AI and jobs

[The Duke]

What effect will AI have on the job market? Elon claims AI will make it so we don't have to work. The US population isn't declining yet, but the growth rate keeps slowing. Eventually if that trend continues, the population could decline and projections show that happening in 2050. I could see then that AI might be a good thing as it could take care of worker shortages in some fields.

However, I also see a large segment of the population that will never be cut out for anything more than basic jobs like call center work, data entry, fry cook at McDonalds, or running the cash register at Walmart. What happens when all of their jobs are taken over by AI? How will they make a living when they are forced out?

There are plenty of blue collar jobs like a mechanic, electrician, plumber, etc that won't be effected. I don't see nurses and doctors being effected either.

Years ago, robotics was supposed to eliminate factory workers and it did to some extent but there are still plenty. NAFTA eliminated more factory work than anything else as it sent production outside of American borders. The number of factory workers in America has held steady for the last 15yrs.

One thing that isn't talked about much is how much society is willing to accept. There is a strong pushback for data centers in the US wish are necessary for AI.

I was alive before the personal computer, cell phone, robotics, and internet era and all of those products were supposed to improve our lives. Sure they have in some areas, but as basic humans we are still running around stressed out, with too much to do, and developing bad habits trying to cope. So its been a net gain of nothing. I can say that none of those products made my quality of life better. I am fairly certain AI will produce the same results.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. The basic wheel is still a circle.

 

[taiyuu_otoko]

Like it or not, AI will fundamentally transform society in ways that can't be predicted.

It's going to cause a lot of pain for a lot of people, just like the Industrial Revolution.

It will make a lot of people filthy rich and ruin a lot of lives.

Even the invention of the printing press, which gave everybody easy access to tons of new information led to all kinds of societal upheaval, including many wars and hundreds of thousands of deaths.

But this train is unstoppable.

 

[plumber]

in some locations those call center jobs are the good jobs. those will loose out, don't think those people will have other good choices, it will just be a loss. it has to be that way, for AI to give the gain to others someone has to loose. the world is zero sum. one of the silliest things is to listen to experts tell about how its going to get better for all. there is only a fixed amount of stuff, how it gets organized and distributed is the game.

AI will move massive percentages around from some to others. perhaps it causes effect so that everyone can eat. the game however is not survival, it is winning. the human animal is not happy unless winning. AI will adjust on a global scale who the winners are.

the trades are at risk as anyone can learn or do the task with AI instruction. i have skipped calling for experts many times as I can simply ask AI how to simply do it. regulation will be the only equalizer. government is regulation, does government really care about the well being of the masses or more about the well being of the self and the relatives...

the speed of knowledge increase is going to be so fast that most of us will not even understand how fast it is growing. status and sex will still be the drivers of humans. there will be new jobs, i don't know what they are yet. for sure humans will organize in ways of winner and looser due to status and ultimately sex. that will leave most doing something they don't want to do because it will clearly show they are not the winner. the game is always to divide the winner from the looser and AI will adjust that formula.

 

[BillyPilgrim]

Like it or not, AI will fundamentally transform society in ways that can't be predicted.

It's going to cause a lot of pain for a lot of people, just like the Industrial Revolution.

It will make a lot of people filthy rich and ruin a lot of lives.

Even the invention of the printing press, which gave everybody easy access to tons of new information led to all kinds of societal upheaval, including many wars and hundreds of thousands of deaths.

But this train is unstoppable.

Death is unstoppable but that doesn't mean you try to avoid or delay it

 

[BillyPilgrim]

Nothing matters until you root out the satan-worshipping Epstein Listers behind the scenes. AI can be good, but not if we're being lead straight to hell by demons in human form.

 

[Apocalyptic Broccoli]

Things are going to get very, very weird the next few years.

I was a "stochastic parrots" AI-skeptic until a few months ago, when I got a bit of a preview of what's coming. My god, we really are just big linear algebra machines. All that gray stuff inside our skull is just doing gradient descent.

What happens when all of their jobs are taken over by AI? How will they make a living when they are forced out?

I think we're already well into the era where most jobs are bullsℎit jobs. For reasons of social stability, we'll just get more white-collar daycare. More layers of HR, more insurance requirements (and insurance agents), etc. Social workers whose caseload consists of other social workers. The trades are only safe until somebody figures out finger dexterity; all the other pieces are in place already to have a humanoid learn pretty much any construction task by imitating a human exemplar. But we still don't know how to build fingers that are squishy-yet-strong like flesh is... you need the "squishy" to get super high-resolution tactile feedback; without that we can't even take a match out of a matchbox.

And then of course there is Ian M Banks' vision of the far-future, where humans are basically the societal meta-organism's pleasure receptors. The humans in his books spend most of their time fuᴄking.

Death is unstoppable

I wouldn't be so sure about that.

• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2975-4
• https://www.nad.com/news/fda-greenl...for-aging-theory-from-harvards-david-sinclair
• https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT07290244

P.S. mangling swear words in text is one thing, but it's super mega turbo uncool that the forum corrupts web links that happen to contain foul words.

 

[BaronOfHair]

The work force will change, some will adapt and thrive, others won't and stagnate

 

[The Duke]

The work force will change, some will adapt and thrive, others won't and stagnate

The horse and buggy gave way to the automobile. The steam engine gave way to the diesel/electric locomotives and semi-truck/trailers. The type writer was replaced by the personal computer. Cattle drives gave way to trains and now mostly trucks.

Telegraph offices gave way to switch board operators which gave way to electro mechanical automation which gave way to computerized digital networks so humans could communicate.

But those Amish are still pulling their buggy's with horses!

 

[Divorced w 3]

Data process and analysis jobs are under extreme pressure. However, there will still need to be highly trained humans to check the work. AI is trying to solve the human problem with agentic AI, which is constantly trying to resolve tasks including AI errors.

 

[Apocalyptic Broccoli]

But those Amish are still pulling their buggy's with horses!

Hey there's a lot I admire about the Amish attitude toward technology. You know they're totally okay with direct current? It's alternating current they oppose. And the reasoning is utterly fascinating: AC allows long-distance transmission (cheap voltage step up/down) which creates centralization and single points of failure.

And of course their reason for opposing zippers should be popular here of all places!

 

[Apocalyptic Broccoli]

The incels at Boston Dynamics are the ones we should be worrying about

This is a bit dark, but let me spell out what I think @BillyPilgrim is alluding to: there are a disturbing number of genius-level people in AI right now who are pushing hard on this stuff while also believing it's going to totally replace humans, in every endeavor. Fortunately they're wrong, but let's set that aside.

Why would somebody who believes this devote their career to accelerating it? These people are highly intelligent. And they can't all be psychopaths.

Part of me wonders if it's them lashing out against the sharp escalation in hypergamy we've seen the last 20 years. These people are the brightest and most creative minds in the world -- and they aren't getting laid. Sixty years ago leading scientists were frequently successful womanizers. E.g. famously, Richard Feynman. I was fortunate enough to work with others of his era and decoration in their later years, and they taught me my first lessons in Game! Nowadays, not so much. You could even see it in the faculty -- the generations between mine and theirs were much more beta/bluepilled.

Another part of me wonders if a similar process led to the rise of Islam centuries ago -- back then power came from the number of males you could recruit to fight for you; today power comes from the tier of machine learning researcher you're able to attract. I'm worried that this won't end well.

I'm replying here because the thread this came from is way too blackpill for me to validate with participation. And this comment is already darker than usual for me. I have a more optimistic -- if unlikely -- take on how this could turn out, without resorting to theocracy, sexual marxism, or (ugh) enforced monogamy. Just getting rid of a few taboos. I'm working on writing it up to post here someday; it's essentially the synthesis of everything I've learned about intersexual dynamics. Like a thesis defense.

 

[Travel memoir21]

We’re going to be living in a worst state of 1984 in the future. I mean I’m here living in a simple village in South East Asia and it honestly feels like the 90s out here because of the divorce laws and culture…soon when they make the divorce laws more liberal….passport bros will be a thing of the past and say hello to sex robots baby! lol…that’s how degraded society will be..sex robots will be more popular than real relationships. Then you gotta also factor in privacy, your privacy is pretty much non existent if you have a smartphone and with the rise of advanced satellites, it’ll even be more non existent….no one is safe anymore, the best thing to do is to turn to godly righteousness communities and put up a good fight against these tyrants.

 

[BaronOfHair]

The horse and buggy gave way to the automobile. The steam engine gave way to the diesel/electric locomotives and semi-truck/trailers. The type writer was replaced by the personal computer. Cattle drives gave way to trains and now mostly trucks.

Telegraph offices gave way to switch board operators which gave way to electro mechanical automation which gave way to computerized digital networks so humans could communicate.

But those Amish are still pulling their buggy's with horses!

One thing I do believe may be gone forever...

The days of anyone becoming a Jacko/Tom Cruise level superstar. Social media has created a level of competition that simply wasn't possible prior to the late 2000s(Taylor Swift slid in underneath the wire... NO ONE since has achieved her near-omnipresence), and streaming has forever and drastically reduced the appeal of multiplexes

The latter isn't necessarily an unwelcome development either... Entirely too many sh-t-y flicks were greenlit simply on account of names like Cruise, Gibson, Stallone, etc being attached to them.

 

[corrector]

the trades are at risk as anyone can learn or do the task with AI instruction. i have skipped calling for experts many times as I can simply ask AI how to simply do it. regulation will be the only equalizer. government is regulation, does government really care about the well being of the masses or more about the well being of the self and the relatives...

The way ChatGPT / AI has worked for me, it does not always push me toward DIY. A lot of the time it actually points me toward calling a tradesperson when the job is outside my bandwidth, skill level, or risk tolerance.

For example, this year I had a couple of things start as possible DIY projects, but they eventually went to tradespeople:

1. fixing the stairs in front of my home
2. repairing a loose door handle

The AI helped me think through the issue, understand what might be involved, and decide whether it was worth doing myself. In both cases, the answer was basically: call someone who knows what they are doing.

So I don’t think AI simply replaces tradespeople. It may reduce some unnecessary calls, but it can also help regular people realize when the job needs experience. It also helps you ask better questions before hiring someone, instead of bothering the tradesperson with 20 nervous questions while they are trying to work, lol.

 

[Divorced w 3]

Tradesmen are making a killing right now, building out all these infrastructures that the AI need.