sharkinwolvesclothin t1_isptt3c wrote on October 17, 2022 at 8:18 PM

You're not crazy, but you do both overestimate and underestimate the speed of change and type of change at the same time.

Sure, if there's a true singularity / general intelligence machine appears that can do anything, we'll pretty much have manna from heaven, society will be rethought, who knows how. You can argue for both dystopian and utopian scenarios. But thinking about which jobs are safe is kinda irrelevant, it'll change everything.

If it's just simple advances, it'll be more like job markets have dealt with technological advances before. For programmers, they will be checking regulatory compliance or fine-tuning something or whatever, or just dealing with legacy stuff (maybe the chatbot eventually can refactor the Fortran code base from the 70s). I'm not sure if artists are exactly thriving money-wise now either, but there would probably be demand for social/performative in person stuff, not all mediums are happening at the same speed (sure you can make a great dall-e photo that looks like a photo of an oil painting, but an actual oil painting will not follow quite immediately, and some people like physical art), they are well positioned to become prompt artists for digital art.. Or a million other options, it's not like I know exactly what will happen in different industries, just like people did not know how things were going to evolve in previous technical revolutions.

Desperate_Donut8582 t1_isq8q6y wrote on October 17, 2022 at 9:59 PM

General intelligence doesn’t mean it can do anything atleast doesn’t necessarily mean so and also to think either we will be utopia or dystopia is also extreme polar generalization

sharkinwolvesclothin t1_iss4h4v wrote on October 18, 2022 at 8:49 AM

Agree on both points, I wasn't quite clear. I was trying to argue that if we do get singularity-type AGI, a machine capable of replicating human thought and communication, we will build an endless amount of them, and everything about society will change. You are right, it's not necessarily dystopic or utopic, but it will be different enough that trying to choose a future-proof job is close to useless.

And if we don't get that, and we "just" get amazing tools, I would assume jobs will adapt. Actually, if some fields get more AI tools than others, those fields might grow in the number of people working in them, just in new AI-adjacent jobs we don't recognize yet.

whatTheBumfuck t1_issggxp wrote on October 18, 2022 at 11:28 AM

I almost sorta think the real human artists will become even more valued when cheap ai art becomes so ubiquitous. Think mass produced vs handmade. I personally know many successful potters who make their living throwing pottery the old way.

kmtrp OP t1_isvbhmv wrote on October 18, 2022 at 11:30 PM

People kept doing portraits of people when cameras were invented, sure, but only 0.001% would now keep making a living with that while 99.999% were suddenly out of a job.

Because the group "I want whatever that works that is cheaper, faster etc" is giganourmous compared to "I want it made by a human regardless of time, price etc".

In short: most demand disappears.

whatTheBumfuck t1_iszb842 wrote on October 19, 2022 at 8:09 PM

Post scarcity, not really. Everyone will have a box that can generate objects out of air and soil or whatever matter you have laying around. There will be no companies that mass produce stuff. It'll just be assemblers all the way down. So your options will be get the assembler version or get the handmade version. Money won't be a thing, but status and prestige will become the main "currency" used to "purchase" time shares of a person's or entities attention. The uber rich today work this way already. When you have billions your most scare resource is your time and attention.