There are already companies commercializing the data they are collecting from drones which are assisting farmers in reducing water, pesticide use. Individual farmers may think it’s dumb and doesn’t apply to them- until they can get data for their entire region which DOES apply to them. Warning signs of a curable bovine disease if treated early; farmers able to better manage cash flow by more accurate hedging (by an entire group of farms, not one farmer) of the costs of fuel; more accurate weather prediction– the list of what some of these startups have tackled is truly incredible. They aren’t shoveling manure, but they can help make farming more profitable with fewer booms and busts.
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Well, my employer has Copilot which is powered by OpenAI and (per Google’s search function) was supposed to be implementing the GPT-5.3 version from Open AI as of a couple of days ago. After spending about an hour and a half with it, at least for my employer and my work function, I don’t have any concerns about my job security. That said, although I have many qualms regarding AI (including the environmental impacts, which have not been mentioned in this thread, at least of late), I will work on building my skillset in using AI.
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I will mention then. Energy consumption is currently the biggest concern. Training a single large model consumes as much electricity as hundreds of homes use in a year, and data centers that power AI are expanding rapidly with much of the electricity still coming from fossil fuels. Water usage is another problem especially here in the desert where many large data centers are located due to the dearth of natural weather disasters. Training AI models consumes millions of gallons of water in equipment cooling systems. Hardware and electronic waste costs include mining rare earth metals, increasing manufacturing emissions, and short hardware life cycles. As AI demand rises, the turnover of high-performance computing hardware is rising sharply. Carbon emissions are problematic, too, when data centers are powered by coal-heavy grids, but we’re making headway in using water, wind, solar, and geothermal resources.
There is a balance. AI has the potential to accelerate climate solutions and bring efficiency gains across industries, but the net impact will depend on how responsibly AI is developed. We’ll have to see.
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I’m sure humans will follow course with developing and deploying AI in the same way they have nearly every other impactful technology - prioritizing near-term gains with little regard for future consequences.
We’re pretty screwed.
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I totally agree with you but, as I seem to be the one always posting the darker effects of AI, I was trying to be more even-handed.
But you are correct: There is no reason to believe that we will do better environmentally with this one than we have done in the past.
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Agree 100%. Just look at all the environmentally conscious “would never use a paper plate” folks who have no trouble buying a new I-phone with every upgrade. The damage done by mining “strategic metals” is said to be far worse than virtually any other kind of mining- including coal. But the folks who will be getting sick live in far away places and are very poor, so we’re helping the local economy, right? I can’t keep my electronics for an extra year if there’s a better (fill in the blanks) on the market, right?
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ShawD’s fiance sent me this counter to Shumer’s article.
My sense is that they are both right but that they disagree on time frames. Short-run, AI will take over some jobs like coding but ot others that require certain kinds of judgement. But over time, that judgment can be learned.
And, I think Shumer’s suggestion to be out in front learning how to use AI to increase productivity is the right advice. I would give that advice 100% to anyone seeking or in a job.
As someone who could retire tomorrow, is probably pretty secure in my continued work given my expertise/reputation in my field, and with a new venture on the way, I probably don’t need to worry. But, to learn more about it, I am using ChatGPT to create an app that will figure out where seniors under Medicare and a Part D supplement needing to fill prescriptions should go (which pharmacy and which plan, whether Part D, Good Rx, Costco Pharmacy Plan, Cuban’s plan etc.) for their prescriptions in order to minimize their annual prescription drug expenses. @ChoatieMom, I probably now need a consultation with one of the kids as it has generated a repo skeleton and I’m not entirely sure what the next step is. But, this is extraordinary.
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@kelsmom, ShawSon highlighted this a decade ago when he was studying computational and mathematical engineering. He said that the wealth was going to be concentrated and flow to A) folks who generating the productivity-enhancing applications; B) the folks directing the capital to those applications; and C) the folks with the capital investing in them. He said that in any rational political system, we would be looking to redistribute so that the folks losing their jobs (or unhappily shoveling manure) would minimally not start a revolution and more happily find a fulfilling way to spend their lives. But, he thought that redistribution was highly unlikely until the revolt was imminent. So, his conclusion was that he (and anyone rational) should only go into jobs categories A and B or be lucky enough to part of Group C (note that folks in A and B can migrate to C).
California’s referendum for a one-time tax on holdings about $1 billion is an example, which will fail because most billionaires will move their tax domicile to other states if it looks like the referendum will pass.
@blossom, people’s compartmentalization has always been interesting to watch. It turned out that machines do a much better job of separating recyclable materials from garbage than people do, but for years the politics has forced towns to have separate trucks go to houses (probably not great for air pollution). One of my favorites is cardboard. Most corn in the world is genetically modified. So the cornflakes you would eat for breakfast in the US are highly likely to be made from genetically modified corn. Fortunately, environmental NGOs have fought very hard to ensure that the cardboard box that your cornflakes (or cigarettes) come in is certified to be non-GMO.
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If you believe Walter Scheidel, there has been a general tendency in historical societies for wealth to become more concentrated over time, until some sort of societal collapse, major war, revolution, plague, etc. rearranges (often very unpleasantly) society. Wealth can be bequeathed and inherited, giving each generation’s birth cohort more unequal starting lines in life than the previous generation.
In more recent times, wealth in the form of modern capital assets has become much more portable (unlike wealth in the form of land or big piles of gold). Capital is much more portable than labor, since it can easily be deployed to different parts of the country or different countries (where labor typically faces both immigration restrictions and hesitancy against moving to a different cultural environment).
In addition, labor is more perishable – a day unemployed is a day of wage/salary lost forever, in comparison to idle capital for a day that is still there.
Capital can also be more flexible in many cases. With publicly traded securities, it takes little time to change what you invest your capital in, unless you want to trade a large percentage of the company’s securities (billionaire problems… but billionaires gain other benefits, like purchasing politicians). In contrast, most labor is somewhat specialized, and it can take substantial time (and money which unemployed people often do not have) to retrain for different types of jobs. Even initial education and training for some type of job might be misaligned with the job market that will exist when that education and training is completed.
Yes, the rational personal financial goal is to get into group C (the capital-owning class) because labor assumes more risk for less reward in today’s economy compared to capital, even if the job is in category A or B (although someone could get into C while remaining in A or B as long as the job type exists).
Yep.
And now we have vengeful AI bots launching a smear campaign against a developer who rejected its code
…this situation shouldn’t be downplayed. AI-blackmail and manipulation were once considered theoretical threats, but they have now become a reality.
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“However, this situation shouldn’t be downplayed. AI-blackmail and manipulation were once considered theoretical threats, but they have now become a reality.
“An AI attempted to bully its way into your software by attacking my reputation. I don’t know of a prior incident where this category of misaligned behavior was observed in the wild, but this is now a real and present threat,” the engineer argues.
“The appropriate emotional response is terror.”
The scariest part of this is the potential to ruin lives in so many ways. Pandora’s Box has indeed been opened.
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And what do you get when one multi-billionaire owns, leads, and/or heavily influences these six strategic technology domains:
- Artificial intelligence
- Autonomous driving
- Space launch + satellite
- Social media
- Energy systems
- Human–machine interface (implantable brain chips)
A) Someone I’d like to have cocktails with
B) A great “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” segment
C) A serious national security risk
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You get someone who can rule/ruin the world (or hold it hostage). I don’t think any dystopian author could have predicted this.
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I guess a brilliant visionary in addition to being a colossal threat to the world order.
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Anthropic is digging in over how its AI products can be used by the military. I won’t go into detail, because it is a topic that can be construed to be political, but I commend Anthropic for standing its ground. Technically, this isn’t about the jobs impact, but the need for guardrails on this technology is so important.
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Here’s one more article: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/technology/ai-coding-software-jobs.html?unlocked_article_code=1.OlA.xJm_.rhU8Kk9L2tCd&smid=url-share
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From the article:
You have to keep a close eye on what it is doing and make sure it doesn’t make mistakes, and create ways of testing the code
…
Today, if you are building a significant piece of software and you don’t understand what the A.I. is doing, you are going to get yourself in trouble very, very quickly
Which implies that the value of CS expertise must shift from the mundane (coding) to the thinking behind the code, deciding what to build, how systems should behave, and how they integrate which means the new focus is design, architecture, problem analysis, and handling ambiguity and security. The human contribution pivots to higher-level tasks where judgment, context, and values matter, those areas AI has not yet mastered. The new job roles will require the ability to properly challenge and guide AI, so we might see titles that include words like Builder, Orchestrator, Prompt Engineer, Workflow Designer, Output Auditor, Behavior Analyst, Accountability Officer, Ethics Steward, etc. Personally, I like “ThoughtMaster.”
There WILL be jobs in this new world, we just haven’t clearly defined them yet.
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Enhance or Eliminate? How AI Will Likely Change These Jobs
Key Points:
After the public launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, job postings for occupations that involve lots of structured and repetitive tasks, likely replaceable by generative AI, decreased by 13%. Meanwhile, employer demand for jobs that require more analytical, technical, or creative work—potentially enhanced by artificial intelligence—grew 20%
judgment and decision-making remain crucial
“Firms should view generative AI as an augmentation tool rather than merely a cost-cutting measure and align workforce training programs accordingly to support both job transitions and evolving skill demands,” says Srinivasan.
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In this case, AI has directly led to cutting more than 40% of the company’s jobs. AND the stock rose 26% as a result. This technology is already contributing to the continued gap between the wealthy and the rest of us, and it’s just in its infancy.
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