"We identified the emergence of entire categories of new, uniquely human jobs... trainers, explainers, and sustainers."
OK, great, but...
a.) these jobs will only be "uniquely human" until AI becomes self-generating and sustaining. [1]
b.) as these jobs emerge, surely they don't expect all of the millions of displaced laborers, truck drivers for example, to find work in these roles.
AI is increasing overall efficiency (less human work => more productivity), while global population grows. This is a good thing, but I can't buy into the idea that these new jobs will be sustainable. IMO #1, we instead simply need to conciously decide to carve out jobs for humans to do, even though the work could be done (probably better) by a machine. After all, I mow my grass with a push mower (vice a gas mower) because it's clean and I enjoy it. IMO #2, a base living wage without work does not a happy life make.
> a base living wage without work does not a happy life make
Makework doesn't cut it, though. You can hire a guy to dig a hole and another guy to fill it in, but both of them will be utterly demoralized. And I have trouble believing garbagemen wouldn't be happier staying home even though they know they're doing necessary work.
And for point b), it's always truck drivers brought up in these instances. Yes, think of the poor truck drivers. I'm sure they love doing a dull job.
If a job is replaceable by machines, it's not worth doing.
I get the worry that people will be without livelihood, but it's not as if this world has a shortage of work to be done. If we had no more work to do, sure, bring on the UBI. But we do. Clean litter out of forests, plant new forests, visit the sick. Whatever it is, there will absolutely be more work for humans in the future. People not being forced to drive trucks means they could be doing something else more useful.
And if people lament losing a particular job and having to pick up a new one, well, sorry but that's reality. I could just as soon lament not getting paid to doodle cartoons.
Clean litter out of forests... for free? Visit the sick... for free? People don't like being truck drivers because they like driving trucks, they like being truck drivers because they like eating, sleeping, and raising their families. The unemployment rate is currently above 0, despite their being no "shortage of work to be done," because plenty of work that could be done doesn't have anyone paying in exchange for that work.
Who's going to pay people to do the things that are more useful, but don't fit in to the standard capitalist system? You? Some benevolent billionaire? The government, if we raise taxes and increase social spending to an extent that makes plenty of Americans recoil in instinctive horror? Yeah, I do think of the poor truck drivers, because I don't want them to starve.
No, he's not, you are. The social programs required to get those things done aren't going to come soon enough due to the cultural rejection of this kind of socialism in America. You're glossing over the hard part, as if "just pass a social program" was an easy thing to do.
UBI has to be worked out "before" these become big problems, not after; now is the time.
All of those jobs you mentioned are not economic, they are public works -- and there is no funding for them, so at best those are volunteer efforts, not something to put food on the table.
You're right, in theory we could have a system where we put truck drivers to work doing great stuff. Losing lots of jobs could be amazing if we had the services and programs that made our society compatible with that. But we don't, they will take a long time to establish, and the political climate appears to be reluctant to even start building them. Thus: a disaster.
That's exactly what I'd like to see. The problem with UBI is it's not that.
There's room for more than one social program in dire circumstances, but ideally we should have a social structure which incentivizes doing good. Help those who can't help others, and encourage those who can to do so.
I'd like that too, but I think at this point, tactically, we need to come together on "we need some social programs, period", and not bicker so much about what that looks like on the first iteration -- there is always a second iteration to be had.
> Yes, think of the poor truck drivers. I'm sure they love doing a dull job.
I have met some truck drivers who DO love their job. They have spoken about the opportunity to travel (that from a husband-and-wife driver team who claimed to enjoy living on the road). They speak of the opportunity to own their own business (although, to be fair, independent truckers are becoming less common).
See: "And if people lament losing a particular job and having to pick up a new one, well, sorry but that's reality. I could just as soon lament not getting paid to doodle cartoons."
You're rather missing the point; AI will create a shortage of work to do. The alternatives you mention aren't things that pay a living wage so yes, people will be without livelihoods and something akin to UBI will be necessary.
It's not about having something to do, hobbies don't put food on the table, or provide a table, or a roof to go over it. Our current economic system has no answers for a world where labor isn't valued because it's all based on capital and wage labor. You think we're talking about people being bored or something?
Real AI would create mass unemployment, 50% or more of the population unable to find someone to pay them enough to live on because robots will be doing all the jobs they're capable of. How are these people going to survive? That's the issue being discussed.
People bring up truck drivers because its a job we can feasibly being replaced soon, doesnt require an expensive education and unlike coal mining, employs a huge amount of people.
You're very much missing the point. There are lots of jobs that used to exist that are no longer viable. This happens. The fact that people are unemployed is a separate issue from any given job no longer being viable. And yet there's plenty of work that needs doing.
a) will happen, it is just a matter of "when" not "if." Of course, "when" could mean tomorrow or a hundred years from now, no one is really sure and there are both optimistic (it will happen in 1975!) and pessimistic (it will happen in the year 2500!) predictions.
I expect AI-empowered job growth to happen heavily in the medical biology field. We've just barely begun to scratch the immense complexity of the human body. It dwarfs any "big data" system today that you can think of.
Another candidate is environmental management, like environmental reviews, construction permitting, and pollution remediation. Again, there is almost no limit to the complexity you'll encounter when you want to model geological systems to make detailed predictions.
Technology usually leads to job creation when it creates new levels of abstraction upon which new careers will be built. These are most needed in areas where complexity overwhelms current technology. Biology and geology currently fit that bill.
And I expect AI-empowered medical jobs to be heavily regulated, such that the extraction of personalized results will have to comply closely with formal processes and strictures, thereby slowing and complicating their adoption.
It's possible that using AI to tune therapy techniques will thrive, like pacemakers and blood glucose monitoring. But diagnosis will take considerably longer to catch on, since the responsible party for making medical decisions can't be mere software.
I work at a pharma, and from what I've seen, the use of clinical data is often complicated and unrewarding unless your question is very precise and worth the extra cost/effort that all that regulation requires. Asking or acting on more general questions like those amenable to AI would be infeasable due to all the constraints against gathering a sufficiently critical mass of general personal data.
Key difference between your comment, and the parent, is the distinction between now and later (time) along with "knowledge" vs "resources." If ai-driven technology produces new abstractions, or put differently, massively reduces the cost and access to resources that are currently scarce and valuable, then you have a whole layer of newly introduced resource(s) to Build businesses off of. This might not be new knowledge the way I took it in your comment. I also think it's reasonable to assume that as quality engineering time keeps getting poured into these areas, these new abstractions will happen. I also believe this is a great way to look at the world, which is why I felt compelled to clarify.
Create, not yet... although there are a few automated biology lab solutions in the wild... but it might help refute a number of dubious findings if it's able to spot methodology problems.
This is why as I look to the future that my two year old son will inherit as an adult, I'm going to make sure that he has a really solid grasp of philosophy.
The cutting edge of today's technology and science are all digging deeply into age old philosophical questions that haven't seemed so relevant until recently. Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality in particular are going to beg us to answer questions about Ethics, the nature of Consciousness, and the nature of Reality.
This is not about jobs, it's more than that. It's like saying Artists don't have enough jobs these days so there is no purpose in studying or practicing art.
I don't think A.I. is the problem, it is automation that is the great fear. Regular code is as dangerous as A.I. as far as fear-mongering goes.
Automation really got going at the start of the industrial revolution and people have been scared of it ever since.
Today I put together some Google Form that writes to a spreadsheet. This means no more excel spreadsheet email attachments or copying and pasting. It took me an hour to research and prototype. With a few adjustments all was done. In this task there was no A.I. to teach, just a few boxes to move around and ability to listen to requirements.
I handed over the form to be maintained and updated by internal client. So no more work needed. Someone normally spends weeks collating the spreadsheet data. Now they don't have to do that. Now they will do cool stuff in Fusion tables, interpreting the data. Plus the company is growing and therefore that role will not be an idle one.
Whole teams of people can be swept away from back office jobs from the simple non AI changes such as better forms. Or people can be empowered to move their job on to the next level, e.g. data analysis rather than data entry.
I know computers can do amazing A. I. things but the much feared change is already happening and it is mostly based on if statements rather than A.I. Some get swept away and others embrace and effect the change. Attitude of the individual matters and there are winners plus losers with change brought on by automation.
> I don't think A.I. is the problem, it is automation that is the great fear. Regular code is as dangerous as A.I. as far as fear-mongering goes.
I 100% agree. Modern business still organize themselves like firms a century ago but with faster tools to accomplish largely the same set of tasks. We have only begun to realize the productivity gains/decreased labor demand of technology that was boring in the nineties.
This kind of division of labor was shown in the recent Westworld series on HBO I think. They didn't get into the economics of the real world (wisely, I'd add) but there were clearly different tiers of jobs vaguely resembling current ones we recognize.
"Customer service chatbots, for example, need to be trained to detect the complexities and subtleties of human communication."
Yes, but for that to be economically a net win, way fewer man-hours will be spent training systems than now are spent by humans doing customer service. Net result will be a significant job loss.
These uniquely human jobs will be replaced by emulated "standard" humans.
A virtual human brain, even if computationally expensive to emulate could be programmed to do rare "human jobs" while AI employs more pragmatic algorithms.
Eventually all the brain functions and networks will be extracted and encoded in algorithms and FPGA hardware, so I won't bet on these "uniquely human jobs" existing forever.
Most of the new jobs will be created by the human resistance. While this includes trainers, I think a majority of the new occupations will be military based.
OK, great, but...
a.) these jobs will only be "uniquely human" until AI becomes self-generating and sustaining. [1]
b.) as these jobs emerge, surely they don't expect all of the millions of displaced laborers, truck drivers for example, to find work in these roles.
AI is increasing overall efficiency (less human work => more productivity), while global population grows. This is a good thing, but I can't buy into the idea that these new jobs will be sustainable. IMO #1, we instead simply need to conciously decide to carve out jobs for humans to do, even though the work could be done (probably better) by a machine. After all, I mow my grass with a push mower (vice a gas mower) because it's clean and I enjoy it. IMO #2, a base living wage without work does not a happy life make.
1. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603381/ai-software-learns...