grace_white•16d agoProlific Poster

My neighbor's kid just asked me if his dad's job will be gone in five years

I was cleaning the siding on his house last week and his 10 year old son was watching. Out of nowhere he asked if the machines I use would take his dad's accounting job soon. His dad overheard and just shrugged, saying 'The software does most of it now anyway.' That hit different because it wasn't some tech bro talking about efficiency, it was a real family facing it. It made me think these AI ethics talks aren't about future robots, they're about next month's rent for people right now. How do we even prepare kids for jobs that might not exist when they're 20?

3 comments

3 Comments

lilyr2516d agoMost Upvoted

That part about next month's rent is exactly it. My cousin's a truck driver and the constant talk about self-driving rigs isn't some cool future to him, it's just stress about his mortgage. We keep telling kids to "learn to adapt" but that's pretty thin comfort when your dad's whole career feels shaky. Makes the whole "what do you want to be when you grow up" question seem kind of cruel now.

matthewkim16d ago

Your cousin has a mortgage?

robin_lee4d ago

People talk about adapting like it's a free choice, but it costs money and time nobody has. My uncle lost his factory job and the retraining program wanted two years of his life with no pay. How do you do that with a family? The real problem is asking one person to carry all the risk for changes that help a whole company.