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Comment by program_whiz

this isn't an unexpected take from someone who is rich and famous for being a "math explainer". If you make your living explaining other people's proofs, then it makes sense to say "don't worry about _how_ the math gets done, you can still explain it, or supervise it." It will be interesting to see how he would react if his channel was overtaken by AI that was RL trained to produce 3b1b content, and produced better content than him, at a faster pace, so he lost his viewership. Then would he be satisfied with: "ok but now you can oversee a machine to make your videos, its not like 'making explainer videos' is inherently meaningful".

Same with programmers. The craftsmen feel the hit, the people that just saw it as a job and/or code as an obstacle to making a product say "what's the big deal, code was just a tool all along".

The end state is that more and more activity will consolidate to fewer controllers because of capital costs. Eventually the "makers" will be outcompeted by the few companies holding all the robots / AI swarms (at which point the other crabs in the bucket will say "told you so"). Sure you could create a startup, at which point your idea is instantly replicated (assuming it wasn't already thought of by millions of agents). Then you're merely facing the huge marketing, name recognition, and production ability of the megacorp versus your one unknown idea for the "factory" you "manage".

That's what's missing from the "factory manager" discussion -- how well can you compete with a Toyota factory? You're free to create your own factory right now. And just wait for the regulatory capture...

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