I'm afraid that this might sound flippant, but the answer to your question comes through another question - why were early 19th century industrialists obsessed with replacing textile workers? Replacing workers with machines is not a new phenomenon and we have gone through countless waves of social upheaval as a result of it. The debate we're currently having about AI has been rehearsed many, many times and there are few truly novel points being made.

If you want to understand our current moment, I would urge you to study that history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_Riots

Same reason so many people got excited in the early Internet days of how much work and effort could be saved by interconnecting everyone. So many jobs lost to history due to such an invention. Stock trading floors no longer exist, call centers drastically minimized, retail shopping completely changing, etc.

I had the same thought you did back then. If I could build a company with 3 people pulling a couple million of revenue per year, what did that mean to society when the average before that was maybe a couple dozen folks?

Technology concentrates gains to those that can deploy it - either through knowledge, skill, or pure brute force deployment of capital.

Because developer and other white-collar job salaries are the top expense of most companies.

> Why is it that so many people are completely obsessed with replacing all developers and any other white-collar job?

For the same reason people are obsessed with replacing all blue-collar jobs. Every cent that a company doesn't have to spend on its employees is another cent that can enrich the company's owners.

Nobody is obsessed with it. People are afraid of it. And yet, what will you do? Will you renounce adopting a tool that can make your work or someone else's work faster, easier, better? It's a trap: once you've seen the possibilities you can't go back; and if you do, you'll have to compete with those who keep using the new tools. Even if you know perfectly well that in a few years the tools will make your own job useless.

Personally, however, I would find it possibly even more depressing to spend my day doing a job that has economic value only because some regulation prevents it being done more efficiently. At that point I'd rather get the money anyway and spend the day at the beach.

I find it weird and uncomfortable too. Like, why are there a bunch of people excited about mass unemployment?

Because white collar salaries are extremely high, which makes the services of white collar workers unavailable to many.

If you replace lawyers with AI, poor people will be able to take big companies to court and defend themselves against frivolous lawsuits, instead of giving in and settling. If you replace doctors, the cost of medicine will go down dramatically, and so will waiting times. If you replace financial advisors, everybody will have their money managed in an optimal way, making them richer and less likely to make bad financial decisions. If you replace creative workers, everybody will have access to the exact kind of music, books, movies and video games they want, instead of having to settle for what is available. If you automate away delivery and drivers (particularly with drones), the price of prepared food will fall dramatically.

> Why is it that so many people are completely obsessed with replacing all developers and any other white-collar job?

> They seem to be totally convinced that this will happen.

The two groups of people are not same. I for example belong to the 2nd but not the 1st. If you have used the current gen LLM coding tools you will realize they have gotten they are scary good.

Imagine a world where there is 10x as much wealth and 10x as many hard problems being solved. Suppose there's even a 5% chance of that happening. It's clearly worth doing

No it is not just you. If true it would be beyond dystopic due to current political immaturity.

Because perceived existential risks capture people’s attention and imagination. If you’re a white collar worker then it’s a big deal to you.

Most people prefer not having to work.

> completely obsessed with replacing all developers

I’m paid about 16x an electronics engineer. Salaries in IT are completely unrelated to the person’s effort compared to other white collar jobs. It would take an entire career to some manager to reach what I made after 5 years. I may be 140IQ but I’m also a dumbass in social terms!

> Re hype: Why is it that so many people are completely obsessed with replacing all developers and any other white-collar job? They seem to be totally convinced that this will happen. 100%

Because the only thing that gets the executive class hornier than new iPhone-tier products is getting to layoff tons of staff. It sends the stock price through the roof.

It follows from there that an iPhone-tier product that also lets them layoff tons of staff would be like fucking catnip to them.

The dream of many business owners is running their business with no products, no employees, and no customers, where they can just collect money. AI promises to fulfil this dream. AIs selling NFTs to other AIs paying in crypto is the final boss of capitalism.

Notice how it wasn't and isn't a big deal when it's not in your own back yard (i.e. destroying blue collar professions); our chickens have just come home to roost. It's amazing the number of gullible, naive nerds out there that can't or won't see the forests for the trees. The number of ancap-lite libertarians precipitously drops when it's their own livelihood getting its shit kicked in.

People really hate late stage capitalism.