AI in your world

[SwampCat]

Hard for me to imagine AI coming out to my house and digging up the waterline and replacing a break in the line, or crawling up under my house and attaching a new air handler under the floor. I think there is going to be a lot of years with current infrastructure that AI is going to struggle. I think AI is going to help, but wont come close to doing it all.

My son trained extensively using robotics in surgery - but when it came down to real life work, he much prefers to operate with a scalpel in his hand as opposed to a scalpel in a robots hands. He said he can do it quicker and evaluate unforeseen circumstances a lot better

All that said - a lot of the AI videos of things like bigfoot, etc - are pretty funny.

 

[ksJoe]

But…so far are you seeing ai provide many tangible benefits to your occupation/life

I'm a senior software engineer. mid/late 40s, 25 years experience.

I am at least twice as productive as I was a year ago. New grads in this field are having a hard time finding jobs because a senior person with AI can makes a pile of new grads obsolete. That situation cannot remain because new grads are the source of senior people. So my industry has a huge talent pipelline problem.

Even senior people who write straightforward software (misc.apps, business software, etc) will likely see their employment options shrink quickly in the next few years.

I've spent my entire career at tech companies small to large working on the "hard" stuff where performance and correctness are not negotiable (data storage products, database ineternals, etc). I suspect this this nitch will hang on better and longer than the simpler areas of software development. But predictions about AI become obsolete in a few months.


The employment threat isn't really based on what it is currently capable of doing. Its the pace of advancement. Over the next few years all cognitive work is going to change. i.e. anyone who's job is sitting in front of a compute reading information and reacting to it.

Hard for me to imagine AI coming out to my house and digging up the waterline and replacing a break in the line, or...

Sure, but if the office workers all come looking for non-office jobs, everyone is affected.

 

[SwampCat]

I'm a senior software engineer. mid/late 40s, 25 years experience.

I am at least twice as productive as I was a year ago. New grads in this field are having a hard time finding jobs because a senior person with AI can makes a pile of new grads obsolete. That situation cannot remain because new grads are the source of senior people. So my industry has a huge talent pipelline problem.

Even senior people who write straightforward software (misc.apps, business software, etc) will likely see their employment options shrink quickly in the next few years.

I've spent my entire career at tech companies small to large working on the "hard" stuff where performance and correctness are not negotiable (data storage products, database ineternals, etc). I suspect this this nitch will hang on better and longer than the simpler areas of software development. But predictions about AI become obsolete in a few months.


The employment threat isn't really based on what it is currently capable of doing. Its the pace of advancement. Over the next few years all cognitive work is going to change. i.e. anyone who's job is sitting in front of a compute reading information and reacting to it.


Sure, but if the office workers all come looking for non-office jobs, everyone is affected.

I agree to some extent. But a lot of the office workers are office workers because they didnt want to be digging up a waterline with a shovel in 10 degree weather or working on duct work in an attic in August where it is 120 degrees.

I am not saying it is not going to turn the economy upside down - the original question was about what line of work to direct kids to the future. I would direct my my school age kids to something like HVAC, Plumber, electrician, general carpentry, etc

 

[jsasker007]

Quantum AI will be when we get actual AI in my opinion. I think right now we're just barely scratching the surface and what is available isn't really TRUE AI. True AI will be able to keep improving itself all on it's own. Right now people still have control over it. When we get to having what is REAL AI is when people become irrelevant for the most part. jmho

 

[Howboutthemdawgs]

Speak of the devil

Stuart Russell, a prominent computer scientist who co-authored one of the most authoritative textbooks on AI, stated in an interview last year that political leaders are confronting the possibility of 80 percent unemployment driven by AI.

Microsoft AI Boss Mustafa Suleyman: Most White-Collar Jobs Will Be Automated Within 18 Months

Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, has predicted that AI will be capable of automating the vast majority of white-collar professional tasks within the next 12 to 18 months.

www.breitbart.com

 

[ksJoe]

I agree to some extent. But a lot of the office workers are office workers because they didnt want to be digging up a waterline with a shovel in 10 degree weather or working on duct work in an attic in August where it is 120 degrees.

If AI is modestly impactful (big productivity gains, 10-20% unemployment), then sure.

If its like this:

Stuart Russell, a prominent computer scientist who co-authored one of the most authoritative textbooks on AI, stated in an interview last year that political leaders are confronting the possibility of 80 percent unemployment driven by AI.

then politcal institutions and social order are in jepordy.

we won't know what the impact will be until its much further. The industrial revolution was a massive change but it was throttled by the speed at which people could build machinery. AI needs compute infrastructure, but the quantity of infrastructure relative to the quantity of disruption is far different. In the industrial revolution each machine needed designed & built, which is a time consuming process. With AI, we taught the machine to teach itself. The natural throttling that slowed advancement and allowed people time to adjust in the industrial revolution isn't guaranteed.

There is a nonzero chance this gets spicy.

 

[Howboutthemdawgs]

And it doesn’t seem like we have responsible parties looking to scale this thing appropriately. It’s an arms race a)between countries cause no one wasn’t to get behind and b) between corporations who are driven to produce for their shareholders.

I’m not sure what the hedge is against it. Buying land makes no sense outside of a safe haven in case some societal collapse. It’s not like you will be liquidate it if money is worthless or nonexistent

 

[hillrunner]

I’m not sure what the hedge is against it. Buying land makes no sense outside of a safe haven in case some societal collapse. It’s not like you will be liquidate it if money is worthless or nonexistent

I wish I knew as well. If we get high universal income like Elon wants, money will be completely worthless. That makes me think I should borrow every dime I can now and turn it into property before money becomes ubiquitous. The problem is you need to be able to hold on during interim period. That could prove difficult if you're overextended and AI takes over your means of income.
As far as a safe haven, I doubt it would matter what you "own" on paper. It would only matter what you can defend. I don't think anyone could defend much land on their own when a few million starving people are wandering the countryside.

 

[jsasker007]

And it doesn’t seem like we have responsible parties looking to scale this thing appropriately. It’s an arms race a)between countries cause no one wasn’t to get behind and b) between corporations who are driven to produce for their shareholders.

I’m not sure what the hedge is against it. Buying land makes no sense outside of a safe haven in case some societal collapse. It’s not like you will be liquidate it if money is worthless or nonexistent

Unfortunately when the USA wins these types of "races" it seems like some crooked S.O.B. sells our leading tech to the competition anyways. China has been reverse engineering our products for decades. We(USA) will put way too much money into creating the best product and then it will be stolen by countries that want to use it against us. jmho

 

[Ben.MN/WI]

Speak of the devil

Stuart Russell, a prominent computer scientist who co-authored one of the most authoritative textbooks on AI, stated in an interview last year that political leaders are confronting the possibility of 80 percent unemployment driven by AI.

Microsoft AI Boss Mustafa Suleyman: Most White-Collar Jobs Will Be Automated Within 18 Months

Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, has predicted that AI will be capable of automating the vast majority of white-collar professional tasks within the next 12 to 18 months.

www.breitbart.com

I wish I knew as well. If we get high universal income like Elon wants, money will be completely worthless. That makes me think I should borrow every dime I can now and turn it into property before money becomes ubiquitous. The problem is you need to be able to hold on during interim period. That could prove difficult if you're overextended and AI takes over your means of income.
As far as a safe haven, I doubt it would matter what you "own" on paper. It would only matter what you can defend. I don't think anyone could defend much land on their own when a few million starving people are wandering the countryside.

I don't think we will see massive amounts of unemployment and $1000 new car prices like some articles reference - at least not for decades at best. But if that does happen to some degree and people have more money available to buy stuff, what things become valuable? Things that can't be created in a robot factory - things like land, recreational activities, health, etc. A robot army may increase ag production, causing a decrease in farmland value, but when people have lots of free time recreational land may be in greater demand.

I'd just like to be able to tell my kids what to study in high school and college and I really have no idea. I'm leaning towards health care, but maybe being a robot repairman would worth looking into-

 

[Howboutthemdawgs]

I don't think we will see massive amounts of unemployment and $1000 new car prices like some articles reference - at least not for decades at best. But if that does happen to some degree and people have more money available to buy stuff, what things become valuable? Things that can't be created in a robot factory - things like land, recreational activities, health, etc. A robot army may increase ag production, causing a decrease in farmland value, but when people have lots of free time recreational land may be in greater demand.

I'd just like to be able to tell my kids what to study in high school and college and I really have no idea. I'm leaning towards health care, but maybe being a robot repairman would worth looking into-

If people have a ton of free time there’s no economy and everything has no monetary value.

 

[Ben.MN/WI]

If people have a ton of free time there’s no economy and everything has no monetary value.

I don't think that's how it will go, but nobody knows. I think it will be similar to a country filled with retired people. Most choose not to work, but people can work if they want to. If you want to supplement your income, you work. If not, you don't work.

Money will still be exchanged like it is now, but some things will cost much more than they do now and some much less. Some things that can be produced using full AI automation will cost very little - similar to how a flat 52" flat screen TV was $10k years ago and now they are $199. Things that require human labor like plumbing repair will cost a lot more than they do now. If everyone wants to leave the rat race and live on a hobby farm, those will be very expensive.

That's how it will work until the terminator factories are finished and the bad guys are better at building robots than we are. Then all bets are off.

 

[Mortenson]

If 80% lose their jobs, I don't think I'd want to be a ceo.

 

[Mortenson]

I agree Healthcare seems logical at this point. Lotta sick and fat people.