Two students say AI will change jobs more than eliminate them, comparing it to how electricity reshaped work. They worry about lower-level programming and service roles, and warn that over-reliance on AI could damage critical thinking skills.
Hey, yo, excuse me. Can I ask you, do you think AI is going to kill us all or take our jobs?
The jobs.
The jobs.
I think it'll be used more as a tool. So we're going to evolve to have different jobs, but I don't think it's going to kill us.
Okay, wait, so you see it as a tool to co evolve together with it?
Yeah.
Oh, cool. Have you always been thinking about this way with any technology or AI?
Yeah, we keep evolving. Like our technology grows, so then we grow and we have new jobs. You know, coding didn't used to be a job when computers didn't exist.
That's true. And what do you all do?
We're students. Yeah.
What do y' all study?
I study biology. Biology, materials engineering.
Materials engineering?
Yeah.
Cool. I did chemical engineering back in college. Very cool. So what are you thinking of your job prospects in the future? Are you uncertain about that? Are you worried about that?
I think when I was picking it, I was considering like what AI would do to different.
Not gonna take a material science job.
No. And I also think material science has so much like range for what you can do.
There is, there is a lot of range, lots of different industries and bias take. But so chemical engineering and materials kind of overlapping.
Yeah, definitely.
So you'll just learn how to solve problems, become invaluable. Yeah, so sick. Okay, so what jobs do you think will be taken?
You said will be taken? Yeah, like, yeah, I think like maybe lower level. Well, lower level programming maybe. Because they're getting that programming.
Yeah, that's happening.
Yeah. And then like maybe service jobs.
Service jobs? Yeah. Like I think Taco Bell is trying to automate their drive thru or whatever. And then somebody came and hijacked and ordered 10,000 things because there was a bug. So there, I think there's something to work out. Okay, another quick question.
Yeah.
If you had to say one thing to Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg, what would you say?
That's a good question. I don't, I honestly, I don't know. I think people need more protection maybe. Yeah, probably.
But yeah, like guardrails so that we have a safer future. Yeah, got it. Okay, last question, doll. Want kids someday?
I have no idea.
Not sure. Okay. For the people, for the kids out there, like, I think about this a lot. Like there's actually studies that have come out that if you overly rely on AI, you literally decrease your critical reasoning skills. So I'm really worried. Like we've kind of seen that with social media and I think this Even newer generation in the birth of superintelligence, it might happen even deeper or at a faster rate. What are your thoughts on that?
I think that's true. I totally agree. But I think there's also the same argument, like when we moved from like, whatever, when we were farming to like here, we'd be like, oh, our kids aren't going to be as active, they're not going to be as resourceful. So you can make all these arguments and say that we're going to get stupider or we're going to lose all these things, but people don't realize that we've already, we've already evolved tools moving in these directions. So I think when people are like, oh, AI is going to steal our jobs, they're just not. This is just something we have to accept and evolve with. Like, with electricity. You know, people were so scared when electricity was first invented that they came out with like their candles and they're like, oh, they're going to kill us all. But I think we'll find a way to evolve with it.
Okay, so you both maintain a positive view of the future. It's just another problem for humanity to tackle. We've handled other problems before.
For now.
Yeah, yeah, I love it. Positive view of the future. Thank you so much. If you want to follow along, I'm Bill building in public open source startup focused on AI alignment so it doesn't kill us all. So look up the Robert Taugh. Take care. Have a great day. Those are great takes. Now it's two people that have said co evolve or we will evolve with it. And I think that's such a kind of macro scale perspective and I tend to lean that way myself. But I don't want to bias these conversations. Hopefully I'm not doing that too much. I'll be conscious of that. But that's cool. It's great to hear from students. And one of them even mentioned something interesting, which is I was thinking about AI taking jobs when I picked my major. Oh, we could stay here. Oh, yeah. So that was so interesting when she said, hey, I'm in material science and I picked this major and I was thinking about AI taking our jobs. So she was thinking about job security. And I imagine a lot of students are. It's a very uncertain time. I've even heard from Brian Johnson, who I've worked with. He's not sure what his kid should do. Right. Like, what do I study now? Like, computer science seems cooked. That was a previous interview. And so I think it's a very uncertain time for everybody and in particular for the generation that is in school now or about to go in school. And there's even a bigger question. Should you even be in school? Right? Like, could you just learn these things and not pay and have a giant debt, tuition debt. So interesting thoughts. I'll have to ask more students about that.
