Current Events > Tech companies should stop pretending AI won't destroy jobs

(+) Yeah! (+)

The general public should too.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610298/tech-companies-should-stop-pretending-ai-wont-destroy-jobs/

I took an Uber to an artificial- intelligence conference at MIT one recent morning, and the driver asked me how long it would take for autonomous vehicles to take away his job. I told him it would happen in about 15 to 20 years. He breathed a sigh of relief. Well, Ill be retired by then, he said.

Good thing we werent in China. If a driver there had asked, I would have had to tell him hed lose his job in about 10 yearsmaybe 15 if he was lucky.

That might sound surprising, given that the US is, and has been, in the lead in AI research. But China is catching upif it hasnt alreadyand that rivalry, with one nation playing off the other, guarantees that AI is coming.
China will have at least a 50/50 chance of winning the race, and there are several reasons for that.
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The rise of China as an AI superpower isnt a big deal just for China. The competition between the US and China has sparked intense advances in AI that will be impossible to stop anywhere. The change will be massive, and not all of it good. Inequality will widen. As my Uber driver in Cambridge has already intuited, AI will displace a large number of jobs, which will cause social discontent. Consider the progress of Google DeepMinds AlphaGo software, which beat the best human players of the board game Go in early 2016. It was subsequently bested by AlphaGo Zero, introduced in 2017, which learned by playing games against itself and within 40 days was superior to all the earlier versions. Now imagine those improvements transferring to areas like customer service, telemarketing, assembly lines, reception desks, truck driving, and other routine blue-collar and white- collar work. It will soon be obvious that half of our job tasks can be done better at almost no cost by AI and robots. This will be the fastest transition humankind has experienced, and were not ready for it.

Not everyone agrees with my view. Some people argue that it will take longer than we think before jobs disappear, since many jobs will be only partially replaced, and companies will try to redeploy those displaced internally. But even if true, that wont stop the inevitable. Others remind us that every technology revolution has created new jobs as it displaced old ones. But its dangerous to assume this will be the case again.

Then there are the symbiotic optimists, who think that AI combined with humans should be better than either one alone. This will be true for certain professionsdoctors, lawyersbut most jobs wont fall in that category. Instead they are routine, single-domain jobs where AI excels over the human by a large margin.

Others think well be saved by a universal basic income. Take the extra money made by AI and distribute it to the people who lost their jobs, they say. This additional income will help people find their new path, and replace other types of social welfare. But UBI doesnt address peoples loss of dignity or meet their need to feel useful. Its just a convenient way for a beneficiary of the AI revolution to sit back and do nothing.

These changes are coming, and we need to tell the truth and the whole truth. We need to find the jobs that AI cant do and train people to do them. We need to reinvent education. These will be the best of times and the worst of times. If we act rationally and quickly, we can bask in whats best rather than wallow in whats worst.

tl;dr- It's not a matter of if AI will take over at least half our jobs, it's when. And we as a society aren't ready for it.
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I say by 2500 AI will take our jobs
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I think you are confused somewhat. A.I can do many things, but it can't unclog a toilet, or pick fruit from a tree. The level of robotics we have today is woefully insufficient for these kinds of tasks. Fear of A.I taking over is superstition brought on by bad Hollywood movies.
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Get a job where your opinion matters.
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008Zulu posted...

I think you are confused somewhat. A.I can do many things, but it can't unclog a toilet, or pick fruit from a tree. The level of robotics we have today is woefully insufficient for these kinds of tasks. Fear of A.I taking over is superstition brought on by bad Hollywood movies.

This is the very mindset that's dangerous. Also this was 10 months ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaL3UxUclKY
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Hmm I think I would rather die from the mistake of a human driver than the programming mistake of an AI.

Mechanization destroyed agriculture jobs. Petroleum destroyed whaling. Steam power destroyed carriages.

Broseph_Stalin posted...

Mechanization destroyed agriculture jobs. Petroleum destroyed whaling. Steam power destroyed carriages.

Replacing bodies with bodies. This time there might not be a place for bodies to go.
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voldothegr8 posted...

Replacing bodies with bodies. This time there might not be a place for bodies to go.

You mean like the people who would design, build and maintain these robots, along with the software they use?

Broseph_Stalin posted...

voldothegr8 posted...

Replacing bodies with bodies. This time there might not be a place for bodies to go.

You mean like the people who would design, build and maintain these robots, along with the software they use?

Do you think the general populace can learn all that shit?
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Broseph_Stalin posted...

You mean like the people who would design, build and maintain these robots, along with the software they use?

The # of people that are needed to do these jobs are a small amount compared to the number of people who are fired and of low skills.
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KamenRiderBlade posted...

The # of people that are needed to do these jobs are a small amount compared to the number of people who are fired and of low skills.

The number of people that are needed to operate farming machinery is also a lot smaller than the number of people required to do the same amount of work without it.

90% of the US labor force used to work in agriculture. Now it's closer to 1%. That's a lot more startling than the AI figures being estimated. Yet here we are, the world didn't end.

lol i'll take the UBI thanks who cares about dignity as long as i don't have to wear a diaper lol

Broseph_Stalin posted...

KamenRiderBlade posted...

The # of people that are needed to do these jobs are a small amount compared to the number of people who are fired and of low skills.

The number of people that are needed to operate farming machinery is also a lot smaller than the number of people required to do the same amount of work without it.

90% of the US labor force used to work in agriculture. Now it's closer to 1%. That's a lot more startling than the AI figures being estimated. Yet here we are, the world didn't end.

Again, bodies replacing bodies. Workers, and I mean the lower skilled workers, moved towards industry after agriculture which still needed bodies in the factories. Then robotics and computing forced industry to downsize and the workers moved towards transportation and services which boomed and needed bodies. That leads to now, services and transportation are about to hit a downsize period thanks to AI and advanced automation, so where to the workers go then?
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voldothegr8 posted...

Again, bodies replacing bodies. Workers, and I mean the lower skilled workers, moved towards industry after agriculture which still needed bodies in the factories. Then robotics and computing forced industry to downsize and the workers moved towards transportation and services which boomed and needed bodies. That leads to now, services and transportation are about to hit a downsize period thanks to AI and advanced automation, so where to the workers go then?

TC get's the point.

Until we have legislation in place to prevent technology from running amok, there will be ALOT of angry people who are out of jobs because of technology replacing them.
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I've worked at plenty of warehouses and this mindset is pretty much everywhere. They've already replaced a full department of workers with Automated machines at the last place I worked at already.

Companies won't hesitate to do this even if it's inferior to actual workers.
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someones always gonna have to fix the AI and the machines
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I4NRulez posted...

someones always gonna have to fix the AI and the machines

That requires Higher Skill Sets and fewer bodies to fill those job slots.

There are going to be ALOT of low skilled workers left in the lurch.

What do you do about them?

Most of them won't be able to catch up or perform to the higher skilled set required due to age / family requirements / misc other reasons.

Low Skilled Jobs are disappearing EVERYWHERE.
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voldothegr8 posted...

so where to the workers go then?

Where will workers go when tractors replace them? No one could have predicted the industrial revolution and all the jobs it created.

You're scaremongering because automation will replace some jobs, create others at the same time, and make every industry they are used in cheaper. This has all been happening for a while.

KamenRiderBlade posted...

I4NRulez posted...

someones always gonna have to fix the AI and the machines

That requires Higher Skill Sets and fewer bodies to fill those job slots.

There are going to be ALOT of low skilled workers left in the lurch.

What do you do about them?

Most of them won't be able to catch up or perform to the higher skilled set required due to age / family requirements / misc other reasons.

Low Skilled Jobs are disappearing EVERYWHERE.

Jobs are always being erased and created. Its the change of the times.
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I4NRulez posted...

Jobs are always being erased and created. Its the change of the times.

And ALOT of people aren't able to adapt.

Change in the past has been FAR SLOWER and more gradual.
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KamenRiderBlade posted...

I4NRulez posted...

Jobs are always being erased and created. Its the change of the times.

And ALOT of people aren't able to adapt.

Change in the past has been FAR SLOWER and more gradual.

Exactly, this is pretty much uncharted waters, or has the potential to be at least.
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Broseph_Stalin posted...

voldothegr8 posted...

so where to the workers go then?

Where will workers go when tractors replace them? No one could have predicted the industrial revolution and all the jobs it created.

You're scaremongering because automation will replace some jobs, create others at the same time, and make every industry they are used in cheaper. This has all been happening for a while.

You're right except the scaremonger part, but it's still not guaranteed something else will boom to take in the lower skilled labor. That's the whole point, then what?
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Yeah the industrial revolution can best be described as slow and gradual :thinking:

voldothegr8 posted...

Exactly, this is pretty much uncharted waters, or has the potential to be at least.

Just look at how fast things change each century before the 20th century (Everything before 1900)

Then compare the speed of change from 1900 - Now

The rate of change has Accelerated DRAMATICALLY with each Decade bringing about faster change then the previous.

There are ALOT of people who can't keep up.

That's why you were correct in terms of "Unprecedented & Unchartered Waters".

It's going to bite society in the arse in ways we can't see and cause countless social unrest.
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We need to start thinking of something like a universal basic income when 25-35% of the eligible workforce is unemployed. This is coming from someone with a good career and invested in cryptocurrency and stocks, I dont need it but I know theres a purpose for it.
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Broseph_Stalin posted...

Yeah the industrial revolution can best be described as slow and gradual :thinking:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840.

The Computer Revolution started: in 195079 and has only gotten better and benefited all of society
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_computing_1950%E2%80%9379

The Home PC Revolution started taking serious hold in the 1990's.

We're at the infancy of the AI Revolution right now.

We're also in the infancy of the 3D Printing Revolution as well.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Eg67jDh2Ts
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16-BITTER posted...

Didnt Player Piano already address these concerns?

What's that?
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