The above image was made with stable diffusion using the prompt 'a person at a computer looking at code.'
The tech industry is hemorrhaging workers. According to TechCrunch, over 200k people have lost their jobs so far. These people have all been forced to look for something new while competition for desirable positions continues to intensify. AI alone isn't responsible, but it is playing a part.
No one has offered me a paid crypto writing job since the market went south. Fortunately, I have other stuff going on. Not everyone I know is so lucky. A programmer who was making bitshares apps is now seeking salaried work with established firms. Another friend who had been working as an NFT artist is now trying to find a job as a prompt writer. He doesn't have a computer science background, so he's going to try seeking some sort of certification.
I told him he should use AI to become a one stop shop for companies' creative needs. I'm sure thousands of other people are also trying to reposition themselves in this way. They can make images with Midjourney and write copy with ChatGPT. This is the direction things are headed in and it clearly means more layoffs.
Hordes of out-of-work tech professionals won't just do nothing. They'll network, establishing new connections and bolstering existing connections. They'll study voraciously to get certifications or otherwise bring their skills up to date. And they'll make cool stuff to demonstrate those skills.
It would be great if they demonstrated those skills by making serious dapps. Decentralized exchanges, manipulation resistant social media, transparent supply chains, and endless varieties of games are all possible. And the intersection of web3 and AI is currently a wide open field.
One nice thing about dapps is that there's sometimes funding available. For example, EOS crowdfunds contributions to the EOS ecosystem on Pomelo. Other chains may have similar mechanisms and the ones that don't should create them. Decentralized funding is a critical part of a decentralized future.
One unfortunate thing about the moment is the US government's increasingly hostile treatment of the crypto industry. This has limited the exchanges accessible to US residents, cutting us off from important trade opportunities and making it impossible for many companies to operate. Because of this, if newly jobless tech professionals want to make cool stuff, their options are constrained, perhaps to a burdensome degree.
I feel like the tech sector layoffs are a small part of a much larger story. In the broader economy, companies are racing to automate jobs away and many will succeed in doing so. Self-checkouts are barely the tip of the iceberg. This is in a sense disastrous. My hope is that we'll respond to this disaster in constructive ways.
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