General Discussion

As a software developer, I've been keeping an eye on this stuff since it started and I've seen the massive leaps in capabilities. I imagine it might put me out of work some day... not tomorrow, probably not a year from now, but eventually, they may not need me anymore.

So its certainly not a "dead end". 3 years ago, the image generation tech couldn't get the number of fingers right. Fast forward to now, not only does it get the fingers right, it can get almost every aspect of a person's physical likeness just about 100% correct.

On the other side of that, you have software development, which is what I do, as I said. Trying to "vibe code" an entire software system using ChatGPT or whatever, its not very good... the architecture is bad and there are a good deal of errors.

But you can take that code and hand it to someone like me and I can clean it up and make it good and it happens a lot faster than if I were to do the whole thing myself.

Eventually they WILL get it to where the "handing it to someone like me" part isn't needed. And there will be 3rd party tools that can clean up the "rough draft". There may always be a need for a little human guidance and intervention but it will become less and less over time.

I have no other marketable skills, this is my career, been doing it for over 25 years. GenAI is here to stay, whether I like it or not, whether you like it or not. (and I don't like it, but I'm not going to lie to myself about it). The only thing we could hope for is for new laws that intervene before its too late, but we don't tend to do that in the US these days. My employer has promised us that they will never replace us with automation and I trust them on that. But I can't guarantee this job lasts me another 20ish years to get me through to retirement.