Ask HN: What if no AIpocalypse, no AI bubble, what if it just keeps advancing?
What about the third possibility? What if GPT 3.5 -> Sonnet 3.5 -> Opus 4.5 -> Astra / Opus 5.5 just keeps going over the next few years? Based on my experience, that will eat all software and software-related meetings. Once lab researchers focus on fields other than software, they will eat those nearly as quickly.
This feels like the real contrarian position in 2026. What does the US economy, which is >70% service-based, look like in the next 3 to 5 years if this happens?
Does a couple labs having control of that percentage of the GDP make an economy? What if it happens too quickly? Is this the real reason as to why they are talking about "pacing the frontier" all of a sudden? Maybe due to the fact that the labs' own economists pointed out that collapsing your country's economy might not be a good idea?
What does unemployment look like in the next few years in this scenario, in the USA?
35 comments
[ 19.6 ms ] story [ 74.5 ms ] threadI think “AI bubble” gets framed as a technological question about AI capabilities and not a financial one. The bubble may deflate slowly, but if you eat all software or eat all other Field’s something is popping. Anthropic OpenAI and SpaceX are all valued partially as if they’ll be the only ones to succeed.
Software engineering is a job. Writing code is a task. The task isn't the job.
Billions of people are going to become impoverished and your reaction is to insult someone for grieving?
What do you think is the purpose of life? Is this how you’ll react as one by one the souls of the ones you love most go dark?
[1] https://arxiv.org/html/2610.08144v1
So, this is an interesting question. If "taste" still gives advantage for now, what does that do to the rest of the boilerplate dev economny, which I am still sure was >90% of the entire thing?
Where does "taste" matter exactly? Only in the (what percentage) of the software development economy? I think to start, in the crappy side of off-shore, which is how big an industry? [2022 opinion]
So, if we can discount 90% of the boilerplate devs, and the 10% can just use tokens.... I mean is anyone denying that we are doing this right now, and killing the entire jr dev ladder???
Therefore, until taste can be programmed as a reward function in RL, or we have demonstrated that scaling RL improves model generalisation to such an extent that we don't need to create that reward function,
> Coding is solved, unless you are doing something truly novel.
Agreed. And even then, AI are sometimes better at humans at finding solutions to problems humans can't (e.g. Navier Stokes equations). But that still doesn't mean all tasks of the job are done (though obviously the definition of the job have and will continue changing as the tech improves).
> Technical ability != building something people want, will use on a daily basis, and provides economic value or enjoyment for humans. Models have been trained to be superhuman at the former, not the latter. Taste is what allows humans to do the latter.
I think finally learned of the role title and the audiobook to teach me about this. It will also be replaced, but one of the last "tech" roles to be automated. It's where the taste lives, right?
Role: Product Marketing Manager - with a tech background and agentic dev skills (although the last part is fleeting)
Book: Obviously Awesome
If anyone else would care to educate me about this here, please and thank you!
Would you mind to share something you built recently that is high quality to the point replacing part of these 90% that's just CRUD?
IMHO, the US is already cooked. Technological superiority is one of many ways to exert influence, and foreign initiatives are closing in, fast. There's nothing the US can do do stop it, unless it can find a way to stall China's advances in the area, and this is incredibly unlikely.
1. The CCP labs are behind the US labs. Without distillation via Bedrock and Azure, they are effed, but likely not forever. While there are many amazing Chinese researchers, the US labs are the true frontier. That is a big deal. Also, at some point, the CCP will certainly just stop releasing open models. Why wouldn't they? This is all a play.
2. The USA can absolutely do something, because at least for now, it is the most stable and technologically advance economy that attracts investment from all the sources.. like KSA, and China, and the EU, and everyone else who is interested in Alpha. Unfortunately, we are fighting our friends at the worst possible time. Fuck the Yarvinites.
Existing among machines more capable than humans in all domains is not a stable outcome. Either AI is significantly curtailed and restricted, or humans are consumed by the machines or disassembled for spare carbon.
What about p(economic-collapse)? aka p(boring)™
Now, where are the economists on the latter, as that is exactly where we are headed?
Using anthropogenic climate change as an analogy, people talk about: it's fake, or ~2C meh, or maybe Venus! I only recently started to phrase the problem as "what if we just burn all known fossil fuel reserves?" - that is the path we are on. Turns out, if we do that, it's >6C and utter catastrophe that we are waltzing into.
Communication on these topics is tough, and seems important. We need much better PR for these difficult problems.
It's not "AI bubble that will crash" but definitely some kind of deflation or correction that will damage a lot of investments. As always, common people will be most affected.
It's not "rogue ASI will kill us all" but advancements in cyberattacks, skill erosion, job loss that will damage us all. Again, common people will be most affected.
It's been 5-6 years with these things, how does anyone still believe that this will usher a new era of prosperity? Maybe for Sam and Dario.
The point my comment was trying to get at is there is zero evidence to support this phenomena ever changing.
I don't understand your framing, because this is far more apocalyptic than any old bubble burst, even if the bubble is a massive one. A crash due to a bubble causes a temporary setback and readjustment that slowly rebounds over time. Fully displacing even 20% of the workforce would likely cause a societal implosion on a never before seen scale. Now imagine how bad it would be if it's 30, 40 or 50% of the workforce. Full automation is not temporary, it would remove these jobs for good. There is no rebound to be had, and only a mass restructuring of society that we all know is not likely to happen would save us from near-total collapse. I don't think AI labs have much of a reason to pace themselves to prevent this, because they're the ones who will come out on top in that poorer, more desperate, more divided hypothetical future.
I’m not sure how it turns out for the software engineering space this time, though. Maybe people will be benefitted by cheaper and more capable softwares?