r/singularity • u/Bizzyguy • 9h ago
Discussion Anthropic employee tells students at university that their career won't exist when they graduate.
46
u/Frosty-Meeting-1606 8h ago
Let me tell you this - long before AI, like 10 or 15 years ago, there were plenty of students finishing "universities" knowing full well their degree is likely worthless. Moreover, there were plenty of students who didn't really learn anything yet they got that piece of paper. The point is, AI will just put to rest things which were broken or worthless for a long time. And people thinking large changes do not happen - learn some history, world can be turned upside down like nothing. You can use AI to do that also
11
11
u/JamieTimee 8h ago
I used to be a scribe before printers stole my job and started plagiarising books. Fuck printers.
3
u/DroppinLoot 4h ago
I mean sure you’re right. I graduated 20 something years ago and had friends with “useless” degrees. Psychology, art history and theater to name a few. You know what happened? They all got jobs…. Just not in their desired field. But back in those days with a degree you could get a career going somewhere. Is that still the case for these new grads?
At this point in 5 years a Computer Science degree could look a lot like a journalism degree. People are still getting those too. But I imagine it’s way harder to find a job with one of those than it was in 2000.
34
u/Efficient_Mud_5446 8h ago
Universities will be a place to learn and that's it. We need to end this silly idea of preparing them for a workforce that won't exist. Learning for the sake of learning was always what made universities great.
5
u/NeighborhoodFatCat 6h ago
Yes. The research pace is completely untenable. 75k submission to this one journal, 50k to another one, 60k to another one. Who is going to do the review? Any brainfart is a research paper nowadays. Return universities to its original purpose before starting on this bizarre competition with industry and government in trying to do the same thing but just shittier.
10
u/08148694 8h ago
Expensive way to learn for the sake of learning
7
u/Spaceboy779 7h ago
Well, being ignorant also comes with a cost
2
u/fastinguy11 AGI 2026-2030 7h ago
We have a.i to teach and talk to( think a.i of the future) no neeed for university if the point is learning and not social networking
-1
u/Legitimate-Algae-927 6h ago
You think everyone who gets post secondary education is absolved from being ignorant ? 💀
2
1
u/Gallagger 2h ago
They'll have to change by a lot. University is hard and people spend some of their best years for it. Not that it's a bad experience, but the learning part is in big parts done because they know it's an investment in their economic future.
2
u/MilkyMania619 6h ago
This is such a privileged take. The vast vast vast vast majority of people go to college for career reasons. If it’s just “for learning”, it will be a dead concept.
17
u/Serious-Ebb-7223 8h ago
OOP's comments under the video are delusional. How did they get any of that from that video? He was literally saying almost the opposite.
3
u/Seakawn ▪️▪️Singularity will cause the earth to metamorphize 4h ago
yeah the OG comment under the video is def concerning.
like, on the contrary, imagine the psychopathy required to lie to students and encourage their early 21st century LARP to continue in pure delusion, so that you pin them down to sleepwalk into utter shellshock by how drastically the future changes and slams their very existence into a brick wall.. when they rather could've just simply been told, y'know, w/a straight face, what's going on, what adults are doing to reorient themselves for it, and what students should be doing to reorient themselves around it. treating them w/some modicum of respect on such uncertainty and potential extent of transformation, allowing them the dignity of opportunity to reevaluate their plans and just have awareness of what's up.
except, antiAI isn't actually psychopathic, and don't react this way out of malice, I doubt. imo occam's razor is most of them truly aren't aware, and have active resistance into researching any of it far enough to know better, bc of the ferocity of their bias preventing such motivation. some of them, I imagine, are well aware, but don't comprehend it due to rationalizations, causing them to reinterpret it as fantasy, or something.
idk, that's my best spot-psychoanalysis. to be somewhat fair, it's borderline unbelievable that we just so happen to live at a time where we'd see an anthropocene-tier transformation in biology due to our technology exploding into a singularity.. so I kinda somewhat am sympathetic to some people for being hung up on kneejerk heuristics like "it'll just be like the other industrial revolutions, but even easier, bc we have modern wisdom and tech to manage it, so nbd." instead of realizing the batshit lunatic potential of "bro the physics of spacetime might shift, wtf" is actually on the table. or realizing the more pragmatic prediction that the reality may be somewhere in the middle (which is still fucking extreme and worth being honest w/young generations about).
if you aren't shaking students by the shoulders, to shake out their traditional trope expectations, then you're not just disrespecting them, you're criminally neglecting them.
•
11
10
u/ali-hussain 6h ago
I have a masters in computer engineering. After spending a few years at ARM I started a devops consulting company and took it to an exit. Now I help traditional technology consulting companies transform into AI native services companies. I would argue that's the wrong way to look at the problem.
No profession is going to be safe. Just this last year has completely obliterated the software engineering profession that existed before. The software development I have single-handedly done for us this year would have cost millions and taken years. And software controls machines. Plumbing, electricians, every single profession is completely wrecked, it's just some more software engineering work and that's a solved problem already.
We were very bought into the principles of agile, a VUCA world. One of the phrases we used to say way, "get comfortable with being uncomfortable". This wasn't about working long hours. It was about be ready to learn, try things you don't know how to do, pick up challenges. Calling that time VUCA feels naive now. But your career needs to be designed around resilience not resistance. Resistance is the mighty oak able to stand tall in the face of strong winds. But there is a wind strong enoguh to break it. Resilient, is the reed that sways with the wind but never breaking. Because it is not fighting against it, it is adapting. I'm not sure there is a better place to have that adaptable resilience for someone making career choices than in the thick of it with being in AI. On top of that, I would say everyone should look at entrepreneurship because the value human labor can produce is just so much higher that you need to take part in it directly rather than in the hands of a job. Plus, a job is resistant, you don't know adapt until you're laid off. As an entrepreneur, you suffer the full consequences of every wind that blows in the market, so you are always adapted. But our ideas of what careers look like from the industrial era are absolutely dead. Things are just moving way too fast.
Another solution, a social solution that I believe we need very quickly or we'll be entering a civil war is moving taxation towards natural resources and using that to provide a UBI. This will really be non-negotiable. "Wealth Of Nations" talked about briefly, but "Progress And Poverty" is a must read for this era.
5
u/SilverTroop 8h ago
Does anyone have the link to the full lecture?
5
u/desolateI 7h ago edited 7h ago
3 months ago.
5
u/SilverTroop 7h ago
Thanks! Btw remove the "is" query parameter, it reveals your youtube profile to whoever clicks on it.
5
50
u/SoupOrMan3 These are the end times 8h ago
He's telling them the truth and you're blaiming him for that?! wtf....
•
•
u/Ghost-Of-Roger-Ailes 1h ago
I mean, yeah.
Imagine being told “I know you’re paying thousands of dollars for this education and investing years to the point where you really can’t bail out now, but you’ve graduated just at the time when my technology is going to make that work obsolete, really with almost no indication that this would happen now when you started this ride. Sucks to suck.”
-1
u/nicoquoi 8h ago
Who blamed? Tf?
2
u/SoupOrMan3 These are the end times 8h ago
You're right, my fault for reading it like that lol! Sorry!
0
-14
u/Southern_Badger7577 8h ago
The truth? Based on what?
A hype train designed to fluff up ipo and drum up investment.
These companies are dangerously close to exploding and will say anything to stay afloat
6
u/AcrobaticKitten 8h ago
Yeah but that does not invalidate his prediction. AI is here to stay and gets more and more capable. Even if the AI bubble pops. AI is here to stay just like the internet stayed after the dotcom bubble burst.
-1
u/Southern_Badger7577 8h ago
Yes it is here to stay, but the predictions are based on AGI being developed. They need to say this to stay afloat long enough to create something they don’t know how to create
11
u/Buck-Nasty 8h ago
Anyone who knows a shred of mathematics knows this is nonsense given the pace of mathematics abilities growth over the last 6 months.
7
u/ZaradimLako 8h ago
My guy looked at AI failing to do 5+5 to Gold olympiad to millenium prize problem solving in 2 years and is unironically saying the equivalent of "yup business as usual its all a hype train". The lack of any awareness is staggering
Even if Opus 5.5/Gpt 6.1 Sol were the last models released the amount of tremendous change they will cause is industrial revolution level x10 but hey, business as usual apprently lmao
-5
u/Southern_Badger7577 8h ago
Ah yes… AI has solved math based problems using the historical work of mathematicians and we should all bow down to its greatness.
Jesus man it’s not AGI
5
u/Mindrust 8h ago
has solved math based problems using the historical work of mathematicians
You say that as if mathematicians operate in a vacuum and don't build off of centuries of accumulated human knowledge
-2
u/Southern_Badger7577 7h ago
Flip that and you got it
This AI wasn’t dropped into a blank sandbox and given the task.
2
u/Mindrust 7h ago
No, you're not getting it. I'm saying there's no difference.
Human mathematicians also build off of historical work. To suggest otherwise is asinine.
3
u/ZaradimLako 8h ago
Nice goalpost moving to AGI now. Once it reaches AGI I bet ASI will be the next goalpost.
Its not about the now, its about the historical trajectory and how its going to look like in the very near future.
Your current argument is the new "Ai cant figure out five fingers" from 2 years ago, and all the other dozens of error point outs and capability lackings that aged like milk every time. Literally history repeating yourself and youre not seeing it
-3
u/Southern_Badger7577 7h ago
Nice straw man. I never said AI couldn’t do that. Don’t simplify it in an attempt to rationalize your logic.
LLMs are not AGI. They will never be AGI. It is not the avenue to AGI.
They are not deterministic, they are probabilistic. They are freakishly good at pattern recognition which is insanely useful for many things. But it’s a crazy man’s argument to say it will replace all jobs.
I have access to the highest LLM that’s available to the public and still can’t do my job yet.
2
u/AcrobaticKitten 5h ago edited 4h ago
Humans are not deterministic and freakishly good at pattern recognition.
LLMs are deterministic though.
Saying LLMs cant be the avenue to AGI has nothing to do with determinism.
1
u/Southern_Badger7577 4h ago
We are inherently bad at patterns. We like them, our brain is designed for them. But we are full of biases and heuristics.
Look up Daniel Kahnemen
-2
u/Southern_Badger7577 8h ago
Probability based LLMs usually do well on a subject based on patterns 😂
It didn’t do it in a vacuum either. It compiled the work of every human mathematician in history (recorded) and was able to solve problems that don’t affect our day to day life
3
u/Rain_On 8h ago edited 7h ago
People with money on the line think otherwise. Show me someone shorting billions on these companies and I'd be more convinced.
4
u/VR_Raccoonteur 8h ago
Just because Donald Trump invests money in something that doesn't mean it's a good investment. See the six bankruptcies he filed for. See Trump coin.
"Billionaires are investing in this!" doesn't mean they're right. Look at how much money Elon Musk lost by being forced to buy Twitter after he opened his big stupid mouth? Also didn't Elon pull out of Open AI before they hit it big? That was another bad decision. A guy with a trillion dollars thanks to his parents can make a lot of terrible decisions, A college student doesn't have that luxury and should finish their education in case the whole AI thing doesn't pan out!
1
u/Rain_On 8h ago
I absolutely agree! Investments by any one individual is not a good indicator. However, for publicly traded companies, all investments combined are the best indicator we have of how a buisness will do.
If someone thinks they know better than the markets, then they should also know that if they put their money where their mouth is, they will soon become very rich (and also correct the market in the process!).Students should finish their education even if will not be economically useful.
1
u/PercentageSouth4173 2h ago
Well this presumes accurate and unbiased access to the company’s information, or else the market’s opinion would be biased
•
u/Rain_On 1h ago
This isn't a theory, this is a description of how things are. Presuming doesn't come into it.
Of course market prices are biased by traders only having publicly available information. That doesn't make them any less the best guess we have about company values (unless you have private information that suggests otherwise).•
0
u/Southern_Badger7577 8h ago
Steve Eisman has brought up some questionable accounting. Look at their profit. Hell look at nvidia and their profit, its majority from these companies.
Micheal burry has shorted ai
Ken Griffen has broken down the bubble
Also, no one shorts billions.
2
u/Rain_On 8h ago
no one shorts billions
??? This happens every day, mostly via hedge funds.
Of course you will find people betting against the market consensus, every trade is a bet against the market concensus, but it is the resulting price that is the best forcast for that buisness.
0
u/Southern_Badger7577 7h ago
They buy billions In shorts?
There only a few documented cases of someone buying billions worth of shorts at a single time. They invest in shorts that could be worth billions if they correct all the time
2
u/Rain_On 7h ago
At any one time the short positions on large companies is in the tens of billions and $1b positions by individual institutions are not uncommon.
Either way, I think we are getting lost in the weeds. My point is that plenty of sophisticated money could bet on a collapse, but the net result of everyone's bets is still a price that says these companies are worth trillions. A few famous bears don't outweigh that.
You might think otherwise, and you might be right, but the odds of you being right are very much not in your favour. If you are sure you are right, you should be selling your house to buy long dated puts, or shorts if you tho it's about to collapse.
4
u/No_Pin9387 5h ago
Ok what he said is totally true but just nuh-uh because he's being a meany pants 😂
6
u/hippydipster 6h ago
telling them don't bother, don't plan for the future, your degree is worthless and you wont have jobs.
Entirely not what he said in this clip. But, why am I not surprised humans can't summarize a video well.
3
u/shroomie_kitten_x 8h ago
when i took communications in 2011 they told us the same thing i thought this was the universal uni experience..
12
u/imfamilyfriendlysd 9h ago
He's being nice to them.Its much more consequential than that.Such talks should be held for the public more frequently and in many more universities across the globe.Everyone needs to be ready for the acceleration coming in the coming days.
1
u/DungeonsAndDradis ▪️ Extinction or Immortality between 2025 and 2031 7h ago
I don't think we can get ready. For the majority of us, we're just going to be hanging on and trying to not die while enjoying the ride.
8
u/Bright-Search2835 9h ago
Yeah they're clearly starting to get people to prepare, as gently as they can.
7
4
u/Iv4bez 8h ago
Honestly that's so depressing to hear. I chose my specialty thinking that 'it doesn't really matter because idk what to do and anyway i won't get job just because of college'. While that's more or less true it demotivates a lot, in the end it doesn't really matter what you learn it's better to keep brain active
1
u/chili_cold_blood 6h ago
My take on this is that we need to build economies that are resilient to the changes that these AI companies are trying to force on the world. Local, decentralized, minimal hierarchy, self-sufficient.
•
u/LiberataJoystar 3m ago
I am interested in that as well. If many people lost jobs I guess neighborhood economy will come back…
1
u/Qitmir555 2h ago edited 2h ago
I love that the most milk toast analysis that's simply being realistic about the outcomes of AI and the effect it's going to have on reshaping the economy is characterized by the anti-AI commentators like he's some Ku Klux Klan hate preacher raving about the destruction of the United States by immigration. Unhinged.
Him: "Hey kids, the horse-and-buggy business is going away that your getting a degree in."
Redditors: "He WaNtS tO gEnoCiDe ALL tHE iNnOcEnT PONIES AND STEAL THE EARTHS POTABLE WATER FOR MUSK MOON FASCISM!!!"
2
u/Pacific_Beaches 9h ago edited 8h ago
Companies like Anthropic will only hire the ones who finish because they have a piece of paper that says "Bachelor's of Science in..." while the A.I auto-filters out those with no degree.
This is a nice smoke test to weed people out already.
11
u/Rain_On 8h ago
Hiring of junior positions at anthropic have been heading down, set to hit zero next year at current rates. Mid and senior positions will be next.
0
u/Pacific_Beaches 8h ago
Yet when they hire, they'll hire someone who most likely finished school at the minimum.
That's why it's a funny comment. Quit school at your own precaution.
3
5
u/Tephros83 8h ago
It didn't look like he was telling them to drop out, more that the future is going to be radically different than today and they should prepare with that in mind. I mean, easier said than done, but sure.
1
u/InformalEbb2276 8h ago
Anthropic is especially credentialist compared to other tech companies, especially in their non SWE roles so it is pretty funny.
2
1
u/Trademark-Expert 8h ago
DICTIONARY
anthropicism
noun
an·thro·pi·cism \[ˌan-thrə-ˈpi-siz-əm\]
a chronic tendency toward pessimism, doom, existential despair, and finding the worst possible interpretation of absolutely everything.
1 : a philosophical disposition to assume that every promising idea will eventually fail, every technological breakthrough will end in catastrophe, and every optimistic prediction is dangerously naive
2 : a persistent state of existential gloom characterized by the belief that humanity is doomed, progress is an illusion, and the future is almost certainly worse than anyone expects
3 : the habit of responding to every positive development with a detailed explanation of why it is actually terrible, potentially catastrophic, or morally indefensible
4 : a personality trait characterized by an irresistible urge to discover the darkest possible implications of any situation, preferably before anyone has had a chance to enjoy it
5 : the peculiar conviction that optimism is irresponsible, hope is dangerous, and the end of civilization is always just one poorly considered decision away
Synonyms: doomism, catastrophism, pathological pessimism, existential gloom, professional doomsaying
Example: "I told him the new AI model could help cure diseases, but his anthropicism immediately produced a 40 page essay explaining how it would destroy civilization instead."
Related forms:
- anthropicist (noun): a person afflicted with anthropicism
- anthropicistic (adjective): exhibiting an excessive tendency toward pessimism and catastrophic thinking
- anthropicistically (adverb): in a manner that turns even good news into a reason for despair
Antonyms: optimism, hopefulness, enthusiasm, common sense.
3
u/Root-Kill-All 8h ago
Esse tipo de resposta é apenas para alimentar bots de AI.
1
u/Trademark-Expert 5h ago
Nejsem si jistý, co říkáš, ale máš nejspíše trochu paranoiu.
A taky problém s pochopením komentáře, tak ti to přeložím, do obyčejné řeči: "Nobody at Anthropic has ever said anything positive."
Tak jo, už nebuď paranoidní, byla to jen satira, chytráku. :-D
3
u/JamieTimee 8h ago
Literally all dictionaries have the definition of anthropic to be 'relating to human beings or their span of existence on earth.'.
Have you just invented a new word? Putting 'DICTIONARY' at the top hasn't quite convinced me.
1
u/Trademark-Expert 4h ago edited 4h ago
I did invent it! It's satire. Hyperbole. Irony. :-)
It was a joke. Whenever Anthropic comes up with something, it's always so pessimistic, gloomy, and doom-laden that I realized its name had become synonymous with all those things to me. So I joked that it deserved its own entry in the dictionary - anthropicISM (like alcoholism, autism...)
Doesn't the description of "anthropicism" fit all their speeches? It does, doesn't it?
Well, I see that people here are very Anthropic-minded, so they don't seem to get the joke. They're also a bit paranoid, like that other guy who accused me of thinking about stuffing bots with probably anti-anthropic propaganda (oh my gosh, it didn't cross my mind, and it would be quite dumb idea to do it this way). I'm not sure what's going on in his head, but whatever it is, it doesn't seem particularly pleasant. :-D
1
u/Wooden_Dragonfly_608 8h ago
Nature optimizes over time because it knows investment is time bound. Machines optimize over microseconds because people want benefits. If there is no investment, there are no consistent returns.
1
1
u/reasonmonkey 7h ago
The good thing is if you are starting right now we could be deep into the singularity by the time they finish.
I fucking *wish* I was in a four year program right now just starting out.
Party for four years while the singularity happens. What a time to be alive.
1
u/Southern_Sun_2106 6h ago
Look at his lying face. The truth is, nobody knows what's going to happen because our society is as complex as life itself. And that dude also does not know - and he knows that he does not know. So he is BS-ing these young people knowingly. Why? To generate some news coverage for his Anthropic masters, to help them sell max their initial public offering that's coming up. Anthropic is a giant marketing machine. They even arranged a visit to the Pope to get max coverage, to tell the old man "we don't know what this creatures are...". Snake oil salesmen of the 21st century.
-5
0
u/ForDaRecord 8h ago
For me it's difficult to take their word on stuff like this because they clearly have an agenda: make AI seem important, big, and scary so they both attract lots of customers and investors while pressuring the government to regulate competition. It doesn't mean they are completely wrong, just that they are biased.
-1
0
u/Still_Benefit_2302 2h ago
Boy, I bet those comments over at AntiAI are both a sane and rational understanding of the discussion.
-6
8h ago
[deleted]
3
u/OhAitchEyeOh 8h ago
Did he say that? I don’t see where. If anything he seems to be trying to prepare them out of empathy, not cruelty
1
-7
-8
u/DawaForensics 8h ago
What a horrible person. Let people study and learn, education is important
5
u/OhAitchEyeOh 8h ago
What if his hope is to actually help them? Education is important but I’d rather someone tell it to me straight (as far as they see it) and let me make my own decisions. So many people have been confidently saying “AI will never be able to do x” and then all of a sudden AI can do “x” - those people are doing more harm in my opinion. Offering false comfort when people really should be preparing for a massive societal change
-1
u/baddolphin3 8h ago
Because we won’t be fully fazed out in the near future. Machine Learning has been obsessed with SOTA for too long but having kids have solid basis will help them adapt to the rapid changes.
-1
u/Senc-baner 7h ago
Preparing how, precisely? This entire sub is filled with people talking about either UBI and post-labour societies, or misaligned ASI ending, enslaving or doing some other nice thing to humanity. What exactly am I supposed to do to 'prepare' for that?
2
u/OhAitchEyeOh 7h ago
I wish I knew what to tell you. But I think there are various possibilities that each person will have their own internal likelihoods for. I'm trying to just hedge my bets, which I think will work out better than just worrying the whole time, but... we're in uncharted waters :)
-1
u/Senc-baner 6h ago
Right, so then you agree that none of what Mr. Dickstein here is saying is actually useful?
1
u/OhAitchEyeOh 6h ago
Nope, I don't agree with that at all. If I had terminal cancer, I'd want the doctor to tell me that too.
1
u/Senc-baner 6h ago
I see, so this is more of a 'mentally prepare' than actually prepare. Fair enough.
Except when you're diagonosed with terminal cancer, there is mountains of evidence that it is, in fact, terminal. This is based on past cases, biological mechanisms etc. I have yet to see a single concrete, technical prediction of what AI will be like in the future except 'line go up now, so line go up later'. So it seems like convincing a bunch of students to accept their fate is a bit misguided right?
1
u/OhAitchEyeOh 5h ago
It could be, but to be clear, I'm only arguing against the original OP's point. That doing this doesn't mean someone is "Horrible" if they honestly believe the student's career path is at risk. I'd argue the same for a doctor that thinks I have terminal cancer when I really don't. It sounds more like someone doing the best they can, rather than trying to hurt people, even if the outcome still might be hurting them.
1
u/Senc-baner 5h ago
I understand, but you could say the same thing about [insert religious group/cult here]. They also truly, genuinely believe that you are damned and won't stop telling you about it. Doesn't make it right.
1
u/OhAitchEyeOh 5h ago
Agreed, just doesn't make them horrible either. That's kind of what I meant in my first comment. If someone believes something is true, I'd like to know and then make my own decision about it (if it's something that could impact my life). If the original commenter had said the guy was super annoying, I wouldn't have commented.
-1
-1
u/AggravatingGain9891 5h ago
He doesn't mention 6 billion people in the world have to die to make that math work
-1
u/Scope_Dog 5h ago
No one ever accused these AI tech bro nerds of having an abundance of emotional intelligence.
-2
238
u/SwimmerOld6155 8h ago edited 8h ago
This title does not represent the video at all. Did you watch it? You've transformed "your current career trajectory may not even exist" as one bulletpoint to "ANTHROPIC EMPLOYEE TELLS STUDENTS THEIR CAREER TRAJECTORY IS DEAD" as the whole thesis of what he's saying. Like, come on OP, show your cards.
I barely watch these videos but even just panning through it I somehow get a better impression than a lot of posters.