Current Events > AI will shrink workforces by thousands within five years, say company execs .

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/05/business/ai-job-losses/index.html

I'm just saying, either we treat this Star Trek style AKA universal payment or there's just going to be more and more bitter angry pepole with nothing to do but seeking something to rage at.

I think there are a lot of execs with dollar signs in their eyes overestimating how much AI presently can really do.

There probably will be a point when automation and AI effectively reduce the need for actual humans in the workforce so much that a UBI becomes necessary but I doubt that's right around the corner or anything.

I'm playing chess no robot or a.i. can do my job

IMO it's pretty easy to see why so many executives like AI so much (in addition to the generic 'next great thing' factor).

AI is perfect for generating a semi-infinite stream of plausible bullshit essentially for free. Naturally, an alarming fraction of the b-school crowd mistakes this for economic productivity (and to be fair, there are more jobs than there should be whose real function is generating bullshit).

That said, it's clear that late-stage capitalism will at least need the band-aid of a UBI as the ruling class gets ever more efficient at taking all the money.

Is anyone actually making significant progress with true AI right now? Or is it all still LLMs that do not attempt to actually be AI and may just some day become part of the toolset used when creating an AI?

Because LLMs have done nothing but disappoint me so far. AI-based searching is so much worse than just finding discussions by actual humans using the words I was looking for, and that's become so much harder to do in the last few years.

they have no idea how to make AI

LLMs are a grift. they provide minor amusement at best--more often they are either 1) plain wrong 2) weirdly censored by bigtech 3) bad at writing 4) boring 5) hyperconventional 6) vague 7) smug 8) all of the above

Advances in technology have been putting people out of jobs for years. The world will go on.

Advances in technology have been putting people out of jobs for years. The world will go on.

Its mostly been a trade off so far, the problem is that when the majority are put out of work for the sake of a " elite minority" which leaves a few as gods with the rest as powerless peasants that it leads to...problems.

UnsteadyOwl posted...

I think there are a lot of execs with dollar signs in their eyes overestimating how much AI presently can really do

Some of them also stand to financially benefit from overstating its potential.

Guess they will start a real pandemic within these 5 years.

Company execs are among the dumbest motherfuckers and they're the perfect candidates to be replaced with the fancy pants autocomplete we currently know as "AI".

i bet they are so excited not to pay anyone

Good.

AI trickle down economics soon!

Yeah I can see AI replacing writers, voice actors, bankers, and cashiers.

AI arent what they imagine AI is.

AI now is just google with a different name. It brings up the same results, repackaged with another look. Voice AI is usually crap and has been proven to be fraud and sometimes even prerecorded. AI art looks boring and people are already tired of it. The only thing it is good at is for quickening boring takes like spreadsheets or repetitive motions like stamping papers.

People amazed by AI really confuse me, and make me think they dont understand that this form of AI has existed since the 80s. Youre being grifted by tech bros who want to find the next big thing

Most demonizing of AI, is oversimplifying matters. It's just a machine. Yeah it can do horrible stuff like scrape the web, swiping art for mass copyright infringement. Or something totally benign like generating the myriad textures and objects to populate a video game world.

Some jobs but not many

youll need AI+Robots to truly remove the human workforce

UBI will not happen in this country, the government will just say they can't afford it and then spend millions installing more anti-homeless bars on benches

war on the poor rages on

There's going to be an uncomfortable transition period between AI replacing workers to large degrees and enough workers being replaced by AI that there has to be some sort of system to guarantee civilians a means of survival in a world where AI has largely made a human workforce irrelevant.

Unfortunately we're going to live through that period and most of likely wouldn't even get to see the end result, just endure the shitty decades of AI getting more developed at replacing human labor without the government thinking it's concerning enough to compensate civilians for having to exist in such a system.

Necronmon posted...

more and more bitter angry pepole with nothing to do but seeking something to rage at.

AI will make incels unemployed then keep them angry by hooking them on endlessly generated deepfake alt-right videos.

Glad I picked a job in corrections. I'll probably be retired before this job could get automated.

Sufferedphoenix posted...

Glad I picked a job in corrections. I'll probably be retired before this job could get automated.

I dunno, using AI and robotics for correctional officers seems like a pretty early go to in order to mitigate harm to human correctional officers.

Yes, it would take more development than AI to do accounting/bookkeeping, however there's a great incentive for "safety to humans" with correction officers that I think could advance that quickly. Similar to how LA cops wanted to use robots that could execute people for them. The desire for the technology in law enforcement is already there, we're just in the rather early stages of this.

Kradek posted...

I dunno, using AI and robotics for correctional officers seems like a pretty early go to in order to mitigate harm to human correctional officers.

Yes, it would take more development than AI to do accounting/bookkeeping, however there's a great incentive for "safety to humans" with correction officers that I think could advance that quickly. Similar to how LA cops wanted to use robots that could execute people for them. The desire for the technology in law enforcement is already there, we're just in the rather early stages of this.

No on several levels. First and foremost some things require the human touch. Like say you notice a inmate behaving in a way that you know isn't typical for him. So you go talk to them or investigate the situation. Perhaps he's having some issues and by talking to him you prevent a incident from happening. Perhaps he's up to no good and you prevent a incident from happening.

On the other note the inmates will tear those robots to shreds and in the long run that will be far more expensive than just having human staff. At best I can see robots used for active situations like a riot. But just having robot staff yeah it will be mayhem trust me.

Sufferedphoenix posted...

No on several levels. First and foremost some things require the human touch. Like say you notice a inmate behaving in a way that you know isn't typical for him. So you go talk to them or investigate the situation. Perhaps he's having some issues and by talking to him you prevent a incident from happening. Perhaps he's up to no good and you prevent a incident from happening.

On the other note the inmates will tear those robots to shreds and in the long run that will be far more expensive than just having human staff. At best I can see robots used for active situations like a riot. But just having robot staff yeah it will be mayhem trust me.

I'd wager they could tear a human to shreds more easily than reinforced steel designed for that environment and setting, that wouldn't hesitate to get violent in self-defense once the conditions were met due to programming. Though I don't think it would be justified, I could also see the law treating them with the same human authority that police dogs have (killing them constitutes killing an officer of the law as if they're human), which gives it the same degree of deterrent that human beings have.

The human touch I'll give you, however AI can paint beautiful artworks that previously people said "you'd need the human touch in order to achieve", so who knows.

Kradek posted...

I'd wager they could tear a human to shreds more easily than reinforced steel designed for that environment and setting, that wouldn't hesitate to get violent in self-defense once the conditions were met due to programming. Though I don't think it would be justified, I could also see the law treating them with the same human authority that police dogs have (killing them constitutes killing an officer of the law as if they're human), which gives it the same degree of deterrent that human beings have.

The human touch I'll give you, however AI can paint beautiful artworks that previously people said "you'd need the human touch in order to achieve", so who knows.

AI art all looks the same, and is easy to spot. People are already sick of it and dismiss it when seen.

_____Cait posted...

AI art all looks the same, and is easy to spot. People are already sick of it and dismiss it when seen.

That's not the type of AI art I'm talking about.

Having trouble finding the article, however I remember a year or so ago the BBC did a segment on this scientist who developed an AI that could make actually beautiful paintings people would say require human emotions.

However, since I can't find the segment/example I'm looking for, I think I'll just retract that part of my previous statement.

AI is going to fuck up so many jobs

Pretty much half the jobs being advertised now are including "Initiaive to effectively use AI to handleworkload" in the description.

Lawyers have been orgasming every hour at how much AI has cut down busywork.

It's the digital age version of industrialization.

All the people going "Lol this won't change anything cuz AI deepfakes have weird fingers!" are in denial

The next generation is so utterly fucked

UnfairRepresent posted...

AI is going to fuck up so many jobs

Pretty much half the jobs being advertised now are including "Initiaive to effectively use AI to handleworkload" in the description.

Lawyers have been orgasming every hour at how much AI has cut down busywork.

It's the digital age version of industrialization.

All the people going "Lol this won't change anything cuz AI deepfakes have weird fingers!" are in denial

The next generation is so utterly fucked

No, the AI you are describing is basically Microsoft Office style of busywork helping. You wont need to spend so long making spreadsheets now. You can make repetitive background images.

we have had this crap for decades. It is grifters trying to sell fake ai packages to dumb executives that claim it is greater than it is.

Automation isn't easy, or cheap. The robots need people to repair them, AI needs coders to scrub out that bit of code that tells them to kill all humans. And what will the exec do when all their customers bail to the new company that has a strong commitment to hiring real humans?

Kradek posted...

I'd wager they could tear a human to shreds more easily than reinforced steel designed for that environment and setting, that wouldn't hesitate to get violent in self-defense once the conditions were met due to programming. Though I don't think it would be justified, I could also see the law treating them with the same human authority that police dogs have (killing them constitutes killing an officer of the law as if they're human), which gives it the same degree of deterrent that human beings have.

The human touch I'll give you, however AI can paint beautiful artworks that previously people said "you'd need the human touch in order to achieve", so who knows.

Inmates are quicker to tear up a robot. They ain't all mindless evil scum bags. Hell the homeless wrecked a robot security guard trying to run them off some property.

But it doesn't even have to be tearing them up. Simply finding ways to blind it by say getting some kinda paint on its eyes/cameras which the homeless kinda did to the before mentioned robot.

But yeah mostly I don't see AI anytime soon being capable enough or caring enough to be able to read the room notice something is up and taking measures to prevent it. Cause it's not always obvious. Sometimes it little things like x inmate who's normally a chatter box is being silent today. Sometimes you just feel tension in the air even though there's no obvious signs.

Sufferedphoenix posted...

Inmates are quicker to tear up a robot. They ain't all mindless evil scum bags. Hell the homeless wrecked a robot security guard trying to run them off some property.

Never said they were, however in this scenario it's logical that it would be worst case scenario, IE a riot or prison break. If they have no reason to be violent at the moment I don't see why robot/human would make a difference.

Sufferedphoenix posted...

But it doesn't even have to be tearing them up. Simply finding ways to blind it by say getting some kinda paint on its eyes/cameras which the homeless kinda did to the before mentioned robot.

Do inmates have regular access to paint? I know they have jobs, I've just never heard of one involving paint.

Sufferedphoenix posted...

But yeah mostly I don't see AI anytime soon being capable enough or caring enough to be able to read the room notice something is up and taking measures to prevent it. Cause it's not always obvious. Sometimes it little things like x inmate who's normally a chatter box is being silent today. Sometimes you just feel tension in the air even though there's no obvious signs.

Fair point

Oh good, more ai fear mongering.

AI comes and goes and waves. This is not the first time over promising led to both executives over investing and journalists over panicking, nor will it be the last. Anyone who's old enough to remember when "Big Data" was being hyped remembers the last wave. You would have to be a little bit older in the 80s to remember the one before that when machine learning finally became computationally viable on standard computers.

At the end of the day, this current wave of LLMs isn't going to result in much more beyond replacing call centers with chatbots, eliminating the bottom of the barrel writers that do things like right cooking blogs you don't even want to read because it stands in between you and the actual recipe you're looking up, and probably make it so that product reviews on the internet are functionally useless because instead of being flooded with reviews from paid writers it's flooded with twice as many auto-generated ones.

Edit: for example, this is what a Carnegie Mellon professor said in 1960 at the birth of machine learning:

"Technologically, as I have argued earlier, machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work that a man can do."

Kradek posted...

Never said they were, however in this scenario it's logical that it would be worst case scenario, IE a riot or prison break. If they have no reason to be violent at the moment I don't see why robot/human would make a difference.

Do inmates have regular access to paint? I know they have jobs, I've just never heard of one involving paint.

Fair point

Inmates can make stuff. Also some jobs do get access to paint. Prison walls don't paint themselves and why pay a contractor when you got cheap labor sitting right there?

Haven't seen home made paint but I've seen home made glue and home made tattoo ink.

But yeah I wouldn't mind them for riots and stuff. But even then I feel the state would deem that too expensive. I'm betting at least in the early stages of a robot the cost of the robot then repairs needed after a active riot situation is gonna be steeper than the workers comp or medical bills of a officer.

Just to point out a riot breaks out thr regular rank and file officers retreat if possible. Then a emergency response team gets called in. These guys a more highly trained than normal officers and carry much more effective weaponry. Literally seen them gearing up at my unit to go to another unit and they had a grenade launcher (surely some kinda gas grenade)

Now if they can't handle the situation they retreat and a even more highly trained team comes in. Why don't they just send them firs you might ask? Cause if they come in somebody is gonna die. They bring in snipers and sharpshooter in general with real ammo. And when I say they are very highly trained I mean we had a officer who is a marine and is still on reserves for thr marines meaning he still has to do their PT and whatnot. He tried out for this team and failed miserably.

I was told if you compare the emergency response team to say swat team this other team is like military special forces.

AI replaces hundreds of thousands of jobs
Those people who could only work jobs like that go homeless
States criminalize homelessness start throwing people in jail for it with decade long sentences
Because of the sheer volume of inmates state officials look towards privatizing the entire industry where those in charge of these prisons effectively have free reign over these people
hundreds of thousands of people effectively become unperson'd as they disappear into the hell of this system
human rights abuses out the ass
To lessen outcry from the public that still has jobs they launch massive propaganda to make people just outright despise these people or even blame them for their situation and view them as acceptable targets

Things are going to get very very bad before they have the slightest chance of getting better

_____Cait posted...

AI art all looks the same, and is easy to spot. People are already sick of it and dismiss it when seen.

not to the masses. the thing about AI is that people in charge don't care if it looks/sounds bad as long as they don't have to hire and pay bennies to someone.

colliding posted...

not to the masses. the thing about AI is that people in charge don't care if it looks/sounds bad as long as they don't have to hire and pay bennies to someone.

I've seen a couple that fooled me at first glance. It's usually hands that are the giveaway but I'm not always focusing on the hands.

1337toothbrush posted...

Company execs are among the dumbest motherfuckers and they're the perfect candidates to be replaced with the fancy pants autocomplete we currently know as "AI".

based on my working experience, inward-facing execs could absolutely be automated since they're glorified analysts, though the outward-facing ones would be tricky since they're glorified politicians

having worked a decent bit with both autocomplete algos and deep nets back in the day, hard pressed to call the gpt3.5+ class llms fancy autocomplete though, cept bard which was trash