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Which career path is not ruined by AI? (lemmy.zip)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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I'm kind of sick of being a dev. I hate AI with a passion.

I hate the hallucinations, I hate slop, I hate megacrops, I hate the environmental impacts, I hate the massive costs. I could go on but you get the picture.

At work I often times have to review vibe code slop from people who clock in 9 to 5 and don't give a fuck (I respect that, I just wish your fucking code wasn't slop)

I'm sick of it, I'm sick of hearing about AI tooling or new models or bro agentic actions bro based on your documentation bro.

I want to switch careers, so which career is not ruined by AI?

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[โ€“] 20 points 7 months ago* (6 children)

I work in a datacenter. I rack servers, I look after the cooling system, the generators, the ups's, etc. I won't ever be replaced by AI. Without me there is no AI. And I barely interact with it. I play with toys all day.

The environmental impacts still bother me. But IT has always been wasteful, even before AI. I hate recycling days when I see exactly how much plastics, styrofoam and metals are going to the dump.

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  • [โ€“] 8 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    Previously the equation was trying to get as much processing out of every kilowatt-hour, now the equation is trying to use as much energy as possible. The impact of AI eclipses IT loads from before by a massive margin, and because of the theory behind it will never, ever do any better than it is right now. The environmental impact should bother you because it's massive and getting bigger.

    And you're helping set it up and keep it going. I know what it's like to run a datacenter, I did it for a decade and a half. I'm not going to say I'm making more money now, but I do sleep much better.

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  • [โ€“] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

    My datacenter doesn't host AI. Most of my servers process data coming from the square kilometer array in Australia. We're looking for aliens

    Problem is, cost of living is so extremely high where I live and I don't know what else I would do to make enough money to stay here. I'm really good at this job, and I don't have very many other talents

    It could be a lot worse too. Our cooling system is a closed loop so we aren't using fuck tons of water like newer datacenters. In the winter we can mostly get away with air cooling from outside air. And the power in my city is all from hydro dams

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  • [โ€“] 1 point 7 months ago (3 children)

    So when you said "Without me there is no AI," what were you referring to?

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  • [โ€“] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Maintence/upkeep on servers in general, pretty fucking obvious what they meant.

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  • [โ€“] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    This person is likely in facilities, I doubt they are touching servers much after they're racked. Maybe a crash cart is shit really hits the fan and ops can't get in remotely.

    They went from directly being responsible for AI to having nothing to do with it. My question is not unreasonable.

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  • [โ€“] 2 points 7 months ago*

    People like me are required to keep this AI empire going. There doesn't seem to be a huge pool of people who are both computer people and good at physical labour/using tools.

    I just meant that AI isn't going to make me unemployed

    I do a lot of system administration too. It depends on the system and who owns it. I do a pretty wide variety of work which is why I love it

    We had facilities monkeys like you describe but after a reorg they gave those responsibilities to whichever sysadmins showed the most interest, which is how I got the job. I'd rather play with toys than stare at a screen all day so the jump was a no brainer to me

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