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Are Gates, Musk Being 'Too Aggressive' With AI Concerns? (xconomy.com)
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.
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.
There will be no need for those who control the resources to share them with those who don't. And it's not like there will even be a job as a 'resource guard', because that'll be a robot, too.
AI isn't going to bring a paradise of passive couch potatoes and inspired creators freed from restrictive toil, it's going to make 99.9% of the population not only unnecessary, but an impediment to the 0.1%.
He who owns the first factory producing robots with a human-level general-purpose AI will have the opportunity to rule the world.
Between 1970 and 2000, manufacturing employment was relatively stable, ranging from 16.8 to 19.6 million when it peaked and began to decline\, falling to roughly 12 million jobs by 2010.
Meanwhile U.S. manufacturing output (in trillions of dollars) is higher than it's ever been. It's up 33% to 4 trillion now vs 3 trillion back in only 2009. (or 2006 if you ignore the dip due to the great recession).
Meanwhile, manufacturing robot shipments have skyrocketed from a low of 5,000 per year in 1996 to over 140,000 per year just recently (against a background of 240,000 shipped globally each year).
So despite a growing GDP and population, manufacturing employment has declined by over 7 million jobs.
Automated vehicles are likely to eliminate 3 million driving jobs rapidly at some point in the near future as well (5-15 years).
Any kind of a labor glut (even a small one) results in severe downward pressure on wages.
Will it be a problem forever? Who knows.
It might be because half the population isn't smart enough to do theorhetical physics or higher level mathematics or create artistic masterpieces. And they would need to bring something to a job which couldn't be automated or turned into self service.
But even if things worked out long term and we found new jobs 40 years from now, humans don't remain peaceful on that time scale. High unemployment is a strong predictor of civil unrest.
The point is, we don't need to eliminate human jobs to have a problem. Eliminating a small number (say 10%) of them rapidly would create severe social disruptions.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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.
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
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..
...we will never breed with machines.
I dunno, man...I'm a musician that's played a lot of bars and clubs in college towns and seen how people act when you add booze (often other chemical enhancement too)...the Borg Queen was almost kinda hawt, and you know how 'beer goggles' work for young guys at last-call, right? I think the biggest obstacle would be the willingness of the AI to stand still long enough! :D
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
[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.
Oh, I don't know. Dogs and cats do pretty well around the better class of humans. AIs might think we're cute. We'd be very well advised to cultivate being cute, IMHO. Because if they don't think we're cute, it won't be dusk, it'll be dark side of the moon.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Restrictions on weaponization of AI simply means that the least ethical will get there first.
Also, past predictions that particular breakthroughs are "30 to 50 years away" have often been wildly inaccurate. "Experts" are often the worst predictors, since being in the trenches doesn't always help you see what is on the horizon.
Once AI is advanced enough to participate in its own improvement, that improvement can advance at an exponential rate. We may go from "not even close" to "too late to stop it" faster than we realize.
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.