Submitted by oldmanhero t3_zrsc3x in singularity
coumineol t1_j14jcz9 wrote
>Imagine, for example, trying to advise a child entering high school or junior high next year about what careers will still be viable when they grow up.
Please don't take it personally but this is a good example of why it's already out of control, and we won't be able to keep up. We're still planning our life in terms of which college we should attend, jobs, careers, salary, or even retirement, while it's painfully obvious that all those concepts are about to lose all their meaning soon. Another nice example is teachers trying to find out ways to identify if the students have "cheated" by using AI in their essays. We're embarrassingly trying to make sense of the new paradigm, using the thought patterns that were only useful in the old one. We look like Coyote from the cartoon, who is still running unaware that he's about to fall down the cliff.
SurroundSwimming3494 t1_j14o4rl wrote
>We're still planning our life in terms of which college we should attend, jobs, careers, salary, or even retirement, while it's painfully obvious that all those concepts are about to lose all their meaning soon.
It's not a good idea to stop planning for your future life because of events that are as of right now hypothetical and thus may never come to pass, or at least come to pass in your lifetime.
Also keep in mind that your belief isn't universally held at all and that many AI researchers, futurists, sociologists, economists, etc. would disagree with it.
JVM_ t1_j14phwi wrote
"Kids in school today will be doing jobs that don't exist yet."
I only found this to be partially true prior to ChatGPT. Programming and being a digital artist are what my kids would naturally fall into.
Now I don't know how to advise either of them. Programming will revolutionize with AI and digital art has been dealt a death-blow in under a month.
AI can solve Leetcode, the Advent of Code problems and re-work existing code.
All the digital art communities are fracturing because AI art is overwhelming them - the split is because some humans don't want AI art polluting their communities - but there's no way to tell what's AI art anymore.
Crazy times ahead, hopefully there's something good past the event horizon.
VertexMachine t1_j16en6j wrote
>"Kids in school today will be doing jobs that don't exist yet."
Yea, and all but one job I had didn't exist when I was a kid. And my life isn't and wasn't terrible ;-)
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>Now I don't know how to advise either of them. Programming will revolutionize with AI and
I think there was just a short period of human history when schools were actually preparing for jobs. The education system will change, evolve, or become obsolete and be replaced by something different.
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>digital art has been dealt a death-blow in under a month.
Art has not been dealt a death-blow. Image generators are for sure disruptive tech, but will not kill art. Maybe in a few generations of this tech. If they will get 100x better. But even then - they will not make magically make people that like to do art not do it or they will not magically destroy Krita or paint shop pro.
As a reminder, for most of the human history art wasn't a profitable profession, and even currently most artists don't make a living out of making art.
Also, dalle/SD/midjourney didn't happen overnight. Diffusion models were first described in 2015. And that paper did build up upon a whole body of prior work.
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>All the digital art communities are fracturing because AI art is overwhelming them - the split is because some humans don't want AI art polluting their communities - but there's no way to tell what's AI art anymore.
No, not yet. AI image generators are not good enough (I use them almost daily for both work and fun) and you can easily spot issues, esp with details. But they are getting better and better.
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Overall, we are very bad at foresight, but very good at adapting to change.
oldmanhero OP t1_j18m8ec wrote
Just a question: have you studied art history? And do you know many working artists? Not just painters or fine artists, but illustrators, animators, concept artists, storyboarders, etc?
Karcinogene t1_j1w3ce3 wrote
Don't advise your kids to pursue a career. Raise them into well-rounded individuals. In the age of AI, it will be the most human qualities that make us worthwhile. For a long time, we all made ourselves into machines, because someone had to. That is no longer necessary.
The world is transitioning again, from experts to generalists.
Creativity, empathy, curiosity and flexibility. If there is anything we can still do, it will involved all of those. If there isn't, then it doesn't really matter.
Everything else will be done by machines.
JVM_ t1_j1w55n5 wrote
Ya, the level of education we give our kids probably isn't required anymore just like we didn't always have these schooling systems setup to the levels the exist at today.
Karcinogene t1_j1wg5r4 wrote
I wouldn't say it's the level of education that needs to change, but rather, the topics.
We are going to need intense education in problem solving, creativity, empathy, curiosity and flexibility. Those are things which can be taught, and for which we have not had sufficient time to teach fully, in the past.
There might very well come a point at which your survival relies on your ability to make a friend. Currently, this is only true of jobs like sales or business negotiations. It is likely to be important for everyone in the future.
I don't know what form those schooling systems will take, but it's likely to be very different from anything that has come before.
ThoughtSafe9928 t1_j14jkgn wrote
“Don’t take it personally”? Aren’t you and OP saying the same things?
coumineol t1_j14k4su wrote
We say similar things in general, yes. But the OP worrying about the difficulty of giving career advice to students stroke me as an anti-pattern in the exponential phase that we're in. I think it's basically the wrong question, or the wrong thing to worry about in particular.
ThoughtSafe9928 t1_j14kf2k wrote
OP provided an example of why things are “changing too fast for us to keep up.”
You guys are literally saying the exact same thing. You just provided another example that goes along with his original point lol.
Regardless I agree with both of you, although it’s more of an objective fact than opinion.
Vitruvius8 t1_j177898 wrote
Reminds me of the old saying “learn this math, you’re not gonna have a calculator at (insert location, grocery store)” not to say knowing math is useless and we shouldn’t do it. But now we all have calculators with us at all times. Or learning how to use a physical library Dewey decimal system is completely unnecessary. When I remember all of this stuff being important when I was a kid just 15 years ago.
Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_j18u2n2 wrote
It is not obvious to me that college will soon lose meaning and I would still go if I were graduating from High School today!!! Lets not jump the gun.
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