I think there will be (and there already have been) significant downsizing over the next few years as businesses leverage AI to mean the same work can be done by less people paid less.

But the job cannot go away completely yet. It needs supervision by someone that can see the bullshit it often spits out and correct it.

But, if I'm honest, software development seems to be targeted when I think design writers should be equally scared. Well, that is if businesses work out that AI isn't just chatgpt. A GPT or other LLM could be trained on a company's specific designs and documentation, and then yes designers and technical writers could be scaled right back too.

Developers are the target because that's what they see chatgpt doing.

In real terms a lot of the back office jobs and skilled writing and development jobs are on the line here.

[–] MagicShel 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

The work can't be done by someone paid less. The work can be done by highly skilled, experienced developers with fewer junior resources. The real death comes 60 years later when there are no more developers because there is no viable path to becoming a senior.

Technical writers you may be correct about because translating text is one is the primary use cases for AI.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Here's the thing. Pay for work isn't based on skill alone. It's scarcity of a given demographic (skill makes up just part of that).

If the number of people overall is cut for software development worldwide, then scarcity at all levels will reduce and I reckon that will reduce pay.

I think our pay will start to diminish.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

My pessimistic take is that everyone in society will get recast as the “human feedback” component of whichever flavor of ML takes over their domain.

8 hours a day of doing your domain’s equivalent of captchas.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

That's a worst case. I think at the moment at least gpt type ai isn't good enough yet to not be used as a tool.

But yeah with some improvements we'll end up being quality control for automated systems.