The article title is click bait here is the full article:
Wondering what your career looks like in our increasingly uncertain, AI-powered future? According to Palantir CEO Alex Karp, it’s going to involve less of the comfortable office work to which most people aspire, a more old fashioned grunt work with your hands.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum yesterday, Karp insisted that the future of work is vocational — not just for those already in manufacturing and the skilled trades, but for the majority of humanity.
In the age of AI, Karp told attendees at a forum, a strong formal education in any of the humanities will soon spell certain doom.
“You went to an elite school, and you studied philosophy; hopefully you have some other skill,” he warned, adding that AI “will destroy humanities jobs.”
Karp, who himself holds humanities degrees from the elite liberal arts institutions of Haverford College and Stanford Law, will presumably be alright. With a net worth of $15.5 billion — well within the top 0.1 percent of global wealth owners — the Palantir CEO has enough money and power to live like a feudal lord (and that’s before AI even takes over.)
The rest of us, he indicates, will be stuck on the assembly line, building whatever the tech companies require.
“If you’re a vocational technician, or like, we’re building batteries for a battery company… now you’re very valuable, if not irreplaceable,” Karp insisted. “I mean, y’know, not to divert to my usual political screeds, but there will be more than enough jobs for the citizens of your nation, especially those with vocational training.”
Now, there’s nothing wrong with vocational work or manufacturing. The global economy runs on these jobs. But in a theoretical world so fundamentally transformed by AI that intellectual labor essentially ceases to exist, it’s telling that tech billionaires like Karp see the rest of humanity as their worker bees.
It seems that the AI revolution never seems to threaten those who stand to profit the most from it — just the 99.9 percent of us building their batteries.
These morons really think AI is going to allow them to replace the technical folks. The same technical folks they severely loathe because they’re the ones with the skills to build the bullshit they dream up, and as such demand a higher salary. They’re so fucking greedy that they are just DYING to cut these people out in order to make more profits. They have such inflated egos and so little understanding of the actual technology they really think they’re just going to be able to use AI to replace technical minds going forward. We’re on the precipice of a very funny “find out” moment for some of these morons.
These morons really think AI is going to allow them to replace the technical folks.
This specific moron was actually talking about people with a humanities degree.
Even less plausible. There was a paper published recently arguing that by design LLMs are quite literally incapable of creativity. These predictive statistical models represent averages. They always and only generate the most banal outputs. That’s what makes them useful.
Well, every academic field needs creativity. But it’s nothing new that people from economic or tech bubbles have a disdain for humanities.
A healthy chuck of CEOs have a humanities degree. It’s a common undergrad before moving to B and J-School.
I think these guys forget that ai is just a program written by drumroll please HUMANS. Sure we could shitcan every programmer and replace them with “vibe coders” and skate by for a year or two but when bugs crop up and backend issues pile up AI is not gonna unfuck the mess they created and it will require human intervention. If these pricks do away with the technical folk well get to that point and suffer a technological collapse because everybody that knew how to code fled or changed careers so they could pay rent.
The scary part is how it already somewhat is.
My friend is currently(or at least considering) job hunting because they added AI to their flow and it does everything past the initial issue report.
the flow is now: issue logged -> AI formats and tags the issue -> AI makes the patch -> AI tests the patch and throws it back if it doesn’t work -> AI lints the final product once working -> AI submits the patch as pull.
Their job has been downscaled from being the one to organize, assign and work on code to an over-glorified code auditor who looks at pull requests and says “yes this is good” or “no send this back in”
I feel like so much LLM-generated code is bound to deteriorate code quality and blow out of the context size to such an extent that the LLM is eventually gonna become paralyzed
I do agree, LLM generated code is inaccurate, which is why they have to have the throw it back in stage and a human eye looking at it.
They told me their main concern is that they aren’t sure they are going to properly understand the code the AI is spitting out to be able to properly audit it (which is fair), then of course any issue with the code will fall on them since it’s their job to give final say of “yes this is good”
It would be interesting to know where your friend works and what kind of application it’s on, because your comment is the first time I’ve ever heard of this level of automation. Not saying it can’t be done, just skeptical of how well it would work in practice.
That was my general thought process prior to them telling me how the system worked as well. I had seen claude workflows which does similar, but to that level I had not seen before. It was an eye opener.
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The rich fully intend to replace workers with slaves one way or another.
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AI robots can be utter shit and they will still be leaps and bounds more efficient than the task specific automation that has been replacing human workers for decades.
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As long as the rich maintain their monopolies quality of service can drop indefinitely. Doesn’t matter if AI robots suck ass when no human employed company can compete and every other option is just as ass.
AI robots can be utter shit and they will still be leaps and bounds more efficient than the task specific automation that has been replacing human workers for decades.
I disagree with this, and we already have live examples today that are good analogs. Youtube is being flooded with AI generated slop. AI generated scripts, read by AI generated voices, over top of AI generated images.
I never seek these out, and actively avoid them when I can tell what they are before clicking on them. In that first 2 seconds of AI generated voice, I can tell this is slop and stop watching it seeking a human generated video instead.
As long as the rich maintain their monopolies quality of service can drop indefinitely. Doesn’t matter if AI robots suck ass when no human employed company can compete and every other option is just as ass.
It can’t. At some point the quality of the product drops to a level it is no longer a product. Lets say we’re in your theoretical dystopian future where the monopoly exists for cookies. There is no other place to buy cookies except from the monopoly. You posit that quality can drop indefinitely as there is zero alternative sources for cookies. So lets say the monopoly cookie brand was deciding to substitute some of the wheat flower with sawdust as a cost saving measure with the consequence being yet lower quality cookies. At a tiny fraction of sawdust you may notice it, but the sawdust cookie may still be better than no cookie. The monopoly continues to increase the sawdust content until the cookie contains zero wheat flour and is entirely substituted with sawdust. I believe even you would concede you would no longer buy the sawdust cookies at this point. Further, you would have stopped buying them earlier when the sawdust content became so high that the cookie was inedible to you even though it contained some wheat flour at that point.
This same thing will apply to Youtube. If the only thing left to watch on youtube is AI slop because no human creators exist, then there is no point in watching youtube anymore.
The point here, is that even with a monopoly on a product, as soon as the quality drops below a certain threshold (and this point is different for every consumer), the product stops being a product to them.
And yet youtube is still the dominant video host.
You’re missing the point entirely. If instead of luxuries you look through the lens of necessities perhaps you’ll see.
Like replace cookies with bread and try tell me people will choose to starve first. Like obviously not.
You’re just too priveledged to realize what I’m describing has been going on in developing countries for decades.
Ask a ford employee 30 years ago about robot automation. Like this is not a new thing in the 2020s. The rich have a playbook for this.
And yet youtube is still the dominant video host.
Youtube hasn’t descended to being unusable yet.
You’re missing the point entirely. If instead of luxuries you look through the lens of necessities perhaps you’ll see. Like replace cookies with bread and try tell me people will choose to starve first. Like obviously not.
I think you’re missing the point. If we substitute bread in the example I gave and they’re putting sawdust in it, then yes people will not buy bread made with zero flour, but instead made with sawdust. Yes, people will stop buying bread in that situation because they would die anyway because the bread doesn’t produce nutritional value.
Ask a ford employee 30 years ago about robot automation. Like this is not a new thing in the 2020s. The rich have a playbook for this.
Now you’re speaking against your original point. Robot automation has not lowered the quality of a Ford vehicle. If anything it has increased it. A robot can have assembly tolerances much tighter than a human. Where is the lowering of quality from a robot making the vehicle that your original thesis demands?
Robot automation has not lowered the quality of a Ford vehicle
I never said that and the quality of a ford truck is irrelevant to the assembly worker who lost their job due to automation.
You need to back up because you have gone down a tangent alone.
The notion that people won’t eat sawdust bread is demonstrably false with many historical examples proving you wrong. Your stipulation about zero flour is a moving goalpost and a strawman fyi
Robot automation has not lowered the quality of a Ford vehicle
I never said that and the quality of a ford truck is irrelevant to the assembly worker who lost their job due to automation.
You need to back up because you have gone down a tangent alone.
I agree we’re down a tangent, but I’m following the logic of your responses. This is a response to your original thesis: “AI robots can be utter shit”. Then you introduced the ford example for automation, which isn’t shit for assembly.
Which point to you want to back up to that would change our conversation path?
The notion that people won’t eat sawdust bread is demonstrably false with many historical examples proving you wrong.
I’m glad you saw those. I specifically chose sawdust in my example because of those events in history. Those support what I’m talking about. When the adulteration of the food became bad enough, people stopped eating it.
Your stipulation about zero flour is a moving goalpost and a strawman fyi
My “zero flour” comment is a response to your original thesis where you said: “quality of service can drop indefinitely.”
It can’t be indefinitely. There’s a point where people will stop consuming it when it gets bad enough.
you said: “quality of service can drop indefinitely.”
What I actually said was…
As long as the rich maintain their monopolies quality of service can drop indefinitely. Doesn’t matter if AI robots suck ass when no human employed company can compete and every other option is just as ass.
So yes you have completely missed my point and are arguing with yourself, not me.
It can’t be indefinitely. There’s a point where people will stop consuming it when it gets bad enough.
Yes but I’m not talking about that. You need to go back and reread what I actually said and stop putting words in my mouth and trying to have a discussion with me that doesn’t exist.
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Ironically us plebs who work with our hands are the people with the skill set necessary to build those things.
We are also very capable of taking other things DOWN
And most jobs are manual labour. That guy wants to seem like he’s making an intelligent prediction about a supposed new paradigm shift for Humanity, but ends up just stating the status quo since a job is a job.
And their goal is to make sure you can’t do anything without THEIR tools/plants, so that you don’t escape from their control.
Imagine we all work with our hands but decide we’ll only sell what we produce to our local communities and not large corporates.
And we will do it with our own hands… he was right… he was right from the very start
We “peasants” are the only reason the filthy rich have what they have, including food, and clean water to drink. They need us, we don’t need them.
Fuck these useless leeches. Billionaires should not exist.
i wish the things nobody wishes on anyone on the Palantir CEO.
Personally I’d settle for degloving his limbs, scalpings, crucifying, and then burning him alive. If he dies midway due to shock keep going anyways.
TL;DR: Tech billionaires like Karp see the rest of humanity as their worker bees.
They see us as livestock.
“Saying the quiet part out loud” moment, because they don’t feel like they need to be quiet. They’re untouchable.
I’m tired of these techbro cultists without any humanity being in power at all.
Sorry, buddy. I’ll burn down your fucking offices and data centers before I go back to manual labor.
I didn’t do 15 years of manual labor just to go back to that shit after I finally got out.
I studied poetry, painting, and music so that my sons could study mathematics and commerce, and their sons could work long hours on the assembly - without having ever studied anything - so that they can consume slop generated by AI that was pushed on everyone by people who studied commerce, created by people who studied mathematics, and trained on the works of those who studied poetry, painting, and music.
Humanities is literally exactly what ai is terrible at.
The tech folks might need to reskill and look out.
People will still be writing excellent poetry and we will need it more than ever. It will be spoken word and written and unreachable by the technical tendrils of these devils for training data.
People who think the humanities don’t matter are husks of human beings. Capitalist dogs with zero personality, no actual skill, and only insatiable greed. And apparently all pedophiles to boot.
These fucks lack humanity. They are AI agents with system prompt “mak munny”. Losers.
I’ve been in software my whole life.
My two oldest daughters are pursuing performing arts and I’m backing them all the way.
And it’s not that software/STEM jobs will disappear completely but clearly there’ll be less of them.
He is such a self-centered, megalomaniac cunt.
comfortable office work to which most people aspire
What ? Do people even aspire to work in the first place ? And idk about you, but I’d rather have been a craftswoman if you could still live off of that.
You went to an elite school, and you studied philosophy; hopefully you have some other skill
You think AI can do PHILOSOPHY !? AI can barely put together one fucking function when coding, and you think it can do philosophy ? Either he’s knowingly lying (he is) or he understands so little about philosophy that the AI can fool him (probably also true)
Get to work, plebs. Those guillotines won’t build themselves.
Are they stupid as fuck? On the knowledge of whom does he think their models are trained? Idiotic thieves.
Assume for a moment that AI really was taking all of these types of jobs, which by the way, almost certainly includes CEOs. It would only be a matter of time before robots take those other jobs he’s talking about.
A normal human of normal intelligence would see that and conclude that people simply wouldn’t have to work anymore. And that therefore, everyone should have their basic necessities taken care of by their governments.
People would be free to do whatever they want, whether it be “humanities” work or creating things or whatever. We’re no longer constrained by the fact that our lives depend on our usefulness in jobs to the ruling class.
Only a member of that ruling class would see themselves as indispensable and others as slave labor.
The problem is ownership.
These scumbags own all the means to produce and will demand compensation for their products. The one thing I don’t understand is if these fucks remove all the workers then who has money to buy their products? There isn’t an infinite demand for electricians, plumbers, carpenters etc etc… so there are going to be a lot of people without the means to earn a living.
I think the ownership class is thinking of revising “let them eat cake” into “let them eat dirt. We have no need for them.”
Whatever bad shit I want to say about Henry Ford, at least he understood the basic idea that people could only spend the amount of money that they have or make. That’s one of the things he’s famous for is that his factory workers could buy their own Model Ts.
We now live in a stupid reality where the world is controlled by rich people who see others as slaves and who are wanting to keep slave labor in perpetuity, even when the labor doesn’t need to exist.
I think the ownership class is thinking of revising “let them eat cake” into “let them eat dirt. We have no need for them.”
In the budding K-Economy, that seems to be the case. The objectively wealthy now make up something like 60% of consumer spending. It seems to be reaching the point that the majority of people can’t make enough money to even be considered vital to the economy.
