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Ask HN: Are you afraid of AI making you unemployable within the next few years?

14 points johnwheeler | 2 comments | 20 Dec 25 21:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source

On Hacker News and Twitter, the consensus view is that no one is afraid. People concede that junior engineers and grad students might be the most affected. But, they still seem to hold on to their situations as being sustainable. My question is, is this just a part of wishful thinking and human nature, trying to combat the inevitable? The reason I ask is because I seriously don't see a future where there's a bunch of programmers anymore. I see mass unemployment for programmers. People are in denial, and all of these claims that the AI can't write code without making mistakes are no longer valid once an AI is released potentially overnight, that writes flawless code. Claude 4.5 is a good example. I just really don't see any valid arguments that the technology is not going to get to a point where it makes the job irrelevant, not irrelevant, but completely changes the economics.
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nness ◴[20 Dec 25 21:34 UTC] No.46339841[source]▶
Largely, no.

AI would need to 1. perform better than a person in a particular role, and 2. do so cheaper than their total cost, and 3. do so with fewer mistakes and reduced liability.

Humans are objectively quite cheap. In fact for the output of a single human, we're the cheapest we've ever been in history (particularly in relation to the cost of the investment in AI and the kind of roles AI would be 'replacing.')

If there is any economic shifts, it will be increases in per person efficiency, requiring a smaller workforce. I don't see that changing significantly in the next 5-10 years.

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johnwheeler ◴[20 Dec 25 21:52 UTC] No.46339975[source]▶
I guess the main thing people aren't taking into account from what I see is that the models are substantially improving. Claude Opus 4.5 is markedly better than Claude Sonnet 3.7. If the jump to version 5 represents such a leap, I see it is game over, pretty much. You'll just need one person to manage all your systems or the subsystems, if the entire system is extremely large. And then I can't think past that. I don't know how long it is before AI replaces that central orchestrator and takes the human out of the loop, or if it ever does, that's what they seem to want it to do.

Anyway, I appreciate the response. I don't know how old you are, but I'm kind of old. And I've noticed that I've become much more cynical and pessimistic, not necessarily for any good reasons. So maybe it's just that.

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1. websiteapi ◴[20 Dec 25 22:23 UTC] No.46340209[source]▶
you're assuming the growth will continue at the same rate, which is hardly a certainty
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2. johnwheeler ◴[20 Dec 25 23:51 UTC] No.46340855[source]▶
Nor is it an impossibility. If the AI stays like it is right now, I think we're fine. In fact I would probably opt for that. I don't know what I would do.