Comment by bane
5 days ago
Of course AI increases inequality. It's automated ladder pulling technology.
To become good at something you have to work through the lower rungs and acquire skill. AI does all those lower level jobs, puts the people who need those jobs for experience on the street, and robs us of future experts.
The people who benefit the most are those who are already up on top of the ladder investing billions to make the ladder raise faster and faster.
AI has been extremely useful at teaching me things. Granted I needed to already know how to learn and work through the math myself, but when I get stuck it is more helpful than any other resource on the internet.
> To become good at something you have to work through the lower rungs and acquire skill. AI does all those lower level jobs, puts the people who need those jobs for experience on the street, and robs us of future experts.
You can still do that with AI, you give yourself assignments and then use the AI as a resource when you get stuck. As you get better you ask the AI less and less. The fact that the AI is wrong sometimes is like test that allows you to evaluate if you are internalizing the skills or just trusting the AI.
If we ever have AIs which don't hallucinate, I'd want that added back in as a feature.
Not everyone have the privelege of learning for free or the time, many needs that lower level job that makes it possible to get paid and learn at the same time.
This is basically the sequential pipeline for any career development.
You get X*5 years of experience doing the job, you know how to do it much better without mistakes. If you can't get experience because AI has blocked that lower run, you basically have a 10 year countdown to deflationary spiral in that factor market; that's a problem for next quarter though.
Whether ladder raising is benefitting people now or later or by how much - I don't know.
But I share your concerns that:
AI doing the lesser tasks of [whatever] ->
less(no?) humans will do those tasks ->
less(no?) experienced humans to further the state of the art ->
automation-but-stagnation.
But tragedy of the commons says I have to teach my kid to use AI!
You could just teach them to be gardeners or carpenters
They would still need to use AI to run their work with higher profit margin ;)
When you have an unfair system, every technology advancement will benefit the few more than the many.
So off course AI falls into this realm.
Definitely. I think it's worse than that too. I have a feeling it's going to expose some people higher up that ladder who really shouldn't be. So it won't just be junior people who struggle but also "senior" people as well. I think that only deepens the inequality.
It's the trajectory of automation for the past few decades. Automate many jobs out of existence, and add a much smaller set of higher-skill jobs.
Yep but this time is different because it's going to completely displace what is left of the middle class and this time the people being fucked have six figures of college debt.
Centuries, surely? "In the year of eighteen and two, peg and awl..."
AI can teach you the lower rungs more effectively than what existed before.
Honestly not sure it is easier to learn coding today than before. In theory maybe but in reality 99% of people will use AI as a crutch - half or learning is when you have to struggle a bit with something. If all the answers are always in front of you it will be harder to learn. I know it would be hard for me to learn if I could just ask for the code all the time.
It's much, much, much easier.
I've been coding for decades already, but if I need to put something together in an unfamiliar language? I can just ask AI about any stupid noob mistake I make.
It knows every single stupid noob mistake, it knows every "how do I sort an array", and it explains well, with examples. Like StackOverflow on steroids.
The caveat is that you need to WANT to learn. If you don't, then not learning is easier than ever too.
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It is but requires discipline.
I've been coding for 15 years but I find I'm able to learn new languages and concepts faster by asking questions to ChatGPT.
It takes discipline. I have to turn off cursor tab when doing coding exercises. I have to take the time to ask questions and follow-up questions.
But yes I worry it's too easy to use AI as a crutch
And yet it's not used that way in the vast majority of cases. Most people don't want to learn. They want to get a result quickly, and move on.
There is a difference between pulling up a ladder and people choosing not to climb it.
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