A new course on dealing with AI anxiety is desperately needed.
I have read a recent newsletter about actors being anxious about AI, but from my perspective, for us ordinary tech guys, there are a lot more reasons to be anxious than for those actors, most of which are already millionaires and have enough capacity to wiggle out of anything. Success to successful, indeed.
I think we need at least two short courses to cover two topics:
How to deal with anxiety about AI
A vision of a future for tech guys like the audience of this learning platform
OK, we learned how AI works, how to do this and that, how to create teams of agents, how to build MCP servers, how to tune not-so-large LLMs and so on. What do we do with all that when labs will deliver a digital employee which will be able to do all that better than us?
Find where the value is? C’mon! Those who are able to see where the value is are already successful entrepreneurs.
I have already accepted the future of living on the street by 2028 (corrected from my 2022 estimate of homelessness by 2026), but maybe there’s a better way?
Everyone I know is extremely anxious and nobody has an answer. The only thing I’m able to calm myself with is: “If we are homeless, my family is better off if I’m alive foraging trash bins than when I’m died from despair.”
This has to do with societal policies, society is there, state, government etc. To protect people from this, if they do their job properly obviously. Before the 1930s in USA a few people became super rich, Rockefellers, Carnegie etc. If it wasnt for antitrust laws can you imagine what would have happened to the US.
Society is there to provide communal support otherwise we would be into each other’s neck. Technology should serve people not the opposite.
There are other countries other than the US… But I really doubt the US will do anything for its citizens either. When there’s nothing to extract from citizens, what is the reason to do anything for them?
Can’t disagree. Some sort of collective action may be a solution in difficult situations, it worked for centuries (see water courts in Spain). This is all cool but rather vague.
What I am trying to tell we need 1. some sort of vision positive vision of medium term future 7-15 years; 2. How do I calm down a person who has AI hysteria when I can’t fully calm down myself?
Fear arises out of attachments and losing them. When you came into this world, you came with nothing; you didn’t even plan to come; nobody asked your permission… why do you think when you leave it will be different? It has always been uncertain; life is uncertain, and the future is always uncertain. Get used to it, and you will feel better!
This is truly philosophical answer, I appreciate that.
I can’t really speak for others, can speak for myself. It’s not that I want riches; I never really had any. I have experienced sleeping in my car for a short period when I was unsuccessfully playing “entrepreneur” in my youth - it was a highly uncomfortable experience. I’m sure it’s still far better than actually living on the street, but I don’t really fear that for myself; I can cope with anything. When you have children, you start perceiving yourself as part of the past. What truly makes me uncomfortable is the thought that my children might have to live on the street because I failed to provide for them.
I don’t think the situation is that dire that people would start living on the street, but let me tell you, it’s not in the interest of the rich and powerful to have people on the streets hungry, because the hungry will do anything to survive! Which country are you living at?
I live in New Zealand, but that’s not really the point.
What I’m trying to say is that we lack a coherent vision for how to approach the future within our own lifetime.
Big tech, on the other hand, clearly does have a vision: to capture all the value currently generated by cognitive labour and, once robots are produced en masse, to capture the rest as well. It’s capital generating more capital, with no labour required at all.
There’s also a post-labour camp that talks about a bright future. However, most of that discussion focuses on a more distant horizon rather than asking, “What can we do now, as individuals, to reduce misery tomorrow?” Simply hoping the government will sort everything out feels naive at best.
They would have to sort it out, otherwise their fortunes and jobs are also at risk, necessity not compassion. Find compassion and the world will be perfect!
AI anxiety: Software developer are dead. Ok, so the software developers learn AI (like here). But AI will not save you. You have tech skills, which are dead, because of AI. Adding new tech skills (AI now) on top will not turn this around.