Comment on AI will reduce workforce, say 41% of execs in a survey
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 7 months ago“Workforce” doesn’t produce innovation, either. It does the labor. AI is great at doing the labor. It excels in mindless, repetitive tasks. AI won’t be replacing the innovators, it will be replacing the desk jockeys that do nothing but update spreadsheets or write code. What I predict we’ll see is the floor dropping out of technical schools that teach the things that AI will be replacing. We are looking at the last generation of code monkeys. People joke about how bad AI is at writing code, but give it the same length of time as a graduate program and see where it is. Hell, ChatGPT has only been around since June of 2020 and that was the beta (just 13 years after the first iPhone, and look how far smartphones have come). There won’t be a huge demand for workforce in 5 years, there will be a huge portion of the population that suddenly won’t have a job. It won’t be like the agricultural or industrial revolution where it takes time to make it’s way around the world, or where this is some demand for artisanal goods. No one wants artisanal spreadsheets, and we are too global now to not outsource our work to the lowest bidder with the highest thread count. It will happen nearly overnight, and if the world’s governments aren’t prepared, we’ll see an unemployment crisis like never before. We’re still in “Fuck around.” “Find out” is just around the corner, though.
I’ve worked with humans, who have computer science degrees and 20 years of experience, and some of them have trouble writing good code and debugging issues, communicating properly, integrating with other teams / components.
I don’t see “AI” doing this. At least not these LLM models everyone is calling AI today.
Once we get to Data from Star Trek levels, then I can see it. But this is not that. This is not even close to that.
People are always enthusiastic about automating others’ jobs. Just like they are about having opinions on areas of knowledge utterly alien to them.
Say, how most see the work of medics.
And the fact that a few times in known history revolutions happened makes them confident that another one is just behind the corner, and of course it’ll affect others and not them.
Hype hype hype hype hype.
You know what I love about blocking people?
You know what I like about Pareto law and all the “divide and conquer” algorithms? You should still know where the division is and which 10% are more important than the other 90%.
Anyway, my job is in learning new stuff quickly and fixing that. Like of many-many people, even some non-technical types really.
People who can be replaced with machines have already been for the most part, and where they can’t, it’s also a matter of social pressure. Mercantilism and protectionism and guilds historically were defending the interests of certain parties, with force too.
No, I don’t think there’ll be a sudden “find out” different from any other period of history.
Hahahaha, good one
just 13 years after the first iPhone, and look how far smartphones have come
I disagree.
As someone who has the first iPhone, it was amazing and basically did everything that a new one does. It went on all websites, had banking apps and everything.
I would actually argue phones have become worse, they are very bloated and spy on you, at first they actually made your life better and there was no social media apps super charged for addiction.
ozmot@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Even mindless and repetitive tasks require instances of problem solving far beyond what a.i is capable of. In order to replace 41% of the work force you’ll need a.g.i and we don’t know if thats even possible.
assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Let’s also not forget that execs are horrible at estimating work.
“Oh this’ll just be a copy paste job right?” No you idiot this is a completely different system and because of xyz we can’t just copy everything we did on a different project.
rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
Or salesmen. “Oh, you have that another system to integrate with? No, no change in estimates, everything is OK.”
Then they have a deal concluded etc, and then suddenly that information reaches the people who’ll be actually doing it.
muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Its not replacing people outright its meaning each person is capable of doing more work each thus we only need 41% the people to achieve the same task. It will crash the job market. Global productivity and production will improve then ai will be updated repeat. Its just a matter of if we can scale industry to match the total production capacity of people with ai assistance fast enough to keep up. Both these things are currently exponential but the lag may cause a huge unemployment crisis in the meantime.
localme@lemm.ee 7 months ago
In this potential scenario, instead of axing 41% of people from the workforce, we should all get 41% of our lives back. Productivity and pay stay the same while the benefits go to the people instead of the corporations for a change. I know that’s not how it ever works, but we can keep pushing the discussion in that direction.
rambling_lunatic@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
You and I know damn well that a revolution is the only way that’s gonna happen, and there aren’t any on the horizon.
msage@programming.dev 7 months ago
It was 41% of execs saying workforce will be replaced, not 41% of workforce will be replaced
richmondez@lemmy.world 7 months ago
We are walking talking general intelligence so we know it’s possible for them to exist, the question is more if we can implement one using existing computational technology.