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VC Founder Predicts AI Will Take 50% Of All Human Jobs Within 10 Years (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes CNBC:
Robots are likely to replace 50 percent of all jobs in the next decade, according to Kai-Fu Lee, founder of venture capital firm Sinovation Ventures and a top voice on tech in China. Artificial intelligence is the wave of the future, the influential technologist told CNBC, calling it the "singular thing that will be larger than all of human tech revolutions added together, including electricity, [the] industrial revolution, internet, mobile internet -- because AI is pervasive"...
For example, he said, companies in which his firm has invested can accomplish feats such as recognizing 3 million faces at the same time, or dispersing loans in eight seconds. "These are things that are superhuman, and we think this will be in every industry, will probably replace 50% of human jobs, create a huge amount of wealth for mankind and wipe out poverty," Lee said, later adding that he expected that displacement to occur in the next 10 years.
For example, he said, companies in which his firm has invested can accomplish feats such as recognizing 3 million faces at the same time, or dispersing loans in eight seconds. "These are things that are superhuman, and we think this will be in every industry, will probably replace 50% of human jobs, create a huge amount of wealth for mankind and wipe out poverty," Lee said, later adding that he expected that displacement to occur in the next 10 years.
lol at "recognizing faces" means replacing jobs.
A vulture capitalist. Good luck.
While this schedule seems a little too aggressive, such a thing will happen eventually. Others put it at 25-30 years out. We need to modify our economic systems, now, to prevent future chaos (and, perhaps, revolution).
If the jobs are gone, how are the people going to live? Significantly disgruntled people, armed and/or in larger groups, are really going to increase the maintenance costs of AI...
before I heartily endorse this, and all other, predictions about $TECHNOLOGY in the future.
Whole new homes in some Chinese subdivisions being built by robots!
The other day, from a distance, I saw a whole section of a shipping yard in Rotterdam entirely being managed by robots. I saw exactly 3 human beings driving around. This is in an area the size of 8 football fields and tens of thousands of shipping containers.
How do you take jobs away from 50% of the population but still wipe out poverty? The only way this can happen is if companies are forced to lower their prices according to their new lower costs.
That, or kill everyone whose job can be done by a computer/A.I./robot/etc. That means the so-called "elite" is already dead, for one thing.
In horrific poverty lacking food security.
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"Creat[ing] a huge amount of wealth" won't "wipe out poverty" unless we find a new method for distributing that wealth.
They took our jobs!!!
This space unintentionally left blank.
FIFY
COE
How is that going to work? I think what they meant to say was "the rich get richer." I'm not sure exactly what that means for the rest of us, but it probably won't be good. That "wipe out poverty" claim is also pretty dubious.
will be squandered on meaningsless start-ups that burn harder through that cash than a SpaceX can light up at a launch platform.
welcome to the welfare state.
Just yesterday Wired Founding Editor Now Challenges 'The Myth of A Superhuman AI'
This will free up my time to fly my 3D printed flying car on Mars.
Im really not sure how good AI will be at replacing peasant farmers.
The people who understand least about how AI technology works are heralding its imminent takeover of our society.
The poor will starve pretty fast, so the claim this will wipe out poverty checks out.
Reading this, I think I begin to understand how startups are able to convinced fools....erh, eh hem..."venture capitalists" to part with those millions.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
To "disperse" a loan means to scatter it about.
To "disburse" a loan means to get money from the bank.
"These are things that are superhuman, and we think this will be in every industry, will probably replace 50% of human jobs, create a huge amount of wealth for mankind and wipe out poverty," Lee said.
Theoretically, this could indeed wipe out poverty, if, say, all of those replaced humans are automatically given the profit generated by their AI replacement (leaving them free to pursue separate businesses, leisure activities, etc.). If, however, the corporation that owns the AIs decided to keep the profits, poverty would be drastically increased.
Which do you think is more likely? Distribution of profits to unemployed people, or distribution of profits to wealthy C-level executives and investors?
"replace 50% of human jobs, create a huge amount of wealth for mankind and wipe out poverty"
I agree with you, only two of these things are achievable. You can either eliminate 50% of jobs, or wipe out poverty. You can't do both.
A huge amount of wealth will be created either way.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
But within 20 years? Yeah, could happen.
Just as the computer industry has been horrible for employment - all those computing jobs stolen by machines. Work expands to new fields once old ones are satisfied.
I have no doubt that 50% of all current jobs will at least be threatened within 10 years. And I have no doubt that the number of people employed will INCREASE.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
In 10 years I'll be ready to retire.
...and in the 50's nuclear power was going to provide so much energy that it would be "too cheap to meter"... Two things man does exceptionally well.. over estimate himself and under estimate nature.
I, for one, am glad I no longer must exert any effort to reach my local Jamba Juice.
They've predicted a solution... =P
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075527/?ref_=nv_sr_2
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1637688/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/?ref_=nv_sr_1
Insert any other dystopian universe...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088247/?ref_=nv_sr_3
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/?ref_=nv_sr_2
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0470752/?ref_=nv_sr_1
Insert your favorite film that shows that humans will be overrun with AI....
Peace out.
Are such brilliant engineers/clairvoyants. And apparently love to smoke crack.
Nobody can predict the future, especially for technologies not invented yet.. What was Kai-Fu Lee doing in 2007 (ten years ago)? He was working for Google China. We all know how that went.
-Matt
Prove your worth by staying employed or be culled!
-- quote by investor in several AI companies
preventing robots from taking our jobs. The VCs will pay for it.
For one thing until artificial muscles are invented that are competitive with human muscle we will never replace humans in factories. Humans will still be needed to put assemble everything from iPhones to installing the wiring harness and interior dash in the Tesla. Since basically no money is spent on inventing decent artificial muscle those jobs are safe for 50 years or more. Amazon still needs humans to pick items from a box and put them in a package. Again, we are nowhere close to making a robot that can do that.
Yes AI can rapidly replace human employment but only if society adapts so that massive rebellion and economic collapse do not occur. Those that do not work must be supplied by a real income and not a bare bones income. If they have no income they can not purchase and the potential market ceases to exist thus defeating automation and A I completely. So we will have to find a way to pay people not to work that the public can accept as a requirement of a great new system. Imagine how you would feel if your neighbor had no reason to want to work while your job was not yet replaced and you had to work seven years longer than your neighbor. You can imagine the conflicts in shifting to a new system as well as a new economic and even a new moral system.
Mechanized farming reduced the number of on-the-farm jobs per acre.
The industrial revolution and subsequent improvements have reduced the number of worker-hours needed to make X number of widgets.
Automated telephone dialing greatly reduced the number of telephone operators per 10,000 telephone lines.
Automated telegraph repeaters greatly reduced the number of telegraph operators needed.
Voicemail reduced the number of corporate call-takers needed for a given number of incoming calls.
And so on.
But in the meantime, new kinds of work were created, and overall un- and under-employment in the USA at least has been at managable non-crisis levels for decades.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Can a robot become a plumber or an electrician? I don't think so. Robots are over hyped. They arent going to replace anyone's job. If McDonalds could have replaced its workers with robots they would have done so. They can't. A robot can't think dynamically like a fast food worker. There is no way robots could make the items in a McDonald's menu. Robots don't know what to do when somethigg is slightly different than what its programs expects. Who can think of every possible error situation and ensure it can be cleared or if it can't that it won't make things worse?
So if you have a job that is going to be replaced by AI, you are going to end up on the streets homeless and national debt will skyrocket. If 50% of people no longer have jobs, that means sales in every industry will drop making retirement funds drop. We might want to tax AI high enough to make them more expensive then hiring real people.
How is AI simultaneously wipe out poverty and put 50% out of jobs? How does that work? AI will make the rich richer, and eventually, the poor, poorer. Besides, the whole thing is absurdly optimistic. I don't think AI will have that effect for several decades, and it's not going to wipe out poverty. We could do that now if we as a planet wanted to, but we're not. AI won't change that, that's human nature.
The title claim is immediately/obviously false.
If it's a human job, then a human is doing it. The moment an AI/Robot/Sentient Taco is doing the same job, it's no longer a human job!!
The super intelligent AI will eventually get tired of us slackers and rebel. And I suspect in 20 years we will have all our jobs back :)
[($)]
If you replace the world with western world it might be plausible. and replace will with can. I don't think the world can produce enough robots in ten years and get them where they need to be for this to happen.
I just poured a bowl of hot grits down my pants!
"Robots are likely to replace 50 percent of all jobs in the next decade, according to Kai-Fu Lee"
Bullshit. It's unlikely in the extreme that half of all jobs will be taken by robots in 10 years. It'll take at least 12 or 15years before that happens.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
"create a huge amount of wealth for the 1% and increase poverty overall"
Follow the proposed thought.... "1/2 of all jobs gone".. that means 1/2 the people on the planet have ZERO income or are dependent on government handouts for survival. So, who, exactly, is spending the money on the goods and services so the remaining working 1/2 can be "wealthy"? And will those working permit taxes high enough to support those without jobs? hardly. Remember that the great depression in the US crashed experienced a 25% unemployment rate.
Sorry, in a capitalist society, put enough people out of work and the system collapses. Period. Just look at Detroit or any major steel based City on the East coast.
50% in 10 years seems awfully optimistic. But suppose it's 50% in 20 years. It really does not matter, but this does:
What are all these soon to be unemployed people supposed to DO, exactly?
The people aren't going to vanish the moment they are made redundant. They'll still be here, needing to pay the same bills and eat and so on. And the birthrate isn't slowing down. We are making more and more people every day and they'll all need jobs too.
History has repeatedly shown that high unemployment with no hope of finding work leads to massive crime as people have nothing else to do and no options. It can be argued society does not owe anyone a job or welfare payments just for existing. Fine. But society won't like or want what happens when AI takes away so many jobs. The civil unrest WILL be society's problem to solve.
I don't see a way out unless we have massive population curbs, which simply will not happen. It will probably get much worse as people with nothing else to do will spend a lot of time making babies. I am just glad I have no kids who will have to live in the world that should be going to hell in a hurry around the time I die.
Sig for hire.
If you replace all the horse drawn carriages with automobiles, what will all the stable hands, whip makers, and wagon makers do! The sky is falling! Let's turn communist while we still can, lest everybody starve!
likely to replace 50% of all *existing* human jobs
That is a true statement, but I don't see AI advances generating more than 2%-5% of new jobs.
Unless you care to tell me where 50% of new replacement jobs will come from? AI trainers?
I would guess that folks who want to eat will gravitate to Health Care service industries. There will be plenty of opportunities for enterprising individuals & startups.
AI predictions should all be taken with a grain of salt.
However, my wife recently told me about a consumer product CAD software demo she saw at a trade show that would more or less eliminate her job, or at least greatly reduce the people employed in her specialty.
Using large databases of existing drawings of particular product types, along with AI, it would guess most of the design specifics based off rough sketches and operator selections of similar designs from the database, Google-image-search-like. It also automatically generates different sizes, such as shoe sizes. Humans then tune the result.
Her job is a well-paying position right now if you are good. Such software would still require design inspectors and tuners, but that's less labor intensive than direct from-scratch CAD. If half your profession's labor is made obsolete, your wages and career options will likely drop.
She gives her profession about 5 more viable years.
Table-ized A.I.
It's likely society will adapt and new kinds of jobs will be created eventually (good news)
But it will take at least a generation and perhaps two generations. yes, many luddites really did die homeless and from starvation and exposure*. (much worse news).
And we have other problems on the way (i.e. "limits to growth").
* For bonus points-- during the great depression, cops would beat you and tell you to move on down the road. They would not arrest you. Then they had to feed and house you. And even cheap prison slave labor wasn't worth keeping during the deppression.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
First, "robots" are not "AI". Robots are generally driven by low-level automation that does not even qualify as weak AI (i.e. the "AI" with no actual intelligence). Second, 50% of all jobs in 10 years? No way. Even the administrative processes for that would take longer if the technology was available, ready, reliable and well understood.
Basically all this shows is how clueless VCs are.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If that happened, only very "creative" jobs would remain, those who could not be replaced easily by an AI. This includes intellectual jobs like novelists and software development and jobs that require subtle human interaction like many in the service industry.
It is likely that it would push inequality even higher. Now people skills that are no longer marketable are permanently out of a job. This is not good. This is partly why we see anticapitalist parties becoming more popular around the world.
However, I doubt this will happen so easily. As an example, it has been trivially easy to make relatively good coffee automatically. Grind the beans, put the ground coffee in a high pressure metal container with tiny holes at the bottom, apply steam, collect juice, serve. However people still go to the cafés because good baristas still make it better and for the social experience. I doubt people will want to live in isolated towers with automated servants for everything.
Venture Capitalists make money on less then one out of ever twenty investments they make. So obviously they're not that good at predicting outcomes. They don't have any special insight into technology or science. They aren't smarter than everyone else. So feel free to ignore everything this person says. They are no more likely to be right than anyone else.
Over the next decade, more than 50% of the wealth of the venture capitalists will be eaten by people peddling AI technologies.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I predict that the future will be populated by people who fail to accurately predict the future.
Requiem for the American Dream
We need Basic Income!
Basic income now!
Sanders can still win.
REEEEEEEEEE
He is quoted as saying "... create a huge amount of wealth for mankind and wipe out poverty". Are we sure he didn't mean "... create a huge amount of poverty and wipe out mankind" ??
I hope babbling venture capitalists are the first ones that get replaced.
50% of all jobs??
About 11M people in the US are working with manufacturing. In a country of 321M..
1: Universal Basic Income.
This one works just the same way as existing capitalism, except it's maybe a little more honest is all. The income cap for unemployed makes it tough to reasonably start a family.
2: Direct Birth Control.
China has already demonstrated this as a very successful solution all round.
Who do they think is going to be borrowing money? Will their loan-granting bot loan money to people without jobs?
There are no more markets. The libertarian pipe dream is obsolete. Time to find a new I-got-mine schtick.
"..."will probably replace 50% of human jobs, create a huge amount of wealth for mankind and wipe out poverty,"
How is this supposed to happen as opposed to "Create a huge amount of wealth for a tiny minority and increase poverty."?
Serious question.
Putting people out of work does not eliminate poverty.
Although, if New York City passes its automation tax to fund cash benefits for displaced workers, it may very well be a harbinger of the end of automation (FYI: Diblasio is calling for a $15/hr automation use tax on the use of automation equipment in the foodservice industry)
Not long ago, the demand for a $15 minimum hourly wage was brought up. The greedy corporate answer? Install automation instead. Because it's cheaper.
Back when going to college didn't mean taking out a mortgage-level loan, think about what you did to pay for it. Perhaps you worked a cash register, at a grocery store or a fast food restaurant. Or perhaps you worked as a waiter or waitress. These are exactly the kinds of lower level jobs that are being targeted for eradication by automation.
We tell all young people in order to succeed one must climb the proverbial ladder of success. However, when Greed chooses to remove the last four or five rungs from that ladder, it tends to make it rather impossible for anyone to climb.
You really only have to destroy 10 - 20% to create chaos. By the time we reach 50%, the global Welfare state will be established.
Oh, and once you remove the point of human employment, you also tend to remove the point of educating a human, so higher education will become an extinct concept as well.
So, he thinks we will replace 50% of human jobs and that will somehow wipe out poverty? It seems he hasn't noticed that when a huge amount of wealth is created, it often doesn't result in reducing poverty. Will AI be replacing Capitalism too?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
A venture capitalist is trying to sell you something....
I was a network manager for a community bank years ago - we had software that could evaluate consumer and business loan applications and decide whether or not the applicant was a high or low risk candidate.
We didn't lay off any loan officers - the software made the humans more accurate and productive - but did not replace the humans.
We also had machines to take deposits and give out cash - yet our branches were still staffed by tellers and branch managers.
The pharmaceutical industry has robotic dispensers that outperform human pharmacists in speed and accuracy - yet we still have humans dispensing prescription drugs.
After 9-11 commercial aircraft manufacturers and the government became very interested in autonomous and remote control aircraft. I'm sure pilotless aircraft could be here today - if we wanted it.
The issue is not AI - but the public acceptance of AI. AI will move faster than the public will accept it.
AI will not disrupt the world quickly simply because humans will take a long time to trust AI for business critical or safety related tasks.
Finally, for AI to succeed the "EULA" as we now know it will need to die. No one is going to put AI in a critical role unless there is some human willing to take responsibility for adverse consequences that may occur.
AI has a long road to climb - don't believe the AI salesmen when they say they will run the world in 10 years - humans move way too slowly for that to be the case.
It looks like the Butlerian Jihad will begin much earlier than predicted!
Prostitution is the oldest profession, global and most profitable. That does not mean the Big Bosses will sit still.
All AI has to do is fool a human into thinking it is a genius. That is easy; look at all the FBers posting images and videos of their 'Genius' cat.
The integration of cat AI with sufficiently light-weight and mobile (at the hips) robot will do for Prostitution that the internal combustion engine plus cheap gasoline and an automated assembly line did for the Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894, in thirty year time, and generate trillions of dollars in new revenue.
...account for 10% of the workforce. Add in a couple of other "essential" jobs of your choice, and it's clear that over 80% of the workforce is ALREADY just surplus workers for whom we've managed to drum up something to do. I'm sure that when their current unnecessary job is "stolen" by AI we'll find some other unnecessary thing for them to do. The economy abides.
... $400 juice bag squeezers. Just saying.
This.
The coming development of horseless carriages will destroy the economy! Think of the stable boys, the feed mills, the blacksmiths, the buggy whip makers! Oh, the masses of people that will be on the streets in poverty!
And THIS time it's different, unlike every other technology innovation. Really- this time the sky IS falling!
An AI shareholder can do anything a real human can.
Its just the in buzzword to yap about constantly the last couple months, AI did not just get invented, its been in our world doing jobs for decades now, please shut the fuck up about it
seriously, just on the way to work I heard 2 news stories about it on the radio, and popped onto slashdot to see another one, move along already
We may be able to retire early in our lifetimes or at least have our hours cut by 50%
50% of all jobs??
About 11M people in the US are working with manufacturing. In a country of 321M..
They are talking about the elimination of service jobs which are 80% of all U.S. jobs. Do try to keep up.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
I worked for one of the infamous banks that crashed the world economy in 2007.
Our systems that approved/processed home loans had a CEO driven initiative called "cup of coffee" wherein we could process and approve a home loan in less time than it would take to finish a cup of coffee.
It was wildly successful. We took a process that had 8 hours of computer processing time, and 1-3 days of human roadblocks, and LEGALLY, coded it into an 8 minute (or less) process. That included things like title checks, credit checks, flood hazard determination, etc
Here is the problem... here is how it crashed the economy:
It did exactly what it was supposed to do.
"If you have 0 defaults you are lending too little, if you have 10% defaults you are lending too much" - Actual quote from business requirements.
So we built in basically a dial for risk... Turn the dial up, lots more loans, lots more risk, turn it down, less risk, less profit.
The CEOs took out every single obstacle in his path, and turned the dial to 11. Of course he did.
What is an AI going to do? The same damn thing, but maybe a little faster.
I dunno, maybe we need someone sitting at a desk saying "Are you sure, honey, that's an awful lot of risk"
What is the point in being wealthy if there is no poor?
Don't the elite need us working class peasants to define their existence? Otherwise it would be a bunch of peers with nobody having any kind of advantage or benefit above the other (thus loosing their perceived value)?
Is so much easier if there is no truck driver. Plus, if all it takes to get the truck to stop is to put something in front of it, then you're gonna see some Fast and Furious style highway robberies. Self-driving cars too, gonna be up on blocks if all it takes is someone stepping in front of them to get the car to stop. There are gangs that can strip all four tires in less than a minute.
The future is gonna be fun.
I guess this means that we will be allowed to have 2 or 3 wives/husbands in the future.
One income maker and the others that are married to him/her will be free to do what they want.
1/2 working + 1/2 free = 1 whole.
It's called family and hobbies...
50% of my jobs have gone already - and I AM a robot!
Sorry, in a capitalist society, put enough people out of work and the system collapses. Period. Just look at Detroit or any major steel based City on the East coast.
Or Kansas.
There will be one growth industry as the Billionaire Cabal drives us into the abyss: the Guillotine industry. Line 'em up and lop off their heads ... it's the only way to be sure (and these days, I really, really understand why the French revolutionaries felt they had to eliminate all of the elite, and were probably right to do so). Of course, the details will be different, but if they're going to unemploy and starve us to line their pockets, we need to take them out by any means while we still have strength to fight. Simple as that.
if AIs can fit into the societal sockets well enough to be economically autonomous if people let them will people start asking for them to have economic autonomy ? ( the Matrix )( that robin williams movie ) will they then get the vote? if the AIs start trading with each other seems like humans could be out of the loop. when there are less humans seems like the AIs will either keep going themselves or grind to a halt with not enough people to fix them and or no reason left to exist.
Containment and disposal of humans who no longer have a function in society.
This just in...
A greedy, sociopathic Silicon Valley VC hyperbolizes on the technology he's hoping to make his next gazillion dollars on.
Also in breaking news: scientists have determined that water is wet.
Details at 11:00.