I think the employment thief point is always misstated.
We invented compilers, word processors, templated document generation, code generators, DSLs and things like that which were all labour reduction technologies for describing systems and information. These were net positives for society but wiped out full administrative and technical professions.
The issue is the impact that technology has on society. It should used to free up more time for enriching humanity with art, music, sciences, mathematics etc. But what really happens is they are used entirely for concentrating wealth by taking revenue and reducing employment, leaving functional people unemployed, destitute and in debt to the people who have the wealth concentration.
At this point it's morally objectionable on all grounds.
A second point, which should be considered an addition to the article is that AI coding shapes thinking based on its capabilities, not the user's intent. I see this a lot. If the objective is to do thing X because it aligns with a well-researched strategic analysis, it may not align with that. People are happy to be pushed to do thing Y which is a totally different thing because they are being slowly gaslit into accepting the mediocrity that the model promotes. This leads to poor business outcomes. And all this is hidden and written off because everyone needs to be seen as AI thought leaders at a high level because that's what keeps the stock going up and engineers are being rated on delivery, not on ROI.
> We invented compilers, word processors, templated document generation, code generators, DSLs and things like that which were all labour reduction technologies for describing systems and information. These were net positives for society but wiped out full administrative and technical professions.
Asking seriously and not in a provocative way: are you then implying that without those inventions we would have much more people employed as white collars? Employed people that would live a better life in economical and life/work balance terms.
We would yes. I'm mostly reflecting on the historical grounds for the current situation. New technology didn't mean the swathes of the population that were made redundant got magically hoovered up into other professions. The redirected revenue went straight into leadership and investment pockets.
My mother is a good example. She was a corporate typist for years, on typewriters. Eventually word processing took over. Good fortune for her that she invested in this privately, but many people didn't because they didn't have the capital to buy a computer to learn on and the corporation didn't provide training. They saw it as a way to reduce that department cost by the 10:1 improvement. She got kept on, 10 people didn't. And most of them ended up as unemployed housewives or moving back in with their parents under serious financial consequences.
Because the invention of the compiler brought software and tools outside of million dollar IBM computer rooms. Which in turn brought more productivity elsewhere and thus a positive economical impact. This argument fails with AI because if everyone can do it, nobody will pay for it.
If we did the same work but didn't have those things, we would need more people employed to make up for it. But if we didn't have those things these days, we probably would have less companies doing this sort of thing.
If we didnt have word processors or templated document generation, we would have people who write things properly, typeset documents etc. If we didnt have compilers etc, we would have people who translated higher level languages into machine code
That's what I also think. Without those inventions, we would more or less have the same number of white collars, only doing another type of job. I don't really know the economic and social consequences of this other reality, but from my naive point of view employment rate are a function of the economical activity, and not of the specific type of work done.
> A second point, which should be considered an addition to the article is that AI coding shapes thinking based on its capabilities, not the user's intent.
which is precisely why this tech has become so invasive in the software industry, the majority's thinking capabilities were mediocre to begin with. Good code was held in place by a few good men and women working as tech leads.
I am also tired of the "We now have bigger picture problems to solve instead". If your code looked like spaghetti, so are your big picture solutions. As a matter of fact, big picture problems are much harder than writing a stupid function.
> The issue is the impact that technology has on society. It should used to free up more time for enriching humanity with art, music, sciences, mathematics etc. But what really happens is they are used entirely for concentrating wealth by taking revenue and reducing employment, leaving functional people unemployed, destitute and in debt to the people who have the wealth concentration.
False, Karl Marx himself says that technology improves wealth for all the masses and doesn't leave people destitute.
Edit: I was wrong. Marx makes both claims because his theory is just not that great.
Is Karl Marx an authority on the matter? If one famous person in the 1800s says something, is one to take it that they are correct, forever, and that noone can express any view contrary to theirs?
He also wrote literally the opposite to what you put in his mouth, so not only is this an appeal to authority, it's a completely incorrect one. Wonderful.
> It is an undoubted fact that machinery, as such, is not responsible for “setting free” the workman from the means of subsistence [...] in itself it increases the wealth of the producers, but in the hands of capital, makes them paupers
I think Marx said that it'd do that "under communism". While "under capitalism" technology is merely a labour-value-creation amplifier for the robber barrons (capitalists). The capitalists are afraid of other capitalists using tech to undercut their prices, so they loose market -- hence they end up in some sort of tech-arms-race.
Do you know the phrase: fully automated luxury communism?
We invented compilers, word processors, templated document generation, code generators, DSLs and things like that which were all labour reduction technologies for describing systems and information. These were net positives for society but wiped out full administrative and technical professions.
The issue is the impact that technology has on society. It should used to free up more time for enriching humanity with art, music, sciences, mathematics etc. But what really happens is they are used entirely for concentrating wealth by taking revenue and reducing employment, leaving functional people unemployed, destitute and in debt to the people who have the wealth concentration.
At this point it's morally objectionable on all grounds.
A second point, which should be considered an addition to the article is that AI coding shapes thinking based on its capabilities, not the user's intent. I see this a lot. If the objective is to do thing X because it aligns with a well-researched strategic analysis, it may not align with that. People are happy to be pushed to do thing Y which is a totally different thing because they are being slowly gaslit into accepting the mediocrity that the model promotes. This leads to poor business outcomes. And all this is hidden and written off because everyone needs to be seen as AI thought leaders at a high level because that's what keeps the stock going up and engineers are being rated on delivery, not on ROI.
Everthing is fucking broken.