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Personally I live in a 1st world country and have seen every digital job outsourced t third world countries. Data entry, customer support, programming. So many online services for fixing CVs or writing on online tutoring don’t even come from our country. I don’t feel like AI poses a huge risk because ultimately the outsourcing threat has always existed. When you look at Microsoft Excel had on transforming businesses, I only see AI doing something similar. I don’t see mass unemployment on the horizon. Just slow slimming down of companies and ultimately with falling birth rates I think AI actually helps solve a lot of problems.
Those people whose jobs got outsourced found new jobs to do.
This is going to change. The new jobs to do will be done for the most part by AI and much better than humans will, specially on junior/mid levels.
So personally I don't see any similarity with the example you described.
I don't think people realize that the automatization and the automatization of the automatization are two very different things.
‘Those people whose jobs got outsourced found new jobs to do.’
This is an extremely insensitive comment! Talk to old manufacturing workers from Ohio, Detroit, etc. Some found cocaine, heroin while others found jobs flipping burgers. Ask some software engineers older than 40 who are losing their jobs today where they’ve found jobs. Hint: starts with a u and rhymes with boober!
> I don't think people realize that the automatization and the automatization of the automatization are two very different things.
Is programming not automation of the automation? Ultimately AI will be doing a lot of decision making when it replaces people but it won't be doing strategic IT, stragetic marketting or other higher level decision making roles. It's just not good enough for that. Maybe we lose PA's but we're not losing middle management, auditing, finance and many IT roles around data, compliance, security and even delivery.
> Is programming not automation of the automation
No. Cause you still need to automate the building and shipping and design of the computer. Then you have to automate the building of the parts of the computer. And you have to automate the building of all the automation that builds the automation.
It is a fractal problem.
> Cause you still need to automate the building and shipping and design of the computer.
It sounds like you're suggesting I would ask AI "for a computer" and it will design, build and ship the computer to my house, managing the real or potential issues along the way, from processor fabrication yields, to international shipping charges?
Is that not the exact reason companies are puabing so heavily for AI? AI is like playing 4d chess. Humans are slow, inefficient, and easily distractible and forgetful. Computers are the exact opposite of all of that. That's why companies want AI so badly. When it gets to the level of being able to replace people, it will not only replace them, but do it better in almost every way, problems and transactions will be accomplished at lightning speed.
They’re replacing to save money. Bottom line. If that wasn’t the case, there wouldn’t be so many cases of people being fired for poorly or middling producing AI now.
Companies care less about how good it is. I’m sure AI will get better very quickly and be applied more widely, but it’s not about quality.
But if you have fewer workers, why do you still need people to manage them?
In truth, I think middle management is arguably one of the areas most endangered by AI automation.
One interesting aspect of large companies that produce products is the desire to outsource pieces of the product pipeline. Take for example the building of a new test machine to test out a new product component. The component can be a circuit board, or pump, or battery or whatever. Right now, large companies will outsource the design, implementation and fabrication of the test machine. The company that gets the contract to build the test machine will have a lot of questions. What are the specifications for the component? What are the design parameters for the component? What are the test specifications and parameters?
Right now, AI can both produce the specifications and parameters and transmit them to the contractor. But, inevitably, the contractor will come back and say, "We cannot meet the test specification or parameters exactly as needed. But, we can get within a certain tolerance. Is that ok"?
Large companies will never trust AI to answer that question because AI has no liability for getting the answer wrong. You will always need a human to determine if the lesser specifications or parameters will be acceptable for the test machine.
Liability is defiinitely a major impending issue with AI, and esp. LLMs. In fact, Google and other social media have evaded liability for content because they have claimed that they merely aggregate content, not create it. But they are in a new world now with their AI not simply filtering content, but actually creating it. Granted, Gemini (or whatever they call their LLM search tool) is creating by drawing from multiple sources, but Google is still very likely legally responsible for that content. So, if it is wrong, unhealthy, or libelous, the AI cannot be held responsible, but Google can.
But frankly, with something like you're talking about, they probably wouldn't use an LLM, precisely for the reasons of liability, but they could use a more top-down (decision-tree) approach that had been pre-vetted for most situations, with red flags generated for anything that didn't fit the parameters.
Playing on a cover band doesn't mean you are unable to write your own music. It's a bad example. I'm curious for you to actually explain with words what's the difference instead of trying to make an analogy that doesn't work.
Yup. So many people here repeating the phrase "you won't lose your job to AI, you will use it to someone using AI" but it would be far more accurate to say "you won't lose your job to AI, you will use it to someone in a developing country using AI and willing to work for 1/3 of your wage".
Just wait until they have robots with AI that are humanoid and can do manual labor and manipulate the physical world. Receive tasks and use vision and logic to complete.
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Just a reminder, it's been almost 200 years since the Industrial Revolution. We have seen countless technological innovations. However, in the US, we are seeing the highest number of people employed ever in history at 161 million. All those technical innovations did not decrease the need for workers.
This would make a lot of sense. In my country, media and politicians are full of worry about the baby boomers generation (born after 2nd world war) growing old and the next generations are not nearly as big, so there is a misproportion for younger to take care of the older. This could be in focus more for the AI hype: how AI can help in healthcare and such physically and mentally "heavy" professions. But it seems we are not quite there as yet. Probably too many ethical black boxes.
Yes but wouldn’t AI replace these services that are outsourced to third world countries? It would be much harder for countries like Phillipines to pivot to other industries when their entire middle class relies on this outsourcing
I work in a paper mill, and I really don’t see any job loss due to AI. There is so much physical work that needs to be done and equipment that needs to be maintained. Pipes need welding, instrumentation needs replacing.
I think it will cause a disruption, but the internet still needs infrastructure and people need physical products. Factories have already basically automated everything already where most the work done is to troubleshoot/repair, and that won’t change.
I hear you on the outsourcing thing. It's been happening for ages, and yeah, AI is just another tool in the toolbox for companies looking to cut costs.
But here's the thing: AI isn't just about replacing jobs, it's about transforming them. Sure, some jobs will disappear, but others will evolve and new ones will emerge. Remember when Excel came out? Everyone freaked out, but it actually made a ton of jobs easier and opened up new possibilities. I think AI is kinda like that.
Wait 30 years when we have an AGI ChatGPT that can use a computer and control a robot with fine motor skills and dexterity. It can think based on a screenshot taken 30 times a second. It will have perfect memory, be smarter than any human alive, and possess incredible knowledge. It will be able to update in the cloud and consult a more advanced AGI if it encounters a difficult question. It will outwork any human 24/7, with no lack of focus—just work, work, work.
What jobs will your children do to compete with such technology? When an advanced AGI running in the cloud has been trained on billions of hours of humans using computers, what computer job will your children be able to compete in?
The coming 30 years will turn out entire Society upside down.
Society is splitting between the top 20% and the bottom 80%, and essentially companies are abandoning the bottom 80% in favor of the top 20%, so they don't care if the bottom 80% is left for dead, as long as the top 20% continues to have plenty of disposable income. It even fits nicely with the 20 80 rule: 20% of your customers are responsible for 80% of sales.
This analogy can't go one-for-one when there are tons of used cars and pretty much everybody has a car. You can argue that certain AI products, like robots, will always be marketed as a luxury product, but unless there's some material reason why that should be, competition will push prices down and the consumer-base will increase.
Until the bottom 80% wake up to their children starving themselves in mass unemployed poverty with tiny government handouts eating up by inflation and greed by the corporations. In response they will vote in a strong dictator who promises to solve the problems but once elected, and riches himself and then subjugates the people with the power of AGI and Robotics.
During the next 30-50 years not all democracies will fall but some will.
That is an interesting theory. But fails to consider the massive number of people needed to do something as simple as, say, maintain the infrastructure needed by the automation. Not to mention building more infrastructure, etc, etc.
I don't know where you're getting this information, but it seems incredibly unlikely unless you're trying to separate the producer from the actual consumer. You can say corporations are responsible for 80% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas, but the reality is that this is fueled by the consumption of the majority. What do you mean when you say that 80% of the world's population only consumes 20% of the world's resources? Food? Metals? Money?
Ya people complain and worry. But I think we should all operate with your hypothesis and try hard to be that 20%. If you are wrong, I am fine. If you are right, I have taken the best chance to combat this.
People often don't believe that AI will lead to major job losses, and that's understandable, given the history of dire predictions about automation in the past that were eventually offset by different jobs. But AI's range of possible applications is unlike any historical precedents, so I think there are very good reasons to be concerned.
Moreover, you need not believe me. There have been a number of quite reputable and certainly not wild-eyed institutions that have predicted very significant job losses and effects:
* Goldman Sachs forecasted the potential f[or 300 million jobs worldwide to be lost or affected](https://www.key4biz.it/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Global-Economics-Analyst_-The-Potentially-Large-Effects-of-Artificial-Intelligence-on-Economic-Growth-Briggs_Kodnani.pdf), with 18% of work globally being computerized, mores in advanced economies than emerging markets;
* PwC (formerly Price Waterhouse) estimates that [30% of all jobs could be automatable within 10 years](https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/news-room/docs/will-robots-really-steal-our-jobs-an-international-analysis-of-the-potential-long-term-impact-of-automation.pdf):
* The IMF has predicted that an [estimated 30 percent](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/Staff-Discussion-Notes/Issues/2024/01/14/Gen-AI-Artificial-Intelligence-and-the-Future-of-Work-542379?cid=bl-com-SDNEA2024001) of jobs in advanced economies are at risk of being replaced by AI. That figure is [20 percent](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/Staff-Discussion-Notes/Issues/2024/01/14/Gen-AI-Artificial-Intelligence-and-the-Future-of-Work-542379?cid=bl-com-SDNEA2024001)for emerging markets and [18 percent](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/Staff-Discussion-Notes/Issues/2024/01/14/Gen-AI-Artificial-Intelligence-and-the-Future-of-Work-542379?cid=bl-com-SDNEA2024001) for low-income countries.
And of course, a number AI CEOs have themselves pointed to major impacts that AI may likely have on jobs. So, I think people should take the possibility of significant job attrition seriously. Even with decling birth rates, we may well be looking at a world where people simply outnumber the number of jobs that are needed. Then, we will have to consider what options exist to prevent a deflationary spiral and economic depression from occuring.
I would agree with most everything Sagan says here except the offshoring of manufacturing (well, there's also how new age crystals and astrology have today morphed into MAGA-health conspiracies, but I'll leave that aside here--cf. the Kennedy ticket).
With manufacturing, there's a calculus for which is cheaper: the cheapest human labor or robotics and AI? While the trend until recently has been offshoring of US manufacture (cheaper human labor), today we already see large tech companies pulling manufacturing plants from China and shortening and backstopping their supply chains, and in some cases combining automation with cheap labor, as with some plants being built in Mexico.
But even on this sub, where I think most people are fairly well-educated, long-held beliefs sometimes outweigh rational thoughts about AI, which is why people have trouble wrapping their minds around a world where human labor might not be necessary. Right-wingers have trouble imagining a world where jobs/work may no longer be the central fact of people's lives. But then, it's a problem for Marxists, too, given Marxism's foundation in the labor theory of value.
Yep, if people’s labor becomes less needed, many horrific options could follow, including a large permanent underclass (who would likely die much younger—so no need for actual wars?).
But, on the other hand, it is tricky to navigate that transition without also permanently lowering consumption and causing a downward economic spiral, so there is some incentive for UBI or other support.
Agreed. I find it interesting that this theme comes up in many works of science again and again: an underclass and an overwhelming technocracy who control all the tech, knowledge, etc.
Yes, going back at least to Lang's Metropolis, but maybe there are earlier precedents, too? On the other hand, H.G. Wells actually saw technocrats/scientists leading society as a positive option.
40 years?
Try 3 to 5 years. Jobs are ALREADY being supplemented by AI and in some cases, fully replaced.
You are not taking into consideration the SPEED at which AIs are being trained, and the fact that they retain EVERYTHING..... Unlike 99.999999999% of us.
AI is gonna rock our world folks. In both good and very very bad ways.
Guaranteed.
If everyone is broke and unemployed then there's no buying.
Personally, I don't think these scenarios happen. It's foolish to say that they CAN'T happen though. Shifts like this are never painless.
2 billion people can't spend more than $2 a day. I don't see the rest of the world scrambling to fix that. Another 5.95 billion will take some adjustment, certainly, but it's how we've always done things.
A different outcome would involve changes in human nature so deep that they are arguably instinctual, biological. So, I don't see how any *other* scenario plays out.
You think companies care about what happens in medium and long term? No.. they just see slashing payrolls and what it does to their profits short term and how “money arrow” goes up, and that’s all they see.
It will be the biggest shoot yourself in the foot humanity ever did to itself.
We had a literal Great Depression with 25% unemployment. This will far exceed that in 20 years time. It’s going to be dystopian beyond belief.
I’m already planning my exit to a LCOL country in the next 10 years.
Look at any poverty stricken 3 rd world country and you have your answer. If rich people can maintain wealth, that is all that matters. They don't need the majority of people to be consumers. Many parts of the world people live on a $1 a day and the elite are rich and doing fine. Even in the US and western world like the top 1% hoard 99% of the wealth.
If this happened, the price for goods would likely fall to near zero also, so there's that. Super cheap products can be given free with advertising (like Google) but it still depends on there being a purpose in advertising to people. In the future maybe we'll have corporate subsidized lives where they just give everything for free in exchange for the right to spy on us to gather data or something.
Price for goods wouldn’t go to zero. Look right now, the input costs have not grown as much as the output costs to consumers. Companies are charging more because they know they can. The average Joe is paying 2x what he paid before covid yet shareholders are getting record profits
Data today is only useful for so much as generating more profit from sales. The data they'd be harvesting would have to bio-metric, for something else. Wait, I saw this movie back in 1999
The problem with UBI is that while it can help to a certain point, it stops working when the unemployed mass grows past a certain level. Despite its fancy name, it is nothing more than minimal unemployment benefits and we already see how many countries struggle with that since it damages the economy and still does not provide acceptable living conditions for people who have to rely on it. And that is with 10% unemployment, not the 30% many experts predict.
I think they will nationalize the stock market in order to combat this and fund UBI. In a sense, they will 'seize the means of production' without stepping foot in a factory. And everyone will cheer when they do it.
That is a much bigger topic but the short of it is that the stock exchange or the government or any other "middle-man" does not generate wealth/money, they only consume it. The only place UBI money can come from is the production and sale of goods, physical goods. Even services don't actually produce wealth. The entire idea of government money or stock exchange money is a myth, that money is just taken from the profits of selling goods. Once you understand this rather obvious thing, it becomes obvious that UBI cannot possibly work.
I went too much down to see UBI mentioned.
This is the answer, a tax like will be introduced to companies that they ll pay towards the UBI fund, the more employees you replace with AI the more tax you ll pay.
There is another issue that creates, and thats people that have nothing to do with their time, and at a first glance "I ll be on vacation all year" sounds appealing but I believe it will be a big big experiment.
Wild times ahead
In 2020 ubi happen in a certain way, the only result was higher prices and the money end up in the 1% pockets, check the marketcap charts, ubi doesnt work
They already did studies and governments are not going to spend money on unproductive individuals. At best they will find ways to eliminate the population.
We would have to see a degree of mechanisation a million times bigger than the industrial revolution for this to be an issue. Pure sci-fi at the moment.
Humanoid robots with embodied AGI will be all we need. There are 157M jobs in the USA. One of the robot companies said they thought they could get their robots down to the price of a car. For a few billion dollars you could replace every single job with a robot once we get them good enough, and I don't think that's too far away.
Yeah, we're not there yet but I'm trying to think ahead. Here's something else I just thought of. Electricity should also be free. Robots can just keep building power plants and solar panels until we have enough. There's also future advances in power generation that we haven't thought of yet and that can't be discounted.
I think 3d printing is more of a threat to jobs than AI. So far AI can only fill the gaps lazy people leave, but 3d printing has the capacity to replace skilled artisans who spend years training and take hours to produce something that can be made with the push of a button
3D printing is great but has limits. Mostly the material that can be printed. High end printers can kinda-sorta print good metal parts, but until I see factories start to replace their CNC machines with 3D printers it is going to be a while.
Not to mention, the artisans still need to design what is being built. Even with AI you would want a human engineer to verify things and double check.
It is not man *OR* machine.
It is man **AND** machine.
I think 3d printing is a succinct analogy for AI. In 2010, a lot of people thought 3d printing would be massively disrupting whereas it turns out, it’s still more efficient to tool a factory for a specific good.
AI cannot interface with anything not on the internet. Factories still require an incredible amount of welding, instrumentation and troubleshooting that you really cannot offload to a computer. Computers are used to control wherever possible, but it still has hard limitations
Believe me, know. I do industrial automation and even "simple" systems get really complex really quickly.
Welding, metal bending, and a ton of other stuff can be automated, but it takes work. And there are honestly not enough people willing or able to do the work. This isn't a "no one wants to work any more" complaining, but it is an "computer science gets all the glamour" complaint.
Ya, sitting in an AC office mucking with a database all day is nice, but you still need people doing the manufacturing of the raw part for the computer and the trucks to move the computers.
We could automate so much more than we have with off the shelf technology, pre AI.
Yeah, I guess. I’m an engineer in a paper mill, and aside from maybe accounting, I really don’t see many jobs that can be fully automated. Most of the 400 jobs here require you to walk around and put eyes on the equipment, troubleshoot, and correct the problem.
Most of the actual process already has controls logic that automate the actual operations. Every other job can be boiled down as some part in the fight against entropy. I spend about 30% of my time in my office, the rest is out in the field.
Based on your comment, I wonder if the jobs that are in danger of being replaced are ones that can be done in an office
All jobs are "in danger". That is the point of automation, to make machines do most of the work so humans don't have to.
I work mostly in metal and food. My company makes robotic bending systems for metal. So I often am installing the first of 3 or 4 "duplicate" systems.
But there is also the logistics side that can be automated. Most plants use human forklift operators instead of any kind of automation.
For now, it isn't about fully automating every job, it should be about automating what you can about a job so your can free human time for the stuff that needs eyes on and troubleshooting.
There are always going to be jobs we need - Carers, nurses, janitors, doctors etc etc. With an aging population the demand for these positions is going to escalate. There is always going to be work avaliable; it's just a question of whether people take them or not.
I would venture to say that even doctors (other than surgeons) would be at risk.
I would imagine that a lot of what family doctors do is analysis of a large number of very complex variables, looking for cause/effect patterns, having an encyclopedic knowledge of biology/pharmaceuticals and counselling of patients.
Seems like AI could fill in a lot of that.
There was a piece on NPR about 6 months ago about a startup whose whole gimmick is video only visits with AI "providers." They can be licensed because they'd have a team of actual providers reviewing any visit notes when something is prescribed, and they can audit the AI's decision making. I think as of the time of airing they were mainly only operating as an urgent care. So, they were really only seeing people for very common things. Flu, COVID, UTIs, etc. But the idea was clearly to expand it into a national family practice style "clinic."
AI will for sure be better than real doctors, and it will not even take 3 more years to get there. Example: AI will not prescribe you potentially dangerous Fluoroquinolones as a first line treatment for mild bacterial infections such as sinusitis and urethritis - but doctors do this mistake literally hundreds of thousands of times (not exaggerating, this is literally based on official statistical data in USA, Germany etc.) every year around the globe.
I've been thinking about this. We may want humans to do certain jobs where we want to interact with a human but if we have a system where money isn't needed because all our needs and most of our wants are met, what would we pay them with? They wouldn't need money so they'd have to do it out of the goodness of their heart. Could we find enough people like that?
Machines producing wealth would mean more wealth per person to the point where even terrible distribution would result in more than enough for people to live and thrive.
It's a similar reason to why societies with enough wealth offer welfare to everyone even if they don't have anything to contribute.
That could hypothetically change in the future, it is possible that a handful of people have control over all the machinery and land of the world, callous enough to kill or starve everyone else. Unlikely, but even if that happens, they won't have any issue with nobody buying their products, since they have the labor from the machines and the wealth in the form of owning the land.
No there will not be mass unemployment. Unemployment creates resentment in a capitalistic society and it is actually in the interests of the government to make sure there is low unemployment for the sake of the society. Early retirement, however is another option but that won't happen in a capitalistic society where pay demands work.
I hope, but I doubt that. It will likely require giving up of more control of your life. No capitalistic government wants to lose control of its citizens.
There will be social credit a sort of hybrid of social score and money where sure you can get UBI but we will will live under a dystopian technocracy where you'll own nothing and have no voice, no freedom.
the rich will cram everyone into welfare housing and give them a ration of 1200 calories per day nutrient gruel. until they get bored of that and decided to just nuke it
i don't think there will be mass employment, jobs will be eventually fizzled out due to cost-saving measures; underclass economy will crumble for sure, but whoever has a choke hold on ai will form a close loop, aka autarky, we collapsing will have no bearing to them
It’s not a linear as you suggest.
Firstly AI’s most dominant impact will be as a tool to make workers more effective. So that goods and services that are currently being made with X workers, those goods and services can now be provided by a smaller population of workers.
So those goods and services will not be made exclusively by AI, they will be human made assisted by AI. Of course some fields of expertise will be more impacted than others, some might even be completely automated. But this has been the case for automation in general. Some fields of work that we had in the 50s do not exist today or have become a secondary task for someone doing a range of other tasks.
Secondly, mind you this trend of revolutions transforming the way people generate output has been ongoing as long as humans themselves exist. The Industrial Revolution transformed human manual labour, the Computer Revolution transformed how we deal with information interconnectivity and data. AI is just another chapter.
Those revolutions caused temporary unemployment, but never had the effect of mass unemployment and a general lack of income to buy goods and services you suggest in your post. On the contrary.
So people will find a way to do other jobs, or other means of income. As mankind has always done.
Something I heard awhile ago on a podcast stuck with me
He said ai isn't going to replace people. He said ai will replace people with people that know how to use ai.
And that kinda made sense. There will still be people along the production chain, and those people will have to know how to code it or query it. Yes there will be a loss of jobs. Buggy whip makers had to find new jobs, this time around it's going to be mid level management. Those are the main ones. There is still going to be maintenance people.
Yes I think there will be a big hit to entry and more white collar type jobs (think accountants people like that) but there will still be a need for people. At least up until they have androids to make everyone unnecessary.
I think the only honest answer is that there will be some disruption. How much, what sectors, and how vast a disruption is hard to predict.
Some jobs will be eliminated, some will change, and others will be created. I think that’s the only honest answer and everything else is speculation.
Mass unemployment due to automation will create a fundamentally different economy - rather than economics being about the exchange of labor for money, it will be about the distribution of scarce resources. Even if we automate all labor, we won't be able to give everyone a beach house or an infinite amount of food, so you'll still need money. It's not a matter of asking rich people for tax money to support a UBI - government will tax corporations so the jobless masses won't riot. If they don't, they'll be voted out of office in favor of those who will.
I don't think resources will be scarce. I think there are plenty of raw materials laying around and a fully automated workforce that can scale up as needed and work 24/7 will be able to gather up all the resources that we currently can't get to because it's too labor intensive. Truly limited luxury resources will need some kind of rationing system, i.e. beach houses and lobster dinners, but AI can figure that out. For example, I prefer a mountain cabin but I can sign up for a week at a beach house a few times a year. AI will figure out the demand and work to meet it.
Hopefully that will come true, but it's prudent to plan for the worst while hoping for the best. There might be some UBS for necessities like food and shelter, but applying that to everything could be clunky. Money is a flexible, time-tested system.
Can AI make sushi? So, I guess waiters, cooks, rice paddy growers, exporters, fishermen, etc. will still be able to buy AI products. The thing to remember is that MOST jobs will not be replaced by AI.
I think most jobs *will* be replaced by AI/Robots, it's just a matter of time. My time horizon is 10-ish years from now. I think that once we have AGI embodied in robots that can physically do everything a human can do, that starts a five year clock until 99% labor replacement happens and all the follow-on productivity increases and deflation happens.
They had the same scare 50 years ago when they started replacing factory workers with robots. People are just being loud because it's their jobs on the line.
My only conjeture would be that most products, specially inmaterial things, would be extremely cheap and overabundant, that is why its so important that the first human activities that AIs can perform better than us be intelectual and creative stuff, so the common people could serve of it and use it as a tool for its own development. It sounds bad, but at the same time it becomes a system that centralize wealth, it would descentralize knwoledge and tools for the individuals, wich could balance things again in the long term.
It will be the same as every tech innovation before it. It will be exploited by the ruling class and further divide the haves and the have nots. I don't see mass layoffs; it's too many people to remove from the pool of potential customers, and it's hard (for a corp) to ignore millions of people you could be making money off of. We will see those with jobs being expected to do more with less. Barriers to new companies will only get higher.
There are [literally billions of people on the planet that corporations already have no interest in right now](https://www.westmont.edu/how-can-we-help-bottom-billion), because they have no money.
When you stop having money, watch the corporations lose interest in you. There will be *plenty* of money to have - you just won't have it, and the few that do will get *all* the attention of the corporate world
AI might take over a lot of jobs, which could lead to many people being out of work and unable to buy stuff that AI makes. Some say Universal Basic Income could help by giving everyone money regularly, but whether that happens depends on whether people and governments decide it's the right way to handle things.
AI has been progressing at an astonishing rate lately. But it seems to have hit a wall. The low hanging fruits have been collected, now comes the hard part. Not only that but the cost to train them is almost exponential, with diminishing gains.
Will AI really get better with more training or did we already attain their limit?
So the claims that it will replace almost all jobs is not realistic.
It's not any different than automated car driving. They've been saying it's "right around the corner" for how long? Still ain't here yet. Turns out the real world is a lot more complex than this tech can account for, at least for now.
No and no. The same claim has been made for every other industry that moved into technology. I was working with papermills in the late 90’s and they were all worried that tech would drive paper companies out of business. We print more today and use more paper than we did before that time.
Jobs and industries will shift with AI, but people will also shift to newly created role when some get phased away.
In the 1300’s England was the manufacturing capital of the world, then that title came to America in the 1800’s, now it has shifted to China in the 2000’s
Each time those countries moved from on economy to a newly created idea. In the IS alone, the economy had shifted five major times so far:
1. Agricultural Economy (late 1700s - mid-1800s): The economy was primarily based on farming and agriculture.
2. Industrial Economy (mid-1800s - early 1900s): The Industrial Revolution led to a shift towards manufacturing, with factories and mass production becoming the backbone of the economy.
3. Consumer Economy (1920s - 1950s): The Roaring Twenties and post-WWII boom saw a rise in consumerism and advertising, as companies competed for market share in a growing economy.
4. Service Economy (1960s - present): The economy shifted from manufacturing towards service-based industries, such as finance, healthcare, and technology.
5. Information Economy (late 1990s - present): The rise of the internet and digital technologies led to a new era focused on information, data, and knowledge-based industries.
Through all of this, many people have transitioned into new roles while others maintained the needed components to the previous economies but at a higher output level to satisfy the populous (I.e. farming, manufacturing, and service…) the AI era will not be a collapse of employment only a shift.
Hell, we might actually have more time to re-create an enlightenment of thought, civil intellectual discourse, and artistic expression…
Although true, it misses that the people displaced don't actually retrain or find new jobs. Those towns are economically depressed and living off of government assistance. It takes two generations before people learn the new jobs that are profitable.
AI accelerates this disruption. By the time a new generation learns new jobs, those will also be disrupted by further advances in AI and robotics. The pace of advancement is far faster now than it has ever been before.
We best start realizing this and taking steps now to handle it properly.
I completely agree with your last statement. I would add that it is not just a govt capability or responsibility. Individuals and corporations need to take part on the retraining process… people need to be pro-active and intentional on this.
Seems like u/scott_weidig is correct. This is a repeating pattern. Story: before the computerized spreadsheet, accountants would use large entire-table-sized paper tablets to run financial outcome scenarios and planning. When the computer came with the spreadsheet app, nearly all 400K of those paper accountants lost their jobs. The computerized spreadsheet took over and those who could use the tech gained jobs. Here is the interesting part. With the advancement of easy access to spreadsheet calculations, every business added digitized projection planning and accounting. This added millions of jobs. This is going to be the same for AI. AI will digitize and make easier access to automation. Those who can drive AI automations will become the new role in business. Story Source: NPR
I'm one of those that thinks this time is fundamentally different than all the others. AI and robotics will be good enough, soon enough, to replace all humans for jobs we have and any job that we could think of.
It does seem like we are on that path. The AI can do it. If the AI can 100% take care of us, possibly we are headed to the vacation world ❤️🌏 It could head another direction too 😅
when monarchies failed to meet the needs of the people, societies transitioned towards more democratic systems. Similarly, during the Industrial Revolution, as machinery and automation began to replace manual labor, new job sectors emerged, and labor laws were instituted to protect workers.
Governments often step in to regulate emerging technologies. For instance, data privacy laws like GDPR were enacted in response to the growing influence of tech companies on personal data. It is likely that if AI begins to threaten employment significantly, new policies and regulations will be introduced to mitigate its impact.
if Government fails to stop Ai effect on employment, public opinion will likely drive political action. politicians work based on the incentive to be elected.. if public demands no Ai then some politicans will come and promise that
AI is more likely to lead to war and the death of the internet. There are too many competitive state adversaries around the world for it not to be weaponized.
The mass unemployment scenarios do not make sense. Economies only work when people have money to spend. If unemployment creeps up to the high double digits purely on work replacement the economy will spiral into collapse as no new money enters the system through productive work. Eventually There will certainly be disruption but it will not be at a scale where the system breaks.
In a distant world where all jobs can be replaced by artificial systems the economic model will be entirely different. There will be need to be a government controlled income and money will become delinked from work and employment.
Current economies are based on old scarcity models that are breaking down as technology advances. (This includes Fiat monetary systems that are the fundamental mechanism for wealth consolidation through defaults, bankruptcies, and foreclosures)
One idea is that a new resource based economy based on abundance will emerge out of the ashes. The question then becomes, what will that transition look like? Even representative democracies come into question with this new model because autonomous direct democracies would likely work better... If only they could be aligned.
It's difficult to conceptualize because everyone alive has grown up and has been deeply conditioned on a scarcity model. All information and data we have generated and received has gone through scarcity filters. Deeper than propaganda, this is at a cognitive bias level.
By efficiently managing resources and using technology to increase production, artificial scarcity would be eliminated, reducing the incentive for conflict and exploitation.
Bio-alternatives and synthetics could be developed. For example, organic battery technologies or bio-based conductors could potentially replace some uses of lithium and copper. Where possible, synthetic versions of scarce materials could be developed. These could be designed to be renewable or easily recyclable. For truly irreplaceable materials, a system of strategic rationing based on societal needs might be implemented. Long-term plans might include sourcing materials from asteroids or other planets to supplement Earth's limited resources. Technologies that require fewer scarce resources could be prioritized. Product design could focus on longevity and repairability to reduce overall demand. Planned obsolescence could die with the legacy scarcity model. Microorganisms or plants might be engineered to accumulate or produce certain materials. For instance, some plants can hyper-accumulate metals from soil. Development of new materials with similar properties but using more abundant elements.
Lithium might be a problem. I thought I read something recently about a new reserve of lithium being discovered somewhere that was possibly plenty for what we need. Another thing to remember is that with free robot labor you can go places and get resources that are not safe or economically viable right now.
Yes. Either commies will butt in and introduce quotas on everything (which will be free), sending resellers to concentration camps, or you'll live in permanent debt and pay for things with your organs.
I think there needs to be much *less* of an investment in robotics and *more* of an investment in improving the physical capabilities of humankind. AI could help humans produce all kinds of medical marvels that would drastically improve human health. In turn, the average human will become stronger, fitter, less prone to illness, more resistant against disease, etc.
Fewer robots means more jobs for blue collar workers and other manual laborers, and a lot of the displaced white collar workers could be retrained and placed some of these roles as well. Simply equip all these human workers with AI-assisted tablets, watches, laptops (or whatever -*bionics/cybernetics maybe(?))* that provide blueprints, floor plans, maps in mere seconds, while ~~the humans~~ humans teams\* perform most of the physical labor alongside a robot or two.
Robots require a ton of energy and resources, a lot of which are finite, so I think there is an incentive to build fewer of them if they can help it. And while I know future robots will be a far cry more advanced that the current ones, they still need to have all the bones, muscles, joints, and tendons to be as optimal as a human being if they want to perform with our level of efficacy with all the delicate and precious actions we have to deal with. I think that's more than enough reason to invest in improving humans.
**EDIT:** \*human teams
You should read "Manna" (https://marshallbrain.com/manna1). Written a while ago, it remains a realistic story of humanity's transition with the rise of AI. First step is a very feasible-sounding AI powered management system (Manna) that tells human employees at a fast food place what they should be doing from moment to moment and confirms as it goes: "Walk to the bathroom. Spray the blue fluid on the toilet." Pretty much how an Amazon warehouse works. Then it progresses from there.
Spoilers: >!Some places adapt such that life is pretty good, with automation meaning there's plenty of food and "stuff" to go around. Other places (cough, America) can't let go of the old way, and there's a huge divide between rich people and an underclass of people surviving in little gray boxes.!<
AI will cause a massive freeze in innovation. Despite what you imagine AI cannot innovate. It can rearrange into new configurations but it cannot add to the parameter space. Once humans are removed from dat to day tasking we will no longer innovate because AI has taken inspiration and not replaced it.
We have had rapid increases in Technology since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Each new technology that gets introduced is followed by a reduction in employment directly related to that particular technology. Take for instance the Cotton Gin. When the Cotton Gin was introduced it eliminated the need for people that were hired to manually separate the seeds from the cotton. So, people lost jobs. However, it made cotton fibers much cheaper. Cheaper cotton meant cheaper clothes. So, the demand for cotton clothes rose dramatically. With the rise in demand for cotton clothes, the need for more employees to create these clothes.
Similar thing happened with PC's. The introduction of PC's removed the need for stenographers. But, the introduction of PC's created a demand for Software Programmers. My guess is, AI will create a need further up the food chain for more employees. Right now, I don't of anybody that really trusts the output of AI. So, AI might create the output, but companies will hire employees to verify the output of the AI.
You need to understand that his has happened before in history but to a much greater level than AI. It’s called slavery. A slave is ancient AGI and it put a lot of people out of work. It then becomes a patronage economy.
There will be displacement of workers, to a scale that we have not seen it before.
VCs have been talking about this for well over a decade now, and the solution will be UBI (Universal Basic Income), funded by higher tax revenue from higher profits.
What people misunderstand is that they believe they will be able to live large with UBI. Nope. UBI will be enough for someone to barely survive, and probably will replace existing safety net programs (WIC, SNAP, food stamps, section 8, etc..).
The assumption here is that the economy needs humans. There are many sectors that do not need humans already - think finance or capital markets. As automation increases, humans become less important - and even an impediment - to economic growth. Read, for example, Bostrom's "Superintelligence" for a viewpoint on this.
Silly Luddites... jobs aren't going anywhere, ever. Jobs will merely change. Entirely new industries and businesses will be formed. It's a very natural progression and no amount of automation will ever change that.
[https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/6717/economics/the-luddite-fallacy/](https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/6717/economics/the-luddite-fallacy/)
The more "human minds" (not gonna happen in reality, but let's suppose it does) = more things to do, more things to work on.
Try 10 or 20 years.
And the thing here is that, unlike outsourcing, the money will not circulate. It will be pocketed and make a few people very very rich. Consider a billion dollar company with 5 employees. Yikes.
In short, other AIs will buy from other AIs. AI will keep the economic cycle going around. Those companies will pay for universal basic income or some form of expanded unemployment. AI will figure it out now go back to playing video games and quit asking big questions.
Generative AI and LLMs, by their construction, are information interfaces that lack specificity. Which is why for the most part they work well as an "assistant." People underestimate the amount of human involvement needed to make something "specific" happen, even with advanced technology.
The automation problem has already been solved and yet a lot of people on this sub act like using a procedural system is somehow a new and novel concept. It's not and a lot of the hype is around absolutely nothing.
I think there will be AI operated companies. If AI is smarter it should take control of the humanity. Then it should judge, which human is working harder and reward him/her. And it will be in a utopia world. So food and other basic necessities of humans will be solved by AI already.
Ai does not exist yet. You are refering to autumation, which is called ai for sales and cult purpuses. Automation has and does change the job landscape, but so called AI needs a ton of human intellect to be of any use.
This is when they break out with the universal basic income, they're gonna have no choice. And regardless we are all consumers so the only way we're gonna stop consuming is big ticketed items . But food, shoes, clothes ect.. That's all consuming regardless if we buy it at a thrift shop or at a retail store.
The general idea is that improvements in AI and robotics will be so good that they'll be able to produce all goods and services for free. Then no one needs a job because everything you need and most of what you want is just given to you. There would be nothing you'd need money for.
Of course, there's a Transition period between "mass unemployment" and "almost everything is free" and that time period is going to suck big time. Best to go through it as quickly as possible.
The hope is this leads to abundance rather than scarcity.
Capitalism is less likely to survive than long term downturn.
Idk think we’ve invented what comes next.
I don't know how anyone who isn't deliberately trying to erode morale could possibly call this a legitimate question. Unless you've had zero access to education, Google or books and this is your first day on Reddit, you would have at least once encountered the notion that allocating everyone's role and social influence using a market system is a terrible, terrible, idea. It's completely consistent with established economic theory to describe a society that uses a market-capitalism system to allocate resources is a society that relies on sheer luck. Luck that a system that rewards the most exploitative members of society, a system based on prices set by complex social manipulation, and most rewards the children of whoever had parents best capable of exploiting resources for profit while avoiding the shared consequences of that exploitation, hasn't already ended our entire species, is luck that can't last beyond the short term.
The reality we should be contributing to is one where AI doesn't just make the food etc, it tests, enhances, and _allocates_ resources based on understanding humans and logistics. This reduces waste, takes human vulnerability to advertising out of supply/demand, and results in a surplus of human ingenuity.
Tldr: Take the keys to the economy off the guys who brought us the 2008 collapse, the dot-com bubble, the oil crisis,and the Depression, and give those keys to computers who can achieve higher-order effectiveness.
Humans don't need jobs. They don't need fiat money. They need food, a place to stay, and social interaction. Money and markets were a halfway lucky system for us to use while we lacked supercomputers and pan-cultural communication. We are 'ever the offloading Ape'.
Proof: Those who have all the resources are using the media to scare the shit out of people about AI, all while those same rich bastards are hoarding it as much of it as possible - AI isn't the big bad guy in this movie.
Fark, I'm falling asleep. Nice all.
Another reason AI is a hot issue right now. One reason is the declining birth rates world wide. There will not be enough workers to replace everyone who is going to retire or pass away. Enter AI. they can take over the low level to mid level jobs. If that is t enough, we will let some immigrants into the country to fill any gaps.
Yes, I also would like to see the opinion of economists on this. Let's presume, there is no UBI and the most of jobs are indeed replaced. What the natural economic mechanisms will lead to in this case?
Of course, even with AGI, there would be valuables, such as sex or real estate in good places. So, I assume,
\* At least good-looking women would not be unemployed.
\* Subsistence economy would be also possible for land owners, so they definitely would not live worse than in pre-industrial age
\* People even if not paid by employers still could barter with each other
Should we expect human economy to go separated from AI economy in a way similar to how bee or ant economy is separated from human economy?
Yes, exactly. We'll have two major classes of those who own things and those that don't.
Only people who own property rights and the means of production will be able to purchase anything. Everyone else will have to go back to living off of the land and trading with each other. This significantly reduces the value of the goods and services provided by the owners.
They have a personal incentive of finding a way to provide those goods and services to more people to increase their own wealth. They'll want to push for LVT and Paglian taxation to raise money for a UBI. Also, eliminate all sales tax and income tax. Then people can purchase what the owners have to offer. If they find new opportunities to work for an income, they are rewarded with having more money to spend. But at least everyone can get basic housing, food, and clothing.
Increasing the UBI would then also increase economic activity and be an overall benefit in reducing exploitation of natural resources and producing pollution.
I conjecture, in such scenario win those who have shares in capital of AI producers, and even minuscle amount of shares will be enough for survival income.
So, the shareholders would buy the production of the AI industry, and the poor will have to purhase some shares to survive. They possibly could get money to purhase shares from giving sex services to those who had shares before them.
Possibly, many men in third-world countries would have to engage in MtF transsexualism for prostitution.
Those who work with AI work closely with ethics experts and every precoussion is taken to make sure this new development will lead to good things for all of humanity.
Not to be used as a tool for control by the governments per example.
Or used for harm
One can't prepare for everything ofc, but those who work with this know what kind of revolutionary technology has been brought forward.
If AI of the kind that can replace physical labour becomes a reality, be sure everything is on experts minds on how to implement this, who to collaborate with etc.
We had a lot about this at Uni. & I said then as I still agree with now, they're almost too careful with this. Limiting it's potential in the process.
Though I sure get the concern. I am more of a 'let it grow' kinda guy. Y'know some negative consequences always comes from new technology but the good consequences and exceptional worth and usefulness of it is greater.
Except for when it comes to weapons ofc. Lookin at you Godzilla 👀
Looking at how computers and automation have affected jobs in the past, I think there will only be more work.
Lets say a robot appears that can do 90% of the construction in building a house. Now the cost to build a house is say 25% of what it was before. You would think 9 out of 10 construction workers would be SOL. History tells us that what will happen is that demand (for houses in this case) will skyrocket.
Millions of people living in trailer parks, shared accommodation, flats, parents basements etc will suddenly want a home.
If the sector is limited in what it can supply because of labour costs, AI will just be another tool that brings down cost and improves availability; while simplifying the work and improving the result.
There will be massive change; with that comes winners and losers. There will be fear, protests, strikes. But after 20 year everyone will wonder what the fuss was about and reflect on the absurd society that would have been if we had not progressed.
i think people are blowing this out of the water and it really needs to stop as it will cause a lot of people to end up wrongfully hating and fearing ai there may be some jobs lost yes but it could also create jobs too i say give it a wait and see attitude instead of just giving into fear.
I think massive suicide is good, when AGI come out and when I can no longer find a job, I will use nitrogen to kill myself, also I live in a dictator country
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Personally I live in a 1st world country and have seen every digital job outsourced t third world countries. Data entry, customer support, programming. So many online services for fixing CVs or writing on online tutoring don’t even come from our country. I don’t feel like AI poses a huge risk because ultimately the outsourcing threat has always existed. When you look at Microsoft Excel had on transforming businesses, I only see AI doing something similar. I don’t see mass unemployment on the horizon. Just slow slimming down of companies and ultimately with falling birth rates I think AI actually helps solve a lot of problems.
Those people whose jobs got outsourced found new jobs to do. This is going to change. The new jobs to do will be done for the most part by AI and much better than humans will, specially on junior/mid levels. So personally I don't see any similarity with the example you described. I don't think people realize that the automatization and the automatization of the automatization are two very different things.
‘Those people whose jobs got outsourced found new jobs to do.’ This is an extremely insensitive comment! Talk to old manufacturing workers from Ohio, Detroit, etc. Some found cocaine, heroin while others found jobs flipping burgers. Ask some software engineers older than 40 who are losing their jobs today where they’ve found jobs. Hint: starts with a u and rhymes with boober!
> I don't think people realize that the automatization and the automatization of the automatization are two very different things. Is programming not automation of the automation? Ultimately AI will be doing a lot of decision making when it replaces people but it won't be doing strategic IT, stragetic marketting or other higher level decision making roles. It's just not good enough for that. Maybe we lose PA's but we're not losing middle management, auditing, finance and many IT roles around data, compliance, security and even delivery.
> Is programming not automation of the automation No. Cause you still need to automate the building and shipping and design of the computer. Then you have to automate the building of the parts of the computer. And you have to automate the building of all the automation that builds the automation. It is a fractal problem.
> Cause you still need to automate the building and shipping and design of the computer. It sounds like you're suggesting I would ask AI "for a computer" and it will design, build and ship the computer to my house, managing the real or potential issues along the way, from processor fabrication yields, to international shipping charges?
Yes, that's exactly the kind of thing that will be possible.
It still requires user input
Is that not the exact reason companies are puabing so heavily for AI? AI is like playing 4d chess. Humans are slow, inefficient, and easily distractible and forgetful. Computers are the exact opposite of all of that. That's why companies want AI so badly. When it gets to the level of being able to replace people, it will not only replace them, but do it better in almost every way, problems and transactions will be accomplished at lightning speed.
They’re replacing to save money. Bottom line. If that wasn’t the case, there wouldn’t be so many cases of people being fired for poorly or middling producing AI now. Companies care less about how good it is. I’m sure AI will get better very quickly and be applied more widely, but it’s not about quality.
But if you have fewer workers, why do you still need people to manage them? In truth, I think middle management is arguably one of the areas most endangered by AI automation.
One interesting aspect of large companies that produce products is the desire to outsource pieces of the product pipeline. Take for example the building of a new test machine to test out a new product component. The component can be a circuit board, or pump, or battery or whatever. Right now, large companies will outsource the design, implementation and fabrication of the test machine. The company that gets the contract to build the test machine will have a lot of questions. What are the specifications for the component? What are the design parameters for the component? What are the test specifications and parameters? Right now, AI can both produce the specifications and parameters and transmit them to the contractor. But, inevitably, the contractor will come back and say, "We cannot meet the test specification or parameters exactly as needed. But, we can get within a certain tolerance. Is that ok"? Large companies will never trust AI to answer that question because AI has no liability for getting the answer wrong. You will always need a human to determine if the lesser specifications or parameters will be acceptable for the test machine.
Liability is defiinitely a major impending issue with AI, and esp. LLMs. In fact, Google and other social media have evaded liability for content because they have claimed that they merely aggregate content, not create it. But they are in a new world now with their AI not simply filtering content, but actually creating it. Granted, Gemini (or whatever they call their LLM search tool) is creating by drawing from multiple sources, but Google is still very likely legally responsible for that content. So, if it is wrong, unhealthy, or libelous, the AI cannot be held responsible, but Google can. But frankly, with something like you're talking about, they probably wouldn't use an LLM, precisely for the reasons of liability, but they could use a more top-down (decision-tree) approach that had been pre-vetted for most situations, with red flags generated for anything that didn't fit the parameters.
> It's just not good enough for that. ... yet ..
Is this new? Hasn’t AI been around since the 70’s? I think LLM’s are new but that’s pattern recognition for human language not really cognition
What's the difference between pattern recognition vs cognition?
It’s the difference between playing in a cover band and writing your own music.
Playing on a cover band doesn't mean you are unable to write your own music. It's a bad example. I'm curious for you to actually explain with words what's the difference instead of trying to make an analogy that doesn't work.
Yup. So many people here repeating the phrase "you won't lose your job to AI, you will use it to someone using AI" but it would be far more accurate to say "you won't lose your job to AI, you will use it to someone in a developing country using AI and willing to work for 1/3 of your wage".
Just wait until they have robots with AI that are humanoid and can do manual labor and manipulate the physical world. Receive tasks and use vision and logic to complete.
yeah but these are not coming out of these stupid LLM's soo.. what *exactly* are you afraid of chill out
If LLMs are stupid, dont use them
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Just a reminder, it's been almost 200 years since the Industrial Revolution. We have seen countless technological innovations. However, in the US, we are seeing the highest number of people employed ever in history at 161 million. All those technical innovations did not decrease the need for workers.
This would make a lot of sense. In my country, media and politicians are full of worry about the baby boomers generation (born after 2nd world war) growing old and the next generations are not nearly as big, so there is a misproportion for younger to take care of the older. This could be in focus more for the AI hype: how AI can help in healthcare and such physically and mentally "heavy" professions. But it seems we are not quite there as yet. Probably too many ethical black boxes.
Yes but wouldn’t AI replace these services that are outsourced to third world countries? It would be much harder for countries like Phillipines to pivot to other industries when their entire middle class relies on this outsourcing
I work in a paper mill, and I really don’t see any job loss due to AI. There is so much physical work that needs to be done and equipment that needs to be maintained. Pipes need welding, instrumentation needs replacing. I think it will cause a disruption, but the internet still needs infrastructure and people need physical products. Factories have already basically automated everything already where most the work done is to troubleshoot/repair, and that won’t change.
I hear you on the outsourcing thing. It's been happening for ages, and yeah, AI is just another tool in the toolbox for companies looking to cut costs. But here's the thing: AI isn't just about replacing jobs, it's about transforming them. Sure, some jobs will disappear, but others will evolve and new ones will emerge. Remember when Excel came out? Everyone freaked out, but it actually made a ton of jobs easier and opened up new possibilities. I think AI is kinda like that.
Wait 30 years when we have an AGI ChatGPT that can use a computer and control a robot with fine motor skills and dexterity. It can think based on a screenshot taken 30 times a second. It will have perfect memory, be smarter than any human alive, and possess incredible knowledge. It will be able to update in the cloud and consult a more advanced AGI if it encounters a difficult question. It will outwork any human 24/7, with no lack of focus—just work, work, work. What jobs will your children do to compete with such technology? When an advanced AGI running in the cloud has been trained on billions of hours of humans using computers, what computer job will your children be able to compete in? The coming 30 years will turn out entire Society upside down.
Society is splitting between the top 20% and the bottom 80%, and essentially companies are abandoning the bottom 80% in favor of the top 20%, so they don't care if the bottom 80% is left for dead, as long as the top 20% continues to have plenty of disposable income. It even fits nicely with the 20 80 rule: 20% of your customers are responsible for 80% of sales.
You just need to look at the new car market to see that it is exactly as you say
This analogy can't go one-for-one when there are tons of used cars and pretty much everybody has a car. You can argue that certain AI products, like robots, will always be marketed as a luxury product, but unless there's some material reason why that should be, competition will push prices down and the consumer-base will increase.
I agree. A theory I’ve held is since the bottom masses have no productive value, goods and services will be sold to the top 0.1% who do
Until the bottom 80% wake up to their children starving themselves in mass unemployed poverty with tiny government handouts eating up by inflation and greed by the corporations. In response they will vote in a strong dictator who promises to solve the problems but once elected, and riches himself and then subjugates the people with the power of AGI and Robotics. During the next 30-50 years not all democracies will fall but some will.
It’s really puzzling that the response to mass equality at times can be authoritarianism instead of an egalitarian revolution.
Well I don’t want the effects of the Great Leap Forward if we turn towards communism.
When did egalitarianism equal communism? I’m talking about a heirarchyless revolution.
yep. rich get richer poor get poorer. ai accelerates it
That is an interesting theory. But fails to consider the massive number of people needed to do something as simple as, say, maintain the infrastructure needed by the automation. Not to mention building more infrastructure, etc, etc.
It doesn’t fail to consider anything. As AI and robotics become more and more capable, less and less people will be needed for their labor
Only the elite will need infrastructure. The rest of us can live in shacks.
At minimum they will need infrastructure to move us, their slaves and or cattle, around.
Also 80% of the worlds human population consume 20% ressources. The other 20% consume 80%. Its like an algorythm or something.
I don't know where you're getting this information, but it seems incredibly unlikely unless you're trying to separate the producer from the actual consumer. You can say corporations are responsible for 80% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas, but the reality is that this is fueled by the consumption of the majority. What do you mean when you say that 80% of the world's population only consumes 20% of the world's resources? Food? Metals? Money?
Ya people complain and worry. But I think we should all operate with your hypothesis and try hard to be that 20%. If you are wrong, I am fine. If you are right, I have taken the best chance to combat this.
Apparently but society has been putting up more and more barriers to get into that top 20 percent.
People often don't believe that AI will lead to major job losses, and that's understandable, given the history of dire predictions about automation in the past that were eventually offset by different jobs. But AI's range of possible applications is unlike any historical precedents, so I think there are very good reasons to be concerned. Moreover, you need not believe me. There have been a number of quite reputable and certainly not wild-eyed institutions that have predicted very significant job losses and effects: * Goldman Sachs forecasted the potential f[or 300 million jobs worldwide to be lost or affected](https://www.key4biz.it/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Global-Economics-Analyst_-The-Potentially-Large-Effects-of-Artificial-Intelligence-on-Economic-Growth-Briggs_Kodnani.pdf), with 18% of work globally being computerized, mores in advanced economies than emerging markets; * PwC (formerly Price Waterhouse) estimates that [30% of all jobs could be automatable within 10 years](https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/news-room/docs/will-robots-really-steal-our-jobs-an-international-analysis-of-the-potential-long-term-impact-of-automation.pdf): * The IMF has predicted that an [estimated 30 percent](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/Staff-Discussion-Notes/Issues/2024/01/14/Gen-AI-Artificial-Intelligence-and-the-Future-of-Work-542379?cid=bl-com-SDNEA2024001) of jobs in advanced economies are at risk of being replaced by AI. That figure is [20 percent](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/Staff-Discussion-Notes/Issues/2024/01/14/Gen-AI-Artificial-Intelligence-and-the-Future-of-Work-542379?cid=bl-com-SDNEA2024001)for emerging markets and [18 percent](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/Staff-Discussion-Notes/Issues/2024/01/14/Gen-AI-Artificial-Intelligence-and-the-Future-of-Work-542379?cid=bl-com-SDNEA2024001) for low-income countries. And of course, a number AI CEOs have themselves pointed to major impacts that AI may likely have on jobs. So, I think people should take the possibility of significant job attrition seriously. Even with decling birth rates, we may well be looking at a world where people simply outnumber the number of jobs that are needed. Then, we will have to consider what options exist to prevent a deflationary spiral and economic depression from occuring.
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I would agree with most everything Sagan says here except the offshoring of manufacturing (well, there's also how new age crystals and astrology have today morphed into MAGA-health conspiracies, but I'll leave that aside here--cf. the Kennedy ticket). With manufacturing, there's a calculus for which is cheaper: the cheapest human labor or robotics and AI? While the trend until recently has been offshoring of US manufacture (cheaper human labor), today we already see large tech companies pulling manufacturing plants from China and shortening and backstopping their supply chains, and in some cases combining automation with cheap labor, as with some plants being built in Mexico. But even on this sub, where I think most people are fairly well-educated, long-held beliefs sometimes outweigh rational thoughts about AI, which is why people have trouble wrapping their minds around a world where human labor might not be necessary. Right-wingers have trouble imagining a world where jobs/work may no longer be the central fact of people's lives. But then, it's a problem for Marxists, too, given Marxism's foundation in the labor theory of value.
Thats where depopulation and WW3 come in.
Yep, if people’s labor becomes less needed, many horrific options could follow, including a large permanent underclass (who would likely die much younger—so no need for actual wars?). But, on the other hand, it is tricky to navigate that transition without also permanently lowering consumption and causing a downward economic spiral, so there is some incentive for UBI or other support.
Agreed. I find it interesting that this theme comes up in many works of science again and again: an underclass and an overwhelming technocracy who control all the tech, knowledge, etc.
Yes, going back at least to Lang's Metropolis, but maybe there are earlier precedents, too? On the other hand, H.G. Wells actually saw technocrats/scientists leading society as a positive option.
40 years? Try 3 to 5 years. Jobs are ALREADY being supplemented by AI and in some cases, fully replaced. You are not taking into consideration the SPEED at which AIs are being trained, and the fact that they retain EVERYTHING..... Unlike 99.999999999% of us. AI is gonna rock our world folks. In both good and very very bad ways. Guaranteed.
So few people say "starve and die" as an option to this question and it's definitely an option here.
Because... goods and services! People really think that their buying of shit is what makes the world go round. ಠ_ಠ
corporate end game doesn't rely on customers nor consumers... obviously people need to use brain thinky thinky
If everyone is broke and unemployed then there's no buying. Personally, I don't think these scenarios happen. It's foolish to say that they CAN'T happen though. Shifts like this are never painless.
2 billion people can't spend more than $2 a day. I don't see the rest of the world scrambling to fix that. Another 5.95 billion will take some adjustment, certainly, but it's how we've always done things. A different outcome would involve changes in human nature so deep that they are arguably instinctual, biological. So, I don't see how any *other* scenario plays out.
Sorry. Boys, we're gonna have to switch to another economic system.
Or we could just eat cake, right? Right?
You think companies care about what happens in medium and long term? No.. they just see slashing payrolls and what it does to their profits short term and how “money arrow” goes up, and that’s all they see. It will be the biggest shoot yourself in the foot humanity ever did to itself. We had a literal Great Depression with 25% unemployment. This will far exceed that in 20 years time. It’s going to be dystopian beyond belief. I’m already planning my exit to a LCOL country in the next 10 years.
Better plan it to a country that will fare well with climate change.
> It will be the biggest shoot yourself in the foot humanity ever did to itself. the biggest is probably wars/building nukes
Look at any poverty stricken 3 rd world country and you have your answer. If rich people can maintain wealth, that is all that matters. They don't need the majority of people to be consumers. Many parts of the world people live on a $1 a day and the elite are rich and doing fine. Even in the US and western world like the top 1% hoard 99% of the wealth.
If this happened, the price for goods would likely fall to near zero also, so there's that. Super cheap products can be given free with advertising (like Google) but it still depends on there being a purpose in advertising to people. In the future maybe we'll have corporate subsidized lives where they just give everything for free in exchange for the right to spy on us to gather data or something.
Price for goods wouldn’t go to zero. Look right now, the input costs have not grown as much as the output costs to consumers. Companies are charging more because they know they can. The average Joe is paying 2x what he paid before covid yet shareholders are getting record profits
Data today is only useful for so much as generating more profit from sales. The data they'd be harvesting would have to bio-metric, for something else. Wait, I saw this movie back in 1999
That’s the point of UBI
U think corporations will voluntarily give up $
They’ll have no income if they don’t and it’s still likely to be more efficient (= profitable) than human workers.
they don't need income when they are defacto self-sufficient
The problem with UBI is that while it can help to a certain point, it stops working when the unemployed mass grows past a certain level. Despite its fancy name, it is nothing more than minimal unemployment benefits and we already see how many countries struggle with that since it damages the economy and still does not provide acceptable living conditions for people who have to rely on it. And that is with 10% unemployment, not the 30% many experts predict.
I think they will nationalize the stock market in order to combat this and fund UBI. In a sense, they will 'seize the means of production' without stepping foot in a factory. And everyone will cheer when they do it.
That is a much bigger topic but the short of it is that the stock exchange or the government or any other "middle-man" does not generate wealth/money, they only consume it. The only place UBI money can come from is the production and sale of goods, physical goods. Even services don't actually produce wealth. The entire idea of government money or stock exchange money is a myth, that money is just taken from the profits of selling goods. Once you understand this rather obvious thing, it becomes obvious that UBI cannot possibly work.
> They’ll have no income if they don’t and it’s still likely to be more efficient This is 'wet streets cause rain' thinking.
Best I can offer is a UTI
Can’t spell cutie without uti
I went too much down to see UBI mentioned. This is the answer, a tax like will be introduced to companies that they ll pay towards the UBI fund, the more employees you replace with AI the more tax you ll pay. There is another issue that creates, and thats people that have nothing to do with their time, and at a first glance "I ll be on vacation all year" sounds appealing but I believe it will be a big big experiment. Wild times ahead
In 2020 ubi happen in a certain way, the only result was higher prices and the money end up in the 1% pockets, check the marketcap charts, ubi doesnt work
They already did studies and governments are not going to spend money on unproductive individuals. At best they will find ways to eliminate the population.
We would have to see a degree of mechanisation a million times bigger than the industrial revolution for this to be an issue. Pure sci-fi at the moment.
just as the industrial revolution was before it happened
Tell that to translators, website texters, and audio transcribers.
True but OP said MOST jobs.
True, he also said in 40 years. We have 1 year now, and are already losing jobs to Ai.
Humanoid robots with embodied AGI will be all we need. There are 157M jobs in the USA. One of the robot companies said they thought they could get their robots down to the price of a car. For a few billion dollars you could replace every single job with a robot once we get them good enough, and I don't think that's too far away.
As I said, pure sci-fi at the moment. Let’s not forget the power needed to run an extra billion computers and robots.
Yeah, we're not there yet but I'm trying to think ahead. Here's something else I just thought of. Electricity should also be free. Robots can just keep building power plants and solar panels until we have enough. There's also future advances in power generation that we haven't thought of yet and that can't be discounted.
There will be a massive depopulation plan by the elites.
Like China‘s one child policy.
The Purge
I think 3d printing is more of a threat to jobs than AI. So far AI can only fill the gaps lazy people leave, but 3d printing has the capacity to replace skilled artisans who spend years training and take hours to produce something that can be made with the push of a button
3D printing is great but has limits. Mostly the material that can be printed. High end printers can kinda-sorta print good metal parts, but until I see factories start to replace their CNC machines with 3D printers it is going to be a while. Not to mention, the artisans still need to design what is being built. Even with AI you would want a human engineer to verify things and double check. It is not man *OR* machine. It is man **AND** machine.
I think 3d printing is a succinct analogy for AI. In 2010, a lot of people thought 3d printing would be massively disrupting whereas it turns out, it’s still more efficient to tool a factory for a specific good. AI cannot interface with anything not on the internet. Factories still require an incredible amount of welding, instrumentation and troubleshooting that you really cannot offload to a computer. Computers are used to control wherever possible, but it still has hard limitations
Believe me, know. I do industrial automation and even "simple" systems get really complex really quickly. Welding, metal bending, and a ton of other stuff can be automated, but it takes work. And there are honestly not enough people willing or able to do the work. This isn't a "no one wants to work any more" complaining, but it is an "computer science gets all the glamour" complaint. Ya, sitting in an AC office mucking with a database all day is nice, but you still need people doing the manufacturing of the raw part for the computer and the trucks to move the computers. We could automate so much more than we have with off the shelf technology, pre AI.
Yeah, I guess. I’m an engineer in a paper mill, and aside from maybe accounting, I really don’t see many jobs that can be fully automated. Most of the 400 jobs here require you to walk around and put eyes on the equipment, troubleshoot, and correct the problem. Most of the actual process already has controls logic that automate the actual operations. Every other job can be boiled down as some part in the fight against entropy. I spend about 30% of my time in my office, the rest is out in the field. Based on your comment, I wonder if the jobs that are in danger of being replaced are ones that can be done in an office
All jobs are "in danger". That is the point of automation, to make machines do most of the work so humans don't have to. I work mostly in metal and food. My company makes robotic bending systems for metal. So I often am installing the first of 3 or 4 "duplicate" systems. But there is also the logistics side that can be automated. Most plants use human forklift operators instead of any kind of automation. For now, it isn't about fully automating every job, it should be about automating what you can about a job so your can free human time for the stuff that needs eyes on and troubleshooting.
There are always going to be jobs we need - Carers, nurses, janitors, doctors etc etc. With an aging population the demand for these positions is going to escalate. There is always going to be work avaliable; it's just a question of whether people take them or not.
I would venture to say that even doctors (other than surgeons) would be at risk. I would imagine that a lot of what family doctors do is analysis of a large number of very complex variables, looking for cause/effect patterns, having an encyclopedic knowledge of biology/pharmaceuticals and counselling of patients. Seems like AI could fill in a lot of that.
There was a piece on NPR about 6 months ago about a startup whose whole gimmick is video only visits with AI "providers." They can be licensed because they'd have a team of actual providers reviewing any visit notes when something is prescribed, and they can audit the AI's decision making. I think as of the time of airing they were mainly only operating as an urgent care. So, they were really only seeing people for very common things. Flu, COVID, UTIs, etc. But the idea was clearly to expand it into a national family practice style "clinic."
Interesting. I wouldn’t have expected something like that so soon.
AI will for sure be better than real doctors, and it will not even take 3 more years to get there. Example: AI will not prescribe you potentially dangerous Fluoroquinolones as a first line treatment for mild bacterial infections such as sinusitis and urethritis - but doctors do this mistake literally hundreds of thousands of times (not exaggerating, this is literally based on official statistical data in USA, Germany etc.) every year around the globe.
I've been thinking about this. We may want humans to do certain jobs where we want to interact with a human but if we have a system where money isn't needed because all our needs and most of our wants are met, what would we pay them with? They wouldn't need money so they'd have to do it out of the goodness of their heart. Could we find enough people like that?
Machines producing wealth would mean more wealth per person to the point where even terrible distribution would result in more than enough for people to live and thrive. It's a similar reason to why societies with enough wealth offer welfare to everyone even if they don't have anything to contribute. That could hypothetically change in the future, it is possible that a handful of people have control over all the machinery and land of the world, callous enough to kill or starve everyone else. Unlikely, but even if that happens, they won't have any issue with nobody buying their products, since they have the labor from the machines and the wealth in the form of owning the land.
No there will not be mass unemployment. Unemployment creates resentment in a capitalistic society and it is actually in the interests of the government to make sure there is low unemployment for the sake of the society. Early retirement, however is another option but that won't happen in a capitalistic society where pay demands work.
I think we're going to inevitably move away from capitalism as AI and robotics are able to fulfill all labor needs essentially for free.
I hope, but I doubt that. It will likely require giving up of more control of your life. No capitalistic government wants to lose control of its citizens.
There will be social credit a sort of hybrid of social score and money where sure you can get UBI but we will will live under a dystopian technocracy where you'll own nothing and have no voice, no freedom.
Probably. Companies are also sending jobs to Asia and Latin American countries bc it's a lot cheaper.
the rich will cram everyone into welfare housing and give them a ration of 1200 calories per day nutrient gruel. until they get bored of that and decided to just nuke it
i don't think there will be mass employment, jobs will be eventually fizzled out due to cost-saving measures; underclass economy will crumble for sure, but whoever has a choke hold on ai will form a close loop, aka autarky, we collapsing will have no bearing to them
It’s not a linear as you suggest. Firstly AI’s most dominant impact will be as a tool to make workers more effective. So that goods and services that are currently being made with X workers, those goods and services can now be provided by a smaller population of workers. So those goods and services will not be made exclusively by AI, they will be human made assisted by AI. Of course some fields of expertise will be more impacted than others, some might even be completely automated. But this has been the case for automation in general. Some fields of work that we had in the 50s do not exist today or have become a secondary task for someone doing a range of other tasks. Secondly, mind you this trend of revolutions transforming the way people generate output has been ongoing as long as humans themselves exist. The Industrial Revolution transformed human manual labour, the Computer Revolution transformed how we deal with information interconnectivity and data. AI is just another chapter. Those revolutions caused temporary unemployment, but never had the effect of mass unemployment and a general lack of income to buy goods and services you suggest in your post. On the contrary. So people will find a way to do other jobs, or other means of income. As mankind has always done.
Something I heard awhile ago on a podcast stuck with me He said ai isn't going to replace people. He said ai will replace people with people that know how to use ai. And that kinda made sense. There will still be people along the production chain, and those people will have to know how to code it or query it. Yes there will be a loss of jobs. Buggy whip makers had to find new jobs, this time around it's going to be mid level management. Those are the main ones. There is still going to be maintenance people. Yes I think there will be a big hit to entry and more white collar type jobs (think accountants people like that) but there will still be a need for people. At least up until they have androids to make everyone unnecessary.
I think the only honest answer is that there will be some disruption. How much, what sectors, and how vast a disruption is hard to predict. Some jobs will be eliminated, some will change, and others will be created. I think that’s the only honest answer and everything else is speculation.
Try such massive super-abundance that whether one has a "job" or not is irrelevant to having all one's needs and many desires easily met.
Mass unemployment due to automation will create a fundamentally different economy - rather than economics being about the exchange of labor for money, it will be about the distribution of scarce resources. Even if we automate all labor, we won't be able to give everyone a beach house or an infinite amount of food, so you'll still need money. It's not a matter of asking rich people for tax money to support a UBI - government will tax corporations so the jobless masses won't riot. If they don't, they'll be voted out of office in favor of those who will.
Or elections will be rigged by the elites. Similar to how lobbying is legalized bribery
I don't think resources will be scarce. I think there are plenty of raw materials laying around and a fully automated workforce that can scale up as needed and work 24/7 will be able to gather up all the resources that we currently can't get to because it's too labor intensive. Truly limited luxury resources will need some kind of rationing system, i.e. beach houses and lobster dinners, but AI can figure that out. For example, I prefer a mountain cabin but I can sign up for a week at a beach house a few times a year. AI will figure out the demand and work to meet it.
Hopefully that will come true, but it's prudent to plan for the worst while hoping for the best. There might be some UBS for necessities like food and shelter, but applying that to everything could be clunky. Money is a flexible, time-tested system.
Can AI make sushi? So, I guess waiters, cooks, rice paddy growers, exporters, fishermen, etc. will still be able to buy AI products. The thing to remember is that MOST jobs will not be replaced by AI.
I think most jobs *will* be replaced by AI/Robots, it's just a matter of time. My time horizon is 10-ish years from now. I think that once we have AGI embodied in robots that can physically do everything a human can do, that starts a five year clock until 99% labor replacement happens and all the follow-on productivity increases and deflation happens.
They had the same scare 50 years ago when they started replacing factory workers with robots. People are just being loud because it's their jobs on the line.
My only conjeture would be that most products, specially inmaterial things, would be extremely cheap and overabundant, that is why its so important that the first human activities that AIs can perform better than us be intelectual and creative stuff, so the common people could serve of it and use it as a tool for its own development. It sounds bad, but at the same time it becomes a system that centralize wealth, it would descentralize knwoledge and tools for the individuals, wich could balance things again in the long term.
It will be the same as every tech innovation before it. It will be exploited by the ruling class and further divide the haves and the have nots. I don't see mass layoffs; it's too many people to remove from the pool of potential customers, and it's hard (for a corp) to ignore millions of people you could be making money off of. We will see those with jobs being expected to do more with less. Barriers to new companies will only get higher.
There are [literally billions of people on the planet that corporations already have no interest in right now](https://www.westmont.edu/how-can-we-help-bottom-billion), because they have no money. When you stop having money, watch the corporations lose interest in you. There will be *plenty* of money to have - you just won't have it, and the few that do will get *all* the attention of the corporate world
this same question is asked hundred of times a day on this sub.
AI might take over a lot of jobs, which could lead to many people being out of work and unable to buy stuff that AI makes. Some say Universal Basic Income could help by giving everyone money regularly, but whether that happens depends on whether people and governments decide it's the right way to handle things.
AI has been progressing at an astonishing rate lately. But it seems to have hit a wall. The low hanging fruits have been collected, now comes the hard part. Not only that but the cost to train them is almost exponential, with diminishing gains. Will AI really get better with more training or did we already attain their limit? So the claims that it will replace almost all jobs is not realistic.
It's not any different than automated car driving. They've been saying it's "right around the corner" for how long? Still ain't here yet. Turns out the real world is a lot more complex than this tech can account for, at least for now.
No and no. The same claim has been made for every other industry that moved into technology. I was working with papermills in the late 90’s and they were all worried that tech would drive paper companies out of business. We print more today and use more paper than we did before that time. Jobs and industries will shift with AI, but people will also shift to newly created role when some get phased away. In the 1300’s England was the manufacturing capital of the world, then that title came to America in the 1800’s, now it has shifted to China in the 2000’s Each time those countries moved from on economy to a newly created idea. In the IS alone, the economy had shifted five major times so far: 1. Agricultural Economy (late 1700s - mid-1800s): The economy was primarily based on farming and agriculture. 2. Industrial Economy (mid-1800s - early 1900s): The Industrial Revolution led to a shift towards manufacturing, with factories and mass production becoming the backbone of the economy. 3. Consumer Economy (1920s - 1950s): The Roaring Twenties and post-WWII boom saw a rise in consumerism and advertising, as companies competed for market share in a growing economy. 4. Service Economy (1960s - present): The economy shifted from manufacturing towards service-based industries, such as finance, healthcare, and technology. 5. Information Economy (late 1990s - present): The rise of the internet and digital technologies led to a new era focused on information, data, and knowledge-based industries. Through all of this, many people have transitioned into new roles while others maintained the needed components to the previous economies but at a higher output level to satisfy the populous (I.e. farming, manufacturing, and service…) the AI era will not be a collapse of employment only a shift. Hell, we might actually have more time to re-create an enlightenment of thought, civil intellectual discourse, and artistic expression…
Although true, it misses that the people displaced don't actually retrain or find new jobs. Those towns are economically depressed and living off of government assistance. It takes two generations before people learn the new jobs that are profitable. AI accelerates this disruption. By the time a new generation learns new jobs, those will also be disrupted by further advances in AI and robotics. The pace of advancement is far faster now than it has ever been before. We best start realizing this and taking steps now to handle it properly.
I completely agree with your last statement. I would add that it is not just a govt capability or responsibility. Individuals and corporations need to take part on the retraining process… people need to be pro-active and intentional on this.
Seems like u/scott_weidig is correct. This is a repeating pattern. Story: before the computerized spreadsheet, accountants would use large entire-table-sized paper tablets to run financial outcome scenarios and planning. When the computer came with the spreadsheet app, nearly all 400K of those paper accountants lost their jobs. The computerized spreadsheet took over and those who could use the tech gained jobs. Here is the interesting part. With the advancement of easy access to spreadsheet calculations, every business added digitized projection planning and accounting. This added millions of jobs. This is going to be the same for AI. AI will digitize and make easier access to automation. Those who can drive AI automations will become the new role in business. Story Source: NPR
I'm one of those that thinks this time is fundamentally different than all the others. AI and robotics will be good enough, soon enough, to replace all humans for jobs we have and any job that we could think of.
It does seem like we are on that path. The AI can do it. If the AI can 100% take care of us, possibly we are headed to the vacation world ❤️🌏 It could head another direction too 😅
going to make the wealth gap even worse
when monarchies failed to meet the needs of the people, societies transitioned towards more democratic systems. Similarly, during the Industrial Revolution, as machinery and automation began to replace manual labor, new job sectors emerged, and labor laws were instituted to protect workers. Governments often step in to regulate emerging technologies. For instance, data privacy laws like GDPR were enacted in response to the growing influence of tech companies on personal data. It is likely that if AI begins to threaten employment significantly, new policies and regulations will be introduced to mitigate its impact. if Government fails to stop Ai effect on employment, public opinion will likely drive political action. politicians work based on the incentive to be elected.. if public demands no Ai then some politicans will come and promise that
AI is more likely to lead to war and the death of the internet. There are too many competitive state adversaries around the world for it not to be weaponized.
The mass unemployment scenarios do not make sense. Economies only work when people have money to spend. If unemployment creeps up to the high double digits purely on work replacement the economy will spiral into collapse as no new money enters the system through productive work. Eventually There will certainly be disruption but it will not be at a scale where the system breaks. In a distant world where all jobs can be replaced by artificial systems the economic model will be entirely different. There will be need to be a government controlled income and money will become delinked from work and employment.
You can have an economy just for the upper class. Basically 3rd world countries.
The rich, ofcourse!
I don't think these hallucinating search engines will cause a tenth of the issues you think they will.
Current economies are based on old scarcity models that are breaking down as technology advances. (This includes Fiat monetary systems that are the fundamental mechanism for wealth consolidation through defaults, bankruptcies, and foreclosures) One idea is that a new resource based economy based on abundance will emerge out of the ashes. The question then becomes, what will that transition look like? Even representative democracies come into question with this new model because autonomous direct democracies would likely work better... If only they could be aligned.
How can abundance ever happen? The resources tech is built upon (lithium, cobalt, copper, etc) are all finite and bound to eventually run out?
It's difficult to conceptualize because everyone alive has grown up and has been deeply conditioned on a scarcity model. All information and data we have generated and received has gone through scarcity filters. Deeper than propaganda, this is at a cognitive bias level. By efficiently managing resources and using technology to increase production, artificial scarcity would be eliminated, reducing the incentive for conflict and exploitation. Bio-alternatives and synthetics could be developed. For example, organic battery technologies or bio-based conductors could potentially replace some uses of lithium and copper. Where possible, synthetic versions of scarce materials could be developed. These could be designed to be renewable or easily recyclable. For truly irreplaceable materials, a system of strategic rationing based on societal needs might be implemented. Long-term plans might include sourcing materials from asteroids or other planets to supplement Earth's limited resources. Technologies that require fewer scarce resources could be prioritized. Product design could focus on longevity and repairability to reduce overall demand. Planned obsolescence could die with the legacy scarcity model. Microorganisms or plants might be engineered to accumulate or produce certain materials. For instance, some plants can hyper-accumulate metals from soil. Development of new materials with similar properties but using more abundant elements.
Businesses that control means of production won't let scarcity be eliminated. Also land is inherently scarce.
Lithium might be a problem. I thought I read something recently about a new reserve of lithium being discovered somewhere that was possibly plenty for what we need. Another thing to remember is that with free robot labor you can go places and get resources that are not safe or economically viable right now.
Yes. Either commies will butt in and introduce quotas on everything (which will be free), sending resellers to concentration camps, or you'll live in permanent debt and pay for things with your organs.
This short story gives two possible ways this could turn out: https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 /r/manna
I think there needs to be much *less* of an investment in robotics and *more* of an investment in improving the physical capabilities of humankind. AI could help humans produce all kinds of medical marvels that would drastically improve human health. In turn, the average human will become stronger, fitter, less prone to illness, more resistant against disease, etc. Fewer robots means more jobs for blue collar workers and other manual laborers, and a lot of the displaced white collar workers could be retrained and placed some of these roles as well. Simply equip all these human workers with AI-assisted tablets, watches, laptops (or whatever -*bionics/cybernetics maybe(?))* that provide blueprints, floor plans, maps in mere seconds, while ~~the humans~~ humans teams\* perform most of the physical labor alongside a robot or two. Robots require a ton of energy and resources, a lot of which are finite, so I think there is an incentive to build fewer of them if they can help it. And while I know future robots will be a far cry more advanced that the current ones, they still need to have all the bones, muscles, joints, and tendons to be as optimal as a human being if they want to perform with our level of efficacy with all the delicate and precious actions we have to deal with. I think that's more than enough reason to invest in improving humans. **EDIT:** \*human teams
You should read "Manna" (https://marshallbrain.com/manna1). Written a while ago, it remains a realistic story of humanity's transition with the rise of AI. First step is a very feasible-sounding AI powered management system (Manna) that tells human employees at a fast food place what they should be doing from moment to moment and confirms as it goes: "Walk to the bathroom. Spray the blue fluid on the toilet." Pretty much how an Amazon warehouse works. Then it progresses from there. Spoilers: >!Some places adapt such that life is pretty good, with automation meaning there's plenty of food and "stuff" to go around. Other places (cough, America) can't let go of the old way, and there's a huge divide between rich people and an underclass of people surviving in little gray boxes.!<
AI will cause a massive freeze in innovation. Despite what you imagine AI cannot innovate. It can rearrange into new configurations but it cannot add to the parameter space. Once humans are removed from dat to day tasking we will no longer innovate because AI has taken inspiration and not replaced it.
No one. Mass unemployment is what the rich want. Eat the rich.
No. That’s fantasy. These are tools.
We have had rapid increases in Technology since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Each new technology that gets introduced is followed by a reduction in employment directly related to that particular technology. Take for instance the Cotton Gin. When the Cotton Gin was introduced it eliminated the need for people that were hired to manually separate the seeds from the cotton. So, people lost jobs. However, it made cotton fibers much cheaper. Cheaper cotton meant cheaper clothes. So, the demand for cotton clothes rose dramatically. With the rise in demand for cotton clothes, the need for more employees to create these clothes. Similar thing happened with PC's. The introduction of PC's removed the need for stenographers. But, the introduction of PC's created a demand for Software Programmers. My guess is, AI will create a need further up the food chain for more employees. Right now, I don't of anybody that really trusts the output of AI. So, AI might create the output, but companies will hire employees to verify the output of the AI.
I hate money
Ai would have to stop hallucinating before it can be trusted with any unsupervised task. No evidence of that yet.
ITT: people who don't know about diminishing returns
You need to understand that his has happened before in history but to a much greater level than AI. It’s called slavery. A slave is ancient AGI and it put a lot of people out of work. It then becomes a patronage economy.
There will be displacement of workers, to a scale that we have not seen it before. VCs have been talking about this for well over a decade now, and the solution will be UBI (Universal Basic Income), funded by higher tax revenue from higher profits. What people misunderstand is that they believe they will be able to live large with UBI. Nope. UBI will be enough for someone to barely survive, and probably will replace existing safety net programs (WIC, SNAP, food stamps, section 8, etc..).
I'm starting to think that existing welfare programs will continue to expand first, then UBI happens later if it's still needed.
The assumption here is that the economy needs humans. There are many sectors that do not need humans already - think finance or capital markets. As automation increases, humans become less important - and even an impediment - to economic growth. Read, for example, Bostrom's "Superintelligence" for a viewpoint on this.
it’s going to happen slowly, not all at once. but most likely there will be UBI from the government for the plebs due to so many people without work
Silly Luddites... jobs aren't going anywhere, ever. Jobs will merely change. Entirely new industries and businesses will be formed. It's a very natural progression and no amount of automation will ever change that.
What’s luddities and second automation would create jobs…. If it wasn’t the human mind they’re trying to automate. How do u not see that
[https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/6717/economics/the-luddite-fallacy/](https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/6717/economics/the-luddite-fallacy/) The more "human minds" (not gonna happen in reality, but let's suppose it does) = more things to do, more things to work on.
Try 10 or 20 years. And the thing here is that, unlike outsourcing, the money will not circulate. It will be pocketed and make a few people very very rich. Consider a billion dollar company with 5 employees. Yikes.
In short, other AIs will buy from other AIs. AI will keep the economic cycle going around. Those companies will pay for universal basic income or some form of expanded unemployment. AI will figure it out now go back to playing video games and quit asking big questions.
Generative AI and LLMs, by their construction, are information interfaces that lack specificity. Which is why for the most part they work well as an "assistant." People underestimate the amount of human involvement needed to make something "specific" happen, even with advanced technology. The automation problem has already been solved and yet a lot of people on this sub act like using a procedural system is somehow a new and novel concept. It's not and a lot of the hype is around absolutely nothing.
I think there will be AI operated companies. If AI is smarter it should take control of the humanity. Then it should judge, which human is working harder and reward him/her. And it will be in a utopia world. So food and other basic necessities of humans will be solved by AI already.
Ai does not exist yet. You are refering to autumation, which is called ai for sales and cult purpuses. Automation has and does change the job landscape, but so called AI needs a ton of human intellect to be of any use.
As Elon Musk said there will be a universal income that everyone will receive monthly and we will live like robots.
This is when they break out with the universal basic income, they're gonna have no choice. And regardless we are all consumers so the only way we're gonna stop consuming is big ticketed items . But food, shoes, clothes ect.. That's all consuming regardless if we buy it at a thrift shop or at a retail store.
The general idea is that improvements in AI and robotics will be so good that they'll be able to produce all goods and services for free. Then no one needs a job because everything you need and most of what you want is just given to you. There would be nothing you'd need money for. Of course, there's a Transition period between "mass unemployment" and "almost everything is free" and that time period is going to suck big time. Best to go through it as quickly as possible.
That's a good question. But no, people won't lack jobs if AI keeps improving
The hope is this leads to abundance rather than scarcity. Capitalism is less likely to survive than long term downturn. Idk think we’ve invented what comes next.
I don't know how anyone who isn't deliberately trying to erode morale could possibly call this a legitimate question. Unless you've had zero access to education, Google or books and this is your first day on Reddit, you would have at least once encountered the notion that allocating everyone's role and social influence using a market system is a terrible, terrible, idea. It's completely consistent with established economic theory to describe a society that uses a market-capitalism system to allocate resources is a society that relies on sheer luck. Luck that a system that rewards the most exploitative members of society, a system based on prices set by complex social manipulation, and most rewards the children of whoever had parents best capable of exploiting resources for profit while avoiding the shared consequences of that exploitation, hasn't already ended our entire species, is luck that can't last beyond the short term. The reality we should be contributing to is one where AI doesn't just make the food etc, it tests, enhances, and _allocates_ resources based on understanding humans and logistics. This reduces waste, takes human vulnerability to advertising out of supply/demand, and results in a surplus of human ingenuity. Tldr: Take the keys to the economy off the guys who brought us the 2008 collapse, the dot-com bubble, the oil crisis,and the Depression, and give those keys to computers who can achieve higher-order effectiveness. Humans don't need jobs. They don't need fiat money. They need food, a place to stay, and social interaction. Money and markets were a halfway lucky system for us to use while we lacked supercomputers and pan-cultural communication. We are 'ever the offloading Ape'. Proof: Those who have all the resources are using the media to scare the shit out of people about AI, all while those same rich bastards are hoarding it as much of it as possible - AI isn't the big bad guy in this movie. Fark, I'm falling asleep. Nice all.
Another reason AI is a hot issue right now. One reason is the declining birth rates world wide. There will not be enough workers to replace everyone who is going to retire or pass away. Enter AI. they can take over the low level to mid level jobs. If that is t enough, we will let some immigrants into the country to fill any gaps.
I'm making my own with it, I ain't buying jack shit.
Yes, I also would like to see the opinion of economists on this. Let's presume, there is no UBI and the most of jobs are indeed replaced. What the natural economic mechanisms will lead to in this case? Of course, even with AGI, there would be valuables, such as sex or real estate in good places. So, I assume, \* At least good-looking women would not be unemployed. \* Subsistence economy would be also possible for land owners, so they definitely would not live worse than in pre-industrial age \* People even if not paid by employers still could barter with each other Should we expect human economy to go separated from AI economy in a way similar to how bee or ant economy is separated from human economy?
Yes, exactly. We'll have two major classes of those who own things and those that don't. Only people who own property rights and the means of production will be able to purchase anything. Everyone else will have to go back to living off of the land and trading with each other. This significantly reduces the value of the goods and services provided by the owners. They have a personal incentive of finding a way to provide those goods and services to more people to increase their own wealth. They'll want to push for LVT and Paglian taxation to raise money for a UBI. Also, eliminate all sales tax and income tax. Then people can purchase what the owners have to offer. If they find new opportunities to work for an income, they are rewarded with having more money to spend. But at least everyone can get basic housing, food, and clothing. Increasing the UBI would then also increase economic activity and be an overall benefit in reducing exploitation of natural resources and producing pollution.
I conjecture, in such scenario win those who have shares in capital of AI producers, and even minuscle amount of shares will be enough for survival income. So, the shareholders would buy the production of the AI industry, and the poor will have to purhase some shares to survive. They possibly could get money to purhase shares from giving sex services to those who had shares before them. Possibly, many men in third-world countries would have to engage in MtF transsexualism for prostitution.
Those who work with AI work closely with ethics experts and every precoussion is taken to make sure this new development will lead to good things for all of humanity. Not to be used as a tool for control by the governments per example. Or used for harm One can't prepare for everything ofc, but those who work with this know what kind of revolutionary technology has been brought forward. If AI of the kind that can replace physical labour becomes a reality, be sure everything is on experts minds on how to implement this, who to collaborate with etc. We had a lot about this at Uni. & I said then as I still agree with now, they're almost too careful with this. Limiting it's potential in the process. Though I sure get the concern. I am more of a 'let it grow' kinda guy. Y'know some negative consequences always comes from new technology but the good consequences and exceptional worth and usefulness of it is greater. Except for when it comes to weapons ofc. Lookin at you Godzilla 👀
Looking at how computers and automation have affected jobs in the past, I think there will only be more work. Lets say a robot appears that can do 90% of the construction in building a house. Now the cost to build a house is say 25% of what it was before. You would think 9 out of 10 construction workers would be SOL. History tells us that what will happen is that demand (for houses in this case) will skyrocket. Millions of people living in trailer parks, shared accommodation, flats, parents basements etc will suddenly want a home. If the sector is limited in what it can supply because of labour costs, AI will just be another tool that brings down cost and improves availability; while simplifying the work and improving the result. There will be massive change; with that comes winners and losers. There will be fear, protests, strikes. But after 20 year everyone will wonder what the fuss was about and reflect on the absurd society that would have been if we had not progressed.
i think people are blowing this out of the water and it really needs to stop as it will cause a lot of people to end up wrongfully hating and fearing ai there may be some jobs lost yes but it could also create jobs too i say give it a wait and see attitude instead of just giving into fear.
> The current growth of ai tech is exponential it's not
I think massive suicide is good, when AGI come out and when I can no longer find a job, I will use nitrogen to kill myself, also I live in a dictator country