And Farms Grew Larger and Owners Fewer

As I wrap up my college education and prepare to begin the rest of my life, I have to consider, what will I do? I have a great opportunity lined up as a software engineer, but if I am to believe the likes of Huang (Nvidia) or Altman (OpenAI) then my days as a software engineer are limited, and it is inevitable that I should be replaced by something a lot more computerized and a lot less cool.

I’m not sure I agree, but to set the stage and perpetuate a little hysteria I’d like to share a post made by a student in an online (in-class) forum at my school which I’ve slightly abbreviated and anonymized:

Is it the end?

Everyone, Cursor AI is dropped. Are we all doomed? As a (wannabe) startup founder, I was stressing about hiring systems, security, software, pen testing, and AI engineers. But after trying out and diving into Cursor, it … it just … it just … do all of those?

Professor Foo, do you have advice for us moving forward, especially on navigating our career and achievements? Should we try to become an even better Software Engineer and know our new tools, should we pursue deeper topics in Computer Science and research, should we focus on doing sustainable businesses, or applications of technology in solving prominent issues in other interdisciplinary fields, etc.?

What I am trying to get at is how do we reconcile our Computer Science degree with the ever-changing landscape of business and economy, and be successful? How do we find ourselves and what we are truly good at? What are the core things/skills/aspects that will always be needed in the future?

Now, I am inclined to believe that this student is wrong. That being said, he may be on the right track with the part about finding ourselves… /s

Up ahead they’s a thousan’ lives we might live, but when it comes it’ll on’y be one.

*The Grapes of Wrath *is a novel about upheaval. A family living on a farm is uprooted when technology (the tractor) makes them unnecessary and they journey west to California with hope of finding work, stability, and a new life.

I think that this narrative is representative of, not AI, but of technological evolution. Engineers are around to make the world more efficient, and sometimes the efficiency gains are such that we just don’t need as many people doing some job anymore. This is almost unequivocally a net benefit for society, but it doesn’t change the fact that one day you might wake up in your farmhouse to the sound of tractors.

But hold on a minute, we still have farmers.

I think there’s two main types of innovations: those that compliment and those that replace. An example of a replacement is something like streaming services. Why would you drive to collect a physical disk to play a movie when you can just click play on your TV? The tractor is a compliment. One farmer can manage immensely more acreage than they ever could before the tractor. That being said, if you gave me a tractor (and didn’t let me research anything) I’d probably be worse off than the farmer with a horse and plow. In other words, it is the farmers who adapted quickly who succeeded and became, not “tractor drivers”, but more efficient farmers.

I suspect that AI is a lot more like the tractor than the smartphone. It will surely replace *a lot *of people in *a lot *of fields. But I believe that those who adapt fast enough will find themselves the owner of a large farm in no time. In the context of software engineering this will probably mean that you, as a human, will still need to research, learn, and understand what is good code or bad code. I think most of the intelligence of a good system should probably not be artificial.

That being said, what do I plan to do? I love programming, and my plan right now is to keep doing that. Ideally, by the time the AIs start taking over I’ll be ready to begin my sailboat circumnavigation where I will be able to live a life beyond inference and context windows.

Fear the time when the bombs stop falling while the bombers live—for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died. And fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live—for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken. And this you can know—fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.