AI will wipe out more jobs than CEOs can count.

[imwjl]

Many years ago as a field service technician I had a call at a GM plant in Pontiac Michigan. As I entered the plant I beheld rows and rows of automation. I eventually saw a single hilo driver pass by. I stood there like Forrest Gump with an imaginary dialogue in my head "Well, Jen-ney, if the ro-bots are doing everything, what are the people who worked here doing now? And how can they afford buying one of these cars?"

That Gumpian epiphany entered my mind every time I drove by the empty field where that plant once stood.

It's easy to swat down people pondering things outside the breadth of their understanding. But like a deer that pauses at the edge of an empty field, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, it is hard to deny the instinct that something might be wrong.

That GM was a major part of my former life.

Many years later the GM board had the sagacity to choose an exceptionally well qualified woman to run the company. She's brought life back to plants in Michigan and is building new ones throughout the US. The old GM didn't operate like her common sayings or mottos that are worth knowing, and especially if you knew the old ways in GM.

 

[Fretting out]

Granted, not there yet, but they are working on it.
They are 3d printing full scales homes and buildings.
Maybe you will be safe until retirement

Look at that balance! And the speed! My goodness the speed! I can never compete!

In the future an average house will take 20 years to complete……

I’m worried for sure but not about Construction robots

 

[Lou Tencodpees]

is that what you think the deer are thinking?

Do you find the minutia of the analogy critical for framing the whole post? How about “it is hard to deny the instinct that something might be wrong when life experience has provided many examples that you should have entered cautiously?”

We have governmental oversight over practically everything. How likely is it that there will be anyone outside of AI and Big Tech capable of understanding how to regulate it? We can't even agree on how to regulate the internet, for example. Toss on a technology that is exponentially more complex with farther reaching ramifications. It's reach can and likely will be omnipotent, and we'll have to entrust it's creators to "do the right thing".

As far as AI not displacing those who turn wrenches and dig ditches, who knows. With AI at the forefront of developing even more technology and subsequently infrastructure, there could be changes that develop at a pace that even it's creators can't anticipate.

 

[Swirling Snow]

When I was a kid, we knew that "artificial" flavors were fake.

Now people seem to think that artificial intelligence is real?

 

[bobio]

Look at that balance! And the speed! My goodness the speed! I can never compete!

In the future an average house will take 20 years to complete……

I’m worried for sure but not about Construction robots

Keep in mind, it can work 24/7 without breaks.
That video is 4 years old, technology is always advancing.

I wouldn't really worry about bi-pedal robots like that....yet.
The worry should be modular construction where the components of a building are built in a factory by robots.
The components are delivered to the site and merely assembled like legos.
That is already happening around the world.

Robotics will eventually lower the skill level required for workers in every industry.
It only follows that it will also lower the pay for those workers.
What company wouldn't jump at the chance to pay you less?

 

[middy]

They will have to implement a UBI to keep this charade going. Who is going to buy all this stuff if nobody has a job?

 

[blowtorch]

fact of the matter is, it is all conjecture/speculation (whether it be positive or negative)

and it is all completely outside of anything you can control in the least.


so, your grandkids may literally be enslaved to the new technology...

I'll be long gone by then

 

[middy]

When I was a kid, we knew that "artificial" flavors were fake.

Now people seem to think that artificial intelligence is real?

Just because it's not truly intelligent doesn't mean it can't take your job...

 

[Knows3Chords]

That GM was a major part of my former life.

Many years later the GM board had the sagacity to choose an exceptionally well qualified woman to run the company. She's brought life back to plants in Michigan and is building new ones throughout the US. The old GM didn't operate like her common sayings or mottos that are worth knowing, and especially if you knew the old ways in GM.

A friend of mine is an engineer for GM. They just had a mass layoff at their tech facility in Warren. It's still a bumpy road.

 

[middy]

fact of the matter is, it is all conjecture/speculation (whether it be positive or negative)

and it is all completely outside of anything you can control in the least.


so, your grandkids may literally be enslaved to the new technology...
View attachment 1116075
I'll be long gone by then

 

[Lou Tencodpees]

They just had a mass layoff at their tech facility in Warren. It's still a bumpy road.

As I'm sure it was for many employed in the Pontiac area.

 

[Whatizitman]

You have a point of view. Which is perfectly logical and respectable.

Can you entertain and visualize a different outcome or can you only see one potential outcome?

Depends on the mood. But I truly worry far more about the impact of language modeling on general society than I do just on job impact. But I also don't know enough about it all. A few years ago I dabbled in some basic nlp programming, just to see if I liked it. Way too tedious and challenging for a dummy like me. And I know as well as any that limited knowledge can cause more fear than necessary. But not until I saw chat algorithms that can generate entire narratives with minimal input did I start to get a little concerned. An article I just came across a few minutes ago is from some Stanford researchers, who, while arguing that misinformation about what AI is and really can do, is causing undue fear, also noted that proper measurement of accuracy is utmost importance. That's good to know, of course. But the takeaway was that good AI models are pretty much useless, if not potentially dangerous, if the human testing and assessment methods for measuring accuracy are flawed.

In other words, error. Measurement error, technically. But in my mind measurement error is invariably human error, as it is assumed in a human-derived model. And even basic stats classes cover the tenet that overall error is increased by multiple variates, and that modern mathematical models can handle huge amounts of variates, because of computers.

When we're talking about ever increasing language sets, only to exponentially increase with the integration of AI models in everyday text based gadgetry, we're talking LOTS of room for error. That scares the bejeezus out of me.

Here's a article about how Wikimedia is trying to deal with it all. Granted, consider the media source on this. It's probably AI generated, too, far all I know.

AI Is Tearing Wikipedia Apart

Volunteers who maintain the digital encyclopedia are divided on how to deal with the rise of AI-generated content and misinformation.

www.vice.com

 

[imwjl]

A friend of mine is an engineer for GM. They just had a mass layoff at their tech facility in Warren. It's still a bumpy road.

Yes, but a lot of it seems cyclical or classic to the industry. Not only platforms and engine changes, but even in the infancy GM is starting a move to next generation battery technology and with plants still being built. I'm pretty sure GM still has near 100,000 employees and we don't have bad cycles going on like I remember painfully well.

News I read about layoffs this week mentioned many were related to the transition to new technologies and platforms. It was horrible when my life was rocked by that sort of stuff but it made sense and I retrained. It was a lesson to help me always stay current.

 

[imwjl]

fact of the matter is, it is all conjecture/speculation (whether it be positive or negative)

and it is all completely outside of anything you can control in the least.


so, your grandkids may literally be enslaved to the new technology...
View attachment 1116075
I'll be long gone by then

In most cases we can almost always control our being skilled or valued. Even if we had that UBI world I dreamed about there would still be the important skills and work to be a good father, husband and citizen.

 

[prairietelecaster]

AI-YI-YI!

 

[oregomike]

Saw a thing on the news the other night where someone programmed AI to write and perform a song. Yes, by any reasonable standard the song was not good. But the same can be said for half the other stuff you can hear on the radio. Based on that standard, you could have slipped it into a "Pop Hits" FM radio format, and most people would never notice the difference.

I asked Bard to write a song, and gave it some parameters like "write an alternative rock song about isolation, in a post-modern world, as if you are David Foster Wallace.", or something to that effect. It basically scraped bits from his various work, and tried to fit it in the parameter of POP. It was the worst. I am disappoint.

 

[Happy Enchilada]

Thought of this years ago.
I chose a profession that isn't easily replaced by a bot or cheap offshore labor.
To quote Sarah Connor, "NO FATE BUT WHAT WE MAKE."

 

[imwjl]

As I'm sure it was for many employed in the Pontiac area.

You don't have to speculate and @Knows3Chords said it was Warren I recall maybe 20+ mi or 30 min away. I confirmed I was close on my 100,000 employee guess (93,000) and found news local and national that said several hundred and around 3500. Very sad news for those people but if the larger amount, isn't that about .03 to .04 of the company?

Competition is a beast that will never go away. Layoffs make me sad having been there but try to live by my mother's advice when my dad died young and our well being collapsed. That was "Put on a smile and get to work". It was pretty shocking in the circumstances but best advice every for so many situations.

If AI means some of us get UBI, being a good family and community member will still be very important work. Maybe many in our species can do that even better if not so burdened with a horrible balance of work and wage?

 

[RCinMempho]

Can you imagine AI HR settling disputes between employees? That I'd like to see.

The HR AI would get threats from the employee's AI.

 

[teletail]

I view that as an excuse used by many to place blame for personal stagnation or failure on somebody else because it's far less work to shrug off personal responsibility than it is to do something tangible to make one's life better. The last thing I want on my tombstone is A Long Series of Excuses.

You nailed it! I remember during the Clinton administration reading an article about some guy who lost his job at a textile plant who used a government program to learn computers as part of a program to help people move out of a dying industry. They followed up a year later and he had quit his new job when he found a job in a textile plant, then he lost that job and he was unemployed again.

I went to night school at 45 to get my computer degree because I could see no future in my occupation. It was hard and I took a $10,000 a year pay cut my first year. I’m no Nostradamus, but you’ve got to pull your head out of the sand and read the writing on the wall.