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.

Comments

When robots can do everything...

[Baron_Yam]

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.

Re:When robots can do everything...

[religionofpeas]

it's going to make 99.9% of the population not only unnecessary, but an impediment to the 0.1%.

They may be able to get jobs as batteries.

The FUTURE!

[JBMcB]

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.

Re:The FUTURE!

[fluffernutter]

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.

yes and no.

[JustNiz]

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..

Re:50 or so years? Hah!

[luis_a_espinal]

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.