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Futurist Predicts AI Will Take Jobs, Benefiting the Rich But Not Workers (venturebeat.com)
Citing "significant" new corporate investments in AI technology, futurist Gary Grossman argues that AI "may be the fastest paradigm shift in the history of technology -- and warns there's a counter-argument to the theory that AI will create as many jobs as its displaces.
"The other view is that this time is different, that we are not just automating labor but also cognition and many fewer people will be needed by industry."
KPMG claims more than half of business executives plan to implement some form of AI within the next 12 months... The disruption is already beginning, with fully 75% of the organizations KPMG surveyed expecting intelligent automation to significantly impact 10 to 50% of their employees in the next two years. A Citigroup executive told Bloomberg that better AI could reduce headcount at the bank by 30%. In the face of all this change, many companies publicly state that AI will eliminate some dull and repetitive jobs and make it possible for people to do higher-order work. However, as a prominent venture capitalist relayed to me recently on this topic: "most displaced call center workers don't become Java programmers." It is not only low-skilled jobs that are at risk. Gartner analysts recently reported that AI will eliminate 80% of project management tasks....
A New York Times article noted that while many company executives pay public lip service to "human-centered AI" and the need to provide a safety net for those who lose their jobs, they privately talk about racing to automate their workforces "to stay ahead of the competition, with little regard for the impact on workers." The article also cites a Deloitte survey from 2017 that found 53% of companies had already started to use machines to perform tasks previously done by humans. The figure is expected to climb to 72% by next year.... The net of this dynamic is that workers are not a major factor in the economic calculus of the business drive to adopt AI, despite so many public statements to the contrary.
So perhaps it's not a surprise when the Edelman 2019 AI survey shows a widely held view that AI will lead to short-term job losses with the potential for societal disruption and that AI will benefit the rich and hurt the poor.
He also shares a sobering quote from historian, philosopher, and bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari on why Silicon Valley supports Universal Basic Incomes.
"The message is: 'We don't need you. But we are nice, so we'll take care of you.'"
A New York Times article noted that while many company executives pay public lip service to "human-centered AI" and the need to provide a safety net for those who lose their jobs, they privately talk about racing to automate their workforces "to stay ahead of the competition, with little regard for the impact on workers." The article also cites a Deloitte survey from 2017 that found 53% of companies had already started to use machines to perform tasks previously done by humans. The figure is expected to climb to 72% by next year.... The net of this dynamic is that workers are not a major factor in the economic calculus of the business drive to adopt AI, despite so many public statements to the contrary.
So perhaps it's not a surprise when the Edelman 2019 AI survey shows a widely held view that AI will lead to short-term job losses with the potential for societal disruption and that AI will benefit the rich and hurt the poor.
He also shares a sobering quote from historian, philosopher, and bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari on why Silicon Valley supports Universal Basic Incomes.
"The message is: 'We don't need you. But we are nice, so we'll take care of you.'"
They'll only need a few million bodyguards.
It is arguable all previous labour automation technologies have also been automating cognition. We've been able to automatically apply raw force without the use of humans for millennia. Doing it in a controlled/reactive way is much more difficult. There was a time when weaving fabric was a very cognitively demanding job. Also there seems to be a fallacy here that past automation had created jobs in the same industries that it removed them from. This has never been true. As always, the rate at which automation will replace all the jobs is being overstated by people who are least familiar with the actual capabilities of AI. Until researchers manage to develop general artificial intelligence, I suspect this cycle will continue to repeat.
Tractors benefited land owners who could buy them, not farmers using them.
Massive numbers of slaves benefitted large land owners, not the common wage workers of Rome who became welfare cases on a Universal Basic Income.
... or does it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The slave-ification of the Roman economy was a process that in many ways was similar to automation since it was a massive infusion of extremely cheap un paid labour so here are historical precedents indicating that this is not guaranteed to end the way you predict. UBI in Rome was simply a mechanism the wealthy slave owners used to keep the masses from arming themselves and coming for them. This was an ever-present danger since many of Rome's free citizenry were veterans of Rome's constant wars to secure resources and pre-emptively neutralise potential competitors which was one of the few career options still open to those who wanted something more out of life than just subsisting on a UBI. That last part about constant wars over resources of course has no parallels in post WWII US history
In benefiting the rich it is not so much different to other waves of increasing productivity – productivity gains always profit those owning the means of production first, never those who do the jobs, and even less those who'll be out of a job because of those gains.
The mountain of skulls resulted from the Leninist idea of the "dictatorship of the proletariat".
On one hand, we must recognize that Leninism _worked_, in the sense of successfully overthrowing several feudalist (or proto-capitalist) governments. On the other hand, it instituted a bunch of goddamned dictatorships. And we all know what happened with that.
Socialism - and even small-c communism - is not the same thing as Leninism. Many people believe there are evolutionary rather than revolutionary routes to socialism. The oft-cited examples are the European welfare states, which achieved a weak (and long term unsustainable, it seems) form of socialism - without piling up a mountain of skulls.
I know lots of small-c communists. None of whom think it would be a good idea to repeat the experience of the Soviet Union.
As I sit here waiting in Florida to finally travel back to civilization, Iâ€(TM)ve seen a huge effect of automation and centralization while on this visit.
The US is way ahead of anywhere else in the world with regards to killing jobs. To be honest, Iâ€(TM)m envious. Due to vast amounts of cheap and untrained labor, the US has made incredible progress towards to a Wall-E like society. People like me have no need to go to the mall or the grocery store or pretty much anywhere else since you can order anything online and get it quickly.
The malls are replacing retail shops with services and entertainment. The roads are littered with abandoned retail shops except those catering purely to poor people lacking credit cards or novelty. The decline is very obvious to an outsider.
Automation and centralization has made it so the people are forced to work in almost entirely service oriented jobs.
America is the logistics powerhouse of the western world. The country is famous for its ability to move things from place to place efficiently. This is glorious to watch. Compared to Europe, America is years ahead with regards to killing off jobs because in Europe, logistics companies are not yet able to offer dirt cheap delivery options. This is because outside of England, there arenâ€(TM)t enough uneducated people in Western Europe to handle all the logistical tasks manually for slave labor wages. We need the machines.
That said, once logistics is automated, both Europe and America will face a huge problem. The issue will be that if products can be delivered by drone or self-driving vehicles or whatever else, a HUGE number of jobs will disappear.
This will cause governments around the world to place many people on unemployment or social welfare because unless people open massive numbers of vanity oriented services like theme restaurants and eyebrow plucking shops, there simply will be no jobs to go around.
As the governments dilute their currencies via deficits, the value of their money will plummet. The ripple effect through the world will be that eventually companies will no longer see a clear path to profitability by manufacturing, distributing and marketing useless shit.
The people will focus on purchasing necessities rather than novelties therefore collapsing markets for endlessly disposable crap. This will hurt financial markets as well as the general import/export markets. Unions like the EU will become a matter of survival and will make it so as the market adjust, the governmentâ€(TM)s will be able to balance their deficits (not reduce, but increase systematically) until people are still being fed and kept healthy but with far less purchasing power than before.
The rich will be hurt because the vast majority of their sources of income will dissolve. The mass dilution of currency will mean that everyone will move progressively towards the middle or many will die because governments dependent primarily on manufacturing will lack the resources to balance their deficits as their exports will become unimportant.
The end result will be somewhat chaotic. Countries will unite to mega corporations who no longer see the financial benefit of producing and distributing necessities. Companies like Amazon will become more similar to a welfare system.
This of course is a doomsday scenario and if I were to write five more pages, I would add predictions that would include the one month work year which will make a big difference. But the point is that rich people are only rich because their money is perceived to have purchasing power. As that perception erodes, so will their wealth.
Then Marx was mostly right about capitalism.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Ahh, the naivety of the optimistic.... See, you thought (like so many before you) technology would allow the common wo/man to perform less work in the same amount of time. NOPE!!! Exact opposite! Technology allows for the condition to perform MORE WORK in the same amount of time.
It's true, society as a whole benefits from this increase in production. We are living a richer lifestyle to those 100 year before. BUT, it still comes down to a work/life balance. That's what's truly out of whack.
IMHO - if there was a way to create a global law and enforce it, the idea would be to make it illegal to work more than 20 hours a week. But, that's just pure fantasy and would never happen. On a personal level, I'd much rather work 4x10 hours/week than the standard 5x8. My day is effectively shot anyways, might as well have that extra day off to perform personal chores and maintenance during the week day.
Life is not for the lazy.
Someone used to actually make the food you eat too, now many of us eat production line items...
Farms require less labor...
Clothing manufacturers...
Machines have been taking jobs for a long time...
Yes, and we've also been fortunate enough to create jobs at a dizzying pace, but that will not be sustained going forward (or at least we won't be creating human jobs).
The next iteration of technology is coming for your mind, so please stop ignorantly pointing to history as if it really means fuck all here. This time is different, and we will not be creating jobs as quickly as we will be destroying them. You won't be telling the recently unemployed to go get an education/learn a new trade like you have for the last few thousand years, because educated minds are being replaced with AI, not merely buggy whip makers.
Stop looking at the past as if the same solutions will fit. They won't.
I believe it. But if it's Silicon Valley (i.e. big business) basically calling the shots, then they will be exactly as nice as they deem necessary to keep us from revolting, and not a sou more. In other words: if you are unemployed, off you go to your TerraFoam* tenement block where you will find the food, shelter and entertainment you need. Of course it will not be long until you will be told to ("asked") not to leave your social housing district, and once the robot guards are in place, they can slowly reduce your benefits, because what are you going to do about it. And perhaps at some point they'll slip a sterilizing agent into your food, because who the hell needs more deadbeats. If we are not careful, the poor will die out while the rich will inherit the Earth. If AI will indeed make the majority of workers redundant, then we will have to move to some form of UBI and socialism, although that does not necessarily mean we will have a planned economy instead of a free market.
*) Read "Manna" by Marshall Brain, a free short SF story on this very subject.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
The thing about these fields, usually plumber is included in the list, is that as people are displaced from other employment, they will en masse pursue the jobs on this list that are not easily automated. The wages for the roles on this list will then lower. The employer (wealthy upper-class) benefits from the abundance of cheaper labor available to do these automation-proof jobs. Because the labor cost diminishes on these jobs, they will become even more impervious to automation, though that job security doesn't benefit the worker who is making much less in their job than they did prior to the arrival of automation in other fields.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Not as long as they are part of a market where they "have to" make more profit.
But that's never going to change. People are greedy and those that make more profit can afford more nice things.
This isn't likely to end well. First thing is, we need to understand the goal of waves of automation.
As an example, the industrial revolution wasn't designed to eliminate people doing work. Even though it ran concurrently with a lesser need for farmers, the goal was an increase in productivity. A displaced farmer might just slide over into a factory job.
The specific goal of this automation effort is to replace "expensive" labor with a less expensive way to accomplish the same work.
So if more human jobs are created, the automation revolution has failed.
My own concerns are that with perhaps 90 percent of humanity rendered unemployable because they are humans, that society is going to have to adjust two things:
Goods and services produced will have some disruption because there will be an ever dwindling market for those goods and services.
That 90 percent of zero value humanity will need addressed. With humans in the loop, that suggests to me that the excess humanity will be eliminated. Probably not in a peaceful manner either.
Fact is, in an automated economy, we simply do not need heading toward 8 billion people http://www.worldometers.info/w...
There are peaceful ways to achieve this depopulation, but humans seldom do things in a peaceful manner. We're going to be damn lucky if we don't bring about our own extinction in the depop wars.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Raising minimum wage is not the answer. It's a terrible band-aid solution. It only makes it harder for companies to employ the students and young workers, whom minimum wage was intended for. The root of the problem is that now more and more people make minimum wage and people have to live on it. So now people are saying, "oh people need to have a living wage". But that's not what minimum wage was for! Companies that hire adults who are trying to live should be paying a living wage.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.