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Are Gates, Musk Being 'Too Aggressive' With AI Concerns? (xconomy.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the welcome,-robot-overlords dept.

gthuang88 reports on a talk titled "Will Robots Eat Your Job?" Bill Gates and Elon Musk are sounding the alarm "too aggressively" over artificial intelligence's potential negative consequences for society, says MIT professor Erik Brynjolfsson. The co-author of The Second Machine Age argues it will take at least 30 to 50 years for robots and software to eliminate the need for human laborers. In the meantime, he says, we should be investing in education so that people are prepared for the jobs of the future, and are focused on where they still have an advantage over machines -- creativity, empathy, leadership, and teamwork.
The professor acknowledges "there are some legitimate concerns" about robots taking jobs away from humans, but "I don't think it's a problem we have to face today... It can be counterproductive to overestimate what machines can do right now." Eventually humankind will reach a world where robots do practically everything, the professor believes, but with a universal basic income this could simply leave us humans with more leisure time.

10 of 311 comments (clear)

  1. Re:"people are prepared for the jobs of the future by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    what jobs? Trump might "bring the jobs back", but robots will fill them.

    Then what's the point of immigration? Why open borders to allow an influx of economic immigrants and refugees from war-torn countries if, as it generally seems to be the consensus of the intelligentsia, robots will replace any possible jobs available to them in just 50 or so years from now?

  2. The FUTURE! by JBMcB · · Score: 4, Insightful

    First, steam engines were going to kill off everyone's job. Then it was power tools. Then cars. Then computers. Cassette tapes were going to kill the music market. VHS was going to kill movies and TV.

    People always think the next advance is going to make humans obsolete and there will be no jobs left. There won't be old jobs, there will be new kinds of jobs. If you can figure out what those jobs will be you'll be a very rich person.

    --
    My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
    1. Re:The FUTURE! by toastjam · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There will be new jobs, but there won't be nearly enough of them to replace the ones that are going away. The thing is we're not just replacing people's bodies with better tools and technology, allowing them to be productive in different ways -- we're replacing their minds. The niche where humans will continue excel vs an expert system that could take only a few days to train is going to keep getting smaller and smaller.

    2. Re:The FUTURE! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Well, as technology displaces old jobs, admittedly new jobs do get created. Let's look at the creative industries: music, art, film, literature, publishing, journalism. The Internet has decimated those industries, which used to rely on sales of media that weren't easily copied like print, film, and vinyl/CDs. And it's not like the quality has improved; consumers are merely accustomed to inferior quality (particularly for pop music and journalism), because the market won't support the kind of payrolls that went into creating the goods of the pre-Internet era.

      Sure, there are some new creative jobs, such as graphic designers and video game creators. Those employment numbers are quite small in comparison.

    3. Re:The FUTURE! by fluffernutter · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Were steam engines created with the sole purpose of replacing human labor? Nope.
      What about power tools, cars and computers? Nope, nope, nope.
      Automation? YEP. And there's a bonus. Companies can get any kind of remaining labor from overseas now easier than they ever could before.
      I have seen so many people say new jobs will be created, but no one gives any examples. If you think the average McDonalds restaurant is going to let go of 20 people and then require 20 automation engineers per site you're dreaming. The whole point of automation is to prevent companies from requiring labor. Any business anyone wants to create that requires labor will not be competitive enough to make it.

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    4. Re:The FUTURE! by Harlequin80 · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I'd disagree with pretty much everything on your list. Pretty much every inventions purpose was to make something easier to do. As something becomes easier to do it reduces its labour demand.

      Once things are created they are refined to fit new purposes. But the initial invention is meant to reduce human labour.

      Power tools? Absolutely. A power saw does the work of 10 men with hand saws. Steam Engines? Again absolutely. It replaces horses, which reduced the demand for a whole swath of jobs. Mining and someone to shovel coal was no where near as labour intensive as horse care, control, breeding, and waste removal. Same comment for cars.

      Automating is great for repetitive tasks. Where location is static. ie things like manufacturing. What it's not good at is anything highly mobile, complex or something that requires creative reasoning.

      Sure the number of manufacturing jobs have decreased in the US. But the US has added an average of about 100k jobs a month, every month back to the 50s. This is despite the number of manufacturing jobs declining. http://www.tradingeconomics.co...

  3. The professor is an idiot by Nutria · · Score: 3, Insightful

    with a universal basic income

    Has he done the math as to how much that would cost?

    this could simply leave us humans with more leisure time.

    He has forgotten what bored young people do.

    --
    "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
  4. yes and no. by JustNiz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I dont think the problem is so much AI itself, but what humans like Gates, Musk and Zuckerberg will be programming them to have as their objectives..

  5. Why, you... by fyngyrz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Their parents will stick to the old ways, just like C coders.

    [stands up, leans on cane, tries to straighten back, and wheezes out]:

    Yeah, and just like those parents, you'll find out us C coders were right all along, you young whippersnapper.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  6. Re:50 or so years? Hah! by luis_a_espinal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The immigrants and refugees we are bringing in to the US are mostly illiterate, and I'm not talking about English (yes, about 2/3rds)

    As a refugee that came here 28 years ago, I say bullshit to this claim. Citations and numbers or get the fuck out with that bullshit.