Comment by Kon5ole
4 hours ago
>It won't have to win by being better
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.