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People are worried that AI will take everyone’s jobs. We’ve been here before. (www.technologyreview.com)

submitted 9 months ago by Womble@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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In a 1938 article, MIT’s president argued that technical progress didn’t mean fewer jobs. He’s still right.

Compton drew a sharp distinction between the consequences of technological progress on “industry as a whole” and the effects, often painful, on individuals.

For “industry as a whole,” he concluded, “technological unemployment is a myth.” That’s because, he argued, technology "has created so many new industries” and has expanded the market for many items by “lowering the cost of production to make a price within reach of large masses of purchasers.” In short, technological advances had created more jobs overall. The argument—and the question of whether it is still true—remains pertinent in the age of AI.

Then Compton abruptly switched perspectives, acknowledging that for some workers and communities, “technological unemployment may be a very serious social problem, as in a town whose mill has had to shut down, or in a craft which has been superseded by a new art.”

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[-] tabular@lemmy.world 28 points 9 months ago

There's no new jobs for horses after the combustion engine was invented to do physical labor - why would there be more "intelligence jobs" for humans when intelligence is automated? If it's a pertinent question then such people have not questioned their wishful thinking.

AI today doesn't need to affect all jobs to cause mass disruptions. The biggest industry is transport - what jobs does MIT’s president imagine will be created for 60 year old truckers if they're replaced with autos? Do we get the funny joke where people suggest truckers should learn programming?

[-] GigglyBobble@kbin.social 7 points 9 months ago

what jobs does MIT’s president imagine will be created for 60 year old truckers if they’re replaced with autos? Do we get the funny joke where people suggest truckers should learn programming?

The way it's developing, programmers will be replaced before drivers.

[-] Womble@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Did you even read the paragraphs I pulled out, not even the article itself?

Then Compton abruptly switched perspectives, acknowledging that for some workers and communities, “technological unemployment may be a very serious social problem, as in a town whose mill has had to shut down, or in a craft which has been superseded by a new art.”

His whole point was technology does not reduce the amount of employment as a whole, but it can focus pain on particular communities that get displaced by technology. I just don't buy into the tech bro singularity cult that AI will grow at an exponential rate and replace everyone, AI will be a tool like any other - extending human capabilities but not replacing them entirely.

[-] tabular@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

Humans were the best chess players until computers brute forced the solution with uninteligent computational power. Humans were the best at Chinese Go for longer as brute forcing would take too long. Humans were no longer the best at Go when machine learning beat pros consistently. This is one-way, hunans don't win back ground. If we assume AI doesn't get better than this saying "technology does not reduce unemployment" is still short sighted.

The alignment problem should be taken seriously even if wealthy assholes agree, but AI killing humans is a seperate issue.

[-] Womble@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Humans were the best at weaving until looms came along, humans were the best at welding components together until industrial robots came along. Humans were the best at doing double entry accounting until digital computers came along.

I just don't see this current wave of AI of being any different than previous technological advances that became tools better at specific tasks than humans.

This is one-way, hunans don’t win back ground.

No they dont they open up new gound as technology increases the range of the possible, as the article talks about

One critical wild card is how many new jobs will be created by AI even as existing ones disappear. Estimating such job creation is notoriously difficult. But MIT’s David Autor and his collaborators recently calculated that 60% of employment in 2018 was in types of jobs that didn’t exist before 1940.

[-] tabular@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

When you know the goal but do not know how to functionally get there then an artificial neural network can be useful. To get Chinese Go artificial opponent working was done by making the program run many games against many iterations of itself to adjust itself towards the correct moves for any situation. The biggest difference is the scope of problems this type of tool is capable of solving.

Technology creating more jobs in the industrial revolution isn't a valid argument that automating intelligence will create more jobs. Even if we grant that it does, are you assuming that it will create more jobs that it nullifies forever? If we can agree there's a point where it stops being positive then we just disagree on the time it will happen.

If we assume jobs are created and they too complex to be suitable for the majority of people (who mostly work in transport) then we have the same societal problem: job available, apply within (humans need not apply). If we're to take the industrial revolution as gospel then most people leave the workforce when the jobs are automated.

[-] osarusan@kbin.social 5 points 9 months ago

There’s no new jobs for horses after the combustion engine was invented to do physical labor

Bingo. And this time we're the horses.

[-] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 2 points 9 months ago

Someone has to keep the robots in check.

Until we have cylons, I suppose. Then they'll just kill us and be the dominant things on earth.

[-] SharkAttak@kbin.social 1 points 9 months ago

Can something unintelligent create something that is?

[-] tabular@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Did ChatGPT write that? Sounds like something from a theist vs atheist thread.

[-] SharkAttak@kbin.social 1 points 9 months ago

Nah, it's just that every new day we're left wondering if humans are really intelligent, so I don't know if we can create something that is..

[-] tabular@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

It appears we can be both really intelligence is one area while stupid in others. Speaks to the segmentation of our brains.

[-] gian@lemmy.grys.it 1 points 9 months ago

There’s no new jobs for horses after the combustion engine was invented to do physical labor - why would there be more “intelligence jobs” for humans when intelligence is automated?

Because humans are "general purpose" and horses are "specialized" for example. What other job can a horse do ?

[-] tabular@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

I've heard horses have a social hierarchy and good emotional awareness. Hopefully humans can focus on being social with each other when there isn't enough jobs to go around.

[-] stoy@lemmy.zip 14 points 9 months ago

IT guy here, I am not that worried about AI, I kinda see it in a similar situation as 3D movies, a fad, with a cool core technology, but way overhyped.

Right now AI companies are trying to find their place, and some will, but most will fail.

The main issue woth AI as we see it today is that it is too unreliable, while stating incorrect informstion as if it is completely true.

I tried Bings AI a few times last year, and while cool, it would often lie or if I am asking for a powershell script to do X, it would send me incomplete or broken scripts, I'd have to talk to it and explain what was missing, then baby it through completing the task.

AI as it is now, will not work good enough to be usefull data

[-] osarusan@kbin.social 7 points 9 months ago

IT guy here, I am not that worried about AI

That's pretty much because you're an IT guy. You're in an industry that AI won't replace any time soon.

If you were a cashier, or a stock clerk, or a busboy, you should be terrified by AI. The speed at which those jobs are already vanishing is astounding. The other day I was at a restaurant, and I never interacted with a human. The ordering was done by touch panel at my table, the food was delivered to the table by a robot and I paid at an automated terminal. I don't know how many staff were on duty but it had to be a fraction of what it would have been a decade ago. I bought clothes last week and there was one employee in the store, overseeing the self-checkout lanes (but really just sitting idly by in case anyone had issues). I read an article yesterday about how robots are now being distributed to convenience stores that can clean, stock, and reorder items, so these shops will pretty soon have only one employee in them.

The gimmicky shit that your browser AI and chatbots can do is nothing compared to how this is already revolutionizing the world.

[-] stoy@lemmy.zip 1 points 9 months ago

This is a bit dystopian, but not entierly wrong, I doubt that stores will only have one employee in them any time soon, but you are right in that the chats we have seen are just gimmicks.

[-] osarusan@kbin.social 2 points 9 months ago

I doubt that stores will only have one employee

It's already here, my dude. Not every store, but some are doing this now. It's just a question of how fast it will spread.

[-] alphacyberranger@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

I'm also a IT guy, I can see many things like data engineering, document verification, data entry etc being automated. Some jobs won't disappear but the headcount in companies surely will decrease. A lot of these automation stuff don't even need AI, it's just smarter and more efficient softwares we are having nowadays. A lot these high paying jobs won't need experienced high salaried people instead companies will hire freshers or those from developing countries at low wages.

[-] Asocil@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

That's only text generation, but we see AI art everywhere. Just think that every piece of AI art you see could have been comissioned.

Hell, Prince of Persia:The last crown launched with a character that had ai voice over

Is worth mentioning that you only scratched the surface of chat bots. ViewGrabber on Youtube shows how chat bots now can have character cards, a description of the world they live in, their relation with others, a history of every event that happened...

The potential of that is shown in this video of Two Minute Papers which shows a full AI video game company powered by ChatGPT that has made games you can play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zlgkzjndpak

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[-] Hotdogman@lemmy.world 10 points 9 months ago

[-] BurnSquirrel@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

From what I noticed working tech, there is a pressure to be on the cutting edge at all costs and a lot of stuff gets over hyped to sell things to MBAs. I've seen a few disruptive technologies come in. They are almost never wrong about what the thing is or will be, but they are almost always wrong about the timeline it comes into being in a really mature way.

[-] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 2 points 9 months ago

Are there any technologies that ended up being disruptive, but at the time, you thought "wow, what a load of hot air?. What about the opposite?

[-] Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 months ago

Thank you. This was cathertic for my anxiety. I can now go back to just worrying about the Mexicans.

[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 2 points 9 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Mechanical switching being adopted by the nation’s telephone network was wiping out the need for local phone operators, one of the most common jobs for young American women in the early 20th century.

Impressive recent breakthroughs in generative AI, smart robots, and driverless cars are again leading many to worry that advanced technologies will replace human workers and decrease the overall demand for labor.

Industrial robots had killed off many well-paying manufacturing jobs in places like the Rust Belt, and now AI and other digital technologies were coming after clerical and office jobs—and even, it was feared, truck driving.

In his farewell speech before leaving office in January 2017, President Barack Obama spoke about “the relentless pace of automation that makes a lot of good middle-class jobs obsolete.” By that time, it was clear that Compton’s optimism needed to be rethought.

In an interview late last year with the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, Elon Musk declared there will come a time when “no job is needed,” thanks to an AI “magic genie that can do everything you want.” Musk added that as a result, “we won’t have universal basic income, we’ll have universal high income”—apparently answering Compton’s rhetorical question about whether machines will be “the genii which … supply every need and desire of man.”

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this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024

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