Let’s imagine that AI will become cheaper and more efficient, it will not differ from humans in terms of the quality of its work, it will replace almost all intellectual workers, and only the operators of these AI models will have jobs, that is, one person or several people monitor the entire office of AI workers for a small salary. Yes, the AI bubble will burst, but the problems of ordinary people will only get worse from this, jobs will not return, no, automation will continue anyway.
Is it worth retraining as a mechanic, plumber or something like that?
Don’t fall for the propaganda, AI can not execute real world technical tasks at a level that is acceptable. It is good for code, creative thinking or literary but tasks which require experience, real life human interactions, it is just not ready yet.
it is lagging 10-15 years of application development and even then it is only going to be able to compete with traditional execution.
AI will not be able to replace intellectual workers, not as it is now anyways. The only people who think that either don’t understand the intellectual work or the LLMs.
For an AI to be able to do that it would need to be an AGI, which we’re not even close to. And if it gets created it’s not just intellectual workers that are at risk, in fact intellectual workers would be the last one to be replaced.
LLMs are a neat trick, they provide some usefulness and can be used to improve productivity. But the moment you give them any autonomy they will destroy everything. And that’s a core issue with the technology, LLMs don’t understand what they’re replying to, they’re just a word predicting machine. Expecting LLMs to do any form of intellectual work is akin to saying accountants will lose their jobs because calculators exist.
By letting all the copper thieves know where they can find a shitton of copper.
Let’s imagine that AI will become cheaper and more efficient, it will not differ from humans in terms of the quality of its work, it will replace almost all intellectual workers.
You can say the same thing in the first industrial revolution: “let’s imagine the machine will replace all physical labor.”
But till this day, they have not been able to do that.
Was that the first one? That was the 1700’s with, like, the first mechanical looms, so it’s doubtful people even realised everything was changing. The whole “all manual labour will be replaced” idea seems most prominent in the mid 20th century, like with The Jetsons, which is between the second and third, if you’re using this system.
The premise of the question asks you to entertain a hypothetical situation.
It’s worth pointing out that if AI can be an engineer, it could definitely be a manager of other AIs. Why wouldn’t the operators be replaced as well? Or even the lawyers who set up and enforce the corporate charters? Meatspace jobs seem to be safer, but “foundation models that can do physical jobs are just around the corner” is something you definitely hear. And of course at the other end Lemmy thinks AI is totally useless.
I suppose in the scenario you’ve defined, yes, being a blue collar worker is the main option, short of owning a bunch of stuff. And like any other technological revolution, eventually the upheaval will end, there will be fairly high employment, and a lot of things will be cheaper than before.
If that worries you that much, yes. Retrain as an electrician, plumber or dressmaker.
Your worst-case-scenario framing makes the question redundant.
You’re essentially asking: ‘Let’s imagine that something really bad is going to happen. Is it worth preparing for it?’
“Are you living in the real world?”
“Do you have a comrade?”
“Do you have a plan?”
Me:
Getting licensed as an electrician.
I work with my hands so I’ve already got that covered. However, most of my customer base does not (which is why they call me instead of doing it themselves) so it remains to be seen if they can still afford to hire me in the future. If not, then at least I’m heavily invested to the stock market so I too get to profit from the productivity boom.
I work in a field that requires human validation of outputs by law. I don’t see that changing before I retire.
I’m in tech but I’ve got a manual trade I could fall back on. Unless robotics takes that from me too.
To be honest I think our only option will be to disengage from the economy. Governments won’t have the coin for UBI or much else cos all of it is flowing up to the billionaires and I doubt there are many that properly pay tax.
I wouldn’t bet that physical robotics will lag behind for long if AI does get to the point where it takes most knowledge jobs. Automating software development has turned out to be both easier and more profitable than automating plumbing, but that doesn’t mean no one is ever going to automate plumbing. So as a software developer, I’m earning and investing money while I still can, and I’m doing the things on my bucket list in case we get the worst-case scenario. I think that in the long term, the outcome in which I still need money but have no way of earning it is less likely than either the “good end” or the “bad end” in which no one needs money anymore, so sometimes I feel silly saving up money I think I will probably never spend, but better safer than sorrier.
Nah.
Most technologies become exponentially more difficult to improve. We’re climbing thar curve now with gen ai but its still so far from being usable i honestly doubt it will ever replace a significant portion of tasks comprising knowledge jobs beyond the most basic.
Like self driving cars. They were almost ready years ago but the last 5% of capability seems to still be out of reach.
Gsm AI doesn’t just hallucinate sometimes. In my “knowledge job” you can load a few thousand words of reference materials into context, ask questions about it, and anything that requires even a modicum of inferred meaning is very likely incorrect. Worse, bots are amazingly good at being xlconfidently incorrect. I dont just mean not quite right on a few technicalities. I mean the opposite of correct.
My understanding is that the current state of physical robots is much worse. We can barely get a bot to drive around your house sucking up pet dander. I watched some commentary recently that made a very convincing argument that humanoid robots will never be popular for any purpose. Just imagine a bot of any form assigned to some simple task like clean a bathroom, or weed a garden - its comical.
Just like flying cars were “the future” until it became obvious that its a terrible idea, I dont think bots will replace many physical jobs.
We’re barely past the Wright brothers’ plane stage of AI right now, so predicting when the technology will level off is very difficult and just extrapolating forward from the limitations that the technology has today is unlikely to be reliable. I think you’re right regarding what we’ll see in the next few years but I have about thirty years until retirement. By then things will probably be very different and that’s something to keep in mind when choosing a career (or deciding to have a child).
Well, you’re right that the future might contain unexpected developments, and extrapolating forward is not going to be “accurate”, but my comment describes the trajectory that we’ve seen in other technologies.
With the greatest respect, the reference to the wright brothers is a hyperbolic metaphor. I suspect that the wright brothers could see that they had achieved a breakthrough moment and they didn’t know what the limitations of this new technology might be at that time. With gen AI I think we have already encountered the steep curve of diminishing returns.
The improvements in the last several years have been modest and incremental, but the infrastructure required to achieve them has been gargantuan. My point being that we have already reached that point of diminishing returns.
I work on a field that relies on human interaction and already has alternatives for customers that do not want human interaction.
Like telephone switchboard operators, travel agents, and knocker uppers before you, we will adapt. PCs themselves upended almost every industry as recently as the 80s and 90s. Even if the job is to operate AI, the job will exist and they will pay to train you to do it.
