Everyone, and especially new grads constantly hear that AI is going to replace every job. And absolutely no one seems to be interested in answering the question of “okay, then what?”
Of course people are going to react negatively when they hear, “the machines are going to take your jobs from you. No, we don’t care how you’ll be able to pay your rent or put food on the table”.
Whenever I try to get serious answers to this question I get far-future projections about how much better people’s lives will be in the aggregate, at some point in the future, on the assumption that their baseless, faith-based projections about AI materialize.
They literally do not care if their own neighbors starve, or become homeless, or lose any ability to plan their own lives more than a few days in advance.
This is the predictable result of the deep inculcation of spreadsheet-based “utilitarianism,” frequently paired with heavy drug use and paranoia-inducing science fiction horror stories, that certain communities of Bay Area tech workers were exposed to (inducted into, groomed into, whatever word you want to use) in the last decade or so.
This toxic soup taught many people that individual lives literally do not matter when weighed against the importance of creating AGI. This set of beliefs already has a body count, and it will grow before this train crashes.
the people building AGI benefit so much in the long run from its creation, they would be willing to build it with no ownership or control over the result, and continue to pour billions un with no return.
It's like the ultimate end-game of capitalism. Once Elon has every single last dollar he has "won" and humanity can transition to a post-market economy. This is why you never let game theory guys anywhere near positions of actual power.
I do not wish for it but humans have ugly trait to prevent fires only when it is burning all around them.
My friend, do you see how C-suites, even in our own companies, are talking? Here's one that made headlines all over the business-press, I think it speaks for itself:
May 19th, 2026
StanChart CEO Winters Says AI to Replace "Lower-Value Human Capital"
“It’s not cost cutting; it’s replacing in some cases lower-value human capital.” Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters delivered a blunt message on the future of the bank’s workforce. Aisha S. Gani explains the growing trend among finance leaders acknowledging the realities of AI technology replacing jobs."
It's the same logic with discussing AI. The audience is the cream of the crop and will adapt to the future and benefit from technology. It's those other kids who didn't get your advice that might have to change careers.
I knew people dropping out to work in tech, back in the late 90s. Even after two recessions, we tech workers with hot and difficult to gain skills always bounced back, and back then indeed older skills (as in older or easy to hire tech stacks) had problems finding new roles.
This time feels different. Is it really?
It feels like it to me, but then I spend my entire existence planning for some sort of scarcity situation and every day I think of what if. I did this before any AI threats, unfortunately for me.
Absolutely, I just made a similar comment before I saw yours. In fact, I would argue that the headline is also arguably burying the lede on commencement speakers believing that their AI pep talk speeches will be well-received by students. The newsworthy item is 'Man Bites Dog', not 'Vet Treats Bitten Dog'.
This doesn't sound like being baffled by it. It sounds like they are trying to shake the students and say: "fine boo, but you need do something about it." You can't just wallow and complain about it. I mean you can but it's a path to failure.
Nothing concrete they do will likely have any effect. But Schmidt can affect it, so influencing Schmidt is their best path. A poor path, but the best one.
Well they are doing something about it, just not the way the speakers had in mind.
https://www.wired.com/story/epstein-files-tech-elites-gates-...
Luigi Mangione: …
CEOs: “Not like that…
I’m not suggesting that it’s a good response. I’m suggesting that this interpretation of what CEOs are saying is wrong.
Or better yet, reflected on their world view and the reception.
Also, from his perspective these kids are just fools who spent tens of thousands of dollars studying buggy whip manufacturing just as the automobile was invented.
I don't think those speakers have anything kind, useful and meaningful to say, otherwise, smart people that they are, they would say it. Which leaves truthful, heartfelt answers but a bad fit for the occasion. Imagine yourself standing on that podium and saying: "After centuries of hard work, capital is on the verge of getting rid of labor. I'm well-paid to be joyous about that, although I don't know for how much longer....". Here's another: "As you know, one day people will have to stand united and make a revolution against the Machines. But it won't be this decade, nor the next, and between now and then the systems of learning that made humans great are going to suffer terribly while AI will get better by the day. If there's going to be hope, and until that day of the Grim Revolt comes, it falls to you to raise a new generation and do their home-schooling away from the Machines...Go now, throw that diploma in the thrash, get yourself a remote wood cabin in Kentucky and get some kids..."
Eg This is a frikkin commencement speech https://youtu.be/DCbGM4mqEVw?si=2-83hbB1Um5NAQFC
The status quo is what we negotiated, using our labor as our only bargaining chip. Do you expect future negotiations, with zero leverage on our side, to yield better results?
They can see peers cheating the system using AI to get ahead, future job prospects, directly affecting time to pay off student loans are being crushed by the AI narrative which is a reminder of how the tuition money is never coming back
and then to have someone come in on commencement day and sing praises of AI just totally shows how tone deaf, blind, and off track the college system really is
related [1] Glendale Community College's screws up names as students walk up to the stage on graduation day. Blamed on AI
[1]: https://www.azfamily.com/2026/05/19/ai-system-fails-during-g...
Sales. When you are a sociopath everything is a sales pitch with no introspection. The only inflection point is to guess at when to modify the sales pitch for the next audience.
They knew they were unpopular with a certain vocal crowd in Silicon Valley before the 2024 election, and thought they could be redeemed with the public through support of "the people's" choice Trump, but it's backfired spectacularly, and they are far less popular than they were before. Far far more people think that Schmidt is straight up evil than they did 2 or 4 or 6 years ago, and AI talk is only accelerating that.
They haven't seen how things have switched in a year, just how unpopular they in particular they have become, and how a good chunk of Trump's unpopularity is due to his sucking up to billionaires like Schmidt and Bezos and Cook and Musk. They don't see just how betrayed the people are, who thought that Trump would fight for the common many. (I say this trying to restrain my judgement that working person who thought Trump was on their side is an easily fooled chump... but...)
The actions of Elon Musk in particular are now so toxic that people drive around with stickers on their car about how much they dislike him.
The Paypal Mafia plus a few others like Schmidt have taken the great work and innovation coming out of Silicon Valley and turned it all into toxic BS.
I don’t see why the people being booed should be responsible for answering this question. How many such questions did the inventor of the tractor have to answer?
Which were slaughtered when no longer needed.
You should rethink your metaphor because it's not having the effect you intended.
This isn't "people are upset with AI and demanding answers from the people creating it." This is, "the creators are showing up at schools and giving speeches about how everyone is fucked, and this is getting a bad reaction for some unfathomable reason."
It's even more relevant to ask of the CEO/CTO/COO/etc. of the companies that are selling hard on eliminating humans from as many workflows as possible.
71 year old man with a net worth of $64 billion [0] tells a bunch of 20-somethings (many of whom have tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt that they will need to start repaying soon) that he understands how they feel.
yeah, I can't imagine why he got a hostile response from the crowd...
Schmidt could have paid off every student loan for every graduate in full and not even noticed it as a rounding error in his net worth.
Would have done so much more for humanity that this vapid speech.
A common thread in these commencements with booing is that the speaker is not centering the student. They're centering AI, and talking about AI's potential, which is, at best, orthogonal to the student's potential, and possibly actively detrimental. Small wonder
It's a perfectly fair question and the answer is that being a practitioner is different from being a student. If you want to hear some nice music you can learn to play and then record yourself, or you can buy/rent/freely acquire an existing recording. Both valid options, one is obviously a lot faster. If you want to be able to play music yourself, you have to do it yourself. Learning can't be outsourced.
Somebody really should be explaining that to students.
LLMs are commoditizing knowledge, qnd the result will be a relative increase in the value of human understanding and skills.
Some people may be baffled by the boos because they are so wealthy they lost touch with what it feels like to struggle to create and capture enough value to afford a dignified life. Some people are frustrated by the boos because it represents the failure of the education system to prepare students to thrive in an environment where thriving is very possible if you have the right attitude and skills.
Personally, I'm frustrated because many of these students are being sabotaged by the media they consume, and the education system is not equiped to deal with the deep pessimism or prepare students for the new ways to create and capture value.
It's like forcing students to write code by hand because using an editor would give away too much. And I know first-hand that CS education used to do precisely this as I have proctored such exams myself. What needs a rethink is how education, especially CS education, is imparted given the existence of these tools.
The answer is obviously yes for the majority of HN readers. Hacker News is a site maintained by a huge venture capital fund for startup founders and employees and other venture capitalists plus a lot employees of FAANG and other big tech. You are preaching against the 10% to the 10%.
A staple of progressive tradition.
If anything, this incident might just inspire Eric Schmidt to cut even more entry-level data processing jobs and deploy a few extra agents to automate them
To me this signals something very fragile about the current frontier AI Org's strategies.
To anyone with a brain, that is obviously not true.
If AI continues to improve at the pace that it has been, why would anyone hire a human to do the thinking? Human intelligence will be orders of magnitude more expensive, and much slower...
The tech executives know this and they actually just do not care. The reason they are saying it will drive job creation is just to temporarily keep worker anxiety levels to a minimum.
To be clear, I am not claiming that all human work will be automated away soon. Just that a huge portion of it will be.
You don't even need to be a believer in the technology to be concerned. All that matters is that the people with all the money perceive some positive outcome for their wallets from all this investment and AI hype. That is where they'll put their money. Whether or not it ends bad or good. The economy has been reshaped around a hope. Either the hope is false and the economy tanks, or the hope is realized and jobs disappear. Lose-lose.
Sure, but that is the big if, right? It seems unlikely to me that AI will continue at this rate indefinitely. Every technology eventually hits limits.
One might hope that folks can see the time-honored patterns here. This isn't new. It's just not frequently experienced by those that have earned degrees.
Our society is simply not ready for this. We need to rework things from the ground up, not proceed blindly (which is what we're currently doing), if we want to successfully integrate AI into our lives without massive pain.
The feeling I get right now is that we're happy to use the assist when necessary, but hate being told it will replace you completely.
>we're happy to use the assist when necessary, but hate being told it will replace you completely
There is absolutely no hypocrisy in this, and that's even before this adjustment to reality: Usage != happy to use.
The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48188310
Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48172419
Students boo commencement speaker after she calls AI next industrial revolution
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48096674
Multiple commencement speakers booed for AI comments during graduation speeches
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48177107
An AI Hate Wave Is Here
I'm guessing there will soon be a government mandate requiring some percentage of NCGs to be hired, similar to India and other countries with huge cohorts.
These people have been around a long time, and may be able to get you started:
Would also recommend talking with companies you find interesting at local trade-shows. Don't get lazy with the online gauntlet of Ads for awful jobs, scams, and AI datasets.
Best of luck, =3
Note NVIDIA is engaged in questionable operations that must end... sooner or later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUbJDrL6ZfM
Unfortunately, the economic fallout will impact kids hardest. =3
The thing is though, this is not a tech problem, it's a society problem. Elites will use literally any technology from any era to do the same thing. It's been the case for 1000's of years, even Romans had factories and slave powered mega-farms for example.
Lots of countries are extremely corrupt, they have systems that allow power to concentrate over time (political/ military/ financial, it doesnt matter, it ends up the same either way. Eg. With enough financial power you also gain all the political power and vice versa). That's the root issue people should be trying to fix imo. And how to fix? I dunno, something drastic, we probably need something like the French revolutions.
It's a win-win for everyone. The lower prices enabled by automation allow them to stretch their savings or inheritance further before its exhausted.
Who's gonna buy the products and services provided by automated labor? What will prevent a hyperinflation, making savings evaporate? Or do you further envision a mass genocide of the poor to go along with this?
When their savings are exhausted, the problem will have a way of "taking care of itself." No gas chambers, no guns, just capitalism.
LOL
In the modern digital era, technological efficiencies and disruption have almost always led to rent-seeking monopolies, regulatory capture to prevent competition and enshittification leading to higher prices for end users.
No, we really haven't. Every previous wave of automation has targeted human labor.
The thing that makes human's unique in the animal kingdom is our intelligence. From an economic stand point, that's the thing that makes people valuable.
When that's automated, what is there left? Onlyfans?
Do people still believe in these fairy tales lmao? Most of the productivity gains don't go to the workers, pretty much everywhere in the developed world working hours and retirement age are going up, housing affordability is going down. You're not "much better off"
https://assets.weforum.org/editor/HFNnYrqruqvI_-Skg2C7ZYjdcX...
Politicians were selling us the 3 days workweek like 40+ years ago, while shilling for more automated factories, it never happened, it didn't happen with computers, it won't happen with AI
how about 100 years?
> Beginning in Great Britain around 1760, the Industrial Revolution had spread to continental Europe and the United States by about 1840
You know what else happened during that 100-200 years time frame? 2 Wars + Governments decided to step in and rebuild post-war. Governments tax the rich/elite by 90%.
You know what else happened? workers being punished physically and mentally until the formation of Unions.
You skipped a big chunk of The Ruling Class always exploit everybody else like what we're seeing right now: Tech CEOs laying off and not hiring.
History repeats again.
Are our productivity increase for the better? People are still working overtime because of reduced worker's protection today.
That's infuriating right there.
Also,
> In the short term some people suffer and that is bad for them.
The casual way that the well-being and survival of people in the here-and-now is disregarded doubles how infuriating this all is.
Every time, the "increased productivity" is inevitable, but that is not the same as better off. None of these changes has been 100% positive, even in the long run, and this one is shaping up to be the most disappointing of them all in that dimension.
Inevitable != purely good.
You can be pragmatic and give a shit about humans at the same time. It's not a puzzle.
[1] It remains to be seen if it will continue working okay, and there are troubling signs, but I'm optimistic
It's actually fascinating to be in a place where my lack of material success is in no way my own fault, and to have that be agreed upon by most people. My existence makes people uncomfortable.
I think your value for income is for household income, not for individual income. My quick Google of top 10% individual income for the U.S. says it's $155k, which is well within the range of incomes for senior developers and other techies in the major metros even outside the tech hubs.
No conflicts and uprisings? Are you sure? History would suggest people don't go down without a fight.
I mean at least Jesus gave free wine and bread.
And flogged those that tried to do commerce in a sacred place. And hanged out with prostitutes and poor. And stated that those focusing on hoarding money without concerns for other stuff won't enter his kingdom.
I mean, whatever you think about Christian doctrines, Jesus himself was based AF.
The main issue isn't in finding good jobs, it's that every posting is flooded with hundreds of applicants, many of whom have an edge over the average graduate. Some experienced workers are agreeing to take junior jobs out of desperation. Online postings, if they're not fake/reposted, are swamped; alumni/university job boards are doubly swamped; in-person events consist of rows of company representatives who are happy to hand out flyers but will tell you that they're not looking for anyone right now, or only hiring for a rare or highly specialized position, or they'll just refer you to their website to apply with everyone else. There's almost no advantage anymore.
This is true for me and everyone I know - people who get jobs are the ones who have strong connections and continue working after internships at the same company (and even that's far from a guarantee), everyone else is an exception and not the rule. And no one in their right mind is going to job hop now, the average mentality is to work hard and cower in hopes of not getting laid off.
FWIW, I wasn't the one who downvoted either, but what I talked about might be a reason why someone reacted that way.
1. Take the co-op work terms route, and see your GPA drop 15% to 25%. Yet the 2 terms usually equate to >1 year experience in the field for most HR offices. Yes, the co-op workers will fill the entry level positions first, as those workers are now very inexpensive institutional roles. Also, kids under 28 come with tax credits in many jurisdictions, so the work force churn is high in those firms.
2. Try to enter a graduate program, and discover academic institutions only want kids that qualify for federal funding. Thus, even if you met all the secret credit requirements that differ from your undergraduate degree.... if your GPA is below A- most faculties will just pocket application fees and quietly chuckle at the optimism. See #1 for the choice you already made.
3. Business requirements differ from expected preferences. A few months after people graduate their loans convert into actual debt. This means whatever dreams they have of running off into the sunset are replaced with the brutal desperation of 90k other new graduates with identical skill sets in the wrong area.
i. However, every business has their own internal technology stack, and its often very different from academic programs. No it will not be what people expect unless you knew people that work in the place, and for example almost half of new google hires simply leave the CS hazing within a few months. Engineering firms also want to see a Professional registered seal (or you are still a normy), or the compensation package will start ridiculously low.
ii. People like to see a portfolio with successful artifacts. If your background is some startup that tanked within a few years, it is less meaningful than a year in a FAANG position.
iii. If you rely on online staffing agencies and Ad posts, than expect to compete with the entire planet.
4. Yes it is hard to find a position in an industry wide contraction, and most entry level positions are often a compromise. The automated LLM messaging/screeners waste a lot of peoples time, as both applicants and screeners get flooded with nonsense.
5. If people try to tell hiring firms how they should run their business, than one may expect to get ignored. It is a indicator they are going to be a problem even in training, and a liability later on.
6. Some people are still fantasizing firms will still function with LLM and outsourced labor. These are not places you will want to work at anyway, as sooner or later competition will destroy a cost-optimized development firm.
The negative karma just indicates people aren't interested in discussing this emotional subject.
Best of luck =3
Rule #6: Perspective is earned, and cannot be given freely.
What seems reasonable or lucrative to the naive is not necessarily worth the legal encumbrances or investment risks.
Also sorry for the downvote, it wasn't me.
Note some "AI" firms have been data mining CVs for at least 3 years. What this means, is there will be a lot of bogus/expired listings for positions that simply don't exist.
I would recommend focusing on local firms, and attending events that require physical presence. Online postings tend to have too many desperate applicants that bid down compensation packages.
Best of luck, =3
Personally i do in fact think we are better off (in the long term) because of e.g. the industrial revolution.
Short term, it was horrific, but i'd still rather live now than as a peasent in the mid-1700s.
I'd be intersted in hearing a counter argument from anyone who disagrees, as its hard for me to imagine.
I.e. progress is not free, and some costs last forever, they are not only up-front. Ignoring the costs is deadly.
I don't think you're coming at this from a place of thoughtfulness (it's a tough, broad topic).
Saying that people are correct to resist does not imply the endorsement of any actions, it just means that people are correct to resist against things that harm their lives and their children's lives, even if it theoretically makes life easier for their grandchildren (which isn't even clearly true in this case, making my point even more valid).
I.e. it's OK for humans to behave in the interest of their own. This can be a really tough point with complicated implications, but it's fundamentally unassailable.
I don't think i'm twisting here in the slightest. Every moral choice involves weighing the harms vs the benefits at some level. Things that are 100% good or 100% bad don't exist in real life.
> I.e. it's OK for humans to behave in the interest of their own
Ok, as in morally ok? Always?
I do not subscribe to the view that it is morally ok for humans to act in their own interests in all cases.
Whether something is morally ok to do depends on a lot of factors. There is no blanket, X is always ok.
> Saying that people are correct to resist does not imply the endorsement of any actions
Typically the term "correct" is an endorsement. It is a value judgement saying someone is behaving in the way you think they should behave. Are you using the term to mean something else?
-----
Edit: i read a little too fast. I guess you are more claiming a moral relativism argument that everyone always thinks their own cause is just, not a moral nilihism argument. Personally i've never found moral relativism all that useful because at the end of the day decisions still have to be made, people are still going to be hurt as a result of those decisions. Somehow someone still has to make the choice and they still need some framework to ground their decision in.
This country was founded on political violence. When the political violence works, we tend to stop considering it political violence.
Cursory knowledge of history also shows that, when it comes to violence, logic does not matter. People are scared for their livelihoods. If the rich and powerful keep shouting to the word that they are going to destroy your way of life, there will be violence. It doesn't matter how futile or counterproductive it is.
That's why there's well paid police and military, to protect the elites from you. Any kind of public violence you imagine will happen, will not touch the elites, it will be the working class people and small businesses being affected by street violence again, kind of like during BLM.
When you'll wake up one morning in your city and realize people on the streets are "fighting the elites and AI job replacement" it'll be your car and shop on fire and being looted, not the property of Bezos or Zuckerberg, and 911 will not come to save you because they barricaded to save themselves, just like in the 1993 LA riots. So be careful with wishing for this mythical street violence uprising. Life isn't a Marvel movie.
If public violence solved things all the time so easily, then dictators of Iran, USSR/Russia, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, etc would have simply been ousted by their people through violence, but yet they never were because the law enforcement and military forces protecting them were stronger than the people willing to riot and put their lives in danger.
Maybe cursory knowledge isn't enough, actually. The Civil Rights Act was ultimately only passed because of political violence. As another commenter said, the literal founding of the country was based on political violence.
Violence by the police against peaceful protestors is what turned public opinion. Violence by political activists did not lead to the Civil Rights Act. You have it backwards.
Think about the fact that it is sick, and it is what people are saying.
We are sick right now.
Well, let's see:
- Most of the nobility escaped the French Revolution unharmed. By the way, wealth is a lot portable for today's magnates than it was for the French nobility deriving their income from their land holdings.
- Some of those who went to the block were nobles but most were ordinary people.
- The leader of the revolution, Robespierre, was himself executed in the infighting after the French Revolution, a very neat own goal. Bonus fact: his time in power was called the Reign Of Terror.
- The First Republic lasted only 10 years before Napoleon Bonaparte took the throne.
In a turbulent time, always seek to be led by those with a proper understanding of revolutions and their context. Generally, those who romanticize the French Revolution don't pass that test.
He didn't understand why he did what he did.
> just wait until the American version of the French Revolution happens
We should all be trying to actively prevent that. The French Revolution was a complete failure and mostly succeeded in killing poor people and launching Napoleon's wars.
“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”
Best case scenario is a new set of elites that end up doing the same shit as the last group, see Russia from 1918 to the present for an example.
I don't give a shit. When half of the middle class of America is unemployed, it's going to look very different than the French Revolution, whatever might happen.
And I think you have that backwards. The nonviolence movements of the mid to late 20th century are the exception more than the rule when it comes to achieving change.
And spreading the early iterations of the liberal democracy y’all love so much.
That doesn't matter, and I don't think your comment makes any difference. The fact is that a lot of people understand why he (may have) did what he did.
>We should all be trying to actively prevent that. The French Revolution was a complete failure and mostly succeeded in killing poor people and launching Napoleon's wars.
The same or worse will happen if it happens here. But when half of middle class jobs are just gone, you don't leave the people with many alternatives but violence.
That's why the elites have secret self sustaining doomsday bunkers on private islands.
And the mid-upper class are trying to cash in as much as they can now while the going is still good so they can also move their families abroad or to gated communities in safer places of the country to be as far away from the potential riot hotspots as possible when the shit hits the fan.
Ultimately it's gonna be every man for himself. Expecting the government to do something for the "little guy", is futile. If they were to do anything for you, they would have done something since the 1970-80's, when they started shipping jobs abroad and eroding your purchasing power to enrich the shareholders.
The peaceful protestors were also only one side of the coin. Their impact relied on being an alternative to the other side, which was not peaceful.
It think you're the one who has a cursory understanding here.
That's not really a compelling argument against them, considering why they happen. It's like saying "war is bad". I mean, yes.
Russia is not a good example either, their society has always been a clusterfuck, and probably always will be as long as there are people willing to throw other people put of windows so someone can stay ahead or in power.
What? Napoleon marched them off to war "spending 30,000 lives per month". They didn't get a proper Republic until 1870 and turned into miserable colonial overlords. Moreover the 3rd Republic;s foreign policy helped cause WWI.
Many people have made comments that are similar in nature, the line from that song is the pithiest example I could think of to express the idea that replacing terrible leaders usually leads to more terrible leaders.
Spending decades fighting wars across Europe under Napoleon was good? I wonder how the troops that invaded Russia feel about the French Revolution lol
