Alex Karp says only trade workers and neurodivergents will survive in the AI era

bigfatkitten

> One-fifth of sales organizations within Fortune 500 companies are expected to actively recruit neurodivergent talent to improve business performance by 2027, according to a Gartner study. Good luck with that. HR departments and interview processes expertly and efficiently filter out neurodivergent talent.

simianwords

Strong agree with Karp that people with different thinking will be rewarded. But strongly disagree that humanities will be automated or become less popular. It will just take a new shape. What I mean is humanities will no longer be gatekept by elite academics with fancy degrees but rather take a new form. What the form would be I don’t know.

digitcatphd

I never quite understood the notion trade workers will be exempt for a couple reasons: 1. Right now trades businesses are profitable because of supply and demand. They are profitable, because they are undersupplied. 2. We are assuming robotics stagnates.

xyzsparetimexyz

Like Blindsight/Echopraxia

dtagames

https://archive.ph/KFdxP

dtagames

Alex Karp needs to read Richard Dawkins. Neurodivergence is a chromosomal aberration that shows up in the phenotype. It takes evolutionary time scales to affect chromosomes through evolution. Launching a new tech isn't going to do it. Dawkins also writes in The Selfish Gene that memes , a word he coined, are faster than DNA evolution because we can transmit "better" ideas (through language and art) that lead to better behavior. This kind of memetic transition is what AI is bringing. We're seeing it already. The communication around AI causes fights among friends (pro gen AI vs against, esp in the arts) and layoffs from VC-led companies, as well as spawning all kinds of new business ideas as the article mentions.

weikju

So which path is in Mr. Karp's future? Oh wait he's an exempt one right? (says me before reading the article and finding out about his dyslexia...)

burnt-resistor

And the vast majority of people will make peanuts with a tiny middle-class of cutthroat specialists all ruled by warmongering, sociopathic billionaires who want it all. Feudalism has returned.

farcitizen

I agree with him. Historically, society handsomely rewarded the book-smart, the classmates who could absorb rules and execute on them flawlessly. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, professions where creativity was almost a liability. In the new AI era, that entire skillset gets heavily discounted, approaching irrelevance. The honors student who aced their SATs and was applauded for their 'intelligence'? They're on a path to obsolescence. In fact, you could start treating a perfect test score as an anti-success metric. Successful companies of the future will need to identify neurodivergent candidates who have a solid foundation, but it's not all upside. These individuals often struggle in conventional social environments, may take risks that could negatively impact a project, lose focus when not sufficiently challenged, and would be more susceptible to substance use. So developing rigorous criteria to find high-functioning neurodivergent talent, and fostering the right environment for them, becomes a critical competitive advantage. Put differently, we're entering a bizarre, topsy-turvy world. The student who sat eagerly at the front of the class, hand raised, awaiting the teacher's next instruction? They may find themselves unemployable. Meanwhile, the kid staring out the window, the one who couldn't fathom how anything the teacher was saying could possibly matter, and saw it simply a busy work. That's your next hire!