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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?