2026: the job I studied for still exists, but I don't know how to do it because I outsourced my learning to an LLM, and keep getting let go during probationary employment periods
this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2026
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This is the truly scary part for students using LLMs. We’re going to end up with civil engineers who don’t know how to calculate weight distribution. Doctors who don’t know how to read an EKG. Lawyers who lose cases they should have won, because they didn’t follow basic procedures.
I work in live events. I do things like hanging like array speakers for concerts. Just last month, I was on a show that was hanging an LED wall behind the stage. A LED wall is made up of individual panels, which lock together and form a solid screen in the size and shape you need. There have been several high-profile LED wall collapses, because they’re huge, heavy, and easy to fuck up. And when they collapse, people get seriously injured.
Typically, you build them by hanging truss from chain motors, and then mounting the screen to the truss. The screen gets built in rows, with one row getting snapped together across the truss, then the truss is raised slightly, then you snap the next row on. Repeat until the screen is at the desired size. So this means the screen gets heavier and heavier as you build it. Part of the reason why collapses can be so dangerous is because it often happens while the screen is actively being worked on. You’ll have crew underneath the truss, hanging panels to build the next row. And then suddenly the chain motors start to slip because they quietly blew right past their weight limits as the crew added additional weight with each row.
While working that gig, I overheard the lead rigger (the one in charge of calculating weight distribution on the hanging motors, designing the truss system to hold everything, deciding exactly where the motors should be mounted, etc) utter the words “yeah, ChatGPT says these panels are only 25 pounds each. That means we’re right at our weight limit. We should be good.”
In stagehand work, we use 25 pound sandbags all the time. I know what 25 pounds feels like. The same way a farmer would be able to feel if a hay bale is too light. I had been snapping these panels together all morning, and I knew without a doubt that they didn’t feel like 25 pounds. I looked up the actual tech specs directly from the LED panel’s manufacturer. Each panel was 35 pounds, not 25.
ChatGPT just hallucinated the 25 pound weight, and the dumbass rigger didn’t bother to double check any of it. We were going to be ~40% over our chain motors’ posted weight ratings, and needed like four extra motors to help carry the load. The screen was already halfway built on the truss, so hanging new motors was a giant pain in the ass. It required a scissor lift and climbing riggers to go install new pick points. It easily added an extra hour to the install, while we just sat and waited for the riggers to work.
That rigger is still working in the industry. I hope that it was a learning experience for him.
As an engineer, what the fuck‽ Who doesn't double check the weights then add a safety margin (20% is traditional for us)‽
In event rigging, the standard safety factor is actually 7:1. So if a motor is rated for 1 ton, it can be expected to actually hold 7 tons. The extra safety factor is mostly because of shock loads, where the rig weighs a lot more when it bounces. Like if you’re lifting your entire rig off the ground and stop the motors, it will tend to bounce slightly as the motors all click off at the same time. And that bounce causes the rig to exert a lot more force than a simple static load. Dynamic load probably isn’t a major concern for permanent structures, (probably why you can get away with only 20% as standard) but it’s a big concern for motors and truss that move around a lot.
Especially in indoor events (where wind is a negligible factor), the vast majority of failures are caused by dynamic loads or by one motor being overloaded compared to the rest. When that overloaded motor fails, that can cascade to other motors as they are suddenly holding more weight than expected. Imagine lifting a uniform load using rigid box truss, but one motor on the end of the truss is slightly higher than the rest. That one motor will end up holding a lot more weight than the rest. And if that motor on the end fails, you have just caused a shock load on the next motor, as the rig settles onto it. And if you’re already nearing your weight limits, that single failure can quickly cascade into the entire rig collapsing.
Better rigging systems actually have weight sensors on each motor, so you can know exactly when one motor is overloaded. But the vast majority of event rigging isn’t done using the nice stuff. It’s usually done using the chain motors that have been rebuilt 3 times in the past decade.
Yeah I should note I'm not civil so I'm not sure what safety factor they use. And also our 20% has a tendency to compound itself across estimations. It's very similar to using four significant figures, where it's a nice easy rule of thumb and you should know if you're in a position where you can't assume it. Safety being a situation where you always want to run it by a few other people for sanity checks.
I'll also hazard a guess and say that a civil engineer would combine the dynamic load factor and the standard safety factor, because the standard safety factor is more for unknown variables and general fuckups like this one. Mind you that would leave you at building a rig for 30lb screens, so still not good.
And yeah we also have to deal a lot with cost-benefit analysis. While I'm sure buying more expensive motors isn't cheap, y'all have the ability to say "this building can't safely handle it". Too much safety factor comes with increasing trade offs, especially in cost.
I don't want it to happen, but I don't see any real scientific reason why machine learning won't eventually subsume jobs at a faster rate than new jobs for humans are created. That might take 15 or 30 years to really hit, but it's certainly something that needs to be planned for extensively.
tbf lemmy users are first to complain and also will be first in line to have clunker girlfriends because it understands them better than real girls
so upsides and downsides
AI gonna go on unemployment and take all the benefits from the rest of us
That already happens, doge used LLMs to decide which programs to cut.
lol america
Lemmy: AI is useless, literally useless, it provides no value
Also Lemmy: It's going to take all our jobs and we'll have literally nothing to do because AI will do everything!!!!!111
The two are not contradictory positions: the problem with AI is societal - all the jobs being given over to it is a problem that's only compounded by the larger issue of people fundementally not understanding the sharp limitations of AI, and how it cannot actually be used to replace most jobs.
if ai is not capable of doing the job people will be hired who can do the job! feel free to read up on supply and demand
They don't have to make an LLM that can actually do your job to get you fired, they just have to convince your boss that it can.
and then when it cannot do what people want it to do they will either hire people who can and/or people will leave and stop purchasing the companies products
this place is literally an example of people moving away from a product (reddit) because it doesn’t do what they wanted to do
apparently in your universe everyone sticks with the original product until the end of time no matter how bad it gets
which is surprising we’re not still all on irc and posting on vbuliten forums
It's almost as if Lemmy isn't a homogenous entity with a single viewpoint... Wow! Who would've thought?
yeah it’s crazy, sometimes I even see people arguing for both points at the same time