This is explicitly about manual labor. The things on the verge of being automated are precisely not in the "sweeping a slushy crossing" category. If Wilde was here to see the things the slop-peddlers are calling art, he'd be distraught.
"However, I do think in the long run AI will become so broadly effective and so cheap that this [this being areas were humans are likely to maintain a relative (or even absolute) advantage for a significant time that keeps them employed] will no longer apply. At that point our current economic setup will no longer make sense, and there will be a need for a broader societal conversation about how the economy should be organized." [1]
"Over the weekend, Musk responded to an user on X that said that the humanoid’s Total Addressable Market (TAM) was the entire global labor market, [...]" [2]
Altman is a little more cautious and thinks (out loud, I doubt he actually does) we'll all be artists on UBI, or something:
"[...] maybe the jobs of the future will look like playing games to us [...] find new ways to play status games, ability to find new methods for creative expression" "And I think we need something like basic income to have a cushion and a smooth transition to the jobs of the future." "In a world where technology eliminates jobs, it will mean that the cost of having a great life goes down a lot." [3]
These aren't very realistic or popular scenarios, but the people building frontier AI (ok, well, one of those three is not like the others...) wanted to get them out there. Seems people don't want to sign up for the questionable utopias.
I know it's against the rules to be a curmudgeon, but this just reads like a lullaby for people preparing to drink the SF kool-aid. The opportunity cost of becoming an expert will remain, but the reward of pushing the frontier is mostly gone. Now, if you want to save universities as institutions(*), you'll have to offer people some other positive vision. "You won't be able to make a difference" is not one of them. After all, you can get understanding for the joy of understanding (doesn't seem very egoless to me btw) outside of academia as well.
I'm much more sympathetic to the views of this anonymous postdoc here: https://proofsandprompts.com/2026/10/22/the-rules-cannot-cha... (unfortunately also in LLM-"polished" English).
Quote: "A field that fails to attract and support its next generation cannot preserve itself through inspiring statements alone."
(*If you extrapolate a little, for now you can also substitute with 'math departments' there.)
I'm a mathematician, but have been for 30 years outside of academics. I like this view. Peter Scholze commented and added a small non-depressive nuance.
You could just reply to me directly, you know. I don't doubt that AI is able to fill some roles already but a company can obviously have other reasons to downsize, and maybe they just think "'twas 'cause of AI" sounds better. Then again, maybe I'm just coping, as the kids say.
As the article says: "One in ten employees at SUSE are facing the chop [...]".
It would be interesting to know if the reason is truly automation. Apparently the equity firm owning Suse considered selling it off recently, see last paragraph.
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