Hacker CinemaHumans Need Not Apply
Humans Need Not Apply
Film · short · 5 min
Directed by Kii Belling
In the near future fully autonomous robots walk among us. There's growing discontent in society as the implications of these synthetics are unclear and possibly dangerous.
4 positive1 mixedfrom 5 commenters
Where to watch
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6 comments on Hacker News
The story reminded me a lot about the Brazil trilogy, and its spiritual successors, aka the movies Brazil (1985), 12 Monkeys (1995) and Zero Theorem (2013).
The dystopian world in that trilogy is becoming more and more reality and humanity will become a tool for programming more or less in the future, similar to how humans help a supercomputer solve "puzzles" a machine cannot solve.
I always mention a quote from an old friend in this context, who said: "The rat race of economy will force humans to have to do programming in one form or the other, there is no way to avoid it".
To me, the first level of software automation was the 2000s, when each and every company automated themselves with Excel spreadsheets. You'd be mind blown working for a corporate enterprise just by looking a the crazy use cases Excel has. That's the real reason companies cannot migrate away from Microsoft software.
Now we have the breakthrough of agentic coding agents, which eventually will be tools to plug and play into the machine via MCP.
And the next big thing will be the one that helps to make this possible in a training loop, where humans are in the testing and discovery loop of "what to write next", similar to how the supercomputer in Zero Theorem was portrayed (or your story's marketing AI).
In an economic context I highly recommend to watch CGP Grey's "Humans need not apply" (2012) video. Even when the predictions are off, the general truth in it remains, and that's what the job market is seeing now. To me the current software engineer market reflects what CGP Grey predicted at the time, even when it still might be too early to bet all-in into AI and LLMs.
I was hoping for a bit more in-depth material - allowing the experts to explore their topics a bit more and potentially talking about potential solutions? Where is the call to action for the viewer? What now?
It's good for non-technical folks to watch, but nothing really new since the 'Humans need not apply' 15 min documentary [0]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU (2014)
Edit: added link to humans need not apply
If you haven't seen the short (15min) documentary "Humans Need Not Apply", then I highly recommend it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
A hundred years ago 'horseless carriages' replaced a lot of horses, and in the next couple decades we're going to see 'driverless trucks' are going to replace a lot of humans.
Copying a comment of mine from a few days ago, seems relevant:
I encourage everyone to watch Humans Need Not Apply, a mini-documentary by the excellent CGPGrey:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
I suspect most of what is said in there is well known to the HN crowd, but it's all put together in a very pleasant video and is a nice thing to link to people who don't understand just how far along we are in the process of automating a lot of people's jobs.
- You're citing a document from 2010, when IBM Watson hadn't beaten humans on Jeopardy, Google driverless car wasn't demonstrated, Boston Dynamics big-dog, atlas hadn't happened, DARPA robotics competition hadn't happened, quadrocopters weren't doing crazy things, Amazon kiva systems, Baxter, etc, etc. Things are picking up pace. (EDIT: hadn't happened or not widely known).
- Since then, Paul Krugman himself has covered tech-unemployment in at least one of his blog posts, in which he has expressed surprise at how things are changing but has concluded the post in humor and essentially dismissing the idea (not very wise!).
- Politicians lag behind economists in staying up to date, who themselves lag behind technologists. "This time" it would really help if economists try to wake up.
- CGPGrey's youtube video 'Humans need not apply' is a must watch for anyone serious about staying aware of upcoming technology.
- The accusation of lump-of-labor fallacy is itself a strawman fallacy. Tech-unemployment doesn't require labor to be fixed. It can happen even if labor lump is increasing but not as fast as humans are becoming obsolete, i.e., "this time".
- Side-comment: Adaptation almost always happens because of new-entrants (youth learning new trades) so it's a generational thing. Those thrown out of the job market are more likely to retire early or something like that. And "this time", even youth are not going to adapt.
- Side-comment 2: Recessions cause quite a bit of damage to social structures which intentionally or unintentionally doesn't get media coverage, or at least doesn't register in public's minds. Just the recent European recession caused suicide in the millions (I came across this article recently but can't find it ATM).
- I've put "this time" multiple times. I have to admit it's a claim without scientific evidence, but circumstantial evidence combined with conversation with technologists who agree what is possible in principle, really is a strong indication. Brain emulation has nowhere to go but in the direction of "a solved problem". The estimated time frame is 10 to 15 years.
I encourage everyone to watch Humans Need Not Apply, a mini-documentary by the excellent CGPGrey:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
I suspect most of what is said in there is well known to the HN crowd, but it's all put together in a very pleasant video and is a nice thing to link to people who don't understand just how far along we are in the process of automating a lot of people's jobs.