[infinitezest]

This is something I've been waiting to hear as well. We hear about how jobs will be eliminated, and occasionally we hear about how that means there will be time for other things that we want to do, but it kind of seems like AI is already doing all of the things that we want to do. And then, of course, there's the question of how the rest of us are going to provide for ourselves if none of us have jobs. Those at the top already seem quite reticent to share with the rest of us. I can't imagine that's going to get better if we don't provide any value to them that a computer can't do for cheaper.

[autoexec]

> occasionally we hear about how that means there will be time for other things that we want to do, but it kind of seems like AI is already doing all of the things that we want to do.

That's been the promise of every technology. Computers were supposed to make us so productive that that we could all work less and spend time with our families or whatever. Instead productivity went through the roof freeing most people to do even more work for our masters who started demanding more from us even outside the office while real wages stagnated. AI isn't going to make our lives any more carefree than any other technology. It'll just make a small number of extremely wealthy people even richer.

Thankfully, what passes for AI these days is pretty shitty at doing even basic tasks and so it'll be a while before we're all replaced. In the meantime, expect disruptions as companies experiment with letting staff go and replacing them with AI, get disappointed in the results, and hire people back at lower wages. Also expect a lot of companies you depend on to screw you over because their stupid AI did something it shouldn't have and suddenly it's your problem to deal with.

[ErroneousBosh]

> We hear about how jobs will be eliminated

I've been hearing about how $latest_technology is going to eliminate jobs for 40 years. It hasn't happened yet.

Which jobs, exactly, is AI going to eliminate? It's not useful for anything. It doesn't do anything useful. It's just mashing random patterns together to make something that approximates human-readable language.

[peterlk]

I am so, so, so tired of hearing this argument. At a minimum, AI provides efficiency gains. Skilled engineers can now produce more code. This puts downward pressure on jobs. We’re not going to eliminate every software engineering job, but the options are to build more software or to hire fewer engineers. I am not convinced that software has a growing market (it’s already everywhere), so that implies downward pressure. The same is true for customer support, photography, video production (ads), paralegal work, pharma, and basically any job that involves filing paperwork.

Eliminating jobs has absolutely happened. How many jobs exist today for newspaper printing? Photograph development? Film development? Call switchboard operation? Technology absolutely eats jobs. There have been more jobs created over time, but the current economic situation makes large scale jobs adjustment work less well.

[achierius]

> It hasn't happened yet.

Not to you. But it has happened to tens, hundreds of thousands already. Did you miss the whole 2016 election news-cycle?

[infinitezest]

I mean, I certainly hope you're right. But it's really hard for a dummy like me to tell how much of this hype is real. There seems to be more money bet on this thing than anything prior. It seems like there's no good outcome here, whether the tech works or not.

[FuriouslyAdrift]

There's always crime...

[A4ET8a8uTh0_v2]

The interesting thing about it is that the signs suggest that 'the rich' are prepping for such an outcome ( you will see occasional article here and there about bunkers being bought ). Naturally, if one was to suggest that maybe we could try working towards some sort of semblance of 'new new deal', they would be called some sort of crazy person, who is a communist and hates democracy ( as opposed to simply trying to save the system from imploding ).

[boilerupnc]

I suspect the early variants will fall into two camps:

1. Traditional garden variety human to human, computer to computer and computer to human crime stuff that happens today.

2. Human to computer (AI) crime, misdeeds and bullying. Stuff like:

- Sabotage and poison your AI agent colleague to make it look bad, inefficient, ineffectual in small, but high volume ways. Delegate all risky, bad+worse choice decision making to AI and let the algo take the reputational damage.

- Go beat up on automated bots, cars, drones, etc ... How should it feel to kick a robot dog?

For a humorous read on automation bots and AI in a dystopian world, take a look at Quality Land [0]. Really enjoyed it. As a teaser, imagine having some drones suffering from a fear of heights, hence being deemed faulty and sentenced for destruction. Do faulty bots or AI have value in this world even if they don't deliver on their original intended use?

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36216607-qualityland