AI driven labor crisis?

[JOhnH]

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.

That's pretty much the same thing I remember reading back in the '60s and '70s regarding automation.

"It will give us time to relax in the park. It will give artists time to paint and poets and musicians time to compose without having to work full time just to live".

That ain't happened yet.

 

[Velocity173]

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.

Based on that prediction, you’d be spending a lot of time with your kids because they’d have no job as well. The question of “what do you want to be when you grow up?” will have become irrelevant.

 

[172andyou]

Ooof, that's pretty bleak. And I'm generally an "AI is coming for us" person lately.

It should be liberating!

I'm not as good at basketball as Michael Jordan is today, much less when he was in game shape. But I still like shooting hoops.

I'm not nearly as good at chess as Magnus, but I still enjoy playing chess.

I could buy a robot lawnmower today, but I still enjoy mowing my lawn.

If, in 20 years, I can spend my time thinking about problems *I* find interesting instead of the ones the boss is willing to pay me to solve. That should be a victory. And I'll have an AI tutor with the total knowledge of the world to guide me. That should be victory are well.

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!

Most of us have never been particularly useful. When it comes to work, most humans are replaceable cogs in the machine. The only difference is that sometime soon the replacement will be smarter, more capable and less whiny than we are. And, if this thread is any indication, less prideful and self important as well. ;-)

Until there's a massive jump in robotics, AI isn't going to be too useful in physical labor.

The technological jump has already happened, and continues to increase polynomially. The only thing left (and it's a big one, I agree), is mass production. Elon, dirtbag that he is, sees this and is moving aggressively in that direction.

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.

Even though I think you're joking, I'll point out that robots will be vastly more effective ditch diggers than us. What with their hydraulic arms that never get tired and all. I mean, we've already replaced ditch diggers with machines, we just need to replace the thing at the controls of the excavator with AI.

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

Bill has joined the chat...

 

[172andyou]

Based on that prediction, you’d be spending a lot of time with your kids because they’d have no job as well. The question of “what do you want to be when you grow up?” will have become irrelevant.

If their answer is "surfer" and my answer is "gardener" it's unlikely we'll be living in the same climate zone.

 

[Barrett50]

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.

You're flying right into my wheelhouse as a philosopher. I'd like to write a 20,000 word treatise referencing Kant, Plato, Leibniz, myself. What is the ultimate goal of humanity on Earth? Is it to remove all want, provide for a citizen without toil, feed every mouth, etc? The ancient cradle of civilization has a lot to teach us about advancement. The best example is agriculture. The Nile and Mesopotamian valleys with rich soil were slowly but surely sown and reaped with grains that would increase the population, and lifespan of the culture. Leading to leisure time, which led to advances in culture, philosophy, libraries, writing, Algebra, music, art, etc.

Motivated exactly to do whatever provides self-actualization AND advancement of the human condition. I guess if self-actualization is sitting in front of the boob tube(or arguing on the internet) fills the bill then fine. However, I would like to see humanity do more than fill the basic human needs and just stop. Freedom from want isn't what I'm planning for civilization. I'd like to see us continue to advance in art, medicine, science, culture, music.

There's only one thing I've done in my career that will outlive me. As part of a team developing aging tests for semiconductor materials, it's now industry standard for MIL-spec, and a lot of Fortune 100 tech companies. Maybe small, maybe not significant in the global sense, but it will help make machines which are used for AI to be just that much more stable and reliable.

 

[172andyou]

Freedom from want isn't what I'm planning for civilization. I'd like to see us continue to advance in art, medicine, science, culture, music.

Go ahead. Free from the burden of work, you'll have a lot more time to do that stuff.

Machines will do it faster and better. But there is absolutely zero reason you shouldn't spend your time on those pursuits if that's what you find fulfilling. I even agree with you on four of the five. I won't be attempting to advance music. Have tried too many times and understand that trying to make music ends up making me frustrated rather than fulfilled.

 

[Hang 4]

I worked for a paper company at the advent of the “paperless office”. Cut sheet sales went through the roof as local office and home printers became ubiquitous. On the other hand I’d hate to own a newsprint mill today.
Point being I doubt anyone has a clue how this will ultimately play out.

 

[Bob Noel]

At what point will the AI become sentient and people will want to stop making the AI robots be our slaves?

 

[Bill]

Just so it’s on record

 

[Barrett50]

Serendipity, I was channel surfing last night and Star Trek "I, Mudd" was on! The rogue Mudd was on a planet of androids and they were planning to 'serve humans, and they will be controlled'. Eventually Kirk and crew get themselves off the planet and leave Mudd there to clean up and make the planet right.

 

[Barrett50]

I love it when a plan comes together.

MSN

Are you an DBMS expert? Have I got a job for you.

 

[JOhnH]

I love it when a plan comes together.

MSN

Are you an DBMS expert? Have I got a job for you.

I think the correct word here is "oops".

 

[Barrett50]

I think the correct word here is "oops".

Somewhat of a self inflicted wound. Anyone since the first remote disk drive knows not to put backups and prod on the same VOL ID. However, even if they had done it right and put the backups on a separate VOL ID, I'm betting this still would have happened. Lets go to tape!

 

[172andyou]

Somewhat of a self inflicted wound. Anyone since the first remote disk drive knows not to put backups and prod on the same VOL ID. However, even if they had done it right and put the backups on a separate VOL ID, I'm betting this still would have happened. Lets go to tape!

It will probably take more than 9 seconds to find the number for the offsite storage company. ;-)

 

[DaleB]

One of their biggest mistakes was making their credentials constant across environments. You never - EVER - use the same credentials for dev, test, and prod. Just like you never allow developers direct access to production systems. Even I know that.

 

[SixPapaCharlie]

One of their biggest mistakes was making their credentials constant across environments. You never - EVER - use the same credentials for dev, test, and prod. Just like you never allow developers direct access to production systems. Even I know that.

Ooooooh some of my most memorable mistakes were in the production database.

 

[Baked Potato]

Ooooooh some of my most memorable mistakes were in the production database.

Well, yes - any mistake made in the production instance has a tendency, by definition, to be much more 'memorable' than any made in the sandbox

*I have been there too

 

[SixPapaCharlie]

Well, yes - any mistake made in the production instance has a tendency, by definition, to be much more 'memorable' than any made in the sandbox

*I have been there too

My first job out of college, we were doing VB on an Access back end and I wiped a major production table.
I knew my boss was going to kill me so I stayed up all night rebuilding the table by hand using data from other tables.

I got it back and the next day he and I were coding together and he goes "What is this new table called Copy Paste Errors"?

I came clean and said I pulled an all-nighter trying to rebuild a table from the other tables. He was ****ed but basically said I think you already paid the price for your stupidity. Now lets just restore prod from the nightly backup. I was very green and had no idea there were nightly backups that we could restore.

Never hid a mistake from a boss in my career again. Always better to say "Hey Boss man, I effed up" and when I became the boss I PREACHED that. tell me what you broke and we will fix it.

 

[Barrett50]

I worked briefly with a woman engineer way back. Friday night about 11 we got a MX window. She goes into the DC and promptly EPOs two mainframes. All caught on video. Nothing I or she could do. Escorted out, fired and never worked in the network/systems field again. She was a nice person, but what a ****up.

 

[rwellner98]

Ooooooh some of my most memorable mistakes were in the production database.

Well, yes - any mistake made in the production instance has a tendency, by definition, to be much more 'memorable' than any made in the sandbox

*I have been there too

My first job out of college, we were doing VB on an Access back end and I wiped a major production table.
I knew my boss was going to kill me so I stayed up all night rebuilding the table by hand using data from other tables.

I got it back and the next day he and I were coding together and he goes "What is this new table called Copy Paste Errors"?

I came clean and said I pulled an all-nighter trying to rebuild a table from the other tables. He was ****ed but basically said I think you already paid the price for your stupidity. Now lets just restore prod from the nightly backup. I was very green and had no idea there were nightly backups that we could restore.

Never hid a mistake from a boss in my career again. Always better to say "Hey Boss man, I effed up" and when I became the boss I PREACHED that. tell me what you broke and we will fix it.

I worked briefly with a woman engineer way back. Friday night about 11 we got a MX window. She goes into the DC and promptly EPOs two mainframes. All caught on video. Nothing I or she could do. Escorted out, fired and never worked in the network/systems field again. She was a nice person, but what a ****up.

Remember my comment about my cynical side remembering that humans, even wildly successful ones like Zuck, make mistakes? You guys aren't exactly making a strong argument that humans will be all that hard to replace. It's easy to go, "haha! dumb AI deleted production", but when multiple people on an aviation forum can also raise their hands and confess that they've also done it, it's not exactly evidence that we need the ghost in the machine.

And add me to the list. Fledgling Rich once caused about a dozen banks to open late because he messed up overnight processing at his first real IT job.

 

[mark.staggs]

It should be liberating!

I'm not as good at basketball as Michael Jordan is today, much less when he was in game shape. But I still like shooting hoops.

I'm not nearly as good at chess as Magnus, but I still enjoy playing chess.

I could buy a robot lawnmower today, but I still enjoy mowing my lawn.

If, in 20 years, I can spend my time thinking about problems *I* find interesting instead of the ones the boss is willing to pay me to solve. That should be a victory. And I'll have an AI tutor with the total knowledge of the world to guide me. That should be victory are well.


Most of us have never been particularly useful. When it comes to work, most humans are replaceable cogs in the machine. The only difference is that sometime soon the replacement will be smarter, more capable and less whiny than we are. And, if this thread is any indication, less prideful and self important as well. ;-)


The technological jump has already happened, and continues to increase polynomially. The only thing left (and it's a big one, I agree), is mass production. Elon, dirtbag that he is, sees this and is moving aggressively in that direction.


Even though I think you're joking, I'll point out that robots will be vastly more effective ditch diggers than us. What with their hydraulic arms that never get tired and all. I mean, we've already replaced ditch diggers with machines, we just need to replace the thing at the controls of the excavator with AI.


Bill has joined the chat...

I misinterpreted your earlier comments. I think maybe you're too positive! Ha!

Honestly, I hope you're right. There's a lot of touchy subjects (e.g. UBI) in this topic so I won't carry it forward here. But, I hope humanity can get there. Maybe we've seen too much sci-fi that shows the negative outcomes from automation and AI.

 

[mark.staggs]

Ooooooh some of my most memorable mistakes were in the production database.

Thank the DB gods for transactions and rollback! I nearly wiped a prod table in the middle of the day on a table that was regulation-required for our business. Learned a valuable "write the where clause first" lesson that day.

 

[172andyou]

I misinterpreted your earlier comments. I think maybe you're too positive! Ha!

Honestly, I hope you're right. There's a lot of touchy subjects (e.g. UBI) in this topic so I won't carry it forward here. But, I hope humanity can get there. Maybe we've seen too much sci-fi that shows the negative outcomes from automation and AI.

Yeah, that's totally fair. I mean, if we judge things by movies and books then not only is the future a nightmare, but currently life is mostly just hardship, murder and gunfights also.

Someone made a comment about how automation was supposed to have already given us a life of leisure. I mean, sure, there were a few people who predicted that. But there are at least two bigger problems with that claim.

1) Even after automation, there was still a need for humans. Washing machines are single purpose robots and absolutely transformed day to day life for housewives. But a washing machine wasn't also going to make dinner, do the shopping, remember birthdays, clean the house, etc. On the other side of the traditional gender roles, automation transformed factories as well. Even the IT revolution from, say 1970 - 2020 was just a way for humans to give increasingly elaborate instructions to machines. They were still needed. I think a lot of people on PoA haven't spent enough time hands on with the breadth of things AI can do today. It is super meaningful that teachers struggle with AI because there is no good way to accurately judge whether a student generated an essay themselves or with chatgpt. It is super meaningful that music streaming services are adopting rules about AI music disclosure because good AI music is indistinguishable from good human music. Humanity at large is no longer special. If it's essentially impossible to detect when generative AI is being used then AI has already won.

Yes, Yo-Yo Ma is still better at cello than AI. But the vast majority of people would have a seriously misplaced vanity if they think they will be able to compete with AI in the near future. Most people are not Yo-Yo Ma. A huge percentage of humanity is already eligible for participation trophies and that trend is not going to change. Ever.

2) Automation really did make life much better, but spectacularly unequally. This is the real risk. The past 200-ish years of automation/industrialization have brought unimaginable benefits to a few. A seriously fantastic quality of life to hundreds of millions. And completely and utterly left behind billions as well. Bill's question "how will goods be distributed in the future" is an important one. It tends to imply that the current system is good and worthy of preservation. Billions of people who have been left behind likely disagree. But it's worse than that, because if it is worth preserving, then Bill's point should be pretty terrifying. If the only way to run an economy both today and in the future is one in which you "eat what you kill" then there are going to be a whole lot of starving people in the near future when AI is the one doing the hunting.

 

[Bob Noel]

Given that resources aren't infinite, how will, in this utopian paradise being discussed, resources be allocated?

 

[172andyou]

Given that resources aren't infinite, how will, in this utopian paradise being discussed, resources be allocated?

Bob has joined the chat...

 

[Baked Potato]

Given that resources aren't infinite, how will, in this utopian paradise being discussed, resources be allocated?

"Fellow PoA posters, provide me with the solution to the cause of every conflict in human history."

 

[JOhnH]

Given that resources aren't infinite, how will, in this utopian paradise being discussed, resources be allocated?

Easy:

From each according to their ability.
To each according to their needs.

This time we are going to make Marxism work because we are going to do it right.
(Bob, if I get banned I' blaming it on you).

 

[172andyou]

Easy:

From each according to their ability.
To each according to their needs.

This time we are going to make Marxism work because we are going to do it right.
(Bob, if I get banned I' blaming it on you).

The idea is way older than that. Goes back, at least, to Acts 11:27-30.

But, yes, to drag this back on topic. The central theme of this thread is that we don't know how to live in a future without the need for human labor because we have never had a past without the need for human labor.

 

[Bob Noel]

The central theme of this thread is that we don't know how to live in a future without the need for human labor because we have never had a past without the need for human labor.

invalid - it's not the central theme. But it may be what is going on in your mind.

 

[MacFlier]

My first job out of college, we were doing VB on an Access back end and I wiped a major production table.
I knew my boss was going to kill me so I stayed up all night rebuilding the table by hand using data from other tables.

I got it back and the next day he and I were coding together and he goes "What is this new table called Copy Paste Errors"?

I came clean and said I pulled an all-nighter trying to rebuild a table from the other tables. He was ****ed but basically said I think you already paid the price for your stupidity. Now lets just restore prod from the nightly backup. I was very green and had no idea there were nightly backups that we could restore.

Never hid a mistake from a boss in my career again. Always better to say "Hey Boss man, I effed up" and when I became the boss I PREACHED that. tell me what you broke and we will fix it.

I came clean when I deleted a few transactions from a table in production, thinking it was UAT and had $1B in trades gone... That was a stressful afternoon for sure.

 

[MacFlier]

On the UBI topic: how is the government survive as the tax base shrinks with fewer high-paying jobs? We all know the corporations running the AI race pay little to no taxes.
Honest question.

 

[Bob Noel]

"Fellow PoA posters, provide me with the solution to the cause of every conflict in human history."

or, to think of the intent of question: consider the consequences of the uptopia that people seems to be dreaming of.

 

[172andyou]

On the UBI topic: how is the government survive as the tax base shrinks with fewer high-paying jobs? We all know the corporations running the AI race pay little to no taxes.
Honest question.

Yep, totally valid question. A government largely based on income taxes ceases to be viable. People have proposed property taxes, VAT and taxes on the robots themselves as alternatives. Short answer is no one knows yet.

 

[MauleSkinner]

It is super meaningful that music streaming services are adopting rules about AI music disclosure because good AI music is indistinguishable from good human music.

The end product may be indistinguishable, but since Suno still can’t understand English well enough to do what I tell it to do so, one could argue that it’s still worse.

 

[Ventucky Red]

In my line of work, I’ve been hearing “the sky is falling” for so long I’m surprised I don’t own stock in hard hats. Years ago, clients told me the internet was going to take all our jobs. I told the Chicken Littles to relax; someone would still need to show people which button to click.

Then along came iPhone apps, and once again the alarms went off: “This is it! We’re finished!” Same answer; someone still has to explain why the app isn’t working after they’ve ignored every instruction.

Now here comes AI, strutting in like it owns the place, and the same crowd is back in full panic mode. At this point, when I hear the screaming, I just say, “Grab an umbrella,” because this one might actually shake things up a bit more than the others.

That said, with retirement now within short field goal range, I find myself channeling the great Alfred E. Neuman:

 

[Baked Potato]

In my line of work, I’ve been hearing “the sky is falling” for so long I’m surprised I don’t own stock in hard hats. Years ago, clients told me the internet was going to take all our jobs. I told the Chicken Littles to relax; someone would still need to show people which button to click.

Then along came iPhone apps, and once again the alarms went off: “This is it! We’re finished!” Same answer; someone still has to explain why the app isn’t working after they’ve ignored every instruction.

Now here comes AI, strutting in like it owns the place, and the same crowd is back in full panic mode. At this point, when I hear the screaming, I just say, “Grab an umbrella,” because this one might actually shake things up a bit more than the others.

That said, with retirement now within short field goal range, I find myself channeling the great Alfred E. Neuman:

View attachment 151785

To be fair, both the internet and smartphones did eliminate very, very many people's jobs.

As a societal whole, raw numbers? Maybe not. But you can't pretend that the livelyhoods of entire sectors' worth of laborers weren't destroyed in a relatively short time.

Heck , I worked in two completely separate industries that were good careers 25 years ago but have barely any jobs left in 2026 (both having to do with specific types of physical media)

 

[Half Fast]

Heck , I worked in two completely separate industries that were good careers 25 years ago but have barely any jobs left in 2026 (both having to do with specific types of physical media)

Are you employed now? Earning sufficiently? Roof over your head? Clothes on your back? Food on the table? Enjoying life?

If the answer is “yes,” that’s the point. Change <> catastrophe.

 

[Hang 4]

To be fair, both the internet and smartphones did eliminate very, very many people's jobs.

And created a crap ton of jobs for other people.

 

[Baked Potato]

Are you employed now? Earning sufficiently? Roof over your head? Clothes on your back? Food on the table? Enjoying life?

If the answer is “yes,” that’s the point. Change <> catastrophe.

I consider myself very lucky. Not everyone has the support system to be able to completely change careers twice in their life.

The two huge societal disruptors above, I think, are major contributors to why we are living in a 'K-shaped' economy. And I don't see the companies that are most heavily pushing AI (coincidentally the same companies representing most growth in the stock market this decade) really working to reduce income inequality.

 

[cowman]

So here's my take on all this...

While there are certainly people who find meaning through their jobs, I don't think that's true of everyone. For many it's caring for their family or a hobby or something else and work is just a means to get money towards those ends. People find happiness through having goals and making tangible progress towards them over time, it doesn't need to be a traditional career. I've poured innumerable hours of labor into things that not only didn't bring me any income but usually did the opposite(airplanes anyone?)... those things have brought me more satisfaction and sense of self-worth than any time spent at a job.

All that said, I don't think the need for people to do labor is going away anytime soon. We still need work to be done for society to function and I don't see that totally going away for people. What I do think might be a thing is maybe we don't need to work as much- maybe a full time work week could be 32 hours in the near future. Maybe even less than that down the line. To me an idealized version of the future might be something like UBI existing and being just enough to get you a cramped studio apartment and basic sustenance but little else. People could work as much or as little as they want to afford the lifestyle they want. Year long gaps or more in employment could become normal- even expected. A job might just mean being an on-call service technician for when the automated systems go down and you get to spend most of your hours as you please.

Will it go that way? Who can say, most of these predictions are something between wild speculation and daydreaming but it's certainly all possible.