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How do I stop worrying about the future?
Im reading and seeing all this new AI stuff that seems to come out everyday. I just cant help feel the progress is fast and only getting faster.
I can’t help but worry about my own future while reading and thinking about this… Am I, a software engineer, going to have a job in 2030? In 2025? Should I be learning a trade right now, in preparation? Will a trade be a good job when every now-redundant white collar worker turns to the trade as well?
and then my thoughts spiral towards all of humanity. Society in general, will our governments adapt fast enough, will ….
How do I stop this kind of thinking? It doesn’t feel productive and seems to just make me worried, with seemingly no upside. I’ve mostly always been optimistic about the future so this feels very weird.
ChatGPT 3 and 3.5 are shit at writing code. A couple of days ago I gave them another shot, I thought "I have the perfect task for this". Had to use an API, it's a well documented API from a OS, and the use I wanted to do was the most straightforward use possible. Just had to be done in Go instead of C (which is how people usually use it). I could probably go on google and easily find the function I wanted to write, verbatim, in C so all chatgpt had to do is translate it in Go. Couldn't do it. Literally every line was wrong. Also it crashed.
I'm not going to pay 20 dollars to see if GPT-4 works better, but, the way I see it, it can go one of two ways. Either this approach doesn't pan out, and nothing changes for us. Or it does pan out, in that case it will have been trained on code we wrote: you and I. We're going to be the last generation to get a free ride on the immortality train. Think about it, isn't that cool? If this were the case you should pity the zoomers who come after us and will have to die like mere mortals.
As for the job, whatever, if AI can replace programmers it can replace most other knowledge workers too. We're all on the same boat, misery likes company.
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One thing I would bear in mind is that people have been predicting that programming would be a dead job for a long time now. When I was a teenager (circa the turn of the century), I had adults tell me that there was no future in programming and I should learn computer repair instead. Needless to say, programming is still quite lucrative and computer repair is not.
The reality is that we just don't know what will happen. Neither you, nor me, nor anyone. Your fears may come to pass, but then again they may not. Whenever you feel anxious I would just remember that people have made predictions like yours before and been dead wrong. As far as what to do on a practical basis, it's the same as it ever has been. Keep your skills current because the industry constantly changes. Be ready to adapt to new trends and become good at those things. We don't work in a business where you will retire doing the same exact job as you are doing today, but that has been the case for a long time.
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First off, I'm well aware of the perils of the availability heuristic.That said, I have been hearing convincing-sounding warnings of imminent disaster my whole life. Is this your first panic of this kind? Some doomer warnings I still believe are, at their kernel, true. But the future doesn't arrive as quickly as you think.
And let's say I'm wrong and the future does arrive quick, singularity style. This is a future you can't prepare for. With climate change or peak resources, you could at least take up homesteading and buy guns and land in Canada. Afraid of nuclear war? Build a fallout shelter. Etc etc.
There is nothing you can do to prepare for singularity even if the doomer warnings you're hearing are true. If people with coding jobs are in big trouble everyone's in big trouble. Let be.
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You’re a software engineer, but computers will soon know how to program each other. Will they ever be able to fix each other? I don’t see the roles of computer technician and sysadmin going away soon, so I’d direct your continuing education toward the fixing side of your industry.
As for the bigger questions, I advise you to read Ecclesiastes
and the Sermon on the Mount.
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Physical activity always helps me, going on a walk, listening to music, etc. Meditation seems to help a lot of people. Avoid substances (esp. pot can increase anxiety) and try to get a good night of sleep every night.
If not try talking to friends and therapy? I hate to give the run of the mill stuff you’ve probably heard of, but there’s a reason it’s standard.
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