Comment by infinitezest

Comment by infinitezest 3 hours ago

9 replies

This is something I've been waiting to hear as well. We hear about how jobs will be eliminated, and occasionally we hear about how that means there will be time for other things that we want to do, but it kind of seems like AI is already doing all of the things that we want to do. And then, of course, there's the question of how the rest of us are going to provide for ourselves if none of us have jobs. Those at the top already seem quite reticent to share with the rest of us. I can't imagine that's going to get better if we don't provide any value to them that a computer can't do for cheaper.

ErroneousBosh an hour ago

> We hear about how jobs will be eliminated

I've been hearing about how $latest_technology is going to eliminate jobs for 40 years. It hasn't happened yet.

Which jobs, exactly, is AI going to eliminate? It's not useful for anything. It doesn't do anything useful. It's just mashing random patterns together to make something that approximates human-readable language.

  • achierius 8 minutes ago

    > It hasn't happened yet.

    Not to you. But it has happened to tens, hundreds of thousands already. Did you miss the whole 2016 election news-cycle?

  • peterlk 34 minutes ago

    I am so, so, so tired of hearing this argument. At a minimum, AI provides efficiency gains. Skilled engineers can now produce more code. This puts downward pressure on jobs. We’re not going to eliminate every software engineering job, but the options are to build more software or to hire fewer engineers. I am not convinced that software has a growing market (it’s already everywhere), so that implies downward pressure. The same is true for customer support, photography, video production (ads), paralegal work, pharma, and basically any job that involves filing paperwork.

    Eliminating jobs has absolutely happened. How many jobs exist today for newspaper printing? Photograph development? Film development? Call switchboard operation? Technology absolutely eats jobs. There have been more jobs created over time, but the current economic situation makes large scale jobs adjustment work less well.

FuriouslyAdrift 2 hours ago

There's always crime...

  • A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2 hours ago

    The interesting thing about it is that the signs suggest that 'the rich' are prepping for such an outcome ( you will see occasional article here and there about bunkers being bought ). Naturally, if one was to suggest that maybe we could try working towards some sort of semblance of 'new new deal', they would be called some sort of crazy person, who is a communist and hates democracy ( as opposed to simply trying to save the system from imploding ).

    • achierius 2 hours ago

      Then why bother? Why not go all the way, try to find a way to a new, better system, rather than gambling that these people who so totally hate you would one day become willing to compromise in order to save the current one (with benefits then most of all, not you)?

      • A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2 hours ago

        Because, in real life, power re-alignment of that magnitude tends to be.. chaotic. I like my life. I also like my kid to survive long enough to fend for itself. Both of these become a big gamble if we do not work within the existing system.

        I am saying this as a person who had a front seat to a something similar as a kid. It was relatively peaceful and it still managed to upend lives of millions ( because, at the end of the day, people don't really change ).

  • boilerupnc 2 hours ago

    I suspect the early variants will fall into two camps:

    1. Traditional garden variety human to human, computer to computer and computer to human crime stuff that happens today.

    2. Human to computer (AI) crime, misdeeds and bullying. Stuff like:

    - Sabotage and poison your AI agent colleague to make it look bad, inefficient, ineffectual in small, but high volume ways. Delegate all risky, bad+worse choice decision making to AI and let the algo take the reputational damage.

    - Go beat up on automated bots, cars, drones, etc ... How should it feel to kick a robot dog?

    For a humorous read on automation bots and AI in a dystopian world, take a look at Quality Land [0]. Really enjoyed it. As a teaser, imagine having some drones suffering from a fear of heights, hence being deemed faulty and sentenced for destruction. Do faulty bots or AI have value in this world even if they don't deliver on their original intended use?

    [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36216607-qualityland