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Notes -
The kids aren't alright (continued)
This college graduation season, many commencement speakers are extolling AI, then getting boo'd by the students. Most notably Eric Shmidt, in University of Arizona, after telling students to "deal with it"; also less recognized speakers in smaller universities (like MTSU and UCF).
Glendale Community College received additional boos because it used an AI tool to read students' names, which messed up.
In contrast, Steve Wozniak told students they "all have AI — actual intelligence" to applause.
This reflects multiple overlapping problems:
Tech students are particularly affected: many were told that if they went to college, they'd be practically guaranteed an easy, high-paying job, like their older peers; but today they graduate to a bad job market. Meanwhile, the companies they planned to join are posting record profits. AI has invalidated some of their learned skills, and moreover, has the potential to worsen the job market and wealth gap.
Although it's not just tech. Liberal arts students have worse job prospects (although some of theirs were never good), and seem to be more against AI. Law and accounting are apparently being impacted, because AI automates their entry-level jobs.
In summary, the speakers have a completely different perspective due to their age, AI outlook, and wealth; and students aren't happy to see their college which has failed them do it one last time, by appointing an out-of-touch speaker (or using AI to flub announcing their names).
Where to go from here?
Undergraduate education is deeply flawed. I think (not an uncommon position): students should only go to college if for graduate education (which is also flawed but for different reasons, and has purpose until ASI or a suitable alternative). Otherwise, they can learn degree skills in high school or on-the-job training: probably a free unpaid internship, which (as long as it demands real skills, not cheap labor) would be an improvement over paying for college; or pursue a trade. But first, employers must no longer prioritize (let alone require) college degrees; I believe this is happening in some fields, but slowly. In the meantime, more students should and will attend cheap online degree mills, possibly alongside an internship (to graduate with job experience and a better resume).
As for AI...I don't really know. It has some great use-cases, and the potential to strictly improve standards of living (why do something that AI can automate?); it and/or another revolutionary advancement is probably necessary to mitigate climate change and TFR collapse. But it also causes some problems, and has the potential to create global catastrophe. Regardless, I don't expect I or the graduates can influence its evolution or effects. For those reasons, I'm not really optimistic or pessimistic about it. At least I'm aware enough not to extol it to college graduates.
I think it's worth noting that the idea that selfish old people are hoarding all the goodies and thereby screwing over the young is one that's been around for a while. When I graduated college into a weak job market (30 or 40 years ago) that was a very popular idea. (Allegedly) old people weren't retiring and making room for young people; old people were preventing new housing from being built in order to enhance the value of houses they had bought for a song many years ago; old people insisting on fat social security payouts they didn't really need which would result in an insolvent system; old people pushing the government to take on lots and lots of debt which would have to be paid by future generations. etc. etc.
I kind of believed it at the time, but the fact that it's so persistent makes me a little skeptical.
That being said, assuming AI doesn't destroy us but instead generates a lot of new wealth, it's pretty obvious that the benefits of that wealth won't be distributed equally. And I could easily see a situation where people who happen to own equities, real estate, and other capital goods end up being the big winners while everyone else licks the street. (Ok, that's an exaggeration, but if a utopia emerges where everyone gets UBI and can live the life of their dreams, such people might still be pretty unhappy if there is a sort of permanent aristocracy in place.) And it would make sense that this aristocracy would be disproportionately old people.
I could also see it happening that medical advances allow this aristocracy (and everyone else) to dramatically extend their lifespans, which would arguably exacerbate this problem. From an abstract perspective I would rather be a peasant in a world where everyone gets UBI and a super-long (healthy) lifespan than a fat cat businessman in that world's past. But I can see how people might get upset at being consigned to a permanent lower class.
A lot of the paths that made money in the older generation got institutionalized. For sales and trading type roles or even Ibanking you read a lot of old stories of a guy just met someone then is at major bank. (Epstein, Michael Lewis. High profile on this path. Many others). Now it’s institutionalized and still pays well but there are 5-10 highly profitable firms and to get in you need to be “math Olympiad winner” and the competition is against a global population. Plus you have to a great degree lost the ability to get equity in form because the competitive moats have increased a lot.
It does feel like the current career paths offer less stability and your career can end quickly even with fairly strong credentials. The exception is a huge explosion in government work which I would include health care in.
Probably some new routes are emerging and in 25 years we will see a bunch of rich people who just started doing something.
Lot of this is hindsighting the previous generation's wealth accumulation methods. Stuff like Medicine is pretty evergreen but each decade or two the dominant forms of finance earning will shift violently. I used to work with a bunch of old Floor traders and that is a totally different skillset than modern trading.
There's also generally a hindsight effect where people assume the big trades of the past were bleedingly obvious since the people who hit them now have the biggest pulpit
You can still see in that industry the skillset change.
1970’s - some even no college made it. Still some truly smart people 2000’s - Big Ten Schools and above 2020’s - what was your placement on the IMO
Another way to look at it - 1970’s the best local talent in Chicago or NYC who just wandered into trading. 2000’s The best in recruited from the top schools in the region. 2020’s the best recruited Internationally. So yes it’s much harder today. Finance in general has gotten much more selective. PE is likely very similar.
Ownership seats are also basically non-existent now in PE or trading. If you started in PE in the 1980’s you have your name on the door. If you started post 2010 you work for a listed PE firm and only get a split of the fees. Which is a lot of money.
Yeah but like I'm sure there's a relatively niche employment spot right now that will turn out to be the big hindsight winner circa 20 years from now. AI researcher was a skilled profession 15 years ago but you weren't paid Lebron James money for the bleeding edge and there's now way more of a glitch of people entering the field.
But yeah there's a reason there's a meme with talking to 50 year olds in elite jobs now and getting 'I started my career at 27 after spending 3 years backpacking and getting turned onto this field by a newspaper ad after junior college' versus the new graduates being the absolute bleeding edge of filtering.
Hell my dad managed to get to a very senior offshore oil platform design electrical engineering position with 2 years before dropping out of a third-tier undergrad and a trade electrician cert. These things happen when you're born in 1949 and get in early on a field that ends up exploding in relevance
Lmao, AI research was an extremely niche profession 15 years ago. AlexNet came out in 2012 and pioneered deep learning which lead to transformers/LLMs. The only people who were AI researchers were college professors and the occasional industry researcher. You had a number of folks doing data science/ML engineering but it was pretty much just a sub-domain of statistics as thats what boosting/SVMs/Random Forests are.
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The only person I can think of who just lucked into their position without heavy filtering today feels like JD Vance. Sure he got into Yale Law, but he sort of just wrote a book that was ok professionally. Then met a billionaire who turned him into the VP. US politics might be the only place I can think of where some of it just feels lucky.
US Politics you're gonna be way more aware of people who end up in the top jobs. There's still plenty of right time, right place hugely-successful people but the traditional UMC path has become exponentially more arduous as a result of striver optimization.
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