I agree but it's also better. On average for most programming tasks I think humans are as "defeated" as coders as we are as chess players.
The machines will not only be as good or better than you at the DB design, the business logic, the performance critical algorithms, the UX, the performance tweaks, the accessibility standards, security holes, browser compatibilities, laws and regulations and whatever else you need to make the whole solution.
It will also write user manuals in any language, and rewrite them when needed even on a friday evening. It absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are DE...wait, I mean DONE!
So the situation for coders is even worse than it was for the weavers. The machine delivers not only cheaper and faster, but also better. :-/
I think nearly all white collar office workers will be replaced eventually. For lots of jobs, the limitation is not the ability of current models, but lack of integration to existing systems. This will change quickly, as writing new systems and integrations is cheaper than ever, thanks to agentic programming.
If the job involves mostly working on a computer, it will be probably gone in 10-20 years.
You may be right that white collar work can be replaced but I don't think it will be. Current society can't function with a majority of the population unemployed.
It's a catch-22 for the companies as well, since white collar work is presumably done because a company has customers, and most of their customers are white collar workers. At least in the US and Europe.
I don't think any previous disruption was as destructive as this. Firstly it happens much faster and affects many more people at once, and secondly it doesn't seem to create any new jobs for the ones it replaces.
The industrial revolution took at least a century depending on how you count, and it created more jobs than it destroyed.
The introduction of computers obliterated whole office floors of employees at banks and insurance companies but it created even more work at companies that sold computers and software and consultant hours.
Ai takes millions of jobs and replaces them with a few thousand caretakers at megawatt datacenters. The workforce at Anthropic and OpenAI is comparable to a game development studio. If all they end up doing is reducing the workforce of JP Morgan by 10%, society still has a net loss of jobs.
That said, it's at least possible Ai will eventually end up creating a bunch of new work indirectly, by enabling people to do more than they ever imagined they could. One can hope.
I agree but it's also better. On average for most programming tasks I think humans are as "defeated" as coders as we are as chess players.
The machines will not only be as good or better than you at the DB design, the business logic, the performance critical algorithms, the UX, the performance tweaks, the accessibility standards, security holes, browser compatibilities, laws and regulations and whatever else you need to make the whole solution.
It will also write user manuals in any language, and rewrite them when needed even on a friday evening. It absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are DE...wait, I mean DONE!
So the situation for coders is even worse than it was for the weavers. The machine delivers not only cheaper and faster, but also better. :-/
If the job involves mostly working on a computer, it will be probably gone in 10-20 years.
It's a catch-22 for the companies as well, since white collar work is presumably done because a company has customers, and most of their customers are white collar workers. At least in the US and Europe.
I think that argument could have been made at any major conjuncture of creative destruction throughout history, if "employed" is construed broadly.
The industrial revolution took at least a century depending on how you count, and it created more jobs than it destroyed.
The introduction of computers obliterated whole office floors of employees at banks and insurance companies but it created even more work at companies that sold computers and software and consultant hours.
Ai takes millions of jobs and replaces them with a few thousand caretakers at megawatt datacenters. The workforce at Anthropic and OpenAI is comparable to a game development studio. If all they end up doing is reducing the workforce of JP Morgan by 10%, society still has a net loss of jobs.
That said, it's at least possible Ai will eventually end up creating a bunch of new work indirectly, by enabling people to do more than they ever imagined they could. One can hope.