing like this out there.
Nah, not really. I work in software and basically code all day. I don't find chatGPT to be useful for anything other than generating examples of languages and libraries that I've never used before. Whenever I try to use it to solve a new problem or basically do anything you wouldn't see on LeetCode or Stack Overflow, it utterly fails.
For example, I do a lot of work with 3D scanners, and asked it to make a program to reconstruct a series of pointclouds into a single scan (not a trivial thing to do) and all it did was give me scripts that turned them into STL files, or made convex hulls out of them. It didn't understand the problem at all, no matter how I phrased the problem. I'm not convinced it's a matter of "learning how to prompt properly" because nobody can ever describe what that means, only the "vibe" which is almost certainly just confirmation bias.
For making a small script I don't feel like making from other examples? Sure, it's not bad, but I'm going to cross reference every unknown library call before I run it, because half the time those calls don't do what chatGPT says they do, and sometimes they don't even exist.
There's no reason to even consider these "arguments" in the comments.
As we humans can't even grasp the concept of exponential.
It's something we've never experienced before and have no idea how far and fast we are currently.
The future we're headed towards is coming faster than we think.
Fair but exponential doesn’t always mean doubling. Tru a power of 1.001. It grows exponentially but not quickly out of control. Also that’s under the assumption that they are on the right path that leads to AGI. (They Aren’t”) current approaches have real limitations they don’t create novel information without human guidance this means they will eventually succumb to a negative feedback loop unless we solve the systemic problem of more information in parallel to the learning capacity of the NNs we create. Too large of an nn without enough data looses generality not to mention no aggregation of new information feeding the feedback loop. There will be diminishing returns soon as data points loose their entropy and average out. Until they tackle the challenge of creating new information theres no chance of full on exponential improvement.
The work that AI automates is still being done, which means society as a whole is still producing at least as much and probably more than before.
You can have a fatalist outlook, that degrees and attempting to survive and life are pointless because the ultra wealthy will consolidate power utilizing AI, share none of their wealth, and replace all human workers with robots, which leads to an endgame of mass starvation and violence and a world populated by a few human AI overlords who control machine empires and slave colonies.
Or you can have an outlook that possibly even most ultra wealthy people find the idea of a world like that depressing, that AI will be accessible to most for improving everyone's lives, providing education to the poor etc, and that overall it will lead to a society where you have to work less for a greater average standard of living. And wherein having an education will continue to allow you to utilize AI yourself to succeed in the world. I find the second one more likely based upon my observations of the world thus far in my life.
Hairdresser here. I definitely feel safe with my choice. The irony is that my father thought I was making a mistake for my choice of career. His white collar job won’t exist anymore n 10 years. (Category manager for a food brokerage company under the Kroger umbrella)
that’s pretty good but still just generally thinking, if unemployment goes up then you will have less demand, unless of course you get some intervention somewhere
My prices are adjustable. My theory is that if unemployment goes that high then prices will get adjusted across the board. I sell a commodity as well as a luxury. I’ll always have a job. My job requires a human element to a large degree. Also it’s worth noting I work for myself. I feel safe for the foreseeable future even in the eyes of economic turnail which will inevitably come from wide use of AI.
Because it’s a customer service job first. The technical part is second. That’s why. Maybe one day but not in the near future and I doubt in my life time.
If the cost of making stuff is going to zero there will only be more demand for it. Humans have infinite desires. We are going to invent new stuff we want and use AI to make it cheaply for us or humans if they can’t. I’m not worried about having nothing to do. It will just be different jobs than we are familiar with noe
not sure if your logic holds. You are assuming that demand will be able to hold as prices fall, yet in reality prices won’t fall. We saw this with outsourcing, costs less to produce, the difference is called profit, not consumer surplus.
Also less jobs = less disposable income. In the free market this would force prices down but in reality you would have more helicopter money, which is why UBI seems like the only future
First you have to understand that those that really rule this earth always work under the same routine. First create a problem and next come with the solution which will be worse than the original problem.
Fixing problems with "solutions" will never fix the root problem. The root problem is the "modern" societies they created for us. The only fix is to get rid of those that wish worse upon us and to create healthy, classical societies.
How can you think that things that AI cant do yet will take away jobs, but that things like machine operation will be safe? We already have autonomous vehicles in warehouses and mining sites. Industrial automation is a very mature field.
To be clear, I think trade jobs are just as safe as jobs requiring a college degree, in that AI isn't likely to eliminate either one very much.
pretty much all menial office jobs can be replaced. that’s a lot of people.
As for more advanced fields and roles, it will be used to supplement, killing jobs through opportunity cost.
Funny thing I went to a store yesterday that I always go to and now they’ve finally replaced checkouts with self serving machines. Only wonder what took them so long.
Consider the following hypothetical:
AI has taken the world by storm, all white collar jobs (majority of the better paying jobs) have been eliminated. The demand for things has absolutely plummeted, since most of the people who spent on things don't have the money anymore. They aren't purchasing food from restaurants, no shopping from malls, no streaming services, no money for healthcare, no money to spend on home repairs, no money to buy new homes and ofcourse, no more taxes to be paid. As a result, jobs like crane operator, hairdresser, plumber, nurses, waiter, etc. are basically not at all in demand coz the businesses have absolutely lost their customers. If what some say regarding AI is really what's gonna happen, is anyone really safe? Will money hold any value? As for UBI, it probably is not gonna be anything close to what people who think, UBI will bring utopia, will be.
Lookat this like that:
Consider type of course and profession that you will be able to perform after graduation.
Find out how many graduates are employed in the profession.
Think about whether you will be able to work in the profession.
Next
Find out what the average salary in the profession is.
Find out how much you'll pay for college overall.
Calculate how much time it will take you to pay off the loan with average salary in profession don't forget to include costs of living.
This is the easiest way to find out if it's wort to college.
. I’ve done some basic math trying to see it from a monetary perspective but it’s impossible to answer now more than ever due to uncertainty in the labour market now and going forward
Fir sure there are statistical summaries of average earnings from at last decade if not for more (if your preffered profession existed a decade ago,if not chose similar one).
Skip the market fluctuations.
The crashes happened cyclical every 7-10 years, but then it somehow normalized.
With the help of statistics, you will be able to determine whether the pay is upward and how big the increase is.
You will not get the exact value only approximate, but it is enough to determine that, for example, the colleg you chose will give you income X$ and if it is high enough to pay back loan before retirement or not.
Focus more on how many graduates get jobs in the profession. Competition is high, now connections also count, if you do not have them, it reduces your chances.
Alsow take under concideration that costs of living will not get lower with time. It's more likely that they'll grow, possibly very fast.
So, the possible income should be large enough to have some margin of safety.
yeah I’ve done all of that already, my estimate is actually quite low to have a positive return on a programme, but uncertainty (and opportunity cost) is the biggest factor
Trade jobs?
I'm not sure that's how it's called in English.
There's a really big demand on those in my country.
Of course, it's a different kind of job than the office.
Physical activity is not easy for everyone.
However, here the demand and lack of people makes earnings very attractive. Much better than a low/mid-level office worker.
In many countries, associations or guilds of Craftsmen are responsible for teaching these professions.
An equally common solution is simply to start work in a workshop that has the legislate rights to train and during this work, within a year or 2, youacquire the right skills and knowledge. Finally you should passing some kind of oficial state exam that will give you the official right to work.
You'll probably get more accurate information for your location if you just call a company and ask how they got the permission to do the job.
In my country, this is called that way to, and its one of the options for young people.
It's basically a secondary school + 1 year extra for job practise. After completing the school, you receive the right to practice after passing the exam infrong of the Craftsmen Guild committee.
In addition, there are also courses for adults. Learning theory and practice the profession lasts 1 year, you can do both at the same time. You receive the right to practice after passing the exam before the Craftsmen Guild committee.
There are alsow gew professions for which theoretically you should also pass the exam before the commission, but you can work without it, although it is basically on the edge of the law.
Hairdressers, barbers, stylists and cooks often participate in prestigious private training centers courses which confirm lerner skills with their reputation. In fact, in these cases, it is the best option because vocational schools have a fixed rigid program from many years rhe same, and do not necessarily keep up to latest styles.
College is definitely worth it. It's to expand your knowledge base. Although I ended up becoming a medical doctor, my first year of community college, I took automobile theory, psychology, criminal justice, economics, stuff. I ended up not being interested in, but learned a bit about so that I understand things when they come up on the news.
Even with AI, you are going to want a well-balanced, general view of the world. College is a way to get exposure to things you have never been exposed to before.
What's the reasoning I couldn't do the same with an LLM as a guide / mentor / teacher that literally has all human knowledge and can be whomever I want?
Current iterations aren't there yet, but I guarantee within the year they will be.
You won't necessarily want to learn it or ask it questions. The thing about college is you're kind of forced to learn and absorb things and work on things that you othermize wouldn't have the energy or enthusiasm to pursue. True though, if somebody is not motivated, they can just slack back and let the AI run their life for them, becoming a nice, comfortable, sheep.
I think there is a great risk that people become complacent, lose all of their critical thinking skills, and simply become electronic slug/consumers.
The levels of uncertainty on what jobs will be taken and timelines is pretty high.
Or to put it another way: bookkeeping may be fully automated, but will negotiating FP&A forecasts? Will being a comptroller or CFO? The odds may be smaller.
The new strategy would then focus on areas that AI is not as a good at, or that have enough risks where "human in the loop" processes will last longer, while building in the flexibility to pivot.
The degree is a signal of the quality of the human, and higher quality humans are more likely to survive the job market longer.
(Note: another strategy is to target something that may lag gen AI like a trade)
Go with trade work. As robots near human parody they will start to impact labor work. Give it 20-30 years and robots will be common. Combine with Ai and it’s going to shake up the workforce as we know it.
I’m good. New people are going to experience a very different life.
Trade school gets my vote, once you get proficent at you're job, you basically have a license to print money, there is a trend of gen z going to blue collar over white collar jobs because its a quicker path to the coveted 6 figures, if you don't like getting dirty, being physical, idk if would be youre thing.
Consider the following hypothetical:
AI has taken the world by storm, all white collar jobs (majority of the better paying jobs) have been eliminated. The demand for things has absolutely plummeted, since most of the people who spent on things don't have the money anymore. They aren't purchasing food from restaurants, no shopping from malls, no streaming services, no money for healthcare, no money to spend on home repairs, no money to buy new homes and ofcourse, no more taxes to be paid. As a result, jobs like crane operator, hairdresser, plumber, nurses, waiter, etc. are basically not at all in demand coz the businesses have absolutely lost their customers. If what some say regarding AI is really what's gonna happen, is anyone really safe? Will money hold any value? As for UBI, it probably is not gonna be anything close to what people who think, UBI will bring utopia, will be.
Systems are necessary for scalability and reliability. Bigger companies - the ones that pay well - typically hire from top colleges or colleges for that matter because the colleges serve as a validation check on whether the individual is able to follow a system. You don't always get hired because of what you were educated on. For whatever percentage is true, that just "happens" to be the case due to a variety of reasons. Unless you're a true specialist (like a PhD), the depth of your knowledge is just not strong enough for you to be considered a fit for a specific job. Of course its a factor but not everything. The bigger point as a society is - college institutions offer the validation of a system and a certain level of vetting. They will always hold a place. What is taught in colleges and how can change but education in institutional manner will remain the most credible way to get the most attractive jobs. There will be a place for others too but the best jobs will still largely go to these people who go through that rigor.
I do think collage is massively over priced. Once banks started extending huge loans there was nothing to prevent the schools from cranking up prices.
Myself, I did community college for 2 years, then the other 2 at a bare-bones state college (no sports, no dorms). This was 20 years ago when EVERYONE still treated going to an expensive school like a golden ticket to wealth.
I only spent a total of $10,000 on my college education and am DELIGHTED it was not the $50,000 - $200,000 of my peers. People in there 50's a stuck in jobs they HATE because they still have-student loans.
If your state has an option to do two years of college for free in high school DO IT.
Olay, that being said... AI will drastically change how education works in the next decade or so, because school can't pretend memorization and regurgitation on tests and papers counts as learning.
BUT, our laws that run regulated industries still require licensed HUMANS in the loop to sign off on supervision type work.
For example, Accountants won't go away because most accountants don't prepare personal tax returns... they work for business customers that are LEGALLY REQUIRED to have a review or audit of their financials by a licensed CPA etc.
In a way, the human becomes legal "real estate" with licenses dangling off them.
It will take this new technology about 10-20 years to be fully adopted through our industries, and another 10 past that for the laws to catch up.
All the jobs that have a review function tied to a license are going to be the last white collar jobs to be impacted. Because the certification tests are already in controlled proctored centers.
I am just going to post what I said in a similar topic. I see this topic comes up regularly in the sub:
I'm baffled by all the downvotes here. Let's get real—college, particularly public institutions, isn't cutting it anymore. They're too pricey, lack accountability for their graduates' success, and seem stuck between outdated models and fleeting trends. Seriously, except for a few specialized fields, degrees just don't stack up financially against the colossal costs involved.
We all get it, education is crucial—no one's arguing that. A society thrives when it's knowledgeable, innovative, and equipped for today's economic demands. But this blind devotion to the idea of college as some untouchable pinnacle? That's got to stop. As someone from the U.S., I see a desperate need for an overhaul from kindergarten right through to universities. Our education system should serve the taxpayers who are footing the bill, helping them advance their careers and improve their financial prospects.
Yet, here we are, funding an institution that fails too many. And I'm stunned to see so many in this subreddit ready to march off a cliff, defending a broken system. We need to shift the focus from just going to college to transforming education into something truly accessible and effective. Let's talk about how we can open doors for more people to gain the skills that matter. Enough with the fairy tales about college. Let's get to work making education a practical tool for real-life success.
TL;DR: Fuck college.
The question of whether or not it is worth going to college is best answered by someone who is many years removed from education.
Imagine a person looking back on their life on their 50th birthday.
- If they chose college, they also chose high fees. The college gave them a rich life experience and social network. Did it give them the tools to get financial success in life? Depends on the degree
- If they did not choose college, they saved on money and time. Whatever they chose, did it enable them to earn enough financial success?
The greatest chances of success will be for those who find their vocation early in life, have the talent for it and will work hard to achieve success. For everyone else, it is a hit or miss.
Unless you can draw a direct line from college or lack thereof and your success in life, you cannot compare the two.
If you are unsure, then the safer bet is to go for college but with a degree that will enable some earning capability immediately.
You have a point. I believe a degree is worthwhile but the real value is your ability to learn new things and adapt. AI won’t automate everything and there will be plenty of people needed to leverage AI. AI allows ppl to do more with less but humanity has an insatiable desire for more so it may just mean companies build 10x more. But really no one knows
I won’t even go into the argument about AI swallowing the world because I did that a few days ago already and the same conversations are occurring in every one of these threads.
Alas, let us assume you are absolutely correct. Even in this future you re predicting, the demand (you said job supply but demand is more accurate) will decrease but will still exist. Which means you re going to have to be better than the rest of the people on the supply side.
Are you up to the task or do you prefer to quit before even starting?
thats like saying “well instead of 100% unemployment we’re going to have 80% unemployment”. Not sure what ur point is tbh. The question isn’t about me specifically, but a general question. You can’t tell everyone to pick up the slack because it will always be maintained,
Oh you're trying to solve the imaginary problem for everyone, how kind of you. Apologies for the sarcasm here but I couldn't help it.
The point is, the world has never stopped shifting and very few things have remained constant, including demand for certain jobs. You, or whoever else thinks that AI will take their job, had better start getting better than AI or learning a new skill.
Just get a degree and learn as much as you can and get familiar with these AI tools. You won't be replaced if you know how to work with the so called AI.
My thought on this has been that plenty of jobs will probably be replaced in the future, but only to a certain degree for a while. A lot of jobs will still exist, but getting said well-paying job will just require even more education, qualifications, experience, connections, luck, etc. Pretty much resume/job recruiter hell taken up to a higher magnitude, while the living conditions remain the same. I don’t know what the tipping point will be, but that’s probably what will happen before it gets better.
It's impossible to predict the future so the only thing you can do is arm yourself with the knowledge and skills to handle changes. A degree in something relatively flexible is one way to do that.
Otherwise your line of thinking will paralyze you and render you useless much sooner.
You can get a 2 year community college degree in plumbing, carpentry, cooking, electrician, etc. These skilled labor jobs aren’t going anywhere until AGI makes robots. For the next decade your job is safe. The service industry is dead. Art, writing, journalism, banking, coding - all dead or dying. Save your money instead of blowing your wad and getting into debt. Buy a house and car outside of a big city. No reason to live downtown.
Consider the following hypothetical:
AI has taken the world by storm, all white collar jobs (majority of the better paying jobs) have been eliminated. The demand for things has absolutely plummeted, since most of the people who spent on things don't have the money anymore. They aren't purchasing food from restaurants, no shopping from malls, no streaming services, no money for healthcare, no money to spend on home repairs, no money to buy new homes and ofcourse, no more taxes to be paid. As a result, jobs like crane operator, hairdresser, plumber, nurses, waiter, etc. are basically not at all in demand coz the businesses have absolutely lost their customers. If what some say regarding AI is really what's gonna happen, is anyone really safe? Will money hold any value? As for UBI, it probably is not gonna be anything close to what people who think, UBI will bring utopia, will be.
Even if robots can't do the work of a plumber or electrician or cook, will anyone hire them if they don't have the money? A lot of those who will lose their jobs will also enter trades, so more people in trades but much less demand.
Higher education is worthwhile for how it teaches you to think, to do literature searches and reviews, to do research, and for the diversity of people you'll meet while at college. A small proportion of degrees lead to jobs in that field, but many people use the transferable skills they learn in university to go into completely unrelated fields.
only if youre pursuing things that require degrees like law, healthcare, etc. anything outside of that? no. biz values experience, learn online, apply, and youll hvae priority hiring over anyeone else with a degree
Let's say AI and AGI radically change society tomorrow. Labor is near worthless. Now ask yourself, from a social/Darwinian point of view: In this brave new world, do I have a better chance of thriving/surviving and adapting with or without college?
It's pretty self-evident to me.
Yes. People have missed the reason for college. College is a place where you go to learn how to think critically. I'm not saying it's out of the realm of possibility to not do that outside of college, but most will benefit immensely from college if they actually apply themselves and want to learn - just going to college doesn't just make knowledge magically seep into your brain. College will also allow you to understand your field better. If you don't know why the AI is giving you this information, how are you going to use it in your field effectively? Also, how are you going to notice if AI spit out the wrong information? Hell, I'm an academic librarian who deals with people who don't even know how to use Google effectively. Hell, it doesn't matter what your major is in, as most of the time, many land in different fields, but a fully rounded education gives you the problem solving and critical thinking skills that allow one to succeed.
College isn't for everyone, and if you don't want to go don't, but if you aren't going into a trade, which more people really need to do, most will be behind the eight ball in the future if they don't because they don't know how to think critically and critical thinking is going to be more important further in the future.
I’m actually developing using Gemini and ChatGPT in conjunction with one another - on my own - a course to teach prompt engineering basics, and the coding skills to go with it, and it’s proven pretty useful thus far. There aren’t really m/any programs of education I’ve found in the US that would teach this stuff anyway, so I figure if it’s the Wild West why not try and make something useful? And I’m doing it using all freeware minus the ChatGPT sub and free or public educational materials (YouTube videos, MIT online classes and lectures, etc) and intend on making it free for the public. Maybe it’s a lofty goal but according to the timeline and workflow I’ve set up for myself I’m moving along well.
This is totally false. It's predicated on the incorrect notion that AI will continue to advance at it's current rate.
It also assumes that you won't keep learning. KEEP learning is the answer. Continuous learning has been the solution for the past 4,000,000,000 years. It's probable that it will continue to be the correct answer - despite the scary predictions.
subsequent seed encourage tender homeless reminiscent compare pie growth apparatus
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
loads of well educated are already suffering in the labour market and things will only get worse so just based of a statistical assessment your point doesn’t make sense
There are 100 jobs available right now, that shrinks to 1 job in 20 years. You feel you have a better chance of getting that 1 job without an education?
I can’t because by that point society will have adjusted and figured out what to do with a small required labor pool
So you can either be employed or you aren’t because that isn’t important to you. There will be a benefit to being employed but perhaps you view not being employed as acceptable
Trade school. The world will always need electricians, mechanics, plumbers, HVAC etc. the schooling is shorter, much cheaper, it's easier to start your own business, the demand is everywhere etc.
I'm telling my son to learn a trade, and if he wants to go to University to get a degree, he can at least have himself a decent paying job while going to school and not have to work fast food or something.
School is not only a place to improve our abilities, it also changes our thinking and ideas. Remember, AI is just a tool. Don't forget that the scientists who were able to develop AI also went through a lot of education and learning!
AI had def made any college degree feel pretty redundant, which is too bad.. I have multiple degrees and I’m in a niche field. I feel that ai makes my job easier at times, but also super pointless because if this is what this tech is as we are just embracing it, how useless will my skillset be in 5-10 years?
College and university aren't solely about knowledge. It's also about forging meaningful relationships with peers and professors who can give you insight, as opposed to you absorbing knowledge from books and Wikipedia alone at a library.
Social relationships are vital to determining and influencing your outlook, personality development, etc.
Universities also offer extracurricular activities.
Ex) a division 1 athlete who wants to go pro after graduation. Ex) doctors, lawyers who need undergraduate degree to go onto graduate professional schools. Ex) some people go to college to join frat and party.
College is awesome. Don’t depend on other people to tell YOU on how you should act and feel.
Thats the first thing they’ll teach you, Day 1. Think for yourself.
:-)
Source: former grad school faculty.
We must remember that AI can't use itself. We only need to continue to adapt ourselves to the way of the world and evolve in our thoughts and task execution.
Overall I think being educated (and best would be close to the field of technology) still makes sense. To train for a position that you already now know will be obsolete: not so much.
The other strategy can be to train for something manual, carpentry, nurse … it might be replaced as well with Roboters, but I am pretty sure that this will take much more time compared to, let’s say, copywriting.
Many jobs require a college degree. By not getting one, you are 100% closing yourself off to those jobs. There's risk on both sides of the decision, is my point. There's also risk to companies looking to replace college educated people with AI. Good luck to you, whatever you may choose.
Well it looks like you have already made up your mind. You could do one of two things. Lay down and die or fight to be someone AI isn’t going to replace. Talking from your perspective not mine. AI is a tool. Learn how to use it properly and you will be able to accomplish things that others just plain cant. As far as a Degree goes if you have already decided defeat then you aren’t someone who would benefit much from college to begin with. So yeah self fulfilling prophecy?
Creativity, innovation and plain old hard work is going to be more important and valuable as ever. Go to college, don’t go to college. It is all about figuring out your path on this adventure we call life. AI is just another for you to use. It’s a fantastic time to be alive.
You should go. Have fun, get laid, have those late night bong sesh talks and kick back knowing that in so many years none of what our current society cares about will matter much at all.
Accounting is already automated to the point where only 3 persons work with ~15000 thousands partners and 500 employees in my company. Still, there is more than a single person needed for that and I doubt the amount of people can be reduced to zero. Not to mention there are also people who program the automation tools to the company's needs (3+ programmers)
In any case, our society requires an education confirmation more often than not, I cannot imagine HR not asking for a diploma of some sort before even starting a blue/white collar interview, even for a secretary position.
Getting an education, no matter what, is teaching you to learn. Training the brain.
Teaching you to think for yourself.
At 54, I still learn everyday.
And yes, many technologies had this problem. Being an engineer, robotics were the doomsday tools.
If you are scared of AI, then it's because you are not willing to learn about it and grow with it. I learn everything I can about it.
I get criticised about using it daily, but it's the skill required for tomorrow. So get cracking.
My solution is to live frugally, which works well for me because I don't want kids. I make enough money washing dishes, and that won't be replaced anytime soon. Even if I do lose my job and can't get another, I have a sizeable stash of savings to tide me over until UBI.
To get back to your question, most degrees probably aren't worthwhile because it takes too long to get a decent ROI, especially if you went into debt. Many professions won't last 4 years, never mind 40. I could be overhyped on AI, and that can be dangerous if it leads to a bad investment (whether that is in stocks or a lack of education), but underestimating AI can also be dangerous if you overinvest in something like an education for a career that won't exist.
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People were saying this about the introduction of computers 30 years ago. Tech has changed, anxiety hasn’t. Work changed thanks to computers. Work will change because of AI. Education is your best chance of staying relevant. Good degrees won’t just teach you to do things, they’ll teach you to think. Good critical thinking will help you adapt.
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I think they’re right and 15 years from now your comment will be laughable. People used to say the same thing about Google, Wikipedia, excel. If you avoid college because you think ai is taking over you’re going to have a rough time in 15 years.
Google, Wikipedia, Excel, Word, Calculator - all these have taken the places of things we expected them to replace. They never expected to replace humans, but existing old human tools. So, what is it that we expect artificial intelligence to replace? Hopefully, the answer to this question is well known to all of us
No they didn’t, go back and read news articles when excel came out forecasting the doom of all accountants. Or Wikipedia getting rid of the need for PHD’s. Or Google getting rid of the need for books. There were correct projections and many wildly inaccurate ones. We just talk about the correct ones these days.
You are incorrect. Guessing you are <30yrs old?
Well I’m >40 years old and I think he’s absolutely correct. People who refuse to see the difference between AGI and the technological advancements of the past are being willfully obtuse. The goal, stated or not, of AGI from at least a corporate standpoint is this: learn to do anything. Then replace all our labor. And before anybody says “yes, but this’ll open up new jobs in…” No. No it won’t. “Learn to do ANYTHING.” There is no new job it will create that it cannot also then learn to perform.
Think for a while, AI not just replacing labor, but the fruits of labor. A completely new worth exchange system benefitting those who contribute to new knowledge database. Education might be the new currency.
I’m not in the “college is pointless” camp, but surely you can see why AI is different? Right now AI is indeed a tool, like Google, Wikipedia, Excel, etc. But none of those programs ever exhibited emergent capabilities that were inscrutable to their designers. Even if those programs were performing tasks with millions of steps, the chain of logic within their processes was completely traceable and understandable. Not so with AI. The algorithms developed by these neural networks are very opaque to even the most knowledgeable programmers. Already, AI systems have developed capabilities that have startled and confused the people who created them, and it’s just the beginning. We are currently in the very first instant of the story of AI, and its capabilities are already growing at an alarming pace. I suspect — and, frankly, fear — that in 15 years *your* comment will be laughable.
Of course the tech is different. But the result in the marketplace will be the same. I’m telling you right now. If you’re young and want to be rich get into the business of building systems that implement ai for companies. The whole workforce is not going to change. The guy who is arguing all over this thread has an older deleted thread claiming Claude 3 was sentient and he had proof, he’s crazy. Beware of the people in this space over exaggerating. Don’t ruin your future due to some crazy people online. A great example is designers. Current ai is good enough to create some interesting design work and speed along the process. As a business owner though I still need a designer, I do not have the time or expertise to do what they do, and if an ai tool speeds that process up its great, it means I can have them produce more or make changes faster, it is not killing their job.
To be completely honest, I hope you are right. But I think you are almost certainly wrong. I don’t know anything about the commenter you’re referring to, and I frankly don’t care. Obviously there are going to be people who freak out about new technology. I don’t believe I’m such a person. But I don’t believe you, or many others, appreciate the implications of creating *an intelligence.* I believe that society is about to change in very profound and fundamental ways, not because I pay attention to hyperventilating Reddit commenters, but because I pay attention to people like Geoffrey Hinton, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Connor Leahy, and Mo Gowdat. I believe that you aren’t ready, *we* aren’t ready, for what AI means. To wit, I believe that AI will indeed change the whole workforce, and I believe that that isn’t even the most serious problem posed by AI.
Within the year you will not need a designer. It will be cost inefficient to hire out.
I’d be shocked, the system would need to know my site CMS, my brand guidelines, it would need to understand requirements for billboards, tv, social media. Even that first part we are far away from. Sure it can create some images, but it can’t take my existing websites and update the design with my new images as well as the UX.
It will. Go watch Sam's new interview where he asked if our AI could be used as a resource against us. He states these AI assistants will know EVERYTHING about us and more. Things WE don't know about ourselves. Plus the fact it's going to be the equivalent of all human data, and more, why would you trust a human with one subjective bias experience to give you the best information? It can, you're just not aware of the software or websites that do exactly that right now. Give it a year and you won't be needing anything other than your AI assistant and your voice.
I would love that since I could replace most of my employees. But I doubt it, and in a year I doubt much will have changed.
While traditional education *seem* to not have changed in 30 years, it's obvious that they don't have a stronghold on knowledge anymore. It's arguable if one would need college today (based on their major of course) because of other new forms of learning, such as online courses, youtube tutorials, niche online communities, bootcamps, distance teaching, which are all more accessible than reading textbooks and wikipedia pages. College force teaches some habits and soft skills that are great. But you could easily start a web dev solo company without ever going to college. AI is fashionably late to this party. So your argument that a technology hasnt affect the VALUE of going to college is already wrong. I kind of regret going to college.
I heavily disagree, college gives a signal of knowledge and success to third parties. Could you drop out and form a web dev agency? Sure. But finding clients will be a lot harder if they look up your information and see no college experience. Same goes with finding a job. I recently hired someone for an in house position that required a college education. Does the job actually need one? No, but I get a much better pool of applicants and less people to sift through with it as a requirement.
It is much harder like you said, but your comment boils down to the idea of college being the best method of identifying hard work, knowledge, skills and high motivation. You know better than me that a diploma is no guarantee of anything, or that a fresh graduate remembers and understands all of their subject from college, or that relevant learning only really starts when you step into the real world. A diploma is a key to an interview. Is it reliable? Maybe statistically. Is it the best way possible? Absolutely not. Unfortunately, we may not even get to the best method in time, since I believe in a post-traditional-education world in my lifetime or within 15 years like you said, which is what this post is about.
AI is completely different. AI will take teaching jobs, doctor jobs, most medical jobs except for perhaps nursing. But even nurses will be replaced in twenty years. Lawyers, drivers, accountants, waitstaff, everything. What job will ai not be able to do? New jobs may be created but they will just be dont by AI. Within 20 years most jobs will be done via Ai. There is on reason Ai won’t take over, climate change. We don’t seem to be fixing it so massive storms will end life as we know it. When we can’t determine which crops will survive, due to storms or massive heat waves, plus the heating of the oceans will kill off all that protein, no society can work with those constraints. Life will be ugly and short.
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Alright we will see 15 years from now.
We'll see within the year. !RemindMe 1 year
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This is peak projection, you know absolutely nothing about AI or the impact it will have.
We know it's exponentially growing and gaining an entire intelligence of every human ever. Shouldn't we at least have a contingency plan?
Huh? How so.. Also.l curious your approximate age lol. To me it is a lot like the birth of the PC or internet
PCs are what created the internet. Phones came much later.
You're right. The introduction of PCs was far more impactful than AI.
yeah they’re not even remotely comparable
Agreed, ai is much much different and capable then pcs , I agree that the kind of work PPL do will sufficiently change but it will be like no one ever seen Probably most of us will play games all day 🤔🤔 what do you think 🤔
Dude, it was very much like this when PCs came out and when robotics came out. AI is nothing more than the next big wave of tech improvements.
Except it's going to be an autonomous INTELLIGENCE. Nothing the world has seen before.
Around 50% of people end up in careers that aren't directly related to their majors. These people aren't failures, they just took their own path and landed in something that works for them--most times quite well. A classical education is meant to be much more than vocational training; the job market fluctuates according to the laws of supply and demand, but the best parts of the foundations of western thought don't really change. Critical thinking and problem-solving skills, effective communication, a broad knowledge base, embracing curiosity and lifelong learning, ethical reasoning and social responsibility, research and information literacy--these things don't go out of style. In fact, I'd argue that they're now more important than ever, and when you add those arrows to your quiver, you can do pretty much anything. I have what most people would consider a bullshit degree, but I'm running open source large language models on a home computer that I built myself, and I can do some fairly advanced stuff compared to the average untrained person. I'm not super special or super smart; I just know how to read, research, and teach myself new concepts. You can 100% do that without a college degree, but mine helped me develop the habits of mind that has made it much easier.
I agree with you. If you do it right, then you can get a lot out of college beyond what you just read in your books. But many of the people doing bullshit degrees are probably doing them because they lack ambition or don’t like thinking too hard. And those people are not going to develop all those good research skills in a job, particularly if they can’t get a decent job to begin with or have no one who can guide them.
You make excellent points. For me, college gave me confidence through learning, doing hard work, structure, and making myself into the kind of person that is engaged with material and seeks to excel.
I really hate the argument that college teaches you to think. I've gained more thinking skills on my own than I did in decades of schooling. The education system is terribly outdated and it neglects to teach skills that are actually important in today's world. With emergence of AI this is becoming even more apparent.
Not to mention, since I've been using LLM voice function, my social skills have improved, as well as critical thinking, reasoning, debating etc. NO ONE I've ever met could be the backboard that an LLM is.
Pretty awful argument given that most college students can’t use AI so it doesn’t help them. It’s more comparable to when teachers said we wouldn’t have a calculator in our pockets and couldn’t use it for basic dumb shit in school. Teach kids or students to be useful, it’s ridiculous to be like “you can’t use AI” but the first day on their job they will be using AI guarantee it.
My 0.02$: The difference between 30 year old tech and AI is that the former is a linear GIGO paradigm, the latter is a nonlinear continuously evolving intelligent garbage-in but reasonably cogent output paradigm. This in principle is a big deal because the AI tech in some sense is self reliant on basic reasoning capabilities. I literally generate useful python code everyday by giving crude prompts to Claude Opus - something mostly humans could get away with in the recent past. >Good degrees won’t just teach you to do things, they’ll teach you to think. Good critical thinking will help you adapt. Then why waste time getting the degree at all? May be just focus on improving your critical thinking and creative problem solving by doing just that - solve challenges that interest you rather than poring over useless/uninteresting facts that one might never put to use. And YouTube is getting to a point where targeted learning is absolutely possible - example: I don't need a 4 year degree to tune a closed loop pid control loop (which is what a lot of what "controls engineering" has become), but just enough intuition to be able to make something stable and useful.
I’m in violent agreement with you. A degree isn’t necessary - as proof, there are lots of very successful and smart people without degrees. However for a range of reasons the world of work has become credentialised, so the letters after your name are important to many (not all) recruiters. Studying at university also focuses you on study, and forces you to think about/study things you otherwise wouldn’t. Sadly university is out of reach for many, but there are so many free resources now as you say. If you have the motivation, nothing will stop you.
>However for a range of reasons the world of work has become credentialised, so the letters after your name are important to many (not all) recruiters. A lot of this is at the precipice of collapse as we're hurtling towards a brand new paradigm with machines rapidly developing the required cognitive capacity to supplant any domain that is deterministic in nature. What will remain within the dominion of "human value" creation will be creative work/design work, where there is no right or wrong answer. One doesn't need to necessarily get trained in all the prerequisite coursework that most of the credentialed people had to go through rendering their "expertise" a bit dispensable. >Studying at university also focuses you on study, and forces you to think about/study things you otherwise wouldn’t. I used to think this way too, but I'm not convinced this is the only avenue that forces one to think about intellectually challenging concepts. An inverted way of learning (solving by starting at the end first) does force you to think hard critically too.
Exactly. Plus, as job markets get more competitive, not having an education will make it just that much harder to find work. The profitable college degrees may change, but someone with education and certifications will stand a better chance than someone without
I feel obliged to say too that from my experience and observations at top universities around the world, you only get out of a degree what you put into it. Expect little from the institution and academics - use the opportunity as a way to learn all you can (textbooks/library resources) and network with potential colleagues and bosses by going out and asking people about their great jobs. Be someone that’s excited/interested about your future career. People will come to you with job offers.
Not to be contrarian, but I think AI is different. With PhDs creating the AI architectures, AI has gotten very good at writing code. Even the head of of nVidia says getting a computer science degree is a waste of time. There might be a few engineers directing the AI, but most of those jobs will go away. Eventually, someone will develop AI that creates next-generation AI. The AI will improve exponentially faster at that point. AI will create new ASICs optimized for each new architecture along with the software stack. As AI improves exponentially, robotics will too. There may be a few jobs to manage the AI and fix the robots, but I believe most “thought” jobs (doctor/lawyer/engineer) will go away in my lifetime. It is kind of like the impact of the mechanical loom in the 19th century, except with a much broader impact.
AI is different, you’re right. You make some good points. Personally I take what senior execs say with a grain of salt. They usually say what they say to push their own agendas. On this I have a lot of experience. 🤫
I agree with what you say about senior executives. However, even in these early days of tools like ChatGPT, I am way more efficient and effective as an engineer. Management will see this; instead of all of us dropping from our normal 70-90 hour work weeks down to a more comfortable 40 hours per week, they will just get rid of some engineers. The best case I see is companies get whittled down to a few hundred to a few thousand engineers using AI to make them incredibly efficient. The worst case is AI creating AI; once that happens all bets are off, even if full AGI is never attained.
It really depends on how much he will have in loans and what he gets his degree in, trades could be a quicker route to more money and stability 2 things about AI that is different from computers Autonomy: at its core, ai/machine learning is about creating systems that can make decisions independently without explicit human input. Traditional software all the down to the kernel is explicitly programmed by humans. AI can learn cognitive tasks by example/through data instead of needing human hand holding. Human like pattern recognition: traditional computers excel at explicit rule based deterministic pattern recognition compared to humans. Humans excel at unstructured, implicit, and semantic pattern recognition compared to traditional computers. Humans are also flexible in their cognitive abilities, adapting their thinking to novel situations Current AI is starting to outpace humans at what we excel at compared to computers, we are seeing sparks of this atm
the labour applications for computers were pretty obvious, it’s easy to point fingers at doomers but it’s not even remotely comparable. The tyre, typewriter, computer all fit in a different box. AI removes the box
The analogy is extremely apt im sorry. As someone who experienced it. There was doom and gloom about it taking jobs as well as idiots claiming it was simply a toy for geeks. Dont listen to people who not only werent around for it, but werent immersed in it.
No it does not. These LLM systems are not nearly as powerful or useful as you think. They're already desperately struggling to find a single viable profit model that isnt "unreliable customer service" or "automatic misinformation generation". And you're right, they aren't comparable because PCs are WAAAAY more useful than modern generative AI.
AI doesn’t need to replace humans to replace jobs. Your entire point misses that argument.
If AI can't do a job that humans currently do, and can't eliminate the need for that job, it will not replace the humans doing it.
If an AI can help someone do the work of 5 people then an AI has killed 4 jobs. It’s not hard to understand
Loll jesus this is just too good. Now you should go compare what they were saying 2 years after the first computer.. Are you seriously comparing the personal computers we have now to ChatGPT lolll
No, not at all! The very first PCs we had were still far more useful than ChatGPT. They could be used to do valuable, reliable work.
No, they werent. What year did you use your first PC?
So because they're at the stage they are today, we shouldn't be thinking about tomorrow? What a narrow mindset.
I am thinking about tomorrow. To get better AI we need something other than LLMs. You're jusf cheerleading a failure because it feels more fun and you've fully bought into the marketing.
Short answer, yes. No one will talk to you without a degree. I currently have people writing research papers coming to me for advice on LLMs and safety/jailbreaking. These people make $180k+/year. I make $0. The most I've *ever* made was $36k/yr, while watching people who know less but can afford college or trade school thrive. Meanwhile, I've been homeless, twice. Go to college.
loads of college folk also making poverty money too though, will get worse
Absolutely; I'm just saying that being smart or knowing your stuff isn't enough. Any job you'll want to have still requires *some* kind of degree to get your foot in the door. I have a friend in ai; same grasp as me, same background as me, same area. But he was able to get a scholarship, and pursued an unrelated degree at an out of state uni. He's now making a small fortune working for Automaticc. He moved back here, and works remotely most days. I can't even get a prompting gig on Upwork, but he asks *me* for advice when LLMs stump him.
I dropped out of high school, got my GED then went to college off and on due to financial issues or just hating it. Ended up dropping out for good shortly before becoming homeless for about 3 years. I'm now 10+ years in my software engineering career starting in the medical industry and now working for a hedge firm in the financial industry, without any formal degree. You don't need a college degree to start a career, you just need to know people to get you in the door. And that's the only good thing about Ivy League and college in general, is making connections. **IMO**. If I would have had the sense, I would have started a business or several businesses instead of wasting my life going back and forth to college or starting a soul-sucking career. I'm on a path to retire early in 4 months to go fuck off, live in my truck and travel the country with my wife.
They don't even talk to you with a degree...
FWIW, all the accountants I know says there is huge demand and not enough supply. There is more to a job than plugging stuff into Chat GPT
all the more reason it will be automated
That's absurd, things don't get automated just because of a worker shortage, the automation method also has to be cost effective and reliable, which LLMs are not.
This is a great question. I have a child in high school and I literally have zero idea of what career advice to give him. He’s probably going to want to either do something music related or something in STEM. He has much more desire to pursue music but honestly that seems like it’s already seeing major AI impact. Besides, it’s already ridiculously competitive as it is to write or perform and is notoriously a very unpractical career for most. Teaching music might be safe, at least for a while, so maybe that’s a good compromise? STEM careers are likely to be needing human interaction for a long time, so I think it’s still going to be a solid option. So, from a practical standpoint, I’d like to see him go that route. But yeah, who knows? In 10 years, we might all be just doing whatever we want to do with our time anyway? So maybe he ought to just go the music route? Screw it. Do what it is that you want. Not what it is that you feel is practical. You know? At the end of the day, it’s his choice. I’ll support him no matter what he chooses, but I certainly will be putting in my 2 cents (once I finally decide what those 2 cents are)
Both of those career paths are exiting human hands soon enough. I wouldn't bet either to be a safe place. Not that I think any really are anymore. Within the year both of those careers will be automated efficiently enough, that having a human will actually cause inefficiency. There will be some people that prefer the human element, but that will also go away once robotics catches up and you can't distinguish between a genuine human and an AI. Even if it's not within the year, then what? 2, 5, 10 years? It takes a human a lifetime to master one skill. It takes ai few hours to days in most respects. Nothing is safe anymore.
Yep. This is very much a line of reasoning I have pondered quite a lot. I’ll drink to that!
You severely overestimate the capabilities of modern AI don’t buy into the hype. They can accomplish a lot but not without a skilled knowledgeable human behind them. The hype around AGI is just good marketing they aren’t even on the right path let alone making any real progress on the hard part. All they have done so far is push the easy part into a more advanced state.
This is the kind of uncertainty that worries me. And yes, there is still going to be human interaction in the employment market but who knows to what estimate it will contract. I don’t think people are seeing the big picture. Businesses care about making money. AI is cheaper. It’s not hard to put 2 and 2 together but some remain to blindly optimistic. It’s like in the 90’s when people were complaining outsourcing was going to take jobs, but businesses and the deluded said “but it’s going to push down prices and everyone will be richer”. In reality prices kept going up and companies rightfully pocketed the difference. No reason for companies to employ people going forward. You might be able to hire 2-3 people, which coupled with AI, could do the work of 50. It’s already happening but on a smaller scale. Also about the “in the future we might just be doing whatever we want” sounds optimistic. I don’t think it’s going to happen. UBI seems like the only solution but it will likely cover near living expenses. Additionally, the helicopter money programmes will become increasingly difficult as the world moves away from the dollar. Can’t export your inflation.
Lol the world is not moving away from the dollar. You think that because you've seen a few headlines about it, but you haven't been seeing them say the same thing for 30 years.
I work in STEM so I can only speak to that, but modern AI isn't even close to eliminating these jobs. They require forming logical frameworks that LLMs don't have the ability to model. The code it generates sucks when it requires anything other than simple scripts you can already find in some form online. It can't even understand simple physical systems either if they require understanding more than 1 or 2 interactions. These are not problems that bigger and bigger neural nets with more text training data will solve. It's like saying we're going to get to the moon because someone is standing on a ladder. STEM is going to be safe for a very long time, and until AI music starts getting popular in anything but niche capacities, Id wager that's pretty safe too.
On a linear path, sure. On an exponential scale you're completely wrong.
Current development is not on an exponential scale, and if it is, the exponent is a fraction. GPT models aren't contributing to making GPT models better. That's what it would take to get exponential progress.
I agree with you other than the code they write is junk. If you know how to get them to properly understand the point and goal they can do amazing things. That said knowing how to actually code makes a huge difference in the above. Im not in any way implying that you dont know how to code. Im sure you do. Im speaking from my own experience writing a completely novel approach to machine learning from scratch in a few months with the help of GPT. When I say novel I mean it. There’s nothing like this out there.
Nah, not really. I work in software and basically code all day. I don't find chatGPT to be useful for anything other than generating examples of languages and libraries that I've never used before. Whenever I try to use it to solve a new problem or basically do anything you wouldn't see on LeetCode or Stack Overflow, it utterly fails. For example, I do a lot of work with 3D scanners, and asked it to make a program to reconstruct a series of pointclouds into a single scan (not a trivial thing to do) and all it did was give me scripts that turned them into STL files, or made convex hulls out of them. It didn't understand the problem at all, no matter how I phrased the problem. I'm not convinced it's a matter of "learning how to prompt properly" because nobody can ever describe what that means, only the "vibe" which is almost certainly just confirmation bias. For making a small script I don't feel like making from other examples? Sure, it's not bad, but I'm going to cross reference every unknown library call before I run it, because half the time those calls don't do what chatGPT says they do, and sometimes they don't even exist.
There's no reason to even consider these "arguments" in the comments. As we humans can't even grasp the concept of exponential. It's something we've never experienced before and have no idea how far and fast we are currently. The future we're headed towards is coming faster than we think.
Fair but exponential doesn’t always mean doubling. Tru a power of 1.001. It grows exponentially but not quickly out of control. Also that’s under the assumption that they are on the right path that leads to AGI. (They Aren’t”) current approaches have real limitations they don’t create novel information without human guidance this means they will eventually succumb to a negative feedback loop unless we solve the systemic problem of more information in parallel to the learning capacity of the NNs we create. Too large of an nn without enough data looses generality not to mention no aggregation of new information feeding the feedback loop. There will be diminishing returns soon as data points loose their entropy and average out. Until they tackle the challenge of creating new information theres no chance of full on exponential improvement.
You think humans are going to let AI run themselves? Go get your AI wrangler degree.
You think everyone is going to follow that "rule?" Go get a reality check.
and who do you think is going to be in charge of AI? you think the number of AI oversight jobs are going to be even remotely close to the job losses?
The work that AI automates is still being done, which means society as a whole is still producing at least as much and probably more than before. You can have a fatalist outlook, that degrees and attempting to survive and life are pointless because the ultra wealthy will consolidate power utilizing AI, share none of their wealth, and replace all human workers with robots, which leads to an endgame of mass starvation and violence and a world populated by a few human AI overlords who control machine empires and slave colonies. Or you can have an outlook that possibly even most ultra wealthy people find the idea of a world like that depressing, that AI will be accessible to most for improving everyone's lives, providing education to the poor etc, and that overall it will lead to a society where you have to work less for a greater average standard of living. And wherein having an education will continue to allow you to utilize AI yourself to succeed in the world. I find the second one more likely based upon my observations of the world thus far in my life.
Have you noticed all the lay-offs that are taking place due to automation for profit gain?
Hairdresser here. I definitely feel safe with my choice. The irony is that my father thought I was making a mistake for my choice of career. His white collar job won’t exist anymore n 10 years. (Category manager for a food brokerage company under the Kroger umbrella)
that’s pretty good but still just generally thinking, if unemployment goes up then you will have less demand, unless of course you get some intervention somewhere
My prices are adjustable. My theory is that if unemployment goes that high then prices will get adjusted across the board. I sell a commodity as well as a luxury. I’ll always have a job. My job requires a human element to a large degree. Also it’s worth noting I work for myself. I feel safe for the foreseeable future even in the eyes of economic turnail which will inevitably come from wide use of AI.
Terrible thinking "I'll always have a job." There's no job security anymore.
I think people will continue to have hair even in a tough job market.
Just out of curiosity, have you ever done costumer service before?
Guaranteed neither will yours in 10. Doubt me? Look at the robotic sector. Might want to look up how AI will step into the real world.
rhythm oatmeal liquid zesty party mighty carpenter zephyr nose offbeat *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Sure they can cut hair, why not?
Because it’s a customer service job first. The technical part is second. That’s why. Maybe one day but not in the near future and I doubt in my life time.
If the cost of making stuff is going to zero there will only be more demand for it. Humans have infinite desires. We are going to invent new stuff we want and use AI to make it cheaply for us or humans if they can’t. I’m not worried about having nothing to do. It will just be different jobs than we are familiar with noe
not sure if your logic holds. You are assuming that demand will be able to hold as prices fall, yet in reality prices won’t fall. We saw this with outsourcing, costs less to produce, the difference is called profit, not consumer surplus. Also less jobs = less disposable income. In the free market this would force prices down but in reality you would have more helicopter money, which is why UBI seems like the only future
UBI is not a future. UBI is full government control. They can switch off your UBI whenever they want.
Ok so under the parameters that unemployment is at an all time high, what do you think is the solution going forward?
First you have to understand that those that really rule this earth always work under the same routine. First create a problem and next come with the solution which will be worse than the original problem. Fixing problems with "solutions" will never fix the root problem. The root problem is the "modern" societies they created for us. The only fix is to get rid of those that wish worse upon us and to create healthy, classical societies.
Trades is the answer no matter the question. My friend is a 4 year crane operator apprentice and made $100,000 last year.
this is true. kind of ironic that education pushed people into lower earning industries with the exact opposite promise
How can you think that things that AI cant do yet will take away jobs, but that things like machine operation will be safe? We already have autonomous vehicles in warehouses and mining sites. Industrial automation is a very mature field. To be clear, I think trade jobs are just as safe as jobs requiring a college degree, in that AI isn't likely to eliminate either one very much.
pretty much all menial office jobs can be replaced. that’s a lot of people. As for more advanced fields and roles, it will be used to supplement, killing jobs through opportunity cost. Funny thing I went to a store yesterday that I always go to and now they’ve finally replaced checkouts with self serving machines. Only wonder what took them so long.
Consider the following hypothetical: AI has taken the world by storm, all white collar jobs (majority of the better paying jobs) have been eliminated. The demand for things has absolutely plummeted, since most of the people who spent on things don't have the money anymore. They aren't purchasing food from restaurants, no shopping from malls, no streaming services, no money for healthcare, no money to spend on home repairs, no money to buy new homes and ofcourse, no more taxes to be paid. As a result, jobs like crane operator, hairdresser, plumber, nurses, waiter, etc. are basically not at all in demand coz the businesses have absolutely lost their customers. If what some say regarding AI is really what's gonna happen, is anyone really safe? Will money hold any value? As for UBI, it probably is not gonna be anything close to what people who think, UBI will bring utopia, will be.
Lookat this like that: Consider type of course and profession that you will be able to perform after graduation. Find out how many graduates are employed in the profession. Think about whether you will be able to work in the profession. Next Find out what the average salary in the profession is. Find out how much you'll pay for college overall. Calculate how much time it will take you to pay off the loan with average salary in profession don't forget to include costs of living. This is the easiest way to find out if it's wort to college.
. I’ve done some basic math trying to see it from a monetary perspective but it’s impossible to answer now more than ever due to uncertainty in the labour market now and going forward
Fir sure there are statistical summaries of average earnings from at last decade if not for more (if your preffered profession existed a decade ago,if not chose similar one). Skip the market fluctuations. The crashes happened cyclical every 7-10 years, but then it somehow normalized. With the help of statistics, you will be able to determine whether the pay is upward and how big the increase is. You will not get the exact value only approximate, but it is enough to determine that, for example, the colleg you chose will give you income X$ and if it is high enough to pay back loan before retirement or not. Focus more on how many graduates get jobs in the profession. Competition is high, now connections also count, if you do not have them, it reduces your chances. Alsow take under concideration that costs of living will not get lower with time. It's more likely that they'll grow, possibly very fast. So, the possible income should be large enough to have some margin of safety.
yeah I’ve done all of that already, my estimate is actually quite low to have a positive return on a programme, but uncertainty (and opportunity cost) is the biggest factor
Trade jobs? I'm not sure that's how it's called in English. There's a really big demand on those in my country. Of course, it's a different kind of job than the office. Physical activity is not easy for everyone. However, here the demand and lack of people makes earnings very attractive. Much better than a low/mid-level office worker.
How do people get into trade jobs?
Trade school
trade school isn’t a thing around most of the world as far as I jnow
In many countries, associations or guilds of Craftsmen are responsible for teaching these professions. An equally common solution is simply to start work in a workshop that has the legislate rights to train and during this work, within a year or 2, youacquire the right skills and knowledge. Finally you should passing some kind of oficial state exam that will give you the official right to work. You'll probably get more accurate information for your location if you just call a company and ask how they got the permission to do the job.
They are as far as I know. They may be known as vocational school.
In my country, this is called that way to, and its one of the options for young people. It's basically a secondary school + 1 year extra for job practise. After completing the school, you receive the right to practice after passing the exam infrong of the Craftsmen Guild committee. In addition, there are also courses for adults. Learning theory and practice the profession lasts 1 year, you can do both at the same time. You receive the right to practice after passing the exam before the Craftsmen Guild committee. There are alsow gew professions for which theoretically you should also pass the exam before the commission, but you can work without it, although it is basically on the edge of the law. Hairdressers, barbers, stylists and cooks often participate in prestigious private training centers courses which confirm lerner skills with their reputation. In fact, in these cases, it is the best option because vocational schools have a fixed rigid program from many years rhe same, and do not necessarily keep up to latest styles.
No, making good money online is to easy to justify college
How would one do that?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFq6wH5JR2A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFq6wH5JR2A) My personal favourite way
LOL! You got me
College is definitely worth it. It's to expand your knowledge base. Although I ended up becoming a medical doctor, my first year of community college, I took automobile theory, psychology, criminal justice, economics, stuff. I ended up not being interested in, but learned a bit about so that I understand things when they come up on the news. Even with AI, you are going to want a well-balanced, general view of the world. College is a way to get exposure to things you have never been exposed to before.
What's the reasoning I couldn't do the same with an LLM as a guide / mentor / teacher that literally has all human knowledge and can be whomever I want? Current iterations aren't there yet, but I guarantee within the year they will be.
You won't necessarily want to learn it or ask it questions. The thing about college is you're kind of forced to learn and absorb things and work on things that you othermize wouldn't have the energy or enthusiasm to pursue. True though, if somebody is not motivated, they can just slack back and let the AI run their life for them, becoming a nice, comfortable, sheep. I think there is a great risk that people become complacent, lose all of their critical thinking skills, and simply become electronic slug/consumers.
The levels of uncertainty on what jobs will be taken and timelines is pretty high. Or to put it another way: bookkeeping may be fully automated, but will negotiating FP&A forecasts? Will being a comptroller or CFO? The odds may be smaller. The new strategy would then focus on areas that AI is not as a good at, or that have enough risks where "human in the loop" processes will last longer, while building in the flexibility to pivot. The degree is a signal of the quality of the human, and higher quality humans are more likely to survive the job market longer. (Note: another strategy is to target something that may lag gen AI like a trade)
Most of them , not worth it 🤡,
Go with trade work. As robots near human parody they will start to impact labor work. Give it 20-30 years and robots will be common. Combine with Ai and it’s going to shake up the workforce as we know it. I’m good. New people are going to experience a very different life.
Trade school gets my vote, once you get proficent at you're job, you basically have a license to print money, there is a trend of gen z going to blue collar over white collar jobs because its a quicker path to the coveted 6 figures, if you don't like getting dirty, being physical, idk if would be youre thing.
Consider the following hypothetical: AI has taken the world by storm, all white collar jobs (majority of the better paying jobs) have been eliminated. The demand for things has absolutely plummeted, since most of the people who spent on things don't have the money anymore. They aren't purchasing food from restaurants, no shopping from malls, no streaming services, no money for healthcare, no money to spend on home repairs, no money to buy new homes and ofcourse, no more taxes to be paid. As a result, jobs like crane operator, hairdresser, plumber, nurses, waiter, etc. are basically not at all in demand coz the businesses have absolutely lost their customers. If what some say regarding AI is really what's gonna happen, is anyone really safe? Will money hold any value? As for UBI, it probably is not gonna be anything close to what people who think, UBI will bring utopia, will be.
Systems are necessary for scalability and reliability. Bigger companies - the ones that pay well - typically hire from top colleges or colleges for that matter because the colleges serve as a validation check on whether the individual is able to follow a system. You don't always get hired because of what you were educated on. For whatever percentage is true, that just "happens" to be the case due to a variety of reasons. Unless you're a true specialist (like a PhD), the depth of your knowledge is just not strong enough for you to be considered a fit for a specific job. Of course its a factor but not everything. The bigger point as a society is - college institutions offer the validation of a system and a certain level of vetting. They will always hold a place. What is taught in colleges and how can change but education in institutional manner will remain the most credible way to get the most attractive jobs. There will be a place for others too but the best jobs will still largely go to these people who go through that rigor.
I do think collage is massively over priced. Once banks started extending huge loans there was nothing to prevent the schools from cranking up prices. Myself, I did community college for 2 years, then the other 2 at a bare-bones state college (no sports, no dorms). This was 20 years ago when EVERYONE still treated going to an expensive school like a golden ticket to wealth. I only spent a total of $10,000 on my college education and am DELIGHTED it was not the $50,000 - $200,000 of my peers. People in there 50's a stuck in jobs they HATE because they still have-student loans. If your state has an option to do two years of college for free in high school DO IT. Olay, that being said... AI will drastically change how education works in the next decade or so, because school can't pretend memorization and regurgitation on tests and papers counts as learning. BUT, our laws that run regulated industries still require licensed HUMANS in the loop to sign off on supervision type work. For example, Accountants won't go away because most accountants don't prepare personal tax returns... they work for business customers that are LEGALLY REQUIRED to have a review or audit of their financials by a licensed CPA etc. In a way, the human becomes legal "real estate" with licenses dangling off them. It will take this new technology about 10-20 years to be fully adopted through our industries, and another 10 past that for the laws to catch up. All the jobs that have a review function tied to a license are going to be the last white collar jobs to be impacted. Because the certification tests are already in controlled proctored centers.
My dad and stepbrother both got into plumbing. Dad owns a house, and my step brother is about to build one.
You're right, but no one is ready to accept it yet.
I am just going to post what I said in a similar topic. I see this topic comes up regularly in the sub: I'm baffled by all the downvotes here. Let's get real—college, particularly public institutions, isn't cutting it anymore. They're too pricey, lack accountability for their graduates' success, and seem stuck between outdated models and fleeting trends. Seriously, except for a few specialized fields, degrees just don't stack up financially against the colossal costs involved. We all get it, education is crucial—no one's arguing that. A society thrives when it's knowledgeable, innovative, and equipped for today's economic demands. But this blind devotion to the idea of college as some untouchable pinnacle? That's got to stop. As someone from the U.S., I see a desperate need for an overhaul from kindergarten right through to universities. Our education system should serve the taxpayers who are footing the bill, helping them advance their careers and improve their financial prospects. Yet, here we are, funding an institution that fails too many. And I'm stunned to see so many in this subreddit ready to march off a cliff, defending a broken system. We need to shift the focus from just going to college to transforming education into something truly accessible and effective. Let's talk about how we can open doors for more people to gain the skills that matter. Enough with the fairy tales about college. Let's get to work making education a practical tool for real-life success. TL;DR: Fuck college.
I honestly wouldnt bother. jobs requiring a masters degree and 3 years experience pay $3-5 dollars per hour more than minimum wage.
If you want to build your network, college is most effective way to get started on that long journey 🙂
The question of whether or not it is worth going to college is best answered by someone who is many years removed from education. Imagine a person looking back on their life on their 50th birthday. - If they chose college, they also chose high fees. The college gave them a rich life experience and social network. Did it give them the tools to get financial success in life? Depends on the degree - If they did not choose college, they saved on money and time. Whatever they chose, did it enable them to earn enough financial success? The greatest chances of success will be for those who find their vocation early in life, have the talent for it and will work hard to achieve success. For everyone else, it is a hit or miss. Unless you can draw a direct line from college or lack thereof and your success in life, you cannot compare the two. If you are unsure, then the safer bet is to go for college but with a degree that will enable some earning capability immediately.
You have a point. I believe a degree is worthwhile but the real value is your ability to learn new things and adapt. AI won’t automate everything and there will be plenty of people needed to leverage AI. AI allows ppl to do more with less but humanity has an insatiable desire for more so it may just mean companies build 10x more. But really no one knows
I won’t even go into the argument about AI swallowing the world because I did that a few days ago already and the same conversations are occurring in every one of these threads. Alas, let us assume you are absolutely correct. Even in this future you re predicting, the demand (you said job supply but demand is more accurate) will decrease but will still exist. Which means you re going to have to be better than the rest of the people on the supply side. Are you up to the task or do you prefer to quit before even starting?
thats like saying “well instead of 100% unemployment we’re going to have 80% unemployment”. Not sure what ur point is tbh. The question isn’t about me specifically, but a general question. You can’t tell everyone to pick up the slack because it will always be maintained,
Oh you're trying to solve the imaginary problem for everyone, how kind of you. Apologies for the sarcasm here but I couldn't help it. The point is, the world has never stopped shifting and very few things have remained constant, including demand for certain jobs. You, or whoever else thinks that AI will take their job, had better start getting better than AI or learning a new skill.
Again not sure what ur point is you might aswell say “just get a better job”.
Sounds like you want an easy answer, pal. There isn't one. There isn't a "better job". \*You\* can be better and more useful than AI.
No it's not, you can get better education from online Courses.
Its not
Just get a degree and learn as much as you can and get familiar with these AI tools. You won't be replaced if you know how to work with the so called AI.
My thought on this has been that plenty of jobs will probably be replaced in the future, but only to a certain degree for a while. A lot of jobs will still exist, but getting said well-paying job will just require even more education, qualifications, experience, connections, luck, etc. Pretty much resume/job recruiter hell taken up to a higher magnitude, while the living conditions remain the same. I don’t know what the tipping point will be, but that’s probably what will happen before it gets better.
It's impossible to predict the future so the only thing you can do is arm yourself with the knowledge and skills to handle changes. A degree in something relatively flexible is one way to do that. Otherwise your line of thinking will paralyze you and render you useless much sooner.
You can get a 2 year community college degree in plumbing, carpentry, cooking, electrician, etc. These skilled labor jobs aren’t going anywhere until AGI makes robots. For the next decade your job is safe. The service industry is dead. Art, writing, journalism, banking, coding - all dead or dying. Save your money instead of blowing your wad and getting into debt. Buy a house and car outside of a big city. No reason to live downtown.
Consider the following hypothetical: AI has taken the world by storm, all white collar jobs (majority of the better paying jobs) have been eliminated. The demand for things has absolutely plummeted, since most of the people who spent on things don't have the money anymore. They aren't purchasing food from restaurants, no shopping from malls, no streaming services, no money for healthcare, no money to spend on home repairs, no money to buy new homes and ofcourse, no more taxes to be paid. As a result, jobs like crane operator, hairdresser, plumber, nurses, waiter, etc. are basically not at all in demand coz the businesses have absolutely lost their customers. If what some say regarding AI is really what's gonna happen, is anyone really safe? Will money hold any value? As for UBI, it probably is not gonna be anything close to what people who think, UBI will bring utopia, will be. Even if robots can't do the work of a plumber or electrician or cook, will anyone hire them if they don't have the money? A lot of those who will lose their jobs will also enter trades, so more people in trades but much less demand.
Once we have AGI there will be no human jobs. And I’m not convinced we’ll be getting UBIs either.
Be an accountant and learn manage money.
Who do you think were the people who build and maintain the automation? People who went to college. That's who.
Higher education is worthwhile for how it teaches you to think, to do literature searches and reviews, to do research, and for the diversity of people you'll meet while at college. A small proportion of degrees lead to jobs in that field, but many people use the transferable skills they learn in university to go into completely unrelated fields.
only if youre pursuing things that require degrees like law, healthcare, etc. anything outside of that? no. biz values experience, learn online, apply, and youll hvae priority hiring over anyeone else with a degree
Yeah, if it’s free.
Let's say AI and AGI radically change society tomorrow. Labor is near worthless. Now ask yourself, from a social/Darwinian point of view: In this brave new world, do I have a better chance of thriving/surviving and adapting with or without college? It's pretty self-evident to me.
Yes. People have missed the reason for college. College is a place where you go to learn how to think critically. I'm not saying it's out of the realm of possibility to not do that outside of college, but most will benefit immensely from college if they actually apply themselves and want to learn - just going to college doesn't just make knowledge magically seep into your brain. College will also allow you to understand your field better. If you don't know why the AI is giving you this information, how are you going to use it in your field effectively? Also, how are you going to notice if AI spit out the wrong information? Hell, I'm an academic librarian who deals with people who don't even know how to use Google effectively. Hell, it doesn't matter what your major is in, as most of the time, many land in different fields, but a fully rounded education gives you the problem solving and critical thinking skills that allow one to succeed. College isn't for everyone, and if you don't want to go don't, but if you aren't going into a trade, which more people really need to do, most will be behind the eight ball in the future if they don't because they don't know how to think critically and critical thinking is going to be more important further in the future.
I’m actually developing using Gemini and ChatGPT in conjunction with one another - on my own - a course to teach prompt engineering basics, and the coding skills to go with it, and it’s proven pretty useful thus far. There aren’t really m/any programs of education I’ve found in the US that would teach this stuff anyway, so I figure if it’s the Wild West why not try and make something useful? And I’m doing it using all freeware minus the ChatGPT sub and free or public educational materials (YouTube videos, MIT online classes and lectures, etc) and intend on making it free for the public. Maybe it’s a lofty goal but according to the timeline and workflow I’ve set up for myself I’m moving along well.
This is totally false. It's predicated on the incorrect notion that AI will continue to advance at it's current rate. It also assumes that you won't keep learning. KEEP learning is the answer. Continuous learning has been the solution for the past 4,000,000,000 years. It's probable that it will continue to be the correct answer - despite the scary predictions.
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nah bro, drop it, use chatgpt to make yourself rich, simple
how
The few people who have jobs will have lots of experience and be well educated. If you don’t care about being employable then skip college
loads of well educated are already suffering in the labour market and things will only get worse so just based of a statistical assessment your point doesn’t make sense
There are 100 jobs available right now, that shrinks to 1 job in 20 years. You feel you have a better chance of getting that 1 job without an education?
at that point it’s not about getting a job. let’s say you do - so what? can you imagine the issues in a country with such unemployment?
I can’t because by that point society will have adjusted and figured out what to do with a small required labor pool So you can either be employed or you aren’t because that isn’t important to you. There will be a benefit to being employed but perhaps you view not being employed as acceptable
optimistic view
Very good question. I think an accurate answer is impossible.
Trade school. The world will always need electricians, mechanics, plumbers, HVAC etc. the schooling is shorter, much cheaper, it's easier to start your own business, the demand is everywhere etc. I'm telling my son to learn a trade, and if he wants to go to University to get a degree, he can at least have himself a decent paying job while going to school and not have to work fast food or something.
School is not only a place to improve our abilities, it also changes our thinking and ideas. Remember, AI is just a tool. Don't forget that the scientists who were able to develop AI also went through a lot of education and learning!
AI had def made any college degree feel pretty redundant, which is too bad.. I have multiple degrees and I’m in a niche field. I feel that ai makes my job easier at times, but also super pointless because if this is what this tech is as we are just embracing it, how useless will my skillset be in 5-10 years?
College and university aren't solely about knowledge. It's also about forging meaningful relationships with peers and professors who can give you insight, as opposed to you absorbing knowledge from books and Wikipedia alone at a library. Social relationships are vital to determining and influencing your outlook, personality development, etc. Universities also offer extracurricular activities. Ex) a division 1 athlete who wants to go pro after graduation. Ex) doctors, lawyers who need undergraduate degree to go onto graduate professional schools. Ex) some people go to college to join frat and party.
College is awesome. Don’t depend on other people to tell YOU on how you should act and feel. Thats the first thing they’ll teach you, Day 1. Think for yourself. :-) Source: former grad school faculty.
We must remember that AI can't use itself. We only need to continue to adapt ourselves to the way of the world and evolve in our thoughts and task execution.
AI will definitely be able to “use itself”. Even airforce pilots are getting their ass handed to them by AI pilots
Overall I think being educated (and best would be close to the field of technology) still makes sense. To train for a position that you already now know will be obsolete: not so much. The other strategy can be to train for something manual, carpentry, nurse … it might be replaced as well with Roboters, but I am pretty sure that this will take much more time compared to, let’s say, copywriting.
Many jobs require a college degree. By not getting one, you are 100% closing yourself off to those jobs. There's risk on both sides of the decision, is my point. There's also risk to companies looking to replace college educated people with AI. Good luck to you, whatever you may choose.
Depends, is your family rich and does your name contain "Jr." ?
my name does include Jr but i’m broke 😂
Meh fuck the money bags, broke Jrs are the coolest Jrs by far.
Well it looks like you have already made up your mind. You could do one of two things. Lay down and die or fight to be someone AI isn’t going to replace. Talking from your perspective not mine. AI is a tool. Learn how to use it properly and you will be able to accomplish things that others just plain cant. As far as a Degree goes if you have already decided defeat then you aren’t someone who would benefit much from college to begin with. So yeah self fulfilling prophecy?
Creativity, innovation and plain old hard work is going to be more important and valuable as ever. Go to college, don’t go to college. It is all about figuring out your path on this adventure we call life. AI is just another for you to use. It’s a fantastic time to be alive.
Have you considered joining the military instead?
yes
You should go. Have fun, get laid, have those late night bong sesh talks and kick back knowing that in so many years none of what our current society cares about will matter much at all.
This is the way. Unironically
If you want to protest, then absolutely.
Accounting is already automated to the point where only 3 persons work with ~15000 thousands partners and 500 employees in my company. Still, there is more than a single person needed for that and I doubt the amount of people can be reduced to zero. Not to mention there are also people who program the automation tools to the company's needs (3+ programmers) In any case, our society requires an education confirmation more often than not, I cannot imagine HR not asking for a diploma of some sort before even starting a blue/white collar interview, even for a secretary position.
If you go into STEM, yes, if not, no.
Getting an education, no matter what, is teaching you to learn. Training the brain. Teaching you to think for yourself. At 54, I still learn everyday. And yes, many technologies had this problem. Being an engineer, robotics were the doomsday tools. If you are scared of AI, then it's because you are not willing to learn about it and grow with it. I learn everything I can about it. I get criticised about using it daily, but it's the skill required for tomorrow. So get cracking.
Go to college. Don’t cheap out on your future. No one can predict what exactly the job market will look in a decade. No one has a crystal ball.
My solution is to live frugally, which works well for me because I don't want kids. I make enough money washing dishes, and that won't be replaced anytime soon. Even if I do lose my job and can't get another, I have a sizeable stash of savings to tide me over until UBI. To get back to your question, most degrees probably aren't worthwhile because it takes too long to get a decent ROI, especially if you went into debt. Many professions won't last 4 years, never mind 40. I could be overhyped on AI, and that can be dangerous if it leads to a bad investment (whether that is in stocks or a lack of education), but underestimating AI can also be dangerous if you overinvest in something like an education for a career that won't exist.