Thanks. Not putting this onto you so I'll say "we/our" to follow
your good faith;
What is "coming for our jobs" is some feature of the system, but it
being a system of which we presume to be, and hope to remain a part,
even though ultimately our part in it must be to eliminate ourselves.
Is that fair?
Our hacker's wish to "replace myself with a very small shell-script
and hit the beach" is coming true.
The only problem I have with it, even though "we're all hackers now",
is I don't see everybody making it to the beach. But maybe everybody
doesn't want to.
Will "employment" in the future be a mark of high or low status?
The problem is that under the current system the gains of automation or other increased productivity do not "trickle down" to workers that are replaced by the AI/shell script. Even to those who create the AI/shell script.
The "hit the beach" part requires that you hide the shell script from the company owners, if by hitting the beach you don't mean picking up empty cans for sustinence.
> Will "employment" in the future be a mark of high or low status?
Damn good question.
Also, +1 for beach metaphor.
My (ignorant, evolving) views on these things have most recently been informed by John and Barbara Ehrenreich's observations about the professional-managerial class.
An interesting view is that people would still "work" even if they weren't needed for anything productive. In this "Bullshit job" interpretation wage labor is so critical for social organization and control that jobs will be "invented" even if the work is not needed for anything, or is actively harmful (and that this is already going on).
Better phrasing may have been
"...happily assist, confident our own jobs will remain secure."