Keras and ARC-AGI creator François Chollet argues AI won't cause mass unemployment, predicting higher demand for software engineers

@fchollet The target of AI is not mass unemployment.

@fchollet The growing demand for software engineers isn't the flat number people are looking at.

What I'm seeing is more demand for the ones who can tell when agents are wrong and less for the ones who just watch them do whatever they think is right. That's not the same as "more jobs"

@fchollet Does not make sense unless demand for software is unlimited. Business will have to offset the cost of AI somehow. It will collapse the job market just as machines did with agriculture back then. Your take is Wishful thinking or denial.

@fchollet Idiot, it’s already destroying some industries

@levie I’d also add as non-technical PM, that when you start building features and products with AI tools, you have a deeper appreciation of the engineering craft and you better understand technical decision-making and exploration

@fchollet seeing what ai videos models can already make, it seems some people will get fired from their jobs

@fchollet @perrymetzger The reality is we don’t know / don’t have great data to measure this just yet. So bold claims in either direction are just wrong.

@fchollet We used to need 4 people to dev an app for 12 months. It costed 400K in France. But the app only brang back 200K. Then, it was not profitable to do it. Now, we can do it in just 3 month for 100K, bringing 200K. It's then profitable. Lots of niches like that will create jobs

@fchollet On account of the devolutionary impact on the industry, resulting in the work shifting towards forward deployed engineering, you'll have a confusing situation where Big Tech is firing like crazy but there are more software engineer jobs than before.

@fchollet No, AI won't cause mass unemployment. It'll create a job market full of low quality jobs, ADHD bosses selling slop, and meme "agentic" LLM crap.

The biggest proof? Claude certification.

The absolute state of idiocracy.

@levie Math is simple:

1. AI raises the floor for everyone to expert level 2. it raises the roof much further for experts in their field

there will be way more content, and the best of it will still be produced by people who master their craft

@fchollet Yeah every wave added jobs before.

None of them went after the entry level first like this one.

@fchollet juniors already can't find jobs.

@fchollet I would want to believe that the demand for SWEs is going to increase

Although,

I feel if AI cost math checks out, a lot of labour arbitrage from India is going to take a hit.

@fchollet There might be however local turbulences where middle management will cut senior jobs to justify their bonuses with explanation that juniors with agents are cheaper and the quality is the same. Seniors will come back after a stream of fuckups caused by that setup.

@fchollet right but misleading , cause a non negligeable part of software engineering was actually writing code…..so developer will be exctinct in a few month

@fchollet Who has hacked this handle? An assertion without profound underpinning logic or concrete supporting evidence is very unlike our favourite AI intellectual.

@fchollet I will have a lot of fun posting this in your replies basically forever

@fchollet I've been a software engineer for ~20 years and I haven't seen the job market as bad as it is now.