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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.
"Creat[ing] a huge amount of wealth" won't "wipe out poverty" unless we find a new method for distributing that wealth.
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.
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!
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...
That's not an option in America, the people are too smart and too well armed to stand for that.
I live in Texas, I own AR-15s and hunting rifles...
They will be completely useless against battle robots deployed to keep order by the elite...
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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.
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)