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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.
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).
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!
If the jobs are gone, how are the people going to live?
The bottom quintile of households already get 40% of their income from redistribution. If the "AI revolution" really does lower the cost of production to the point that it is no longer worth paying a human to make stuff, then everything will be so cheap that even today's level of redistribution will mean enough for everyone.
Nobody can predict the future, especially for technologies not invented yet.
Sure people can. Arthur C. Clarke predicted satellites and Karel Capek predicted robots. And George Orwell and Franz Kafka might just have had their timing slightly off.
Most humans, especially Americans, already hate automated service of any kind. Being served by an actual human is a luxury that signifies status whereas being transferred to the automated voice answering system, no matter how sophisticated, only serves to reinforce the relative insignificance of the person receiving the "service". The fact that the automated answering system generally sucks donkey balls only adds to the indignity of the experience. Humans are biased, prejudiced, judgemental and demanding. This makes them very difficult to satisfy, especially with a machine that attempts to substitute for a human interaction. Manufacturing was different because there was little or no human interaction there, what mattered was the finished good received. Service jobs are an entirely different animal and I don't see AI replacing humans there anytime soon, at least at businesses which care about their customers and prefer not to give them the middle finger by transferring them to automated phone tree hell.
Very funny.
Poverty exists not because of a lack of resources or productivity. Poverty exists because of the extreme unequal distribution of wealth. If there was the political will to fix wealth distribution, we could eliminate poverty today.
So, no, AIs will not wipe out poverty. AIs will increase wealth inequality and with it, increase poverty.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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.
Since about 1980, trickle-down has been failing more and more, in many countries. The "market" ain't working well for about 90%. GDP's grow, but most don't receive the benefits of that growth. Time for a Plan B.
I suspect your head has been filled with anti-government and anti-tax propaganda from the right and big corporations who bribe heavily to keep and grow their turf.
USA is full of really fat cats, and full of lots of rotting bridges, road, dams, and pipes. Something is out of kilter.
Table-ized A.I.
and instead you now have thousands of jobs maintaining and building those robots. jobs are evolving, robots are better at repetitive/dangerous/mundane tasks.
Actually, no... you have dozens of jobs maintaining and building those robots that replaced thousands of workers...
It isn't a 1 to 1 replacement ratio, that is what most people miss...
Taken at face value, 500 million Chinese unemployed, 200 million Russians unemployed, 200 million Europeans unemployed, 150 million Americans unemployed, at least two billion people in the rest of the world unemployed. That means a lot of hungry, restless people struggling to survive. This presents a nightmare for conservative libertarian Republicans and their counterpart politicians around the world. Guaranteed annual incomes for starving billions, while robot servants serve up their meals, build their houses, tailor their clothes, build and maintain their infrastructures? Conservative anathema.
All living creatures tend to multiply during easy times. The worst scenario that could happen is that we fill up our planet with people and deplete our essential resources. The second worst outcome (for most) is that authoritarian governments would impose a one child per family policy world wide and enforce it. The third worst outcome is that robot soldiers would battle for power in an armageddon for resources leaving the world in smoldering ashes.
The best possible scenario is that we would swing in our hammocks, sipping mai-tais, cheering our NFL robot teams clashing on the gridiron twelve months of the year. Pick your sport, same outcome.
Income inequality didn't drive the push towards two incomes - it was inflation and taxation. Adjusting for inflation, per capita the US Federal Government consumes (via direct income taxes) twice a person's income as it did in the late 1950s. It's not income inequality, it is overwhelmingly forced income redistribution (which comprises about 70% of the US Federal Government budget) that has forced the two income household.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Why? There will be more wealth. Employment is just a mechanism for distributing it. Yes, if half of people lose their jobs and the idiots at the top don't figure out a new way to spread the money around then there will be a bloody revolution. As there should be.
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.
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.