> Large swaths of the population unemployable though... That's a real issue.
IMO the one job that is most threatened by future progress in AI is the job of software developer.
As for the menial jobs, of course nobody cares whether a human or a machine mows your grass. But I do think that most people would rather be nursed by human being than a robot. I think there will be a big increase in care-giving jobs, which would be wonderful because the world is in dire need of care-givers.
> As AI and automation improve, the majority of people will have negligible economic utility.
I'm not 100% sure of this. As a software engineer and AI researcher I actually feel that AI is more likely to replace my job before it replaces some dude hauling boxes in a truck across Colorado during a blizzard and then figuring out how to unload them into the back of a poorly-organized grocery store, or some restaurant chef working with open flames in the back of a restaurant while figuring out how to make something vegan and dealing with someone else's peanut allergy.
Robotics+AI will happen eventually, but high-paid computer-based jobs are IMO the easiest targets to replace. Human labor involves dealing with a lot of corner cases safely and it's going to take a while.
>There are a lot of jobs that humans can inherently perform better than robots for the next few decades at least: taking care of the elderly, hospice care, community development, physical therapy, etc. Humans are wired to trust and engage with our own species over any machines that could be developed any time soon.
While this is true and one of the unintended consequences of guaranteed minimum income would be even harder to obtain elderly care, not everyone is suited for this kind of work - and if you think a large % of people who spent the last 20 years driving cabs and trucks can now go on to be a nurse or some such I don't think it's very realistic.
IMO there will soon be a new class of unemployable people - with low social skills and low enough IQ to not be trainable fast enough (one thing that is a requirement in modern economy is fast training and adaptation - no more learn one job and do that for the next 30 years - you stick around for one job for a couple of years and then your position gets automated, the company reduces capacity, relocates operation, shifts focus, etc. etc.)
So on one hand there will be vacancies for many jobs (like competent programmers right now) but on the other hand people available will not be able to enter those markets in any reasonable amount of time.
I can tell you myself - years of working on a computer over 8 hours a day have left my motor system very very underdeveloped and I have a hard time focusing on menial things, my first job was physical labor after highschool - I took months to get to the point where I could be useful and I was a work hazard during my training - the only reason I got a job there was because the manager knew me from school "internship" and he knew I could code/was a fast learner - he gave me a job before he could get an opening to move me to production planning/management. I needed the money because I was poor. But there was 0 point in hiring a person like me for that kind of work - if I was hired for that job I would be fired way before I got good enough at it to not be a hazard. On the other hand I've seen new people come on out of school that learned much faster and were just better at it. Just like there would be 0 point in hiring anyone that was good at that job to be a programmer.
> Well, this one could really be problematic for everyone. We're talking about social unrest and revolts on a global scale.
Not necessarily.
Firstly it's not even clear that AI will eliminate jobs without creating new ones. It's not clear that any development in AI will be any different than the transition to mechanization in the 19th and early 20th century.
Secondly, it's not clear that even if AI were to successfully automate away labor that we would have a problem. For one, we have a demographic cliff rapidly approaching whereby a lot of countries population is falling, and even where it's not, the population is rapidly aging. There's already protests in France about raising retirement age. What if AI lets us have our cake and retire earlier too?
At any rate, if AI is busy automating away labor, then the world is getting more efficient. And that means there are more resources to support people. All those debates are worth having, but you gotta cross that bridge when you get there, if you get there.
> physical labour hasn't been replaced yet in many areas isn't because AI tech hasn't advanced sufficiently
I’m a robotics engineer. There are two options. AI can either replace all jobs or it can’t.
If it can then we are all out of a job, and then the next project is how to organise society such that everyone can live a good and fulfilling life in harmony.
If it can’t, for whatever reason, then that is the next thing I will be personally working on. Simple as that.
Because of this I don’t see how would it be possible to run out of programing jobs before running out of all the other jobs first.
You are talking about ChatGPT, and LLMs, but what i am saying transcends particular technologies.
> The rise of AI will free people up to do things that software never will—teaching, caring for patients, and supporting the elderly, for example.
Every sci-fi movie show any of those jobs as replaced by AI (or robots). Probably they will not achieve the same level of connection (mostly because they will lack a human body to make expressions, at least at the beginning).
Those jobs will be replaced, not because there is a human that will be replaced, but because there is no human doing them. There are plenty of people in need of education, caring or just loneliness.
> AI and automation will almost certainly make things worse
This quote is followed by percentages of jobs being at risk.
But I find it not convincing at all. There are measures society can take to care for the unemployed. And realistically speaking, I look forward to a future where AI and automation makes most of our manual labor jobs obsolete.
> I'm quite certain that even the current generation of AI could already make 10-20% of first-world jobs obsolete
I often ask people how we could modify a economy to support 10% automation of the workforce. Where 10% of people are not only displaced, but that we do not gain an additional 10% of new jobs which could be filled by humans.
The most reasonable answer I've ever gotten was jobs programs. But I don't think this actually solves things, and neither did that person. It's just a tax and prevents people from... being the most human they can be. It also prevents us from reaching post scarcity.
Now I don't actually believe that 10% of jobs in Western countries could be replaced. There's 135m people employed in America and AI can't even replace the 2.4m janitorial staff that we have. AI isn't needed to replace the 3.8m retail staff (#1), 3.4m cashiers (#3), or 3.2m fastfood workers (#4), where the first two have already seen significant disruption and the latter is still unsolved since AI can't "flip burgers" good enough yet (yes, I know there are burger flipping robots, you're missing the point). But they still can't replace health care aids (#2), nurses (#5), or even movers (#8). I'd really encourage you to check out the most popular jobs[0] and ask yourself if you truly can disrupt them. Because if so, you should probably apply for a y-combinator seed round. Or AI just isn't as far as many people think it is. Replacing the one cashier and one person working the drive-through (both people multi-task btw) isn't going to significantly reduce the 8 people working during any given shift at a taco bell.
This is more problematic than it seems, though. What if there isn't enough work in other industries to absorb the people? If AI works out as proponents want, this seems likely because lots of jobs, across a wide swath of industries, will be eliminated.
There's also the issue that not everyone is suited for every kind of job.
>I see a bright future for humans. In fact, I believe there will be plenty of challenging work for humans because of AI, not in spite of it.
This is my biggest problem with those who fear "AI domination". They assume that we've reached the maximum number of jobs possible and that no new jobs/industries will be created ever. It's short sighted and irrationally fear based. They also assume that society needs to be based on trivial work to keep moving. I am all for a post-work society, but I know there are naysayers.
If, theoretically, we could out source every manual/trivial/repetitive task to AI - that alone would create an entire industry of building/deploying/maintaining/reviewing/optimizing AI. Not only that, but it would free up unprecedented numbers of people to work on solving large issues that society is facing (clean water for all, global warming, food shortages, post-earth living, etc).
Yes, your job as it exists right now probably will not exist after AI, but that doesn't mean humans will become obsolete.
> But where are my damn robots that I can assign task and do them reliably ( clean the garden, go get this list of groceries - or , just look in the damn fridge and go buy what is missing , and so on )?
The amusing/terrifying thing is that AI is probably going to replace a bunch of people's jobs before it can take away any of that menial labour from them.
>Old jobs are always replaced by new (and usually better ones).
No, that's just what happened a few times in the past. Not some natural law. The previous times farming jobs got replaced by factory jobs (which were enough because of a huge increase in the manufactoring sector) and when those dwindled by robots and more efficient factories, they got replaced by the services industry. This time automation and software/AI depletes factory and service jobs, and we don't have much room for any other kind of jobs.
Any job we'll come up with will either be able to be done by robots, or be replaced by advanced AI. The exceptions where human touch will be still (always?) needed (artistic work, prostitution, etc) are not enough to make a living even today, much less in an oversaturated future market.
> most programmers will have to learn to do something else. Humans are resilient and will adapt.
Like what? Seriously, which cognitive occupation is safe then? I think if one wants to stop competing with the machines (who appear very close to becoming superior to humans by what you are saying), it's some kind of child care / social work job. We still don't want robots in those (for now. Eventually they may do those better than us as well).
Not exactly. Old school automations are pretty limited. You can’t automate everything so there will always be work for humans.
Automation is what allows our quality of life today so I wouldn’t knock it.
AI though could potentially eliminate all jobs. How the heck is society going to function after that I have no idea.
In its current state it has the potential to eliminate “low end” beginner jobs. That’s problematic because if you don’t have juniors professionals today … you won’t have seniors in the future. Now you could argue that AI would develop to takeover senior jobs too but that’s not a sure thing. It would be really bad if you bet the farm on AI continuing to progress at a certain pace and it didn’t happen - we could even get another AI Winter as all the low hanging fruit from the advancement of tech the last few decades are picked clean.
>People always claim this, yet with ever increasing population, we continue to find work for people to do.
The reason I expect employment to eventually be much less than 50% is automation not population growth. In the past when one industry gets automated people move to another industry, but I don't see how that happens when/if we have human level AI.
Is there any problem at all, really? Humanity gets more and more efficient at allocating jobs and then at removing the need for human input at all. It's only a problem for people who cannot contribute to humanity in any way but repetitive manual labour, and while I genuinly tried, I can't feel sorry for them. You don't even have to have a high IQ for a different kind of a job - there's a LOT of jobs that require social intelligence and empathy instead of intelligence that are even less prone to automation than software development.
> a large section of the population is already at this point without AI.
Which section? Just about any able-bodied person can create enough value to feed/house themselves by washing dishes, stocking shelves, mopping floors, staring at security camera monitors, etc.
> Human labor will easily win on cost for many of those jobs.
A human will not work a job that doesn't pay their cost of living (or if they do it won't be for very long because that's not sustainable). If that means $20k per year, then I would guess robots will have no problem competing on cost. When the software is ready, anyway. Probably not within 10 years.
IMO the one job that is most threatened by future progress in AI is the job of software developer.
As for the menial jobs, of course nobody cares whether a human or a machine mows your grass. But I do think that most people would rather be nursed by human being than a robot. I think there will be a big increase in care-giving jobs, which would be wonderful because the world is in dire need of care-givers.
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