AI driven labor crisis?

JOhnH said:
We already have a head start on UBI. There are government benefits for almost any of the necessary (and many not-so-necessary) things in life available for people that can't or won't work. I only see that as expanding to more benefits for more people as the need for manual labor shrinks and the production of food and electronics becomes more automated. I would modify Elon's statement to say that in 25 years only people that want more porridge will work for it. The number of people willing to accept "basic" living will accept UBI and be happy about it. Of course though, the standard of living will be more like a 3rd world country than what we have come to know. athough the gulf between the haves and have-nots will make today's society look like a homogeneous utopia.
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We are. And I think that's way more dangerous than people realize. There's the old saying that the public just need bread and circuses, but that's not true. People need a purpose, and people need to associate work with a reward. People who can't complete a thought all the way through see a world where people get a check every month and then live a lifestyle of painting and philosophy. No.... It would be a world where people believe they are entitled, by their very existence, to whatever they want; and where those same people have a lot of free time. Separately those two things are bad, together they're catastrophic.

I've had the discussion with folks who want to view themselves as doing what's best for the world economy rather than what's best for us. Well, that might be where we're headed. And if it is, remember that there's not enough electricity or vegetables in the world, nor can there be, to bring everyone else up to our level. So something has to give. We can be feed lot cows, or we can be pasture cows, but the math for those two lifestyles are quite a bit different.
 
Kenny Phillips said:
Ask the joke goes, AI can't lay bricks, or unclog a drain.
Yet.
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I think Musk is a bit out of touch with common people when it comes to his Optimus bot. He thinks everyone is a geek like him and will want their own “C-3PO.” No, no I don’t want a robot walking around my house. And while I remain healthy and can take care of myself, I prefer to keep it that way.
 
fasteddie said:
I've heard this here and there. I don't have the numbers to prove it, but my understanding is that, even after the latest cuts at Meta/Facebook, their headcount is still higher than it was pre-COVID.

"We're doing massive layoffs because we're replacing people with AI" plays much better to Wall Street than "We're doing massive layoffs because we way over-hired."
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In most of the financial publications I've seen this being labeled this as 'AI WASHING'. Lots of accusations floating around about that w/all the layoffs.

Like you said, it's messaging largely for wall street. Why talk about slowing sales and inefficiencies and over hiring and restructuring charges, when you can instead talk about how you're already reaping the rewards of AI and that's allowing you to position for a leaner future. Your stock is going to react very differently based on the messaging.

The worst the industry has seen yet is Block (formerly square). They fired 40%+ of their staff and claimed it was due to all the gains they're seeing in AI.
Hard to actually prove they're wrong/lying, but most people are pretty sure that was BS cover for the fact that they massively over hired and they want to boost EPS going forward.
 
One of the big issues that is often not discussed is what AI is going to cost all of us? Many businesses will make a killing by implementing AI and in many places robotics to reduce their labor costs. Great for the businesses, but...

Now we have all of these unemployed people standing around and no one will hire them because they have AI to do those jobs. So now we have massive unemployment and homelessness since they can't pay their rent, etc. So those who are still employed end up picking up the tab (via taxes, donations, money to churches or whatever) and probably also see a giant leap in crime as some people opt to just start taking what they need. (Prob. retirees too that are still paying taxes.)

And no, this is not political comment, pure business and obvious number crunching. I'm just pointing out that you can't just lay off potentially hundreds or thousands of people without giving them some other means of income. And if there aren't some other jobs already waiting in the wings, the "government" will have to step in to feed and house them. We're talking City, State, Federal gov. and this is going to cross over all parties over time and I'm currently not seeing anyone stepping up with a potential solution.

I'm wondering if we're going to end up seeing some version of the old Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) reappear.
 
M20K said:
And no, this is not political comment, pure business and obvious number crunching. I'm just pointing out that you can't just lay off potentially hundreds or thousands of people without giving them some other means of income. And if there aren't some other jobs already waiting in the wings, the "government" will have to step in to feed and house them. We're talking City, State, Federal gov. and this is going to cross over all parties over time and I'm currently not seeing anyone stepping up with a potential solution.
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Who is this "you" are you referring to?

And why is it the "government" that will be responsible for feeding and housing people?
 
M20K said:
...a degree in AI will be a good thing to have if you get a job before the 300% overkill also graduate.
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I am doubtful.

We're now seeing the "AI-ready" push, as we saw the "cloud-ready" push not very long ago :rolleyes:

It doesn't help that when most people say "AI" they actually mean "commercial LLM services". I find it instructive to ask people to define what they think constitutes AI, give examples of what is and what is not, and why.

I'm convinced that the leadership set thinks AI comes from the magic AI tree; they want to check the AI box, because it will look good on their LLM-generated CV.

boss: "do you know AI?"
employee: "yes, I am familiar with reinforcement learning, support vector machines, Gaussian mixture models, neural networks, genetic algorithms, k-means, EM..."
boss: "uhhh.... why come you got no prompt?"
 
Barrett50 said:
I can think of 20 jobs right now that AI will never touch. If I gave it more thought, I could come up with plenty more
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Here’s your starter list. Post #278.

ArrowFlyer86

Thread '[NA] Practical tariff impact'

[Plz don't turn this into an overtly political thread :frown2:]

TLDR: Is your job/line of work impacted by tariffs? Being in finance/software I've been in a bit of an insular bubble and hadn't seen many direct impacts until this last week catching up with some people. I'm wondering if anyone else can share specific impacts they're seeing (or not seeing) in their own market or upstream/downstream in their business? Or specific areas that are getting roughed up? It's one thing to hear generic cases on the news, it's another when it's actual real people.

What I've heard from...
  • Sad
 
To me, AI is just a giant sorting program that sifts through what is available in digital archival form to come up with solutions. It's best at doing what humans have already done in the past. But can it discover new things? Would it have invented the airplane if the Wright Brothers hadn't? I am not saying no, but I think AI will free our minds to do more creative endeavors by taking care of the messy work.
 
sarangan said:
To me, AI is just a giant sorting program that sifts through what is available in digital archival form to come up with solutions. It's best at doing what humans have already done in the past. But can it discover new things? Would it have invented the airplane if the Wright Brothers hadn't? I am not saying no, but I think AI will free our minds to do more creative endeavors by taking care of the messy work.
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I would never have reached the levels I did if I had not had to do the "messy work" when I was starting out.
 
JOhnH said:
I would never have reached the levels I did if I had not had to do the "messy work" when I was starting out.
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Good point indeed. But I think we can become accustomed to exercising that part of our brain by engaging in purposeful "messy work". Like for example, we go the gym, or go jogging to stay healthy. Our ancestors didn't have to. They stayed physically healthy by doing their daily activities.
 
maybe they can take their severance pay and go to A&P school.
 
Bob Noel said:
Who is this "you" are you referring to?

And why is it the "government" that will be responsible for feeding and housing people?
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The "you" would be the queens "you" I guess. :cool: Just saying business in general, large and small.

And why the government? Always has and probably always will be. Not saying right or wrong, just that people look to the government and they usually are the ones to step in as there really is no other mechanism. And sorry if I seemed to sound like the world was ending, not my intent. Just saying there is a shift coming with the available jobs tightening as they're filled with technology and a large number of people (even a few % can be impactful) now being outplaced to be part of the numbers looking for work.
 
Most people confuse AI with LLMs. AI isn't intelligent, as you can 'ask' it things and all you get back are glorified google search results in a more natural speaking/reading manner. Anyone that's tinkered with AI chatbots has certainly gotten some dubious and outright wrong answers.

Right now AI is just the newest VC gambit. Remember that electric airplanes were all the rage a few years ago. Where are they? Self driving cars? Good, but nowhere near ready for actual use.

When is AI gonna fold my laundry? Load my dishwasher? Fix my car? It can't. It can only tell me what other people have told it (aka google 'how do I fold a fitted bed sheet'). Heck we can't even get a Roomba smart enough to not get hung up on a carpet or find its way out of a small closet.

Even Savvy aviation is blathering on about its AI boroscope service.... um... how is that any different that using say magick and looking for a green color % of image? One uses a kewl new buzzword 'AI' and the other is a program that actually works.

One thing is true, even if there is a Jetsons 'Rosey' AI robot in the future, there will still need to be meat sacks to fix it.
 
SoonerAviator said:
I can certainly see accounts payable clerks, engineering drafters, legal secretaries, etc. being replaced by AI simply because many of those tasks can be easily enough done by AI. The accounting world has plenty of positions ripe for AI to replace. The positions it won't be able to easily replace are the higher level positions (like a Controller) where the knowledge and critical thinking will be tough for AI to parse.

As much as people want to believe robots and AI will take over the world, I'd ask them to show me a robot that will climb under a sink and replace a faucet or garbage disposal. We aren't there yet, and I doubt we will be there in 20 years, much less 5.

Sent from my SM-S938U1 using Tapatalk
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Amusingly, I've been predicting for years that plumbers are among the trades most likely to be replaced quickly. They, as you point out, have to crawl into awkward places to do some kinds of repairs. They have to deal with gross work environments. They have to apply force at weird angles. They have to have a lot of knowledge about a variety of different equipment that was used over the years, and laws.

All of these lean strongly into the strengths of AI and robotics. A small robot that can either crawl under a sink or sit near the sink and extend multi-jointed arms into the cavity under the sink isn't much of an engineering challenge. They can have a "hand" that's actually a wrench that can fit on the large nut that's holding the faucet in and self rotate in that stupidly small space between the wall and the sink. They can have IR vision to assure both that the copper pipe is hot enough for brazing and that the wood behind it isn't about to reach combustion temperature.

Plumbers will be one of the first trades to fall.

Whether that's 30, 20 or 5 years is the bet I'm not all that interested in. It's coming and it could literally be done with today's technology. If the only thing stopping it is the will to put the money behind it to make a business... Well, that's not saying much for the long term viability of human plumbers.

Baked Potato said:
Sure, but... if it's generating that many lines of code are you able to review it all in a reasonable amount of time and understand what it is actually doing (like, really understand what's happening and not just seeing satisfactory output)?

Much of the work of 'coding' is not the actual creation of the code. It's QC, security review, UAT, stress testing, etc... magnified by orders of magnitude if sensitive data is passing through.
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AI is already more effective at code review than humans. Which is why any shop that turned to AI code production is also using it for review.

e.g. Mythos

The security experts are pretty unified in the opinion that they can outperform Mythos. And today that's almost certainly true. But even today you don't have one of them working at some random SaaS company and Mythos has proven that the old way was letting tons of vulnerabilities into the wild.

JOhnH said:
We already have a head start on UBI. There are government benefits for almost any of the necessary (and many not-so-necessary) things in life available for people that can't or won't work.
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Before dismissing what people spend their UBI on, try living on it yourself. I'll look forward to reading your report about the many not so necessary things that are being sprayed around.

The harder truth is this: if AI displaces 50, 75, or 95% of workers and UBI stays at subsistence level rather than scaling to something resembling a middleclass life, no amount of austerity moralizing will matter. History is pretty clear about what happens when large majorities have nothing left to lose.

Albany Tom said:
People need a purpose
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Totally agree.

Albany Tom said:
and people need to associate work with a reward.
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Nope.

The vast majority of people work because they have to, not because they want to. Much less because they find the more nebulous concept of reward being associated with work to be it's own reward. People want money to feed their family, have a nice house, buy a car, buy an airplane, go on vacation and eventually retire. They will be perfectly happy to not work when all those goals can be met otherwise. I've know tons of retired people and they all seem to have happily found a purpose beyond work.

Albany Tom said:
People who can't complete a thought all the way through see a world where people get a check every month and then live a lifestyle of painting and philosophy. No.... It would be a world where people believe they are entitled, by their very existence, to whatever they want; and where those same people have a lot of free time. Separately those two things are bad, together they're catastrophic.
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Yes. This is the most important point in the thread. The world will change. Full stop. The question is how we, as a global species/culture navigate it.

JOhnH said:
I would never have reached the levels I did if I had not had to do the "messy work" when I was starting out.
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This is another important point. Today software is the biggest and most immediately impacted industry. There is no AI that can effectively reach into the mind of Facebooks 3B monthly users, Facebooks senior management team, extract a business plan that serves that combined set of goals and update the software to manifest the business plan into reality. It's entirely possible that there will always be a need for 5, 10 or 20% of the current workforce to still exist as oversight. The problem will eventually be, how do those 20% become trained enough to be effective at their jobs without the need for the 80% and the 10,000 hours of experience that being part of the 80% gives you.

That's my real concern.

My more cynical side will point out that it's not obvious humans are any good at it either. Maybe AI Zuckerberg would have spent only a billion, gotten better focus groups, trusted the focus groups and spent the other $79B on other things.
 
rwellner98 said:
Amusingly, I've been predicting for years that plumbers are among the trades most likely to be replaced quickly. They, as you point out, have to crawl into awkward places to do some kinds of repairs. They have to deal with gross work environments. They have to apply force at weird angles. They have to have a lot of knowledge about a variety of different equipment that was used over the years, and laws.

All of these lean strongly into the strengths of AI and robotics. A small robot that can either crawl under a sink or sit near the sink and extend multi-jointed arms into the cavity under the sink isn't much of an engineering challenge. They can have a "hand" that's actually a wrench that can fit on the large nut that's holding the faucet in and self rotate in that stupidly small space between the wall and the sink. They can have IR vision to assure both that the copper pipe is hot enough for brazing and that the wood behind it isn't about to reach combustion temperature.

Plumbers will be one of the first trades to fall.

Whether that's 30, 20 or 5 years is the bet I'm not all that interested in. It's coming and it could literally be done with today's technology. If the only thing stopping it is the will to put the money behind it to make a business... Well, that's not saying much for the long term viability of human plumbers.


AI is already more effective at code review than humans. Which is why any shop that turned to AI code production is also using it for review.

e.g. Mythos

The security experts are pretty unified in the opinion that they can outperform Mythos. And today that's almost certainly true. But even today you don't have one of them working at some random SaaS company and Mythos has proven that the old way was letting tons of vulnerabilities into the wild.


Before dismissing what people spend their UBI on, try living on it yourself. I'll look forward to reading your report about the many not so necessary things that are being sprayed around.

The harder truth is this: if AI displaces 50, 75, or 95% of workers and UBI stays at subsistence level rather than scaling to something resembling a middleclass life, no amount of austerity moralizing will matter. History is pretty clear about what happens when large majorities have nothing left to lose.


Totally agree.


Nope.

The vast majority of people work because they have to, not because they want to. Much less because they find the more nebulous concept of reward being associated with work to be it's own reward. People want money to feed their family, have a nice house, buy a car, buy an airplane, go on vacation and eventually retire. They will be perfectly happy to not work when all those goals can be met otherwise. I've know tons of retired people and they all seem to have happily found a purpose beyond work.


Yes. This is the most important point in the thread. The world will change. Full stop. The question is how we, as a global species/culture navigate it.


This is another important point. Today software is the biggest and most immediately impacted industry. There is no AI that can effectively reach into the mind of Facebooks 3B monthly users, Facebooks senior management team, extract a business plan that serves that combined set of goals and update the software to manifest the business plan into reality. It's entirely possible that there will always be a need for 5, 10 or 20% of the current workforce to still exist as oversight. The problem will eventually be, how do those 20% become trained enough to be effective at their jobs without the need for the 80% and the 10,000 hours of experience that being part of the 80% gives you.

That's my real concern.

My more cynical side will point out that it's not obvious humans are any good at it either. Maybe AI Zuckerberg would have spent only a billion, gotten better focus groups, trusted the focus groups and spent the other $79B on other things.
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All good points Rich. Even where you disagreed with me.
 
As a software engineer of 26ish years, from where I'm sitting I'm seeing the tools being rapidly adapted by some of the stodgiest and biggest corporations across industries. In fact, it's far more than a trendy thing. It's a permanent change in software production. It's a bit like taking the days of punch cards or assembly and moving up the chain to higher-level languages... but in 1-2 years rather than decades.

The agentic AI tools are definitely going to flip the knowledge worker workforce on its head. For white collar jobs you better understand the why's more than the how's. The how is where AI shines (for now).
 
mark.staggs said:
For white collar jobs you better understand the why's more than the how's. The how is where AI shines (for now).
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:yeahthat:

A nail gun is a much faster way to drive a nail than a hammer, but that doesn't make a nail gun a master carpenter. The skill and the art lie in knowing what a customer needs and why, and creating new solutions tailored to those needs.
 
Half Fast said:
:yeahthat:

A nail gun is a much faster way to drive a nail than a hammer, but that doesn't make a nail gun a master carpenter. The skill and the art lie in knowing what a customer needs and why, and creating new solutions tailored to those needs.
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Our courseware department is using some combination of AI and live developers. I don’t think either of those understand the hows OR the whys.
 
I don't know if I've ever mentioned it here, but I whiplash between "ai is going to be the greatest thing ever" and "ai is going to destroy humanity" a few times a day.

Right now I'm definitely on team humanity. I use transcription software regularly to generate ideas and scripts for my videos. The one I depend on the most is easily good enough to add value to my workflow and I'm not dropping it anytime soon. It does, however, have a quirk where at the end of a recording it sometimes traps itself in a loop of repeating nonsense. I promise you, I did not spend 15 minutes repeating the mantra "I'm the feather" at the end of my last session...

[02:29:10.900 --> 02:29:22.100] Oh, me, I'm the feather.
[02:29:40.900 --> 02:30:10.880] I'm the feather.
[02:30:10.900 --> 02:30:40.880] I'm the feather.
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rwellner98 said:
I promise you, I did not spend 15 minutes repeating the mantra "I'm the feather" at the end of my last session...

[02:29:10.900 --> 02:29:22.100] Oh, me, I'm the feather.
[02:29:40.900 --> 02:30:10.880] I'm the feather.
[02:30:10.900 --> 02:30:40.880] I'm the feather.
[02:30:40.900 --> 02:31:10.880] I'm the...
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Are you sure?
When was your last medical? :biggrin:
 
rwellner98 said:
Nope.

The vast majority of people work because they have to, not because they want to. Much less because they find the more nebulous concept of reward being associated with work to be it's own reward. People want money to feed their family, have a nice house, buy a car, buy an airplane, go on vacation and eventually retire. They will be perfectly happy to not work when all those goals can be met otherwise. I've know tons of retired people and they all seem to have happily found a purpose beyond work.
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I don't mean reward in the sense of a prize, but in the sense of something that's earned. I also know people who've retired and are happy...one of my own goals. But that "reward" was earned. Contrast that to someone who's only had things given to them, and I don't believe you're going to see happiness. The don't have the perspective of understanding how to match spending to effort, and how to achieve that balance. People who are individually gifted large sums of money for whatever reason often don't turn out well, and being in groups will not help. The people getting the hand outs will want more, and the supply will continue to dwindle as fewer people are actually keeping the lights on.

There are lots of dystopian novels/films about some sort of war that leads to a breakdown of government and people living in poverty. There are also a few about a seemingly economically successful future but where people live in the fear of the evil but magical overlords. But the reality that we might see is somewhere between those - a gradual decline into a state where few people starve, but almost no one lives well. Where some people work to keep the economy barely working, but no one really tries hard. Maybe something along the scale of the Soviet Union before their collapse. Historically, though, a better system - where better means more ruthless - will come around and replace that system, either internally or externally, and then that system will put people back to work, one way or another.

That might be a bit dark to put out there...in a way it's making Ayn Rand or the movie "Brazil" seem optimistic, and that's not a good place.
 
rwellner98 said:
Amusingly, I've been predicting for years that plumbers are among the trades most likely to be replaced quickly. They, as you point out, have to crawl into awkward places to do some kinds of repairs. They have to deal with gross work environments. They have to apply force at weird angles. They have to have a lot of knowledge about a variety of different equipment that was used over the years, and laws.
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I disagree that plumbers will be easily replaced. It's not just knowledge of code and awkward areas. But there's a fair amount of troubleshooting.

My last plumbing situation I had water coming up from the shower. I have a steam shower with a tankless water heater. Was relaxing when suddenly water was coming up from the drain. After 15 minutes it didn't go down. All the pipes were full of water. Clog ended up being at the inlet baffle for the septic tank. Using the normal clean out in the house would dump water into the crawl space that has a slush coat. My solution was the apartment in the detached garage tee's into that septic line. I have a clean our under the stairs in the garage to use a rodder.

Once the clog was clear I found the reason it was clogged was because the clay tile to the leach field was disturbed so grey water wasn't able to drain quickly enough. Effluent would get stuck at the inlet baffle because it wasn't draining fast enough. Tank had to be pumped. Yard dug up.

Ai might replace repeatable task jobs and computer jobs. It will be a long while before something is able to replace complex human movements.
 
Albany Tom said:
I don't mean reward in the sense of a prize, but in the sense of something that's earned. I also know people who've retired and are happy...one of my own goals. But that "reward" was earned. Contrast that to someone who's only had things given to them, and I don't believe you're going to see happiness. The don't have the perspective of understanding how to match spending to effort, and how to achieve that balance. People who are individually gifted large sums of money for whatever reason often don't turn out well, and being in groups will not help. The people getting the hand outs will want more, and the supply will continue to dwindle as fewer people are actually keeping the lights on.

There are lots of dystopian novels/films about some sort of war that leads to a breakdown of government and people living in poverty. There are also a few about a seemingly economically successful future but where people live in the fear of the evil but magical overlords. But the reality that we might see is somewhere between those - a gradual decline into a state where few people starve, but almost no one lives well. Where some people work to keep the economy barely working, but no one really tries hard. Maybe something along the scale of the Soviet Union before their collapse. Historically, though, a better system - where better means more ruthless - will come around and replace that system, either internally or externally, and then that system will put people back to work, one way or another.

That might be a bit dark to put out there...in a way it's making Ayn Rand or the movie "Brazil" seem optimistic, and that's not a good place.
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THX1138 maybe over Brazil.

I have seen what you describe in both my own family, and even more-so in tenants I've had to work with in my later years. My kids grew up in relative economic comfort. My wife and I have known deep poverty in our youth. As a child, my wife and her sisters used to go around the market trash cans and collect glass bottles. They did this from the age of 5 to 12, and it helped feed the family. My kids understand nothing of poverty, and although they clearly understand the value of things, and are hard workers, they are going to have nothing of the fear of poverty that my generation had.

Speaking more of the people I meet as tenants, it's rather unbelievable what some younger people think is proper. That they can just stay living in my property, and not pay bills or their rent, and if that's a burden, it is not their burden to suffer but my burden. To them - I'm the 'ruling class' and I can afford to take a loss when they either lose their job, or just don't want to work(slavery) to produce income and pay their living expenses. An eviction in front of a judge, and their **** being tossed out on the curb is a violent wake-up with me and the court 'not understanding how much they NEED a place to live' but don't see the need to pay for it.

A mention of UBI has been made WRT the decline in income generating labor. We're moving into forbidden fruit territory, but this is exactly the opposite of what should be done. Take it from me, and my wife - an empty stomach, and sleeping in a Toyota is a wonderful, and powerful motivational tool. All any UBI support is going to do is reinforce the idea that the world/govt/ruling class/wealthy/authority owes some mouth-breathing, do-nothing, useless calorie consumer a free ride. Including a phone, air cond room, health care, cigs, booze, drugs, and a 88" flat screen.

Everyone able-bodied should be pulling a wagon. It doesn't have to be a big wagon, but notwithstanding the advantages(if any) of AI to society, defining this advancement as a way to make humans even more fat, stupid, and lazy is a crappy way to run humanity. And - we've come nearly full circle back to THX1138, who gets his pellet of mind-numbing drug, and watched degrading porn to feel a tiny bit alive. Eat, or be eaten. Work or starve, contribute some way to the benefit of self, and lesser to society. Even if it's a small paycheck from the arches burger spot. Flip a burger, it's honest work. I know because all of my kids did it and it really helped them understand value(even though they never wanted for much).
 
to quote a line from a movie... are you gonna be a giver or a taker?
 
Barrett50 said:
Take it from me, and my wife - an empty stomach, and sleeping in a Toyota is a wonderful, and powerful motivational tool.
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Motivation to do exactly what? Remember, in this future world there are no jobs that require humans. So you wake up hungry in the back of a Toyota and have the motivation to do what? Make shirts more slowly and at a lower quality than a robot? Or design a new module for the ERP tool more slowly and at a lower quality than an AI? Or assemble a car more slowly and at a lower quality than a robot? Or diagnose and repair a plumbing problem more slowly and with lower quality than a robot?

You guys are missing the point and it shows. The goal isn't to starve people until they are willing to work. In the future there will be no jobs to work. The goal is to get out of the antiquated mindset that human labor has value in this future world.
 
Barrett50 said:
And - we've come nearly full circle back to THX1138, who gets his pellet of mind-numbing drug, and watched degrading porn to feel a tiny bit alive.
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*Makes mental note to not tell Barrett50 about what goes on during much of my free time
 
172andyou said:
The goal is to get out of the antiquated mindset that human labor has value in this future world.
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And therein lies the fundamental disagreement.

IMHO, that mindset is not antiquated. Human labor, whether physical or mental, is and will remain a resource that will continue to have value and will be tapped.

It might not be tapped for the same jobs as it is today. Automation may take over some of the existing jobs, depending upon the business case and whether automation will be the right economic solution. But there will be other jobs, entire new industries in fact, and entrepeneurs will not let the human labor resource go unused when they see a way to profit from it.

Humans using their own effort to better their lives has been the way mankind has worked for all of recorded history. It's embedded deeply in the human psyche. No amount of automation is going to change that.
 
Half Fast said:
And therein lies the fundamental disagreement.

IMHO, that mindset is not antiquated. Human labor, whether physical or mental, is and will remain a resource that will continue to have value and will be tapped.

It might not be tapped for the same jobs as it is today. Automation may take over some of the existing jobs, depending upon the business case and whether automation will be the right economic solution. But there will be other jobs, entire new industries in fact, and entrepeneurs will not let the human labor resource go unused when they see a way to profit from it.

Humans using their own effort to better their lives has been the way mankind has worked for all of recorded history. It's embedded deeply in the human psyche. No amount of automation is going to change that.
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It's too bad I'm not a fan of prediction markets. This would be the easiest money I ever made...
 
Half Fast said:
And therein lies the fundamental disagreement.

IMHO, that mindset is not antiquated. Human labor, whether physical or mental, is and will remain a resource that will continue to have value and will be tapped.

It might not be tapped for the same jobs as it is today. Automation may take over some of the existing jobs, depending upon the business case and whether automation will be the right economic solution. But there will be other jobs, entire new industries in fact, and entrepeneurs will not let the human labor resource go unused when they see a way to profit from it.

Humans using their own effort to better their lives has been the way mankind has worked for all of recorded history. It's embedded deeply in the human psyche. No amount of automation is going to change that.
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Absolutely this! Even as I use AI tools regularly for my daily tasks, one thing that becomes obvious is that AI isn't and may never be great at synthesizing novel ideas, solutions, products, etc.
 
mark.staggs said:
Absolutely this! Even as I use AI tools regularly for my daily tasks, one thing that becomes obvious is that AI isn't and may never be great at synthesizing novel ideas, solutions, products, etc.
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If history has taught us anything it's that humans aren't very good at any of those things either. Most things fail and most things fail quickly. While it's tempting to judge based only on the ideas that survive, it gives you a super incomplete picture of how good (and bad) humans are at creating.

But even if we accept for a moment that for some reason AI can't create novelty, what about the 80-90% of humans who don't have that as a job description? AI can already do the kind of problem solving Racerx had in his plumbing example (don't believe me, plug his problem into your AI of choice and see what comes up. chatgpt gave me the correct solution). Rich was right to point out that one of the wealthiest and most successful humans to ever live just ****ed away $80B solving a problem no one wanted solved.

The days of human labor being a necessity are coming to an end. This should be a good thing. No one is going to stop you from synthesizing novel ideas, solutions, products in your spare time if you want to. But it's a mistake to think you'll be needed. For the rest of us, if humanity survives, it will mean more time for picklball or playing with our kids.
 
Since we are talking about AI,

I asked Amazon's RUFUS about metal cutting boards:
Stainless steel is Softer than titanium, so your knife edge doesn't take as much abuse. It's a balanced surface that won't damage your blade
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Then I asked Grok:
stainless steel cutting boards are generally harder (not softer) than titanium ones, making titanium more knife-friendly in most cases
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I wonder if Boeing is using AI on their Starliner.
 
172andyou said:
If history has taught us anything it's that humans aren't very good at any of those things either. Most things fail and most things fail quickly. While it's tempting to judge based only on the ideas that survive, it gives you a super incomplete picture of how good (and bad) humans are at creating.

But even if we accept for a moment that for some reason AI can't create novelty, what about the 80-90% of humans who don't have that as a job description? AI can already do the kind of problem solving Racerx had in his plumbing example (don't believe me, plug his problem into your AI of choice and see what comes up. chatgpt gave me the correct solution). Rich was right to point out that one of the wealthiest and most successful humans to ever live just ****ed away $80B solving a problem no one wanted solved.

The days of human labor being a necessity are coming to an end. This should be a good thing. No one is going to stop you from synthesizing novel ideas, solutions, products in your spare time if you want to. But it's a mistake to think you'll be needed. For the rest of us, if humanity survives, it will mean more time for picklball or playing with our kids.
Click to expand...
Ooof, that's pretty bleak. :D And I'm generally an "AI is coming for us" person lately. I'd say humans as a whole aren't very good at much of anything, but that's never stopped us from being useful before!

Until there's a massive jump in robotics, AI isn't going to be too useful in physical labor. Yeah, sure there's splashy demos by Boston Dynamics and others, but until I see a robot navigating my back yard, opening a septic tank, finding and unclogging the baffles, and successfully putting it all back together, humans will be needed. Honestly, I see human physical labor becoming more useful (we'll be the ditch diggers), and the AI will be the ones telling us what to do. Hmm, maybe that's more bleak. :)
 
172andyou said:
But it's a mistake to think you'll be needed. For the rest of us, if humanity survives, it will mean more time for picklball or playing with our kids.
Click to expand...

So, how are money, housing, and resources to be distributed when there is no differentiation between humans?
 
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