Automation taking our jobs

That ship has sailed and is sinking in deep water. People expect more for less every year, while inflation drives up the cost of living faster than wages. The only way to improve productivity is with better tools that let the same number of people, or fewer, do more. Sure, we could do like Asimov's series and ban robots from doing human work, but as that showed, it would stagnate the economy and could only work if the whole world buys in. China, for example, is going all in on replacing humans with robots. Factories can get a robot that can do most of what a human can do right now for $5K/mth. They work 24/7 and swap their batteries in just 3 minutes of downtime. How is a human going to compete with that? That is $6.94/hr plus electricity. Not training time or time off. So if you want a job that will probably still be around in a decade, you'd better learn a trade like plumbing. Something that requires some training, that the average person will not learn, and that interacts directly with people. But even those jobs will probably give way to economic pressure in the following decade. The real question is: how do all those unemployable people live? UBI paid for by these almost totally automated companies. Either directly by taxes on US factories or the sellers of goods imported from automated factories overseas. The 2030s are not going to be fun for the average person while all this transitions. And you will be glad for anything helping stem crime for the next decade or so as this shakes out with all the unemployed and unsupported about.

AI is taking all the coding jobs

You still have to know enough to tell the AI what you want in more detail than we generally get from project managers. And if you have an existing codebase, as you do 99% of the time, you need to put all that in context so the AI can "understand" it well enough to review it before you can have it alter the code per specs. 

I don't think the day is far off when AI can do most of the work, but right now we're seeing a lot of demos of simple apps. And it will regenerate the app to add a feature. That will not cut it with enterprise-level systems. Most of the apps I've worked on over the last few decades have run on multiple servers, and many were even spread across multiple "projects". The basic config for one spread over was 24 servers. That one had fully automated CI/CD, but you would be shocked at how many projects I've been on without any automated testing before I got there. And little documentation. If you do not have that with the current codebase, how are you going to have AI take it over? Not to mention projects with a change control board that must sign off on every commit to the main branch. It's going to be a while before they approve AI-rendered changes without a developer explaining the change to them. Then there is the whole private repo issue. Those projects will not have code generated by an external AI. But again, self-hosted AI is rapidly becoming more common. Just not that common yet.

AI's driving forces

Increased profits by reducing labor costs: This has been true for all innovations since the wheel. The desired outcome is to improve efficiency and profitability, not just for companies but also for individuals, such as small farmers. Watch this season of Clarkson's Farm to see how it helps small farmers. 

Adding skills to people who lack them: From accessibility to creativity, this also has a long history. The desired outcome is to enable people with disabilities to interact with the world in ways they only dreamed of years ago, and to empower people with ideas to bring them to life where there was no chance before.

Security: Software is now too complex. It’s built on packages that may contain unknown weaknesses. AI reveals just how insecure things really are. These tools are out there and are constantly improved by bad actors. To prevent attacks, we should use AI to proactively find and suggest fixes for our software. Our goal is to stay ahead of bad actors and reduce risks in the coming years, which may be challenging.

Innovation: There is hope. Just as AI found novel ways to win at Go, it may develop solutions to unsolved problems.

The huge con is that it could put most out of work. But the desired outcome is to transition to a society where, with support like UBI funded by corporate taxes, people can focus on creativity and innovation. There will be major resistance and likely a period of economic difficulty. However, the real question is: do we ban AI in the US while the rest of the world advances, risking our global standing?