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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.
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.
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.
While this schedule seems a little too aggressive, such a thing will happen eventually.
The heat death of the universe will also happen eventually. A prediction without a time window is meaningless. There is a huge difference between AI replacing jobs over the next 50 years, and replacing them in 10 years, which is way too quickly for society to adapt.
lol at "recognizing faces" means replacing jobs.
Indeed. Human level face recognition software already exists and it has replaced approximately zero jobs. If you look at productivity growth, it is clear that the pace of humans being replaced by machines is actually slowing down, as service jobs are proving much harder to automate than the manufacturing jobs that disappeared a few decades ago.
This VC's Chicken Little prognosticating is not based on evidence.
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!
"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?
"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...
Or the top 2% will own the means of production therefore ensuring monopolies with high prices.
You think a Mom and Pop shop can buy $90,000 worth of robots to start a business?
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It is unsurprising that there is resistance to this idea.The implications (more on that below) are horrific.The fact, though, is that robots and AIs are becoming rapidly more capable, and denial is not going to prevent organizations from selecting the most cost effective way to get jobs done. Even if the robot/AI solution has some limitations, the profit motive will win out (as anyone who has used call centers staffed by people who cannot communicate effectively in your language should recognize).
What are the implications? The most obvious is mass unemployment/under employment. This is going to create a huge disadvantaged class in rich countries. Proposals for a national basic income are well meaning, but unrealistic. It might happen in a very limited number of smaller countries, like Finland, but the elites in most countries who decide such matters will never willingly allow some of their wealth to be given to "non productive" members of society.
The BBC ran an interesting opinion piece recently (http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse) that predicted a breakdown of Western civilization if gross and increasing levels of inequality continue to occur. I think those predictions ring true. Further, the piece does not even consider the problems introduced by huge segments of the population becoming completely surplus to the elite's needs.
There will be valuable jobs those displaced by robots and AIs could do, but they will be of no economic benefit to the elites to would have to put up the money to finance them.
Ever since I was a child, I have been reading about how automation would create more leisure time, and the challenge being how that leisure time will be used. The reality of the last 40 years is that those with jobs work harder than ever for the same or less money in real terms. Total wealth has increased, but (the predictions of trickle down economics notwithstanding) virtually all the increase has gone to the already wealthy.
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.
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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.
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.
All jobs don't have to go away for it to become a problem...
Simply removing paid drivers may well be enough to push us over the edge, but we shall see...
The numbers are not on your side, sadly...
Over the next decade, more than 50% of the wealth of the venture capitalists will be eaten by people peddling AI technologies.
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Requiem for the American Dream
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.
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.
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.
When have those idiots ever figured that out? Any business wants to pay people as little as possible while retaining as much as possible for said idiots. That won't change until they realize the benefits of broad-based prosperity. But that reduces their level of power and control. AI doesn't change that equation. If anything, businesses will like it precisely because it reduces their labor costs.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
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.