Comment by gnfargbl
2 days ago
One repeated failure that I have noticed as I age is that is folks expect change to either happen quickly, or to not happen at all. As a species we collectively seem to lack the patience that reality demands of us, probably because our own useful lifespans are so short.
Self-driving trucks are not here, nor are they coming anytime very soon, but driver assistance systems really have advanced meaningfully since 2012. They will continue to do so, to the point where I imagine driving without them will feel pretty alien. I feel much the same way about AI; it will change everything, but we need to be thinking of that change on thirty or fifty year timescales. 2030 won't feel so different to 2025.
This is very true, and is the (perhaps not obvious) subtext of my post as well. I'm not arguing that self driving cars are never going to happen or that AI won't eventually change the nature of a lot of work. There is a big leap between AI changing how programming is done and AI changing every other job too. The other poster arguing that "programming is harder than most other jobs, and therefore AI will eat them too", is taking a very stereotypically myopic and arrogant "computer person" posture.