AI to make us all redundant

I read an article in New Scientist, they've to start trying to find ways to get AIs to forget \ unlearn \ relearn because some of them were trained on data sets that either they have no right to use OR the data set was flawed.
 
thedaddyman said:
typical tech head statement not realising there is a whole world out there beyond tech.
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Nearly all jobs in Banking and Finance, IT, Insurance, Medicine, Pharmacy, manufacturing and logistics can be done by AI.

Most jobs in new build Construction, Farming and food processing can be done by AI.

Trades involved in the refurbishment of the existing housing stock, customer facing service and sales jobs, lifestyle and beauty and "wellness" should be relatively safe.
 
As a tech head i totally disagree with Mr Musk.

I remember the dawn of the PC and how it would eliminate paper. It didn't, it just changed the way paper is used. (Unless you have to deal with State Savings )
 
redstar said:
As a tech head i totally disagree with Mr Musk.

I remember the dawn of the PC and how it would eliminate paper. It didn't, it just changed the way paper is used. (Unless you have to deal with State Savings )
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I am/was an actuary by profession. I qualified around the time computers were taking off; there were 36 of us in Ireland at the time. There was talk that computers would make actuaries redundant. There are now hundreds of actuaries in Ireland.
 
Duke of Marmalade said:
I am/was an actuary by profession. I qualified around the time computers were taking off; there were 36 of us in Ireland at the time. There was talk that computers would make actuaries redundant.
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Was that the era of Alan Turing or the PC?
Duke of Marmalade said:
There are now hundreds of actuaries in Ireland.
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I bet I know what sector most of them work in.
 
redstar said:
As a tech head i totally disagree with Mr Musk.

I remember the dawn of the PC and how it would eliminate paper. It didn't, it just changed the way paper is used. (Unless you have to deal with State Savings )
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I work in manufacturing where automation has been a thing for the last 30 years. While our workforce has increased it's definitely true that 80% of the manual labour is gone. The people here are now doing other jobs so it's true to say that it killed off the traditional jobs in manufacturing. The current technology is automating material handling and machine loading.
Our QA system is paperless. Our payroll system is automated. Our accounts are no longer done in ledgers.

In medicine your watch will soon be able to do more diagnostics. You can already see a GP via a video call. If you need a blood test or have a bug a drone will soon be able to deliver a device to take a blood saliva sample and then fly it to an automated lab for testing. There are already AI's reading scans and diagnosing patients with brain tumours and doing it much faster and with a far higher level of accuracy than any doctor. Medicine is a high cost area with integrated systems and a small number of companies with the capability to really manage and control the data flows in large scale integrated healthcare systems so it's a ripe and ready environment for AI.
 
New technologies like AI (well, not really new but its reach a stage of sophistication where its really going to explode over the next few years) tend to replace existing jobs and also create new ones. Automation of manual labour processes, for example, killed off many of those roles but created thousands of jobs in computer manufacturing, software development, maintenance, test, design etc...

AI will need developers and testers, so that area will grow.

Musk should've said AI will help change the nature work, not eliminate it.
 
I think this is different as AI can write its own code. I think we are at a tipping point where there is a confluence of technologies that are sophisticated enough to really change things.
redstar said:
Musk should've said AI will help change the nature work, not eliminate it.
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I think the prediction is that it will eliminate far more than it will create.
 
AI-written code will still need to be tested. Automated testing is not enough (its not proper testing, which is more investigative, its just checking).
I agree though, we are at a tipping point in the development of AI.
 
Now, is redundancy such a bad thing? I remember in primary school the catechism teaching us that one of our punishments for Original Sin is that we have to labour.
Now if machines can do nearly all the labour for us, surely that is a good thing. It raises socio economic issues of course. We can't have a world were the only people with income are a few trillionaires running the show. The goods produced by the machines will need to be distributed to the masses but if they are not supplying any labour then their "money" must come from some central distributor and since it wasn't earned it must be the same for everyone. Is Marx going to win the day after all, albeit not through the class war he predicted?
 
many jobs can be done by AI but it may not be cost effective to do so. The cost of replacing a plasterer with a plastering robot, (aside from the fact it would save a fortune in cups of tea), is currently likely to be very prohibitive.

In reality, like any automation, work will change. Think piece work moving to production lines. But work won't go away.
 
thedaddyman said:
many jobs can be done by AI but it may not be cost effective to do so. The cost of replacing a plasterer with a plastering robot, (aside from the fact it would save a fortune in cups of tea), is currently likely to be very prohibitive.
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I agree. That's why I said those jobs are safer. Removing the need for plasterers and most on-site trades from new builds is already possible. It just required a change in how we manufacture houses.
thedaddyman said:
In reality, like any automation, work will change. Think piece work moving to production lines. But work won't go away.
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I work in manufacturing. We can produce with 30 people now, 10 on whom are highly skilled, what would have taken well over 100 highly skilled people 30 years ago. And it's produced to a far higher quality.
 
Q. Where is AI learning from?
A. Human produced data / creativity / intelligence.

AI will be just a good or bad as the data / biases / information it has learned from.

We are only now catching up to the privacy issues / scams / stolen data from the first wave of ubiquitous IT.

We need more and better legislation to manage AI, and for creators to be able to withold their consent to their work being used without compensation.
 
I don't think we get the speed at which AI is advancing. If you're not frightened by it that's because you don't understand it.
 
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