Slashdot Mirror
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.
Revolutions like these never happen faster than society can adapt. Production owners can't live on selling goods to each other, and conversion can happen no quicker than society can adopt it.
The agricultural revolution, animal husbandry, pottery, the wheel, hardened metals, the modern industrial revolution all had safety valves preventing the revolutions from occurring faster than was viable. And demand for the pre-revolutionary products still existed, but now as higher paid luxury items for the rich, who would wear earmine fur, eat luxury game and exotic berries, be carried instead of wheeled, drink from malleable metals like gold, sit on hand carved furniture and cover the walls with hand-woven tapestries. So tradesmen either become specialist artisans, or transition into new jobs supporting the newly rich and their ever growing demands.
Yes, it will suck for those who cannot adapt or end up at the bottom, but it won't happen faster than society as a whole can adjust.