The only new thing (to me) was the observation that some of our societal timeframes (e.g picking a 4yr university degree) hinge on assuming a specific rate of societal change. If the rate of disruption exceedes that assumption, the timeframes become inadequate.
> AI is developing faster than humans can individually and collectively understand it and adapt to it. People trying to plan their futures, e.g. trying to plan for a world several years in the future as they enter university, can no longer do so the way previous generations could.
I tried asking this before on here, and didn't really get many useful replies (and I guess I won't again now the algorithm has decided this post has too many comments and not enough upvotes, or whatever it is that's caused it to sink off the front page), but I'm honestly interested in what people here with (school age) children are telling their kids about the future, and what that looks like in terms of decisions around education, careers etc.
This isn't because I think that having children gives people any extra insights, but because it's pretty hard to think of other situations in which people have to plan for the happiness of others they care about over a timescale of decades and where there's significantly more ability to change course than for many adults (kids tend not to have short-term financial commitments that lock them into existing career decisions, for example).
Historically I think a lot of people in tech would have recommended it as a good career (whilst at the same time, reputedly, the people who made generational wealth out of tech were arranging their children's lives to minimise exposure to the products that made them rich). Is that still what people are saying?
* Keep calm and carry on, because we don't have any better ideas
* Sometimes it's OK to eat the damn marshmallow (i.e. in the face of future uncertainty, remember to do things that make your kids happy today)
I kind of suspect that the first one in particular is more or less people's default response. But I also wonder about what changes people _have_ made, if any.
I have three children aged 15-17. My youngest one has shown an interest in becoming an electrician, and I encourage that as I think it is pretty AI safe and in high demand.
My two older and more theoretically oriented children I am not sure what to recommend so I let them find something they are interested in mostly on their own.
My kids are too young for that, but my nephew is applying to college now. I told him that anyone who says they have any great insight into how he should be thinking about his future education/career is either wrong or lying.
This is something I've been thinking about for a while, as I have two high schoolers, both with a knack for programming, and at least one of them wants to get into software.
A lot of my comments get responses that assume I'm an "AI booster" but what I really am is someone highly motivated to understand the capabilities and limits of this technology, because it is already very directly impacting the future of my kids.
What I tell my kids is a function of what I believe the future holds: nobody will be doing low-level cognitive work anymore, it will all be done by AI, so our job is to be better than AI. Unfortunately:
a) Low-level cognitive work is like (SWAG) 80% of all knowledge work, and so more than 80% of jobs are effectively gone, they just don't know it yet.
b) AI is getting really good really fast so that 80% is also growing quickly.
That means that the days of doing a junior-to-mid level job, kind of just coasting along -- often until retirement -- are gone. Everybody has to be good enough to be doing the top 20% of cognitive work, which involves fuzzy things we call innovation, expertise, domain knowledge, intuition, taste, handling uncertainty, and the like.
So my advice to my kids is:
1. Whatever you do, be the BEST at it, regardless of grades. Grades already meant little, now they mean even less. Being the best likely also necessitates strategic avoidance of AI, but I'm willing to be proven wrong on that.
2. Be "high agency". Annoying buzzword but perfectly captures the trait everybody will be hiring for. The 80% of the jobs were those doing the drudgework for the 20% "high agency" people calling the shots. And those are the exact jobs that are gone. Just do things, because now you can.
3. Critical thinking may soon be the only job requirement remaining. Get bullet-proof at that and learn relevant skills (maybe data literacy?)
I'm also encouraging trade school, but that seems less attractive to the kids.
I'm not saying skip college just yet, but we do intend to aggressively "value-maxx" college education (e.g. community college) and focus on building something, anything, practical -- since showing what you've built is better than degrees from most colleges.
I thought of that too and looked into it. (Or rather had an AI look into it! ;-)) Fortunately, there are extreme physical constraints on how quickly manual labor could be replaced, especially anything requiring dexterous work. Mainly, supply chain constraints on rare earth elements, which are required to make these motors feasible.
By some estimates, today's global supply is like 2% (or was it 0.2%?) of the total amount required to enable such widespread deployment of robots. Until we can scale that up (or figure out how to bypass that dependency) there is a very hard constraint on how fast they can be deployed.
I have a hard time believing that won't be overcome or surpassed when you compare it to the cost of producing an adult human capable of skilled trades.
The incentive is definitely there, but right now we physically just don’t have enough rare earth supply to make the number of motors required. So we simply cannot scale that production up to the level where it would be cost effective to displace humans. This is assuming fine motor control is “solved” which it is not currently, but I think LLMs will take care of that soon enough.
I think the company that cracks the mass market robotics puzzle will be the next trillion (quadrillion?) dollar company. I suspect that would require bypassing the dependency on rare earths, but there seem to be no serious contenders out there? All the big shots are focusing on using current technologies because they basically “solve” motors. Maybe the company that does crack this puzzle will come out of left field with an unconventional technique, like OpenAI did with ChatGPT.
negura · · focus · HN ↗
> AI is developing faster than humans can individually and collectively understand it and adapt to it. People trying to plan their futures, e.g. trying to plan for a world several years in the future as they enter university, can no longer do so the way previous generations could.
jgraham · · focus · HN ↗
This isn't because I think that having children gives people any extra insights, but because it's pretty hard to think of other situations in which people have to plan for the happiness of others they care about over a timescale of decades and where there's significantly more ability to change course than for many adults (kids tend not to have short-term financial commitments that lock them into existing career decisions, for example).
Historically I think a lot of people in tech would have recommended it as a good career (whilst at the same time, reputedly, the people who made generational wealth out of tech were arranging their children's lives to minimise exposure to the products that made them rich). Is that still what people are saying?
fsflover · · focus · HN ↗
orborde · · focus · HN ↗
jgraham · · focus · HN ↗
The conclusions there seem to be roughly:
* Keep calm and carry on, because we don't have any better ideas
* Sometimes it's OK to eat the damn marshmallow (i.e. in the face of future uncertainty, remember to do things that make your kids happy today)
I kind of suspect that the first one in particular is more or less people's default response. But I also wonder about what changes people _have_ made, if any.
0c3ca83 · · focus · HN ↗
Education is a bet against AI.
kristoffer · · focus · HN ↗
My two older and more theoretically oriented children I am not sure what to recommend so I let them find something they are interested in mostly on their own.
streptomycin · · focus · HN ↗
keeda · · focus · HN ↗
A lot of my comments get responses that assume I'm an "AI booster" but what I really am is someone highly motivated to understand the capabilities and limits of this technology, because it is already very directly impacting the future of my kids.
What I tell my kids is a function of what I believe the future holds: nobody will be doing low-level cognitive work anymore, it will all be done by AI, so our job is to be better than AI. Unfortunately:
a) Low-level cognitive work is like (SWAG) 80% of all knowledge work, and so more than 80% of jobs are effectively gone, they just don't know it yet.
b) AI is getting really good really fast so that 80% is also growing quickly.
That means that the days of doing a junior-to-mid level job, kind of just coasting along -- often until retirement -- are gone. Everybody has to be good enough to be doing the top 20% of cognitive work, which involves fuzzy things we call innovation, expertise, domain knowledge, intuition, taste, handling uncertainty, and the like.
So my advice to my kids is:
1. Whatever you do, be the BEST at it, regardless of grades. Grades already meant little, now they mean even less. Being the best likely also necessitates strategic avoidance of AI, but I'm willing to be proven wrong on that.
2. Be "high agency". Annoying buzzword but perfectly captures the trait everybody will be hiring for. The 80% of the jobs were those doing the drudgework for the 20% "high agency" people calling the shots. And those are the exact jobs that are gone. Just do things, because now you can.
3. Critical thinking may soon be the only job requirement remaining. Get bullet-proof at that and learn relevant skills (maybe data literacy?)
I'm also encouraging trade school, but that seems less attractive to the kids.
I'm not saying skip college just yet, but we do intend to aggressively "value-maxx" college education (e.g. community college) and focus on building something, anything, practical -- since showing what you've built is better than degrees from most colleges.
Seattle3503 · · focus · HN ↗
keeda · · focus · HN ↗
By some estimates, today's global supply is like 2% (or was it 0.2%?) of the total amount required to enable such widespread deployment of robots. Until we can scale that up (or figure out how to bypass that dependency) there is a very hard constraint on how fast they can be deployed.
Seattle3503 · · focus · HN ↗
keeda · · focus · HN ↗
I think the company that cracks the mass market robotics puzzle will be the next trillion (quadrillion?) dollar company. I suspect that would require bypassing the dependency on rare earths, but there seem to be no serious contenders out there? All the big shots are focusing on using current technologies because they basically “solve” motors. Maybe the company that does crack this puzzle will come out of left field with an unconventional technique, like OpenAI did with ChatGPT.