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Comment by mschuster91

1 day ago

Pareto principle in action - smartphones are good enough for 80% of use cases. And so is AI for a lot of junior-level work.

The problem is, when there are no trainee and junior positions (and, increasingly, intermediate) being filled any more... there is no way for people to rise to senior levels. And that is going to screw up many industries hard.

Many industries have hit this without AI. One example is surveying: it used to be that you’d have a crew of survey techs moving around equipment and measuring reference points, a crew chief, and a licensed surveyor directing and signing off on them. Those techs and crew chief were the future surveyors, as licensed surveyor requires x years working under supervision.

Now there’s one or two guys out there with a total station and/or drone. You’ve gone from 10 techs/junior positions per surveyor to 1. The average surveyor is something like 60 years old and has no successor lined up.