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Nearly Three-Quarters of Adults in US Believe AI Will Eliminate More Jobs Than It Will Create -- and They Want Companies To Pay For the Retraining (gallup.com)
Key findings from a Gallup poll: Nearly three-quarters of adults (73%) say an increased use of AI will eliminate more jobs than it creates (PDF). Results are consistent across most demographic groups. However, those with blue-collar jobs are particularly pessimistic, with 82% saying the transition will result in a net job loss, compared with 71% of those with white-collar jobs.
Nearly half of Americans (49%) say "soft" skills, such as teamwork, communication, creativity and critical thinking, are the most important for U.S. workers to cultivate to avoid losing their jobs to AI. Alternatively, 51% say learning "hard" skills, including math, science, coding and the ability to work with data, are the most important to maintain a job in the face of new technology adoption.
When asked to choose among seven options concerning who should pay for retraining, a clear majority of U.S. adults overall (61%) say employers should fund these programs. The federal government comes in second at 50%.
Nearly half of Americans (49%) say "soft" skills, such as teamwork, communication, creativity and critical thinking, are the most important for U.S. workers to cultivate to avoid losing their jobs to AI. Alternatively, 51% say learning "hard" skills, including math, science, coding and the ability to work with data, are the most important to maintain a job in the face of new technology adoption.
When asked to choose among seven options concerning who should pay for retraining, a clear majority of U.S. adults overall (61%) say employers should fund these programs. The federal government comes in second at 50%.
the bad news is 1/4 haven't. When the industrial rev took off it put more folks out of work than it employed. That's where Luddites came from. The were freaking out over losing their livelihoods in a society where your quality of life is determiined by your job.
It took 80 years for other tech to catch up and employee more people than it put out of work. The people alive during those 80 years either lived like kings or like crap. And as far as I can tell nothing's changed. Your quality of life is determined by your job (or lack thereof)
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1. Change the clutch on my car.
2. Fix my home's AC.
3. Trim my trees.
4. Talk to me about my investments.
5. Diagnose my illness (without a doctor as the interface)
6. Teach my kids.
7. Police my neighborhood.
8. Put out a house fire.
9. Rescue someone.
10. Get elected and participate in government.
AI is a tool that could help with all this, but it isn't a thing that can do all of this.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
we need to start taxing companies who use AI/robots that take away jobs
Exactly. We need to start by taxing everyone that uses a washing machine or dishwasher rather than employing a laundress and scullery maid.
I think if you delved deeper into this you'd find that the same people who are screaming "THE SKY IS FALLING!" also don't understand that so-called 'AI' is not what television, movies, and the media all portray it to be: I'm convinced they think it's walking, talking, thinking, human-like; sentient and self-aware. The reality couldn't hardly be farther from the truth. These 'robots' they're all worried about are very limited, and really can't be trusted. Even the programmers who wrote them can only make educated guesses as to what's going on under the hood. People need to know that these so-called 'AIs' will need to be closely monitored since their output will not necessarily be what you expect, and in many cases leaving them unsupervised may create dangerous situations for humans in the vicinity otherwise.
Management types are part of this problem too. They're not any smarter when it comes to the reality of these so-called 'artificial intelligences', and as a result their expectations are way out of whack from reality, too. Then there's marketing people, and do I really need to explain how far they'll go to make a sale?
Everyone needs to calm down. There also needs to be some realistic, fact-based conversation amongst everyone as to what these so-called 'AIs' are and are not, and what they are and are not capable of, and most important of all: they are not equivalent to (or better than!) a human being in any way, shape, or form and will not be anytime in the forseeable future.
;In the short term, we're in for epic disaster levels of unemployment. Only the owners of capital will be immune to the worst effects.
Of course, in the long term the economy will adjust and we'll use our extra productivity to sell each other goods and services we previously wouldn't have bothered with...
That's where you're wrong. In the long term, the results will be even worse.
A hundred years ago, when Henry Ford began producing automobiles, he paid his workers higher wages than most other companies of that time. He didn't do it because he was a nice guy, he did it because he recognized a very simple and basic reality: those people aren't just workers, they are customers. Higher wages means he sells more cars.
Contrary to the bullshit "trickle down economics" that Republicans have pushed for 35 years, the truth is, our economy is based on trickle-up economics. When you give people at the top more money, they keep it. But when people at the bottom have more money, they spend it and the money flows up to the business owners and that's how they become wealthy.
And that's the big problem that nobody is talking about. Yes, in the short term the rich get richer and everyone else gets poorer. But, ironically, in the long term, everyone gets destroyed, including the wealthy, because of that one simple reality: Once you've eliminated all the jobs and 98% of the population is living in poverty, who will buy your products?
Without time or money, it's difficult to do it yourself.
I think it's amazing that more people think hard skills (i.e., things computers are good at) are essential rather than soft skills (i.e., things computers aren't good at) are necessary for humans.
Perhaps they are using evidenced based reasoning. So far, hard skills are way more useful in the job market. Engineers earn a lot more than sociologists. Also, so far, AI has been mostly replacing jobs that require soft skills: telephone interactions, face recognition, voice recognition.
Soft jobs such as driving are forecast to be replaced in the next decade. Hard skill based jobs such as programming are not.
Geez...when exactly did this "someone else do it for me" mentality hit the US with such full force and become so widespread?
What happened to self-suffiency?
As the average level of education has increased over the past 50+ years, the percentage of people who understand these problems has increased. So instead of childish notions of self-sufficiency, more people know greater social insurance programs are needed for average people to take levels of risk once only possible for the wealthy. These safety nets have allowed the greatest prosperity in our species' history, and they will need to be seriously strengthened if this prosperity is to continue.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke