Well this is HN so a lot of us are pretty terrified of your 1). We went from 'you have a good job for the next couple of decades' to 'your job is at extreme risk for disruption from AI' in the space of like 5 years. Personally I have a family, I'm a bit old to retrain, but I never worked at a high-comp FAANG or anything so I can't just focus on painting unless my government helps me (note - not US/China). That's extremely anxiety-inducing, that a vague promise of novel new things does not come close to compensating.
I'm 33 and I feel sort of lucky that I'll still potentially have time to retrain. I'm fully prepared to within the next 5 years or so (and potentially much less) I'll probably need to retrain into a trade or something to stay relevant in any sort of field.
Many people claim its going to become a tool we use alongside our daily work, but its clear to me thats not how anybody managing a company sees it, and even these AI labs that previously tried to emphasize how much its going to augment existing workforces are pushing being able to do more with less.
Most companies are holding onto their workforce only begrudgingly while the tools advance and they still need humans for "something", not because they're doing us some sort of favor.
The way I see it unless you have specialized knowledge, you are at risk of replacement within the next few years.
> I'm 33 and I feel sort of lucky that I'll still potentially have time to retrain. I'm fully prepared to within the next 5 years or so (and potentially much less) I'll probably need to retrain into a trade or something to stay relevant in any sort of field.
The problem is that there are not many fields that are going to be immune to AI based cost cutting and there surely will not be enough work for all of us even if we all retrain.
If we all do, then it will create a n absolutely massive downward pressure on wages due to massive oversupply in other lines of work too
I also have contemplated just retraining now to try and get ahead of the curve, but I'm not confident that trades can absorb the shock of this - both in terms of supply (more unemployment) and demand (anything non-commercial will be hit by capital flight on the customer-side). I figure I will just try and make as much money on a higher wage as I can and hope for the best...
