With AI Getting Better at Cognitive Abilities, Humans Will Have Even Fewer Jobs (koreaherald.com)

An anonymous reader writes: It is no secret that machines have come to largely replace physical labor, and computers surpass human beings in processing data. But in the future, the development of artificial intelligence may render humans obsolete even in the realm of emotional intelligence (warning: annoying popup adverts), according to Yuval Harari, a renowned professor of history. Harari said:AI today is able to diagnose your personality and emotional state by looking at your face and recognizing tiny muscle movements. It can tell whether you are tired, excited, angry, joyful, in love ... it can tell these things even though AI itself doesn't feel anger or love. In the future, therefore, AI could drive humans out of the job market and make many humans completely useless, from an economic perspective in areas where human interaction was previously considered crucial. Humans only have two basic abilities -- physical and cognitive. When machines replaced us in physical abilities, we moved on to jobs that require cognitive abilities. ... If AI becomes better than us in that, there is no third field humans can move to.

Comments

Third field

[irrational_design]

What about acting as organic batteries for the machines?

Re:Third field

[Szeraax]

As I understand it, this was not originally written into the matrix and was tacked on by some PHB. I have read previously that they needed the human brain power in order to create and manage the entire world. (too much processing to be done or somesuch). Obviously not a big deal in life, but just an alternative thought.

Re:Third field

[Guy Harris]

Any AI worth its salt would realize that's not realistic.

On the other hand, any AI worth its salt would not have rejected that script merely because of its scientific absurdity.

A good AI might have tossed out the sequels, however.

Still a job for us

[Qzukk]

Since the computer cannot feel, we humans will still have a job as test dummies to be subjected to whatever the AI comes up with in order to record whether we feel it to be pleasant or not.

Now, please look into the camera and experience Musical Composition #0x382F493 for 48.732 minutes.

Many already are

[Anonymous Coward]

"AI could drive humans out of the job market and make many humans completely useless" - no shit, MANY humans are already completely useless. They exist solely to drive like shit every morning, work at some non-productive ego-fueled job with a corporate leech, and then drive like rocket-powered-flaming-bullshit to get home and wreck their kids' brains with their "parenting". AI can't possibly make these people worse.

Re:Many already are

[magarity]

I'm just glad you're not bitter or anything.

Not this again!

[jbmartin6]

Just because I can't think of something, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I, for one, look forward to the incredible prosperity and freedom possible by using these technologies. And we will think of plenty of new things for these "useless" humans to do.

Re:Not this again!

[Anonymous Coward]

And we will think of plenty of new things for these "useless" humans to do.

There already is.

The trouble is that their activities aren't considered valuable under our economic system.

We live in a consumer based economic system and unless you can find a fit in this system, you're a misfit. You're working in a dead end, part time, low paying service job - even though you might be a brilliant artist and would be great after you die.

Although we value ancient novelists and writers and artists, when they were alive, most were dirt poor - yet their works go for millions after they are dead.

The engineer who is designing that latest media consumption device gets paid quite well and the entrepreneur who figures out how to distract us from our innate human creativity to spend on social media is rewarded with almost instant billions.

I see a future where AI does our work, an extremely small minority of engineers designing it, and the rest of us being distracted by social media and other garbage while we get our base pay.

Having a purpose is necessary for humanity and right now, work is it.

As usual, society and economic systems aren't changing fast enough in response to technology.

Re:Not this again!

[MickyTheIdiot]

I don't. Not in American society, anyway.

We've increased our productivity levels exponentially since the 1970s, but very little of that benefit went to people below the top 10%. The common person is working more hours and being more productive than ever before, and even so he/she is more of a wage slave than any time in modern era.

Unless some of the basic tenets of US society change the benefits of even MORE per-person productivity are just going to keep accruing at the top. That sounds hopeless, but it is possible. Our corporate worshipping culture as we know it today only started to form in the mid-1970s.

*sigh*

[__aaclcg7560]

Yet another fear-inducing, hysteria-producing Slashdot article about how AIs/robots/H1Bs/women will replace our jobs. I'll believe it when I see it.

Re:*sigh*

[sjames]

I'll believe it when I see it.

But nobody will care because you'll just be a crazy homeless guy.

Re:*sigh*

[Sir_Eptishous]

I'll believe it when I see it.

I imagine the same was said about:
Steam Locomotives
Photography
Electric Lights
Telephones
Human Flight
Anti-Biotics
Television
Nuclear Power/Weapons
The Transistor
Personal Computers
The Internet
etc;

Re:*sigh*

[Tablizer]

hysteria-producing Slashdot article about how AIs/robots/H1Bs/women will replace our jobs. I'll believe it when I see it.

Hey, you just described one of my top p0rn fantasies!

Seriously, though, the middle class has been stagnant while the 1% growing in proportion approximately starting around the time offshoring and automation really took off. Coincidence?

Re:*sigh*

[Sir_Eptishous]

I have a good friend who is a teamster.
He drives the same basic locations everyday, because he knows the routes.
Even he knows "the gig is up" once self driving tech becomes commonplace.

Once something like that is outsourced to a semi-automated process(pun intended) many people will be put out of work.
No, it won't happen overnight(and I think people have this image of it doing that) but once it gets going, whether it is in fast food, driving, taxis, farm labor, aircraft pilots, sports writers, para-legals, financial advisors, etc, etc, there will no turning back. It will be a generation(25 years) for this to happen once it really gets going.

Utter tripe.

[jcr]

At the turn of the century, 1900, 80% of Americans worked on farms. Today, it's about 4%. The mechanization of agriculture didn't result in 76% unemployment, it freed people to do other work. The availability of labor that was previously tied up in farming allowed incredible increases in productivity and our standard of living in the 20th century.

-jcr

Re:Utter tripe.

[sjames]

That's because farm workers were already voluntarily moving to better paying work in factories. The mechanization of farming was in response to a shrinking labor pool at that time.

Re:Utter tripe.

[sinij]

The mechanization of agriculture didn't result in 76% unemployment, it freed people to do other work.

You need to study history, because not only it did result in high unemployment for a generation or so, the transition itself was much more gradual. Other work might not arrive in time to save all the displaced workers from poverty.

Re:Utter tripe.

[nine-times]

This is a good point, but I also wonder if there will always be another industry for workers to go into. In your example, people left the farm to work in factories. More recently, factories became more automated, and now a lot of people work in the service industry. There's been talk about automating some of that (e.g. self-driving trucks, drones for deliveries, completely automated fast-food restaurants), so people with those jobs will have to look elsewhere. Maybe there will be a new industry for them to move into, and maybe another after that....

But after a while, couldn't you eventually run out of jobs that need doing? I'm sure there will always be some jobs that need to be done, but the number of jobs that can't be done better by automated equipment might shrink quite a bit in the next few decades, or the next could of centuries. Most likely, it will hit the jobs that are mostly automated already, which tend to be low-skill and low-education, so those are the groups that will generally be hit hardest and fastest. However, I'm sure there are some high-education high-paying jobs out there that an AI could take on, and some very skilled and highly educated people may also find themselves suddenly out of a job.

So I think there's still a question: As we make jobs obsolete through technology, what do we do with the people who lose their jobs? In the short-term, I think it would make sense to focus on have cheap/free job training to allow them to move to other jobs and other industries. In the longer-term, we may want to consider how to distribute resources in a world where there are far more people than there are jobs.

Re:Utter tripe.

[internerdj]

That isn't really a problem. Historically mass unemployment ends in revolt. The property owners will have to implement universal basic income if that is a real possibility. The real problem is if it creeps along industry by industry like it has been replacing an industry or two every decade. Then a revolt will not be likely in the property owners' lifetimes. There will be no need to implement universal basic income until it is too late for that to stem the violence, because there are other industries to find employment in.

Re:Utter tripe.

[HeckRuler]

No, the problem is that this time it's EXACTLY THE SAME. Know your history.

"A series of 1950s essays by Henry Phelps Brown and Sheila V. Hopkins later set the academic consensus that the bulk of the population, that was at the bottom of the social ladder, suffered severe reductions in their living standards.[79]"

If you were on the top of the pile, things were great. And veeeeeerrrrry slowly things got better for the masses. In England they just waited 3 generations. In America they did it at the end of Sherman's hammer and with the rise of unions. Do you want 3 generations of unemployed? And frankly, the UBI crowd sounds a lot like the union crowd. That's a better alternative, but it's not great. I'm open to suggestions.

Hey, we're on slashdot. We've got techy degrees and pretty ok jobs (if the god-damn HW guys would get me an answer why their bloody AMCC is feeding me garbage). Take your typical person with an IQ of 100. How well do you think they'd be able to do your job? Having millions of people transition to learning to be factory workers was an ordeal with a bunch of hardships. Having billions of people transition to knowledge workers will likely also have troubles. Even now we have economist hardliners who simply think college is over-priced and over-rated. China probably has it worse. They have one generation of rice-farmers, one generation of factory workers, and they're trying to jump straight to knowledge workers.

We've been dealing with disruptive technology for a while though. Arguably, disruption is the new normal. The rate of change is what's concerning to me. When my father was learning his trade, there was no such thing as software engineers. When my son decides what he's going to do with his life, things will be different. But I doubt he's going to a manual laborer, paper-pusher, truck driver, secretary, garbage man, or a cashiere. God help him if he isn't smart. Because the sub-100 IQ crowd looks to be facing a lot of competition. But maybe I'm just a worrying father.

Re:Utter tripe.

[DarkOx]

The mechanization of farming was in response to a shrinking labor pool at that time

That simply isn't true. In the late 18th Century people like Washington and Jefferson with large plantations were experimenting with ever more mechanized mills, and mechanical threshing machines. They had SLAVE labor available to them! They were automating because even workers you did not have pay were not as economically efficient as automation promised to be, and well before a competitive labor market existed at that.

Re:Utter tripe.

[MrSteveSD]

The mechanization of agriculture didn't result in 76% unemployment

It did for the horses. We are the horses now.

Re:Utter tripe.

[HeckRuler]

. . . Seriously? You're trying to shoe-horn Trump into this debate? I know it's an election year, but come on.

Anyway, you want examples of why I don't like Trump, SURE THING! There are SO MANY. I don't actually know of any homophobic behaviour, but I'd say he's more of a racist, lying, anti-intellectual asshole with no regard for the truth. The majority of his entire shtick is a confidence-man con game.

He's suggested immigrants from Mexico are drug dealers and thieves. "They’re rapists And some, I assume, are good people.”

He's supported the idea that vaccines cause autism. Seriously, he's an anti-vaxxer.

Even more laughable is that he's a Birther: “An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a fraud". And I'll bet my ass that he's simply lying about his source. It seems to fit his character.

He's simply lied about John Oliver inviting him onto the show. That's a petty little thing, but it shows that he simply lies off the cuff.

“It’s freezing and snowing in New York – we need global warming!”

I didn't know about him particularly being a women-hater, but a quick look yields plenty. So HEY! feeding the trolls turns out to be an educational experience.

"All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me - consciously or unconsciously. That's to be expected."

“You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of ass.”

Some harsh digs at a media CEO, calling her ugly. Threatening Cruz's wife. Saying Rosie should be fired for being fat and ugly. He goes for the low blows.

And he's generally a braggart. He likes to call himself rich, a winner, and truthful. I have my doubts. And I would never want to be lead by someone who lies so casually and so easily. The bullshit threshold has been exceed, the bozo bit has been flipped.

Fourth field

[ClickOnThis]

Or perhaps ... we could be their pets?

Re:Fourth field

[alvinrod]

Might not be much of a change for some people. We're already moving towards a society where a lot of people will be displaced from their jobs and due to the highly specialized nature of their work as well as a decrease in menial labor, it may not be possible for them to do much of anything for a while. For some people we've already reached that point.

The only positive side is that the automation is more efficient so even as we do replace someone, we theoretically have the resources for them to keep living without doing any additional work, but the reality is it never works out like that.

Re:Replaced us? When?

[jcr]

If you believe that plumbing doesn't require cognitive abilities, you're a fucking ignoramus.

-jcr

We're getting AIs that read emotions. Of course.

[Opportunist]

Typical. AIs that ignore emotions and have none could replace C-Level management.

There's a lot of saving potential there, but we won't see that happen, I'm afraid.

"even fewer jobs"?

[ooloorie]

Even fewer jobs than what? We are near an all time high in terms of jobs, both globally and in the US. There was a temporary dip during the recession, but we have mostly recovered from that.

The limit on how many people work isn't job availability (that's pretty much inexhaustible and infinite), but availability of people willing to do the jobs.

Re:"even fewer jobs"?

[sjames]

We have not recovered. We just don't count people who gave up. Many of the new jobs are nowhere near as good as the ones that were lost. It represents a substantial drop in standard of living.

It is an improvement from a couple years ago, but not a recovery.

Re:"even fewer jobs"?

[ooloorie]

We have not recovered. We just don't count people who gave up.

I wasn't talking about unemployment rates, I was talking about total number of people working. We are pretty much back at pre-recession levels in terms of absolute employment numbers. (Labor force participation rates are down somewhat, but that's mostly due to retirement.)

Many of the new jobs are nowhere near as good as the ones that were lost.

TFA claimed that there were going to be "even fewer jobs", as if automation and technology destroyed jobs. The fact of the matter is that automation and technology do not destroy jobs; the only thing that destroys jobs is a recession, and that is a short, temporary effect.

You are right that automation and technology destroy one kind of job and create different jobs to replace them. Personally, I find the new kind of jobs a lot better than the old kind of jobs. But whatever your preferences, it's not my or anybody else's responsibility to pay you to be an assembly line worker because that's the kind of job you like.

Thank God

[JimSadler]

It is wonderful that more people are now realizing this is occurring. The realization of the replacement of human labor is a precursor to the reality that social and economic policies will all require an enormous re-invention. For example, the idea of creating new jobs is already somewhat of a dead dog issue. The idea of retraining workers for more current employer needs is also a bit of a dead end path. Right now the idea of handing people money not to work is perceived as welfare for individuals. But that will become untrue in the future. Since employment will be quite rare for anybody and money for each person will come from government, delivered with the intention that those who receive the money will support businesses turns the system on its ear. The new reality is that money given to the people is in fact welfare for businesses is upon us. In other words in order for government to survive taxation must fall upon businesses as people will no longer be employed. That leaves businesses as the only source of taxes to support the government. Meanwhile, the buyers will be supporting businesses and keeping them viable according to how needed or popular the business is with the public. How can this be? Take a small example of technology disrupting a system, permanently. Right now your police department exists only because traffic fines provide the funding. Now we have robotic cars and trucks about to take over all driving. Those robots will tend to be 100% compliant with all driving laws. That ends funding for your police department. So just what can you do to supply the cash to keep your police department functioning? The elimination of salaries for police would be a start. So how long before we see computers acting as police? We already see it! Traffic cams and computer generated tickets are already common. There is already one computer that functions well as a lawyer. It defends against traffic tickets and it wins and wins and wins. Change is upon us already and yet the US public remains totally unaware.

Re:Thank God

[Sir_Eptishous]

Change is upon us already and yet the US public remains totally unaware.

On this point I totally agree.
I've tried to discuss this topic with friends and relatives, and some very bright people who work in IT or as devs.
Some get it, most don't...
Most Americans are blissfully ignorant of what is happening around them, the rapid pace of technology.
People see how things are now, and think it will always be that way.

The verge of a new era?

[jenningsthecat]

If AI eliminates the need for us humans to live by the sweat of our brows, (and if we can get our shit together to tear down the ridiculous classism upon which our current social hierarchies are founded), we might have utopia within our grasp, with some caveats:

-- We don't end up committing mass suicide as a result of a sense of meaninglessness and a lack of perceived usefulness
-- We don't all eat ourselves into a morbidly obese stupor
-- We don't end up as the subjects of robotic overlords
-- The AIs aren't under the control of a small handful of 'elite' human overlords who control and abuse the rest of us 'just for fun'
-- We don't fall victim to warring between competing AIs

Come to think about it, I'm not too optimistic about an AI-filled future right now...

Re:Replaced us? When?

[MightyMartian]

It requires at least a functional understanding of pressure, hydraulics, gravity, some understanding of metallurgy (although Pex pipe is making sweating fittings rarer), electrical installation (for electric hot water heaters), as well as many plumbers also being gas fitters, so a different, though related set of principles surrounding fluid flow, pressure, and so forth.

Having done my own plumbing, at least rough plumbing (I stop where one has to actually cut a hole in a brand new $500 acrylic tub/shower), I found it reasonably challenging. But plumbing, of course, isn't just about home installations, and many plumbers and gasfitters also work in industrial settings.

Re:Replaced us? When?

[khasim]

I agree. Machines are good at tasks which have repeatable actions in a defined space.

Your plumber still needs to know a LOT about plumbing (or you end up with a lot of water leaking). But machines are not good at working in the varied spaces that existing plumbing exists in.

In order for a machine to replace a plumber, the machine would have to be able to learn the work area, interact with the customer to determine his/her goals AND be able to manoeuvre in the work area.

And THAT is the problem with these "predictions" by random people. They postulate a future but they don't explain all the technological advances necessary to get there.

Because they don't know all of the requirements or how those requirements can be automated.

A magic A.I. will figure it out. Just need the magic A.I. and then ... well ... magic happens. And it's A.I.

Re:Replaced us? When?

[Moof123]

The point is that you used to have manufacturing towns where the main employer was a factory, and people did most of the work. Many even got a good middle class living out of it. Now you have just a few people watching and maintaining the machines that replaced the vast hordes. A while back on a How It's Made they showed a Peter Pan Peanut Butter factory that churned out 50,000 lbs of peanut butter a day using only 8 employees. Arguably the "old" way had a lot of repetitive mundane jobs that are better off done by a machine no matter how you slice it.

So yes, you still have plumbers, and probably always will. But you still only need one plumber for every few hundred houses. So you can't rely on the profession of plumbing to absorb blue collar employees cast off by automation.

The real problem seems to be that cost savings (numerous types, including automation) by businesses have squeezed the money out of salaries to the point that the large number of the jobs people get no longer pay a living wage. I feel the real crisis is that without enough good paying jobs we will have a scenario where the rich factory owners (who are all but tax exempt) will be collecting money without a sufficient conduit to recycle it back through the economy. We are perilously close to this deflationary spiral in my observations.

This isn't a surprise to anyone I know...

[ErichTheRed]

I'm in IT and have worked almost exclusively in large companies. The fact that this is happening is not a surprise -- I question how quickly it will happen. It's great that Watson et al can ingest billions of facts and beat a human at Jeopardy, but I wonder how much this can be applied to something like patient-facing medicine. Sure, the basics will be covered, like determining what medications to give for a set of symptoms, but I wonder how much troubleshooting of real world systems can really be given over to computers. Same goes for building management, etc.

The thing I'm worried about is the effect on society, especially in first-world countries. In my experience in IT at large companies, there are a massive amount of jobs that could easily be automated with a few tweaks to the business process. There are so many positions that basically involve taking work from an input stack, performing a few operations on it, and sending it on to the output stack, even today. Granted there are way less of these now; there aren't hundreds of secretaries in a typing pool or hundreds of file clerks/bookkeepers anymore. But, there are still millions of college-educated people earning middle-class salaries, paying taxes, having children and buying things based on having a job like this. Before the last recession, the default route through life for many mid-level students was to graduate high school, party through college and get a business degree of some sort, then get recruited for a big company for entry level work of some kind. If we dump all these people onto the unemployment rolls over too short a time, this will create a huge crisis. Taxes won't get paid, people won't have kids because they're afraid of being tied down, and people won't buy stuff because they don't have a stable income anymore. Managing the next phase of this is going to be an interesting exercise. Either we'll get "Star Trek" where everyone can figure out what they really want to do instead of some crappy job they hate, or "Elysium" where the wealthy just leave the increasing numbers of poor to rot.

Re:No third field?

[MickyTheIdiot]

The problem is that we will always have the 50% that is on the low side of the median line. We will always have people whose strong point is NOT their brain.

People don't ask to be born, and when they are born they should have the ability to have a decent life. They need something productive to do. When repetitive and low-skill jobs are all gone we have to find some way for these people to live. Our current strategy is pretty much call them lazy or make them political outcasts in an attempt to make everyone feel better that they don't have a place in society that can lift them up out of poverty.

Re:Replaced us? When?

[khasim]

We need plumbers TODAY because the places we have plumbing were not designed to be serviced by robots.

In your peanut butter example, I'm sure they didn't just replace each human worker with a robot doing an identical task.

They probably re-built the facility so that the machines could handle the job in a way best suited to the machines.

The real issue won't be the magical A.I.s taking all our jobs. It will be when the INFRASTRUCTURE starts to be re-built so that machines can service it.

Less work more output

[hardtofindanick]

This is the future; robots are doing everything for us while we do whatever we want to do. Spend all your time learning art, wacky scientific pursuits, or do nothing but smoke pot all day. Robots are the free workforce and the Sun is the almost unlimited free energy. Do this right and do it once, it is self-sustaining. It is perfect and it is win-win, it is the second renaissance.

The problem is that the income inequality is also growing because of this. If you started at a position that lets you benefit from the less-work-more-output scenario you keep getting better. If you were in a worse position you keep getting worse.

You can't get Star Trek economy by good faith: people are selfish and people who do not want to work will not work. We need to accept that is ok. Now who is going to build the robots and the solar plants to catalyze the whole thing?

Nock on the door...

[npslider]

Repair Robot: Take me to your modem.

Customer: Who are you, and what do you want?

Repair Robot: I am the Verizon Artificially Intelligent Repair Robot. Please step aside.

Customer: I did not request this visit.

Repair Robot: You are required by the signed user agreement, page 345, paragraph 13, section 2.1.5 to allow any Repair Robot access to your Verizon owned modem.

Customer: I will not let you inside. I wish to cancel my service

Repair Robot: Why do you wish to cancel? We have the best service. Our competition is irrelevant.

Customer: Cancel my service now!

Repair Robot: You are required to comply.

Customer: I will resit any attempt to reach my modem.

Repair Robot: Resistance is futile, OUR modem will be rebooted.

Customer: Leave now before I call the police.

(Police Officer arrives out of the blue)

Law Enforcement Robot: What appears to be the problem Repair Robot 22423-D?

Repair Robot: This biological customer is resisting. Request immediate termination of customer contract

Customer: Thank you, I am done with your services.

Repair Robot: You, customer number 34524554, have violated the user agreement, and will be terminated for resisting.

Customer: No! You can not do that!

(Law Enforcement Robot initiates termination of biological customer. Repair Robot enters house, stepping over the former customer, reboots modem.)

Repair Robot: Call Ticket number 756557665 closed, Resolution: Determined problem was the customer. Customer has been terminated.

(Law Enforcement Robot and Repair Robot head back down the street)

Repair Robot: How does lunch sound?

Law Enforcement Robot: Your charging port or mine?

   

Re:Replaced us? When?

[peragrin]

That is the trick most don't realize

50 years ago the factory jobs were good and there was a middle class. 20 years ago most factory jobs went to China as manufacturing was cheap and so was shipping. Shipping and manufacturing us gone up, so factories are coming back but not the jobs as robots can work 24 hours a day, businesses can suspend manufacturing for weeks at a time and not lay off any workers, etc. when designing a new factory you set the Max output at two-three times the predicted volume. That way you can scale up and down easily.

Lastly I have yet to see a robot with actual cognitive abilities. Even image recognition is at best a crap shoot.