Am I the only one on this sub that believes AI actually will bring more jobs (especially in tech)?

Submitted by raylolSW t3_ztstp7 in singularity

Technological advancements are correlated with wealth, before the Industrial Revolution 90% of people were farmers.

Before high level programming languages it took many experts to make simple games like Mario Bros, now someone with months of coding experience can achieve something like that and what happened? Modern games are million times more complex and requiere more people.

Experts and even the AI itself agree that programs like chatGPT will be used to speed up the progress, it just the people from here acting like r/conspiracy saying AI will kill jobs when we have left many things to achieve like Mars landing, AGI, longevity, VR, asteroid mining, etc.

It’s basically the evolution of search engines.

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4e_65_6f t1_j1f4lkh wrote

It's possible that it creates new jobs up until the point you're not required for literally anything else anymore.

But I couldn't say if that new jobs period is going to have more jobs than we have now, it might be less IMO.

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raylolSW OP t1_j1f4yg7 wrote

Ya, but when it becomes that good I guess we can say it will kill other careers instantly.

AI can (will) basically learn anything billions times faster than the smartest person alive, and when we can mass produce humanoids robots with AI intelligence then everyone is done.

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4e_65_6f t1_j1f5enn wrote

True but why do you think there will be more jobs before singularity level tech?

I think there will be new jobs but that's not the same as more jobs.

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Nervous-Newt848 t1_j1flslh wrote

There will be two types of people... The people who own the production of the robots and ai...

And then there will be everyone else who receives welfare...

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FranciscoJ1618 t1_j1gtkd1 wrote

No, there will be two types of people. The people who own the production of the robots and ai... And then there will be everyone else who obeys.

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GalacticLabyrinth88 t1_j1x6a0i wrote

In other words, a two-tier techno feudalist class system where the rich own the AI while everyone else is enslaved and made financially dependent on the government. Nice dystopia you got there (for everyone except the techbros that is, who love AI not knowing they will eventually be thrown under the bus just like everyone else, once the AI doesn't need us anymore).

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sheerun t1_j1glf45 wrote

They will require operators for security purposes. The smarter they are and more powerful they are the more need for someone watching their actions. I can't imagine other course of action. I guess in the future most of humans will work as operators / watchers of GAI

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22HitchSlaps t1_j1fiz4u wrote

I get why you think in such a manner given the amount of negativity around "AI killer robots" kind of nonsense but I just don't feel like your argument will play out the way you think it will. Putting aside debates about how far along the technology is and how fast it will improve and evolve, the real issue is our pre-existing economic and political systems. We just do not have the ability to deal with this right now.

Firstly it needs to create at least as many jobs as it takes away and it needs to create those jobs in the same industry as it's removing them from. Which to me just seems impossible. How are you going to re-train millions of truck drivers for instance.

People always bang on about the industrial revolution as if they are even remotely similar. There's no comparison to AI in human history. Period. And even if the analogy held up are we going to ignore the impact the industrial revolution had, say on the wars that followed?

Even if everything goes right with the technology, I just don't see how we as a society are going to travel through it without completely restructuring society.

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Ortus12 t1_j1g6rw3 wrote

I expect at minimum a million deaths from starvation, suicide, and increased crime caused by many people not having jobs before society restructures and implements UBI.

European countries will probably implement UBI first.

As jobs start to get automated countries may start or escalate wars so they have a meat grinder to pour all the jobless people into (while there still are some jobs left for a shrinking percentage).

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DukkyDrake t1_j1f7kkr wrote

No, you're not. It will bring more jobs long before it can do everything. People use more of a given good or service the cheaper it gets. AI will deliver serfdom to the tech workers and make them no better off than the avg unskilled laborer after mechanization.

> before the Industrial Revolution 90% of people were farmers.

The reasons people found other work was because a tractor or a combine couldn't do those other jobs. A tractor could plow the fields, but it couldn't become an accountant. An automated intelligence could operate a tractor and serve as an accountant.

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Nervous-Newt848 t1_j1flgze wrote

Precisely, the invention of AGI robots and AGI software is something way beyond the scope of the Industrial Revolution...

I have a feeling OP doesn't even really understand what AGI is...

AGI is basically AI that can learn to do any task a human can... ANY!!

So lets use some common sense here, AGI can replace pretty much every human job there is.

This is not the creation of a machine that can reduce the amount of workers... This is the creation of a machine that can replace ALL WORKERS

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InvisibleWrestler t1_j1ft5wj wrote

We don't even need AGI at this point to do that. Most jobs (emphasis on most) that can be done sitting in front of a computer can be done by something like chatGPT3 or GPT 4. Or atleast make one worker productive enough to drastically reduce the number of employees.

Similarly self driving and other similar automation may be able to reduce physical labour jobs but that's most likely going to require AGI and advanced robotics.

At this point white collar office workers seem easier to automate than even bus and truck drivers.

Also, once this wave of automation starts in offices, "bullshit jobs" will be wiped out.

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DukkyDrake t1_j1fyvi9 wrote

There is 1 limiting factor, economics. If AGI running a McDonalds is more expensive than a poorly educated human, the human will still have a job frying burgers. If every random person can run a bootleg AGI algo on their beefed-up desktop, economics won't be a huge limiting factor, it will be access to raw materials. But that outcome will likely be an existential threat.

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Ortus12 t1_j1g5w5e wrote

Energy costs trend towards zero, so the Ai itself will not be a cost issue. The robots might be a cost issue depending on their materials in the short term. Ai is working in material science already, and will be working on optimizing manufacturing and distribution pipelines so I don't know how long that will last.

If Telsa Bot (or competitors) is 20K when it comes out, and it last 5 years, with an average of 1K a year on repairs (done by other tesla bots), then it could replace all humans making more than 5K a year. Assuming these bots are physically capable and as intelligent as a human.

Food costs will also come down so I'm not sure how this will work out. It's possible, that because Ai's are smarter than humans, but humans are already around and don't yet require a manufacturing cost to the ASI's, that we will all have hats or vests with cameras and little ear plugs telling us what to do all day long, and if we are fired or not.

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DukkyDrake t1_j1idk99 wrote

It's possible. But you should consider the fact human labor isn't usually the largest % of retail prices. (e.g., You might pay ~$0.57/lb for potatoes in Austin TX, ~$0.12/lb goes to the farmer.) Grocery stores labor costs is around ~14% of sales.

There is a factory in Japan that operates lights out, no human workers. Robots do all of the work; the factory happens to manufacture robots. These robots made by other robots are expensive. The entire chain isn't automated, they don't make the semiconductors etc in their robots, but my point is that companies make products to sell for the maximum price the market can bear and not the cheapest. Although manufacture/labor cost doesn't determine the price, automation does lower the cost of goods and services.

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Ortus12 t1_j1ij3ym wrote

That's true. Food prices probably won't come down much.

It looks like food prices were going down but reached diminishing returns and then flatlined and probably won't go much lower than they were in 1990.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=76964

I'm not sure what you mean by expensive robots. At the moment flippy the robot that makes fries cost 3.5K a month for jack in the box to rent. You can buy it for 30K. It also grills burgers, fries and onions rings.

https://www.businessinsider.com/miso-robotics-flippy-robot-on-sale-for-300000-2020-10#miso-first-introduced-flippy-at-the-grill-in-2018-as-the-first-burger-flipping-robot-in-the-world-it-could-grill-150-burgers-each-hour-1

I'm realizing that the most cost effective robot for different tasks, is not a full humanoid robot with legs and fingers (unless that humanoid robot is produced at scale, I don't know). Our world could fill up gradually with many robots. So certain jobs that are harder to automate (plumper/repair man) will probably be safe from robots for a while.

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DukkyDrake t1_j1ilas7 wrote

That example is just a long existing manufacturer of industrial robots, demonstrating products aren't necessarily super cheap just because their production is as maximally automated as permitted by economic concerns.

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Equivalent-Ice-7274 t1_j1g5isz wrote

Having AGI doesn’t mean we will have the hardware to create human equivalent robots. The human hand is absolutely amazing, with it’s strength to size ratio, it’s speed and it’s dexterity. We have nothing even close to that, so many jobs will require humans for a while.

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Nervous-Newt848 t1_j1hf0gr wrote

Look up robot hands... We have plenty of things close to that...

Honestly you dont really even need a human hand to do most tasks... As long as a robotic arm can move and hold a tool it can do several things...

We already have robots in Tesla factories and Amazon warehouses... Tesla bot is going to change everything in my opinion... But itll take years to be released

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Flannakis t1_j1fo8pr wrote

OP respectfully you are basing your theory on historical data. In the past we have always been smarter than our machines. We could manage and oversee them. We could now get to a point where AI is less error prone on complex tasks than humans. To me this is the tipping point on where you hand the ball over to AI. When this will happen? Who knows, but being blindsided in 2022 by AI art and chat gpt shows how quick the landscape can change.

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PrivateLudo t1_j1f8rgo wrote

With the current rate of technology, it probably will but how will people going to adapt this quickly to change? If you study 3-4 years for that job maybe it will already be useless by then.

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Primo2000 t1_j1f6f4b wrote

Cloud infrastructure is good example of what you are saying. When i started in IT on prem infrastructure was handled by whole departments and people used to have specializations like backup engineer, networking etc. With cloud and infrastructure as a code single devops can handle whole infrastructure part of the project. This didn't kill IT engineers job, instead it create a lot new project opportunities, only folks that weren't willing to change specialization might have problem finding job now.

Same thing will probably happen to coding now and just instead of multiply devs working on project one will be able to handle whole coding side of project as somebody still needs to doublecheck that before it gets pushed to production(in most cases we are handling sensitive user data)

A lot of peoples in the world don't even have refrigerators, there is a lot to do in automation till all of this becomes saturated

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EnvironmentOptimal98 t1_j1fhp47 wrote

I can't understand how this simple algorithm doesn't leave us all jobless:

->AI becomes smarter than humans in all aspects ->Robots become more physically capable than humans ->Robotic/AI systems become cheaper than hiring humans

= No capitalist entity can stay competitive by hiring humans instead of machines

This isn't a tractor we're talking about.. we're talking about self replicating systems that are smarter than we are..

Its imperative that we start envisioning a jobless future and new economic systems

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Nervous-Newt848 t1_j1fn7mx wrote

Thank you... We are talking about AGI here...

It can learn to do ANY HUMAN TASK...

Why don't people understand that?

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raylolSW OP t1_j1flg1z wrote

What you’re implying it’s literally more complex and harder than saturn colonization, not only tech wise but in every form, social, economical, etc.

Its will happen someday but we are hundreds of years earlier for that.

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EnvironmentOptimal98 t1_j1g787n wrote

Not sure what you mean.. we're less than 10 years away from AGI, and humanoid robots can already move with more agility than half the population.. the only uncertain part is how we'll rearrange social and economic systems..

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rainy_moon_bear t1_j1flct1 wrote

Sometimes increased efficiency reveals a greater demand for a service, and therefore a potentially greater job market.

I think it just depends on the demand post-efficiency. I believe software demand will go up with software development efficiency for example.

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slopdonkey t1_j1fchp5 wrote

The way I see is that the only way you would be able to have more jobs for everyone is if they were able to adapt at the same pace as tech advances and we all know that definitely is not how humans operate. MAYBE if we were able to pause any new advances and spend 10 years catching up to the things weve already invented then we could have more jobs for everyone.

Thing are now moving way to quick to try and train people for jobs that may not exist by the time they are finished their training.

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eve_of_distraction t1_j1ivpan wrote

No you're not alone I'd say there's probably around thirty of you guys. I think you're wrong though, and we're going to need UBI.

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Meta_Archon t1_j1ffez3 wrote

You’re definitely not alone. A lot of people do not have the ability to conceptualise potential, history shows this over and over

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SmashmySquatch t1_j1nadk1 wrote

Speaking of history, this is sort of like telling Native Americans in 1820 that they just failed to see the potential of what the white man's technology could do for them.

Untethered AI is an existential threat.

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Either-Championship2 t1_j1futpf wrote

No, you're not. It's already happening and all forecasting agrees with this. Most future jobs haven't been invented yet. The metaverse alone over the next 10-20 years will spawn a whole new iteration of virtual jobs. But we will definitely reach a point where this is voluntary work and UBI systems will be in place.

I expect around the time that AGI systems are widely used that there will be VERY LITTLE necessary human work available. And most "jobs" will be constructed from the backbone of a socialist utopia. These jobs are more fun experiences we do simply to burn time but they allow us to feel like we're pushing humanity forward and still have goals.

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Affectionate-Food912 t1_j1g9yhz wrote

Yeah it's mainly a lack of understanding. I think they will see in a few years with the explosion of VR/AR work.

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Ortus12 t1_j1g3w1q wrote

ASI will kill all jobs. Ai that is more intelligent and with robot bodies more physically capable than humans means, no humans will be able to compete with the ASIs on any job. Even sex robots will be more attractive, charismatic, funny, alluring, and charming than any human who has ever lived, and better able to convince you that they have a soul.

If you expect a slow take off then maybe they'll be new jobs until ASI occurs.

So maybe 10 years, 20 at the absolute most. Anything more is ignoring the economic feedback loops of capital reinvestment from the profits of less capable Ai, feedback loops of Ai's being used to optimize and improve Ai code (already happening), Ai's being used to design better chips (already happening), and Ai being used to optimize server farms (already happening), the trend towards zero of cost of energy from similar feedback loops (already happening), and the growth of more and more server farms.

When you stack that many feedback loops on top of each other you get an exponential. The human mind doesn't think in exponentials naturally (one of our many limits), it thinks linearly. Which is why we sometimes imagine future robots to be like in the movie interstellar, rather than future ASI like in books such as the metamorphosis of prime intellect.

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raylolSW OP t1_j1g7b89 wrote

I personally think that level of AI and robotics won’t happen in my lifetime, but yeah, we won’t be able to compete

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IntelligentBand467 t1_j1ges1u wrote

Humans have fundamental intentions and motivations that will continue. Jobs can move from survival to entertainment. Imagine a city of games and gardens, people only doing what they enjoy. They are still jobs but we redefine things a bit. That's ideally what will happen.

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Accomplished_Box_907 t1_j1gr9ym wrote

So I'm no economist, and someone tell me if they disagree and why. But hasnt every technological advancement "Taken jobs"? Like imagine youre in a tribe and and you invented the cart! Now it only requires one person to bring back a deer instead of 5. Does that mean 4 lost jobs? Or does that mean they move on to something else? Heres my theory about how it works. Pretend for simplicity that every artist is now out of a job, they will have to look for more work right? So they flood the job market, moving into whatever matches their other skills, meaning now companies can pay employees less, effectively able to hire the more employees for the same amount of money. You know what that means? More product. More product equals cheaper price for said product. Wouldnt this have a small deflationary effect? Not only that, but the tribe hypothetical could also explain exponential advancement, because guess what the 4 tribesman without jobs can do? Now they might have time to build mud huts instead of tents, and so on and so forth.

Tell me if this does not make sense and i will reiterate.

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FranciscoJ1618 t1_j1gtc5d wrote

It create more variety of jobs but reducing drastically the amount of position. So instead of 100 programmers you'll have maybe some kind of debuggers (only 1 or 2) and maybe one software prompt engineer and another ai configurator. So 3 new kind of jobs but 96 less positions.

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Nervous-Newt848 t1_j1hfiai wrote

Prompt engineers won't even be necessary when LLMs become even better at understanding human language... Sam Altman said this in an interview...

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antipod t1_j1guiaq wrote

I think the race to AI will create jobs, but once AI is achieved hopefully we have a good plan in place, but doubt we will.

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TheSecretAgenda t1_j1gvogc wrote

Some people just can't computer program. They don't have the mind for it. They aren't logical and it is too much of an abstraction for them. More might be needed but, companies are more likely to brain drain the rest of the world for talent than try to train locals without an aptitude.

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rollsyrollsy t1_j1hlmfd wrote

I believe it’s human nature to put one’s hand to a task. In that sense I believe there’ll always be work, but it might involve complex layers of AI interaction.

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StardusterX t1_j1hvxlk wrote

Of course it will bring more jobs, just like cars brought more jobs for horses.

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Clarkeprops t1_j1hx8fk wrote

More business is more money. More equity generated. The only issue will be the rich hoarding it. Same as the only issue with tech will be people using it for evil instead of good

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KidKilobyte t1_j1i64tf wrote

I think there will be a lot of churn starting in 2023 that creates a lot of jobs as small startups figure how to do new things or compete with old players, but by 2024 lots of companies will decide they need fewer people. Employment will still be low as there is churn, but wages will start to slide for jobs that used to be high pay. 2025 the great hollowing starts.

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Ok_Assistance_2364 t1_j1i73xn wrote

yes you are the only one. it will bring some new jobs but not more jobs than all which will get automated

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stewartm0205 t1_j1iahmg wrote

Don't believe the hype. AI isn't that flexible and unlike a human, it must be taught.

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SmashmySquatch t1_j1nbl2a wrote

First, AI will allow someone from a different country to do my job for a much lower wage. It's just a matter to time until my company does it and ChatGPT would allow them to plan to do this immediately as soon as someone high enough up realizes they can save $30 million a year replacing all of the people in my division in the US.
So, it will initially create a lot more jobs in low wage countries. Won't be so great for me though.

Then it will replace all of those jobs.

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Mezzanine_9 t1_j1f9rx8 wrote

I'm with you there, tech has always made more jobs. Think about how many people still can't use a search engine. You think they'll be able to use AI without help?

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FranciscoJ1618 t1_j1gtwsu wrote

They'll only need to be able to talk, as AI will be like Alexa + chatGPT.

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fingin t1_j1fcumg wrote

It is already creating more and more jobs. It's actually unclear what a reasonable upper bound is for the number of new job titles it could create is, but the lower bounds is 100s. That's just the roles, not number of jobs created. and the demand for those jobs will vary but on the whole, demand for ML skills is increasing and now with the advent of GPT and Diffusion models, I expect this will shoot up over the next year or so.

I guess with this subreddit you just have a lot of people convinced the literal singularity is here (AGI) and so the way they see it, every person is replaceable. I don't think this is going to happen in the next few years personally, maybe another decade or so.

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