{"id":10375,"date":"2023-06-12T10:37:57","date_gmt":"2023-06-12T08:37:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2023\/06\/12\/when-i-lost-my-job-i-learned-to-code-now-ai-doom-mongers-are-trying-to-scare-me-all-over-again-tristan-cross\/"},"modified":"2023-06-12T10:37:57","modified_gmt":"2023-06-12T08:37:57","slug":"when-i-lost-my-job-i-learned-to-code-now-ai-doom-mongers-are-trying-to-scare-me-all-over-again-tristan-cross","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2023\/06\/12\/when-i-lost-my-job-i-learned-to-code-now-ai-doom-mongers-are-trying-to-scare-me-all-over-again-tristan-cross\/","title":{"rendered":"When I lost my job, I learned to code. Now AI doom mongers are trying to scare me all over again | Tristan Cross"},"content":{"rendered":"

Silicon Valley wants to make us believe humans are predictable and our skills replaceable. I\u2019ve learned that\u2019s nonsense<\/p>\n

I spent the best part of the 2010s working in new media, which \u2013 if you enjoyed being repeatedly laid off and then being inundated with jeering messages inveigling you to \u201clearn to code\u201d because your industry was doomed \u2013 was a great big laugh. Eventually, the fun began to wear off and in an act of subversive defiance (or cowardly resignation), I took their goading advice, learned to code and pivoted to what I\u2019d hoped would be a far more secure career in \u201cweb development\u201d, only for recent advances in AI to supposedly render coding jobs a waste of time<\/a>, too. It seems I have accidentally timed my career change to coincide with a mass rollout of AI chatbots that have also <\/em>learned to code, and that are \u2013 in many respects \u2013 already far better at it than me.<\/p>\n

Code can appear alarming to the uninitiated: inscrutable \u201clanguages\u201d that mostly read like a calculator having a stroke, but, according to AI\u2019s most fervent evangelists, they no longer need represent any barrier at all. Why bother wrapping your head around the needlessly convoluted nerdspeak required to display white text on a black background, when you can now simply ask a chatbot to do this in layperson\u2019s terms and it will promptly serve up your code, complete with instructions?<\/p>\n

Tristan Cross is a Welsh writer based in London<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nSilicon Valley wants to make us believe humans are predictable and our skills replaceable. I\u2019ve learned that\u2019s nonsense
\nI spent the best part of the 2010s working in new media, which \u2013 if you enjoyed being repeatedly laid off and then being inundated with jeering messages inveigling you to \u201clearn to code\u201d because your industry was doomed \u2013 was a great big laugh. Eventually, the fun began to wear off and in an act of subversive defiance (or cowardly resignation), I took their goading advice, learned to code and pivoted to what I\u2019d hoped would be a far more secure career in \u201cweb development\u201d, only for recent advances in AI to supposedly render coding jobs a waste of time, too. It seems I have accidentally timed my career change to coincide with a mass rollout of AI chatbots that have also learned to code, and that are \u2013 in many respects \u2013 already far better at it than me.
\nCode can appear alarming to the uninitiated: inscrutable \u201clanguages\u201d that mostly read like a calculator having a stroke, but, according to AI\u2019s most fervent evangelists, they no longer need represent any barrier at all. Why bother wrapping your head around the needlessly convoluted nerdspeak required to display white text on a black background, when you can now simply ask a chatbot to do this in layperson\u2019s terms and it will promptly serve up your code, complete with instructions?
\nTristan Cross is a Welsh writer based in London Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Silicon Valley wants to make us believe humans are predictable and our skills replaceable. I\u2019ve learned that\u2019s nonsense I spent the best part of the 2010s working in new media, which \u2013 if you enjoyed being repeatedly laid off and then being inundated with jeering messages inveigling you to \u201clearn to code\u201d because your industry …<\/p>\n

When I lost my job, I learned to code. Now AI doom mongers are trying to scare me all over again | Tristan Cross<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10375"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}