The main reasons would be: poor work/life balance, low pay for what is expected (at first), constant work with zero downtime, hazardous chemical exposure, positions that matter are extremely competitive, etc. Redundancy by automation isn’t even a consideration I’d list actually.

I’ve worked in lab science for many years, I now run my own department. I’ve done everything from bench work to multimillion dollar project management.

The thing everyone is hanging on to is “a machine will be able to do my job” and yet they are never asking whether their company will actually get a machine to do their job at all. Just because an AI can do your job doesn’t mean it ever will.

In my experience automation in lab science only goes so far. You can have tons of automation, every lab I’ve worked at has had automation to varying degrees. But we always needed to have techs to fix the instruments, we need scientists to troubleshoot things the instruments cannot, we need bench workers who can do things that are just not feasible for a robot to perform, you need IT, you need QA, QC, Regulatory, etc. The list goes on.

Could an AI do those jobs? Probably. But no biotech laboratory I’ve ever worked at would pony up the money to do that, not now, not in the future. You’d get laughed out of the building. if I proposed using chatgpt to write methods and protocols, I’d probably have my expertise questioned. Again, could we use it to do this? Yeah sure. Will we? Maybe. But probably not.

I’m not ignorant to the abilities of AI or the “tremendous progress” everyone always gets riled up about everyday on this sub. But the reality outside of pure computer based tech is just not what people paint it to be online, at all.

Nothing I’ve seen in the progress of AI makes me worry for my job or that of anyone in my department, now or in the future. they certainly could build a robot with an intelligence to replace me and do my job, but every person at my company who would make the decisions to push that forward would probably respond to the notion with “what? No? Why would I do that?”

maybe I’ll be proven wrong, as a scientist I’m always open to the possibility, but my observations lead me to strongly doubt it.

tl;dr could an AI replace us? Yes. Will anyone actually do that? Highly unlikely from my experience in the industry.

As a chemist myself I think you are overreacting to something that most companies in the industry would probably never do, there’s many reasons to not pursue laboratory chemistry, I’d personally put “threat from automation” near the very bottom of that list.

Nonetheless, I still applaud your determination with your choice, and wish you the best in the future.

exactly, how did you know

lol okay

Not everyone who went to college has a job where all they do is computer bs all day

I can still tell that they’re AI generated. it’s pretty obvious since they all have the usual look about them, sometimes the anatomy isn’t quite right, sometimes it’s the clothes.

If the overall quality of the piece was on par with the errors it would be harder to tell between an amateur piece of art and an AI image, but the AI either goes for straight realism or a very high quality professional art piece.

Whether it be realism or high quality fiction, the AI still makes mistakes that a human artist would see and iron out.

(For the US at least) I honestly expect a period of instability and a general downturn in quality of life for ideally a decade or more and in a realistic sense, generations.

Changes like those borough about by AI take years and years and years to become mainstream, the rich will reap the benefits first and foremost, and everyone else will be forced to scrape for what they can.

Seriously i dont see how anyone at all could be an optimist when it comes to AI. every crisis we’ve lived through so far this century has been tilted in such a way to benefit the rich and let the working classes figure it out. look at what’s happened in Ohio recently, look at how COVID was handled, look at the response to the crash in 08. An AI built by multi-billion dollar corporations (the only groups who could build such a thing outside of government) will use it to enrich themselves.

The industrial revolution destroyed millions of lives, sure the products of it are great for us after the fact but generations of people suffered and died for literally their entire lives before any sort of movement for improvement began, all while the rich lived increasingly fantastic lives.

with the society we have now, an AGI would only accelerate the divisions between the upper and lower classes, we would go back to that industrial revolution when people were moved off farms and crammed 20 to a room with a toilet shared by an entire tenement. working 12-16 hours a day for a pittance.

There would be fantastic advances and near magical levels of tech, but you are absolutely lying to yourself if you think anyone besides those in charge will see these perks in their lifetime.

I got a pack of masks during the pandemic that had an insert that said they were inspected and approved by the “quauty depatment”

I kept the insert as a momento but its also just rather silly

Saying “advanced aliens could do this” is basically just a science “gotcha” headline to get people to publicize their article about how we could eventually do this.

if you wrote a paper that said that humans could do this in the future it would be just as accurate but probably wouldn’t show up in a social feed.

Ever seen Elysium?

Yeah probably something like that

That’s the neat part, we won’t

I’m honestly horrified of what will become of workers with long COVID in places where there are not robust social programs.

Absolutely everyone in Northern California has an almost vitriolic hatred of PG&E.

Myself included.

Just let the fed buy them and let’s have public utilities already ffs.

Coming soon: 5.99$a month subscription to earthquake early warnings

I’m fine with smaller earthquakes, but the big ones definitely can get scary. The one in 89 knocked over all those freeways right?

The big one I was in started very gently, like a smaller earthquake, but instead of stopping after a few waves like you’d expect, it only got stronger and stronger until it was really hard to stand up. I was in a fairly safe building (newer construction) but some buildings nearby came down. The sound of the buildings collapsing, people screaming, car alarms, and the whole time the shaking is just getting worse and worse and it goes on and on.

They sorta build up like the frog in the pot of water, it doesn’t seem like you’re in the middle of a natural disaster and then it suddenly crosses that line and you realize there isn’t really anything you can do, just sorta hope you picked the right hiding spot.

It’s weird to realize that we are very well within the “ring of fire” up here. it’s all volcanoes from Shasta all the way up through alaska.

I’m at the south end of cascadia, so let’s hope the big one doesn’t happen in our lifetimes

This scale is absolutely correct lol

We literally just had a 4.1 right by where I live a few days ago and I was bummed because my wife felt it and I didnt.

Biggest I ever got caught in was the “Easter Sunday” quake in 2010, that one was a 7.2 and my response was “oh wow yeah that’s an earthquake” and I got under a door frame. a few buildings collapsed nearby too.

A 5.1 in California is called Tuesday

hey wait a minute

He also beat his kids so hard they wrote books about it lol