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Used to be a very important and popular job. They required a degree of trust and must be pretty skilled to connect so many calls. Yet direct dial made their job obsolete and historic. I bet if we went back in time, they were worried about what job they'll do next. Does that mean we shouldn't be able to just make a call on our own?
I wonder if we can draw any parallels between that and AI today. Hmmmmm. Just food for thought.
Jeremy Falcon
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Technological advances always displace people's jobs and in theory creates new jobs, though not as many and often requiring significant retraining / new skills.
I tend to be less concerned with AI per se and more concerned with the robotization of lots of things (which, yes, AI plays a part in of course) and the droves of people that will be replaced, a significant number being in service industries.
We're not looking at / planning for the social shifts that will result.
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Marc Clifton wrote: We're not looking at / planning for the social shifts that will result.
Tru dat buddy. And unfortunately, the masses will have to learn the hard way over and over again that change is coming.
People have always attempted to pass off "menial"* work onto others since like forever. Doubt human nature will change in our lifetime.
Say for instance, you know once robotics are cheap and advanced enough, everybody will want a robot maid like the Jetsons. Being a maid is a service but that will die out eventually too.
* I say menial in quotes because jobs like farming is one of the most honorable jobs out there. But even robots will replace some of that grunt work too.
Jeremy Falcon
modified 3hrs ago.
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I think the parallel lies in the fact that switchboard operators were only employed until their jobs could be automated. That was just a matter of time and, I think, inevitable.
Some people are definitely in positions where their day-to-day tasks can be automated. It won't be pleasant for them, and probably not pleasant either for the people who would've used their services. Maybe that's the real impediment preventing it from having taken place already on a large scale.
But then there's also a whole category of people who could be replaced by machinery, where cost is the only thing getting in the way. I remember reading an article some years ago, I think involving McDonald's CEO, saying if he could replace people in their kitchens with a $30,000 machine, he'd do it in an instant. The fact that he came to an exact figure means he's already done the calculation and he's just waiting for it to become cheap enough.
Some people's days are numbered for sure.
I wouldn't want to be an unskilled kid quitting school today at the age of 18.
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dandy72 wrote: I think the parallel lies in the fact that switchboard operators were only employed until their jobs could be automated. That was just a matter of time and, I think, inevitable.
Yuppers. Exactly.
dandy72 wrote: Some people are definitely in positions where their day-to-day tasks can be automated. It won't be pleasant for them, and probably not pleasant either for the people who would've used their services. Maybe that's the real impediment preventing it from having taken place already on a large scale.
Yup. I'd give industry examples of this, but everything is politicized these days. You're smart enough to some industries like this though.
dandy72 wrote: ut then there's also a whole category of people who could be replaced by machinery, where cost is the only thing getting in the way. I remember reading an article some years ago, I think involving McDonald's CEO, saying if he could replace people in their kitchens with a $30,000 machine, he'd do it in an instant. The fact that he came to an exact figure means he's already done the calculation and he's just waiting for it to become cheap enough.
Dude, that's already started. Dunno about the rest of the world, but there's already a fully automated McDonald's in Texas. They're already testing that out to see how it goes. Robotics definitely gonna be a thriving industry at least. 
dandy72 wrote: Some people's days are numbered for sure.
Yeah, that's just it though, it's not always bad even if it's scary. I'm sure there were skilled cave painters at one point, but I for one am glad we have houses and easels now. Just some people only learn just enough in the youth and then stop learning once they age, health declines, etc. Those who understand times change are the ones that survive.
dandy72 wrote: I wouldn't want to be an unskilled kid quitting school today at the age of 18.
Tru dat. For the short term at least, blue collar skills are making a resurgence since for the past couple decades nobody taught their kids how to fix a tire while watching cat videos online. I mean robots will eventually replace that too, but for the next 10-20 years at least you can do pretty well being a plumber, for instance. AI can't do that... yet.
Jeremy Falcon
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Have you read the book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensible[^], (2008) by Seth Godin
By coincidence I am listening to it for the 11th time -- yes I'm serious.
I read this book twice and now I listen to it every year, at least once, since I first read it.
Here's a gem:
Linchpin: The difference between what an employee is paid and how much value she produces leads to profit. If the worker captures all the value in her salary, there’s no profit.
As a result, capitalist profit-maximizing investors have long looked for a way to turn low-wage earners into high-value producers. Give someone who makes five dollars a day an efficient machine, a well-run assembly line, and a detailed manual, and you ought to be able to make five or twenty or a thousand times what you paid in labor.
The author is not saying this is a great idea.
He is saying it is "the way the system works".
And when a system works, the people are going to work the system.
People who understand that are going to "work the system" with AI.
Yes, it is too bad. It's why we all have to grow / get skills that AI cannot reproduce easily.
I understand you are one of those who thinks this too and who has skills.
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raddevus wrote: The difference between what an employee is paid and how much value she produces leads to profit. If the worker captures all the value in her salary, there’s no profit.
That's a pretty good quote, and accurately reflects the real-world situation.
It didn't take me long for me as a kid to realize that you're rarely paid what you think you're worth--your pay is the intersection point where you're willing to accept the minimum your employer offers.
The delusion of what some people think they're worth explains why so many people hate their jobs. Or they simply don't have the job they want (and think they can do).
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dandy72 wrote: The delusion of what some people think they're worth explains why so many people hate their jobs. Or they simply don't have the job they want (and think they can do).
You sir, just won the Internet for today. 
Jeremy Falcon
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dandy72 wrote: It didn't take me long for me as a kid to realize that you're rarely paid what you think you're worth
Agreed. You aren't paid based upon what you're worth to the company. You're paid based upon how replaceable you are.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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raddevus wrote: Have you read the book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensible[^], (2008) by Seth Godin
Haven't read it. Most of my audio books over the past few years have been market related. You've totally piqued my interest though. I'll have to put it in the queue.
raddevus wrote: By coincidence I am listening to it for the 11th time -- yes I'm serious.
That's because you're a learner, buddy. If the material is important you want to make sure it's absorbed, then relistening to books are great. Beats the hell out of watching the same movie over and over.
raddevus wrote: The author is not saying this is a great idea.
He is saying it is "the way the system works".
Tru dat. Being a bit of an economics nerd these days, I don't think producing more value than you're paid is bad. Companies have to do this too. Yes there are crap companies out there that try and scam the system, but consumers love when a company over delivers and under charges. It's called a good deal or a bargain. People only think it's bad when it's employment... because most people just want something for nothing.
IMO the problem occurs when greed gets out of hand... from the government on down. Corrupt people will always take a good system and pervert it. Even if we changed the system to something new, the incorrigible will pervert that system too. It's what they do.
raddevus wrote: And when a system works, the people are going to work the system.
You beat me to it. 
raddevus wrote: Yes, it is too bad. It's why we all have to grow / get skills that AI cannot reproduce easily.
Yup, which means we need to specialize to help train AI for stuff it's not aware of yet, work on AI itself, learn prompt engineering, learn two industries (tech and something else) since AI isn't there yet, or learn soft skills. The clock is ticking and I'd be shocked if in 20 years some of these run of the mill LOB jobs still exist.
raddevus wrote: I understand you are one of those who thinks this too and who has skills.
Thanks buddy. I think that's we jive. You give the impression you're a lifelong learner too. Adapt or die. Always been the way, will be the way in our lifetime for sure.
Jeremy Falcon
modified 1hr 20mins ago.
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Remember them well. My wife's aunt was one. Had to learn a new skill.
Pick up our first phone and the operator said "number please". Was a party line. No dial or keypad. I think our first phone number was something like 264.
Anyone left ponders old enough to remember ads that said: "In New Jersey, dial Bigelow 8-1234"?
How about the Acme Buggy Whip Company? If AI had been around back then, it would have said that the world would be knee deep in horse manure by now. 
>64
It’s weird being the same age as old people. Live every day like it is your last; one day, it will be.
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theoldfool wrote: Remember them well. My wife's aunt was one. Had to learn a new skill.
Glad they were there when we needed them though. No way this country would've advanced so much in the 1900s without communication.
theoldfool wrote: I think our first phone number was something like 264.
Nice. Kinda like getting one of the first .COMs. Too bad you couldn't keep it. 
theoldfool wrote: Anyone left ponders old enough to remember ads that said: "In New Jersey, dial Bigelow 8-1234"?
Not I. When I grew up we were "fancy" with rotary phones. But, I do think those of us who came afterwards would do well to know of what came before ya know. Always a joy hearing your perspective.
theoldfool wrote: How about the Acme Buggy Whip Company? If AI had been around back then, it would have said that the world would be knee deep in horse manure by now. 
Jeremy Falcon
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Quote: When I grew up we were "fancy" with rotary phones.
Seems like phones with push buttons were sort of a "status symbol" because they charged more per month. That was back in the day when you used the telco's phone. I always thought the "2 piece" phone was neat. Base had the dial and microphone, and you held an ear piece up to your ear. Tried to buy one of the antique wooden wall mount boxes with the hand-crank a while back, in an estate auction. Too many other people wanted it. Back in the day, we did lot of farm auctions.
>64
It’s weird being the same age as old people. Live every day like it is your last; one day, it will be.
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What is The Matrix?
Caveat Emptor.
"Progress doesn't come from early risers – progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things." Lazarus Long
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Have heard that AI has given rise to a new job called Prompt Engineer.
Or, is there already an AI to replace such Prompt engineers?
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Amarnath S wrote: Have heard that AI has given rise to a new job called Prompt Engineer.
Yup, they're growing in demand. To be fair though, it's a short spike as AI gets smarter and smarter. But for the next several years for sure, it's a good field to be in.
Amarnath S wrote: Or, is there already an AI to replace such Prompt engineers?
Yeah exactly. What peeps don't realize is that progression is not linear with machines. It will be exponential when they hit that tipping point... watch.
Jeremy Falcon
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Probably a huge influx of intellectual property lawyers suing for infringement.
A new skill, now how to make 90 day wonder lawyers. GD&R
>64
It’s weird being the same age as old people. Live every day like it is your last; one day, it will be.
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Maybe it's just me. 10 years ago, I would occasionally poke around DICE and it seemed like real people and companies were posting jobs. Now? Not so much. This is what I see on every posting: "Employers have access to artificial intelligence language tools (“AI”) that help generate and enhance job descriptions and AI may have been used to create this description."
As soon as you go to dice, you get an immediate idiot pop up "is there something I can help you with?" Don't worry, I'm not picking on dice, so many sites and companies have this turd it is a joke. Worse, most of the HUMANS you talk to after getting through the bot are as dumb as a brick as well. Just didn't want to offend bots out there.
The last thing I am going to do is submit anything to a recruiter. Anyone else seeing the AI "revolution" just automating shoveling BS?
Charlie Gilley
“Microsoft is the virus..."
"the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money"
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I saw a description recently along the lines of AI enables the wealthy to gain access to skills while denying the skilled access to wealth. Kind of see what they mean.
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Alister Morton wrote: I saw a description recently along the lines of AI enables the wealthy to gain access to skills while denying the skilled access to wealth. Kind of see what they mean.
It's true, but unfortunately in business the labor side of it has never been seen as "valuable" as the business / non-contributor roles. Whether someone agrees with that or not doesn't matter. It is what it is. But from a value perspective, that's how a lot of people think - even if it is shortsighted.
As far as AI changing things, can you blame businesses? If you wanted to buy a car and paint it yellow because your customers love yellow cars... and from your perspective it's the same exact car you're buying... either for 3 million and headaches (tech staff) or $30/month... what would you pick?
They way I see it is, is that's not so much screwing over the skilled. It's that the required skill set for success is changing. We're not the first generation to see change happen. It's inevitable, you either get with the times or just die out. Circle of life.
Jeremy Falcon
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Fair warning, long winded...
As AI becomes more prevalent, real human interaction will be the next cool thing. Right now, AI is only as good as the person using it. Even that will change in the future. We lived in a time where it was tech and gizmos and took for granted some things. Times change. Life is cyclical. Not saying tech isn't still cool, but we've as a society have gotten used to it. We live in a time where the geniuses are hated and the stuff we do consume is just rehashed over and over again as we stream Netflix and get fat.
Tech is repeatedly new, but not novel... in a manner of speaking. iPhone 27 now with a new camera... again. PS7 with better graphics but the same exact types of games... again. What we lost was the "real". AI will make this worse with spam, garbage, nonsense, etc. I agree, but it's also a result of the tech space being polluted. AI is just a tool - for now. Back in the 70s, all you had to do was say tech and you were paid a nice salary. Then the money grabbers came in and polluted the industry. That's finally changing, and it's great. Time to weed out the people in it for the wrong reasons.
This over abundance is great in a way. It'll make the crap very obvious. Since life is cyclical, once it gets really bad people will eventually wake up. I'm not hating AI btw, it'll do a better job than the generic, lazy, carbon copy recruiters. And if it weeds out the people that only got into tech for money... great. It's a good thing. But, it will also make real, genuine stuff more valuable as it also pollutes the ecosystem even more like like a crappy, spammy website does today. And just be another cog in the system of blah mixed with a few actual key players while the rest of the space is polluted.
Which is to say, get people on the phone. Be nice to recruiters (the good ones). If they're cool peeps, keep in touch even if you don't need a job. If you don't know anyone yet, there is more than on job site: dice, indeed, monster, Google, etc. Times change, some times that used to be good aren't any more. But knowing people will never change. All industries change, but if I were a gambling man, I'd bet the next wave of tech will be the opposite of what we've seen and more of a shift towards getting back what we've lost - human connection. It'll probably be expression through tech, but connection is the goal. If a recruiter asks you questions, take it as a complement. Human connection will never go out of vogue. I'm not saying be their BFFs, but be friendly and memorable. If the ones you do talk to are terrible, ignore them and move on... they're just a distraction.
Long winded way of saying, human connection is the next wave man. The blah spam is only going to get worse. For you typical LOB job, if they still exist in the future, will have such generic posts for them. Specializing will still happen, but for your run of the mill LOB type apps that can be generated by AI, nope... that's going away. It's not 20 years ago anymore. Human connection, communication, and prompt engineering is the future unless you specialize. Even web development, despite being so popular, will eventually succumb to AI generating cookie cutter sites too.
P.S. If you've talked to any recruiters in the past you liked, give them a call if you still have their number.
Jeremy Falcon
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: I'd bet the next wave of tech will be the opposite of what we've seen and more of a shift towards getting back what we've lost
That day can't come fast enough, bro.
Tech today is making me hate people. It makes me want to dissociate from tech, as I'm deep into it, have made a career out of it, but what people do with it nowadays is NOT what I signed up for. People who know me are surprised and sometimes don't believe me when I say (for one thing) I'm very much against social media in all its forms, thinking I'd be all in, while in reality nothing could be further from the truth. It's not a case of cognitive dissonance, I don't sing its praises. I don't think Mark Zuckerberg is our lord and savior, I view him more like the anti-Christ. Seriously.
It used to be only nerds "got" tech. Then "the rest" got involved, and now it's all about me, me, me, my number of subscribers, my views, and smashing the Like button. The one word that always makes me roll my eyes nowadays is "influencer". FOAD already, you're not exerting any sort power over me, in fact the more involved you get into your own sh*t the more pathetic I think you are.
In a group at a table in a restaurant, I'm the one guy left who isn't glued to his phone and would rather have a face-to-face conversation. People sitting at the same table texting each other make me want to take their phone out of their hand and place it in their drink.
I'm just hoping that this next wave of tech you're forecasting has nothing to do with people and anticipating their every want and need. That's profiling, we're already there and it's the nastiest thing that's happened to civilization.
So IMO if the next wave of tech is the opposite of what we've seen, then it has to be something that leaves people out of it and does NOT make the individual the center of the world. I don't know what it'll be, and I don't how we get there. But I think the solution has to be less tech, and less trying to "connect people", not more.
And that doesn't make one a luddite.
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dandy72 wrote: That day can't come fast enough, bro.
You and I are kindred spirits, buddy. Thank God there's still a few kids playing around outside with actual friends in the neighborhood I'm in, but it's less and less these days.
dandy72 wrote: I don't think Mark Zuckerberg is our lord and savior, I view him more like the anti-Christ. Seriously.
Same. If people honestly trust this dude, it just goes to show how much they never were around people in their lives. For those of us who's been around the block, it's pretty obvious what his stage of character development is.
dandy72 wrote: In a group at a table in a restaurant, I'm the one guy left who isn't glued to his phone and would rather have a face-to-face conversation. People sitting at the same table texting each other make me want to take their phone out of their hand and place it in their drink.
It's because you're intelligent. Like it or not, the intelligent were apart of this movement. All of us. Not everyone is intelligent. Which means it's up to us to help correct it.
dandy72 wrote: I'm just hoping that this next wave of tech you're forecasting has nothing to do with people and anticipating their every want and need. That's profiling, we're already there and it's the nastiest thing that's happened to civilization.
Me too. Unfortunately, I think that's gonna get worse, way worse, before it gets better. Like this Windows Recall feature where some refuse to see the writing on the wall. Things gotta get real bad before it takes a turn in the opposite direction.
I learned about the cyclical nature of people from studying market psychology and dynamics btw. Economics is really rooted in psychology. Peeps don't become "aware" until things are so bad it's obvious to even the least brightest. Then things change, but not until, while the those of us who can see it just have to suffer in the meantime. 
dandy72 wrote: And that doesn't make one a luddite.
Doesn't make you a luddite at all man. You just remember what being a human is supposed to be about. Totally agree, and I love tech. I think laughing it up with a friend who's mentally there is what makes life worth living. No matter what tech brings, it shouldn't remove that. Then, it's no longer serving humanity.
And if we're being real, most of the people in power with tech were the kids who were socially clueless in school that never left the computer room and have absolutely no idea how people work. I'm guilty of that (very late bloomer). But these are the people in "influence" now.
Jeremy Falcon
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As the saying goes, tech brings the world closer together but your neighbors, friends, and family further apart.
Jeremy Falcon
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^ This.
It's always been my belief an "influencer"'s 50,000 online friends would probably think they're a jerk IRL.
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