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VC Founder Predicts AI Will Take 50% Of All Human Jobs Within 10 Years (cnbc.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the countdown-to-unemployment dept.

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.

3 of 451 comments (clear)

  1. It's already happening... by bogaboga · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:It's already happening... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Informative

      Labor automation must result in a net loss of jobs, or it wouldn't exist.

      That is not true, and there are plenty of historical examples to the contrary.

      Jevon's Paradox occurs when lower prices due to more efficient production leads to even more demand. So if a product uses half as much labor per unit, but demand goes up by a factor of ten, then you still need five times as many workers as you started with.

      Even if the amount of labor needed for a product falls, the savings will be spent/invested elsewhere in the economy, where it may produce even more jobs than were lost. This happened when manufacturing jobs disappeared in developed countries, and were replaced by lower paying, yet more numerous, service jobs.

  2. Re:Basic Income by kilfarsnar · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Creat[ing] a huge amount of wealth" won't "wipe out poverty"

    (Absolute) poverty has already been wiped out in the US.

    Hey, whatever helps you sleep at night.

    https://www.nokidhungry.org/problem/hunger-facts

    --
    "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)