What Value Do You Provide? | Ethan Carter Edwards<br>What Value Do You Provide?<br>May 9, 2026<br>Ethan Carter Edwards<br>Respect, man

I recently overheard the following interaction in the Leverett dining hall while<br>attending office hours for my Operating Systems class (with anonymized names):

Jeff sees his friend in the dining hall, "oh hey Brian, what are you doing here?"

Brian replies, "I'm here for Differential Topology office hours. I'm having some trouble with this week's problem set."

J: "I took that class last year, I'm sure now you could just chat (referring to using ChatGPT to solve the problems) the questions."

B: "I mean, sure, but I want to understand the material and do it myself."

Jeff, expressing his admiration, "oh, respect, man, I would have totally chatted them if I could have. It does most of my classes for me now."

AI and Jobs

There's no denying that AI is going to change the world (for better or for<br>worse). It already is. While the future is too uncertain to make concrete<br>predictions about the job market in any industry, many economists predict<br>massive layoffs that could impact tens (hundreds?) of millions of people if AI<br>becomes sufficiently advanced and cheap enough to replace some types of jobs.

I study Computer Science, so one of my most recurring and worrying thoughts is<br>"what is AI going to do to Software Engineering?" It seems like every month, a<br>new model comes out that blows previous ones out of the water on all<br>benchmarks, and then layoffs follow shortly thereafter (though I think this is<br>shortsighted, but that's for another post). A year ago, I thought AI was a neat<br>party trick that could be useful to write one-off scripts. Now, any given<br>frontier lab model can do my peers' graduate-level CS, Math, and Statistics<br>homework, and is probably a better developer than most of them.

I would be lying if I said I was not worried about how far models might advance<br>in another year, two, or even three (when I graduate). I think timelines like<br>"AI will replace all Software Engineers in 3-6 months" are stupid, mostly<br>marketing, and completely unrealistic for various reasons, but I would be lying<br>if I said I wasn't worried at least a little bit.

To be fully explicit, I don't think Software Engineering will be the only<br>industry affected. Lots (all?) of white-collar jobs are probably vulnerable.<br>Even if this rhetoric is just unrealistic hype, I think the outcome is far too<br>dangerous to dismiss or not consider seriously.

Why do we educate?

A common criticism that I hear of modern education (but vehemently disagree<br>with) is that it is too abstract and not practical enough. The people who make<br>these statements usually tend to follow it with the idea that education should<br>teach specific skills and tools that are useful and in demand in the workforce.<br>Initially, these statements seem reasonable, but are ultimately misguided for<br>the vast majority of jobs (and I suspect this will become increasingly true).

Note that I think the trades (electricians, plumbers, construction, nurses,<br>etc.) require practical skills, but good practitioners are educated (see<br>below). Even then, the skills required for these careers are often learned on<br>the job through apprenticeships or shadowing, rather than inside the classroom.

So what is the point of education? In my mind, there are two elements:

1: To become deeper, more critical, and capable thinkers and problem solvers.<br>This is primarily achieved by repeatedly doing things that are hard in various<br>domains.

2: To become a better citizen of the world. This is achieved through exposure<br>to diverse content that forces one to confront their biases and assumptions.

Both of these elements are worthwhile pursuits on their own, but they also make<br>a person employable. They are also inseparable, and the second is a natural<br>consequence of the first.

Notice the list doesn't include "learn to compute a derivative", "write a<br>really good policy memo", or "memorize historical facts". While you'll probably<br>have left college being able to do these things, they were never the point.

History has repeatedly shown us that technology changes the way we do work and<br>live life. AI is no exception. Technology makes jobs that were previously<br>stable and common obsolete overnight. While I don't have any empirical data to<br>back this claim up, it seems pretty obvious (think about "human computers" that<br>did math being replaced by the computers we have today).

On the flip side, new jobs were created as a result of computers. While some<br>people seem to think AI will replace all jobs, I really don't know what will<br>happen. Personally, I think of this as an AI Wager (with people upskilling<br>being the positive outcome, though I recognize that this has problems).

There is short-term pain for those affected, and unfortunately, it seems hard to<br>avoid in our capitalistic society. As people's skills are made obsolete by<br>technology, they lose their jobs, miss mortgage payments, and have to...