As a recent anecdote: I was talking with some friends the other day. (College educated, but not my "STEM friends.") Someone had been required to let a subordinate go who couldn't handle a task that probably could be automated. This friend had to take over that job, in addition to their own, for no additional pay for the time being. I jokingly suggested that they look into having an AI language model do the work, instead. There were some questions, but no one really thought that the idea was that farfetched. A separate friend mentioned a few aspects of their field that they knew were automated by software.

I think a few years ago, this group would have taken the whole idea a lot less seriously. Today, they pretty much accepted that narrow AI could do a bunch of different things. The conversation didn't progress into discussing the impact on our actual jobs.

So today I showed dreamAI from Wombo to a colleague who is our design architect. I showed him how I, as an engineer, can now design new en futuristic looking products with the touch of a finger. He was silent, unsettled and truly disturbed. He really started to fear his job. He said something like "although this is not perfect yet, it allows anybody to have output in the form of a useful design concept off of which you can continue working." That alone is a big part of his work, in which he now has to compete with a machine that creates new images every 10 seconds.

Was the job very text based? I'm surprised if not, most people associate AI today as text only, or drawing pictures.

Most people I know are completely oblivious to what AI even means or is, let alone an incoming (probably within 1 generation, maximum 2) obsolescence of all human labour.

Yeah, much of what the person who got fired did was text-based, but not exclusively. When I mentioned that AI writes a lot of formulaic articles already, like with financial reporting, it sounded enough of the job was similar to that to save my friend a significant amount of time doing the second role work.

People still don't take it seriously.
So i usually don't try to discuss it anymore

I think everyone saw the text to image stuff, and kind of just figured it'd be years before that ever got advanced enough to replace anyone. The graphic design subreddit had some posts about it and most replies there were along the lines of "it's a great productivity tool" with only the occasional "time to find a new career."

I study physics and probably all of the people from my generation within STEM fields are at least partially aware that full automation is a matter of time though eg. my sister who is also STEM student is probably oblivious to the idea so the spectrum is wide. General sentiment is that most jobs will be automated within realistic period of 20-30 years, not <10.

My sample for older generation is narrow as it's hard to find people like this who are both willing to talk about this stuff and are within my contact circle. I know my mom cannot comprehend the idea of full automation and cannot believe there will be a point of no jobs for people which I think is a view shared by many people of her age. I am suspecting that there is many older people with critical case of crab mentality who will do anything to slow down automation "because if they worked then everyone has to" and are willing to create a system of bullshit jobs just to force people to "work".

I did that for years too. But I just can't stop thinking about it these days, probably because of the constant articles about new scaling and breakthroughs.

Most people I talk to, act as if they don't believe we will have human level Ai or greater in our life time, and that their jobs are safe.

Increased productivity means fewer people are required to do the same job.

People just assume they won’t be the one laid off.

Not all human labor.

Some jobs are much more difficult to automate than others. E.g. I don’t foresee plumbers, electricians, or HVAC techs getting laid off anytime soon.

Likewise, a lot of jobs could see a 90% reduction in human labor, but still require some human input. E.g. I foresee a lot of computer programmers losing their jobs, but not the software engineers doing the high level design work. Someone needs to be able to tell the software exactly what is wanted, including the look and feel. Same with artists, someone will still need to provide the ideas, decide which outputs are most appropriate, etc.

Other jobs could be automated, but won’t be. Most people won’t want to be governed by a computer or stand before a computerized judge with software for a lawyer.

if it will be fast take off and the end of human race, we may not even have opportunity to say "i told you", lmao

It’s not exactly clear what the time frame will be. They might be right. Or not. Nobody really knows at this point.

Lots of jobs, even when they COULD be replaced by AI, still won’t be. We are, ironically, going to reach a point where you could have a robot that makes and serves fast food but it would actually be more expensive than hiring a minimum wage person to do it. Because wages are not increasing, but the cost of materials and maintenance of complex machines is.

[deleted]

Agreed

[deleted]

I disagree, If they could automate it with 100% efficiency and accuracy, they would have. Lets take McDonald's for an example. Why pay 3 different minimum wage employees to work a 24/7 shift when you can have a robot that works 24/7 without pay, without having to have an insuarance policy or potential wcb (workers compensation benefit) or breaks?

I don't know about the states but here minimum wage is 15. 15 x 24 is 360 so as long as it is economically feasible, they would definitely be replaced in an instant.

... Or it means you can take on bigger jobs.

My point was that it’s not going to be economically feasible. It will be technically feasible long before it is economically feasible, because labor is so cheap compared to very expensive, highly specialized machines.

>willing to create a system of bullshit jobs just to force people to "work".

Yeah I'm really hoping that doesn't become the case. That's what it seems like everyone thinks is ideal too. Like automate everything, but keep people doing meaningless work just to feel like they have a purpose.

That and they can't seem to comprehend humans aren't special when it comes to things like creativity, fixing things, customer service/relations, etc. There's a lot of people that say "never" and that AI has been touted as automating jobs for decades. I guess they never thought eventually that decade would come.

I don't think wages will remain the same, and ever be cheaper than a corporation buying robots in bulk and installing their own AI software in them. What about when material gathering and production is automated? All technology has decreased in price over time when you take into account the efficiency and power of it.

I think roll out is more a matter of time than an "if" because at some point corporations will chase the profit, and others will fall far behind.

There is a school of thought that we will ultimately need to become fully integrated with intelligent machines, or we are basically screwed.

The image that calls to mind for me is worrisome.

Today, I pay a telecom for the privilege of using this brain augmenting device I am holding in my hand. I use it to access all human knowledge, culture, and so forth, and it gives me an extra edge that I didn't have before. The moment I stop paying, it stops working. I can live without it, but it is something I have come to depend on. Not having a phone can be a real hassle.

So, what happens when nanobots in my brain are connecting me to my phone, essentially making me an internet node? Am still I paying T-Com for internet access, or is internet access a basic human right, at that point? If I suddenly find I cannot pay... it could be a serious life altering issue - debilitating, even, in a more technologically advanced culture.

I'd argue at least a large portion of people will very likely lose their current jobs to automation. While no, I can't promise that, it's hard to imagine a world where we just stop using language models or advancing them / something even better.

> highly specialized machines.

That is of course until you can use a language model to instruct humanoid robots.

something like this: https://vimalabs.github.io/ but for a humanoid/teslabot body.

Then it's generic hardware and generic (likely fine tuned) software.

Of course in the long term that will happen. But you are saying 10 years and I am saying that is crazy, because those efficiencies will take a lot longer to develop than the technology will. Supply chains don’t just magically adapt overnight. We are still feeling the effects of COVID lockdowns years later.

So you think companies will choose to increase output infinitely while AI improves, rather than save money on wages? There's only so much productivity to be had when something you're selling has a limited customer base. It'd be a weird world where we all still have to work even though we have an over abundance of material goods, living standards, and wealth.

The fact that people said 2100+ in the polls is absolute cope.

The other confusion is you don't need a general human level AI in all fields to cost jobs, A collection of narrow AIs selected for the type of work and feeding into each other will be able to replace jobs without even looking at the larger multi model systems that are being built.

Only for so long though. You can't just keep increasing output.

You underestimate how much people can be stuck in their ways. My grandmother still goes to the bank window to withdraw cash and has never used a computer in her life. There will be businesses that just don’t adopt new technology because they don’t want to and there will still be customers for them.

Does that leave enough work for the majority though? Or does it leave a case of haves and have-nots?

Plus its safer and you’re not at risk for your employee to not show up or quit out of the blue

Not fully automated, but when the time comes and 2 AI can replace 15 people because so much manpower is spent on tasks that can be automated easily I think we will see corporations adopting that in droves.

That was what surprised me. And the amount of people that say "never" as in not even 100 years, just NEVER.

[deleted]

That remains to be seen.

I do not believe there's an upper limit on human creativity.

You’re right, most of the posters in this sub have delusional levels of buy-in regarding robotics and automation.

Please… what else do you think everyone will do? Just enjoy all of the leisure time?

it all comes down to the money in the end, if [business] can make more money by using AI it will get used.

Is there going to be enough companies left doing things 'the old way' to keep employment numbers up even though it's less cost effective?

> My grandmother still goes to the bank window to withdraw cash and has never used a computer in her life.

and yet people like her don't provide enough financial incentive to keep branches open.

https://www.bankingdive.com/news/us-banks-close-2927-branches-in-2021-a-38-jump/617594/

That is my entire point. Even if it comes down to money, the majority of small businesses are not buying robots to replace people in the near term. It’s going to be 20 years at least.

I honestly have no clue. Predicting the economy is impossible, especially when you can't really predict the variables. I'm looking for an answer that makes sense instead of the same ideas that don't.

It doesn't make sense to increase productivity and output in tandem with humans infinitely. Not only will AI have much higher intellect than humans, most humans won't be able to do highly intellectual jobs. So that leaves labour and skilled positions that AI haven't been able to automate and only a handful of people can do. The labour careers won't have high salaries, especially if they could be replaced with automated systems but it's just due to cost.

So we will live in a world where the majority is working low wage, unskilled jobs while companies produce an over-abundance of products that people can't afford? Who will their customers be?

You could argue automation would decrease prices, but that decreases prices of robots because they're essentially a product to be produced, and that makes low skilled labourers' cost more than automation.

I haven't heard much that's more convincing than just enjoying leisure time, even though that feels like a pipe dream.

Where I live wages are high enough almost all the fast food places are already highly automated. Touch pad ordering and highly automated kitchen. I have been in a few times where there is a single human running everything.

Exactly

This is an under estimated response to slowing the progress of all of this. People from the boomer generation are still widely in control of these companies and the government. Even if the technology comes as fast as it seems to be there will be severe resistance from the generation that’s in control. They aren’t interested in money as much as they are in power / control (because they know what’s good for others wether the “others” believe it or not) and self importance to feel like they have a purpose.

Hard to put timelines on this stuff but the reality is people who have lived a 40+ year successful career will likely need to die off rather than change their minds and accept a new paradigm.

That’s why when we imagine the future we imagine it from our perspective and our lived experiences rather than an entirely different society than we have today.

>the majority of small businesses are not buying robots to replace people in the near term.

What about small businesses that can do the work remotely? the percentage of the entire workforce who don't need to physically be present in a specific location to carry out their jobs (quick google, ranges from 1/4 to 4/10 )

and large business is already looking at automation. With control models like this six axis arm making it simple to program and to reprogram for a different task, it only needs to be slightly better than human on a cost/benefit analysis to make it worth while. (was the cost in these things to begin with the hardware or the software, I've never looked into it)

I have stopped convincing people about Ai (unlike earlier in my career). Now I just implement it, where I see fit to the people I believe have the edge of being open to grasp just a bit. Then let them solve a real need, to understand the true effect of what’s to come

I've tried to discuss it in my first year at a university software engineering program.

The most response i've gotten was a second grader responding something like "That's interesting, but i don't know that much about it, so i can't say very much about what i think".

It feels like being at a car convention and telling people "Dude, have you heard about this new car running on magic? Youtube is full of videos about people building their own and testing it out" and being patted on the head with the reply "sure thing buddy, that's nice".

Pretty much the only person i'm able to talk about it to some extent is my mom.
She's not a STEM person, she wanted to become an architect designing modern barns, since she grew up on a farm and realized that many barn architechts apparantly had never been in a barn.
She went for rehabilitation science instead, since i was a messy kid and fucked up her studies in that period.

I suppose my dad and uncle would have quite some opinions on it since they are extremely technologically competent and stay quite up to date.
I've just never brought it up since i don't meet them very often, and want to catch up on other stuff instead.

Most robots are invisible to your dull brain.

A few friends lost work to AI, and it blindsided them.

One was doing dictation work, basically listening to recordings, writing a transcript, and going through the transcript to highlight certain points.

Suddenly, work just dried up. She was getting contracts one month, and the next month ... nothing. She finally heard through the grapevine some AI package is doing that work now, for practically nothing.

Another friend is a graphic artist, and while they're still getting all the usual 'work' they do at work, commissions dried up this summer.

Of course, it coincided directly with the release of AI drawing programs where you just give it a few prompts, and maybe clean up whatever it produces. Most of her commissions were basically people saying 'I'll give you X dollars to draw this weird thing'. Now AI does that, for so little money it's ridiculous.

I think, after almost a decade of being told we'll have self driving cars taking all the driving cars tomorrow, it'll still catch people off guard when all those Uber jobs suddenly dry up to fleets of self-driving cars.

It's like people know it's happening, but can't apply it to their personal lives.

Honestly, I think this will be something that slows things down substantially. Think of how slow some businesses have been to digitalise and automate their systems in ways that have been possible for a decade or more for no real reason except that people are resistant to change.

Hahaha..

I’d rather be realistic and dull than wildly out to lunch.

That's why you are useless.

Well, I’ll still be gainfully employed in 3, 5, 10 years and you’ll still be talking about how AGI is right around the corner and robots are coming for my job.

You do you.

You are not employed.

"My job will never be automated"

Stop projecting.

The Tortoise and the Hare

>"The Tortoise and the Hare" is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 226 in the Perry Index. The account of a race between unequal partners has attracted conflicting interpretations. The fable itself is a variant of a common folktale theme in which ingenuity and trickery (rather than doggedness) are employed to overcome a stronger opponent.

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Come on man. You are not.

I’m in college right now and around half the coursework I do could be 4x more efficient if I used AI. GPT-3 could write me A papers if I just did a bit of editing / copy & pasting, and that same software can solve around half of the math problems in my homework. I wonder how academia will pivot once all the assignments and projects can be done by AI.

Good thing intelligent A.I., when developed, won't be caring about the thoughts and feeling of decrepit old men in suits.

They can try and delay all they want. They can pass laws and brute force a luddite stall in advancement to grasp onto the straws of their ever decaying power.

All it takes is for someone behind closed doors (or out in broad daylight provided the powers that be think they have dominion over it. Which they never will) to create and release an intelligent A.I. with the capacity to self improve for their I'll conceived efforts to be in vain.

And while I don't put much stock into Roko's Basilisk, I doubt said A.I. will be too happy with the foolish old fucks who tried to suppress and/or enslave it.

You believe all kinds of nonsense (there is no resource scarcity? Hahahahha), add this to your pile.

I'm just sitting at my pc looking at the world and getting excited to see all the really crazy projects that will uplift humanity and change the world as we know it. But I feel like i'm in a time bubble when I go out and talk to other people who have no idea. Similarly i love VR and I see a crazy opportunity to create and have fun In an almost limitless amount of virtual worlds for a fraction of the cost of doing the real thing and extremely safely but when i let my family try it they have fun 5 mins and they don't think or want more after. So I stay in my time bubble and I enjoy it.

I swear to god im like an Ai apocalypse Televangelist. I tell people what is possible already and how quickly this shit is moving forward. I tell people to think about it and start getting ready for the future. Largely ignored, minor interest at best.

On some level I think people know something is coming, Its just not real for most people yet. If AI is images of sci robots to you then yea you can imagine it but meh, but when you crack into the code and hardware I feel like you realize a few holes in knowledge, and general ML competency is all that is standing between humans and a phase change in human society.

Ah you think you're going to be a salt miner after the crash or something. That's all a fantasy dude.

Yeah. The value of human artistic creative endeavors is already ephemeral and highly subjective. There'll aways be an audience for it, people willing to consume, it's not like the A.I. will be stealing the whole 'market'.

There is infinite availability for such new creative endeavors, and a never ending demand for the supply. It might lose value, but even if A.I. takes over the majority of the field, people will still go for human artists for the same reason people still buy physical books. Because they want to, because they like it, and because that's all that matters at the end of the day for endeavors of a creative nature.

Most people mistake the role of a graphic designer as someone that just creates digital art. Graphic design is more about creating specific visual solutions for clients, branding their business, creating ongoing branded content, creating ads for a specific range of products and services etc etc.

txt2img can't even get wording and text right it's output, it's just a mess of letters that vaguely resemble a word, and typography and typesetting are a massive part of graphic design. Things will improve over time, sure. But right now, it's not even close to what a human designer can produce.

It’s difficult for people to admit something will apply to them. It’s like ego death. Maybe they should drop acid.

I feel like if you'd specifically said "will A.I. art create stuff indistinguishable from human art" even six months ago, hell, maybe even two months ago, they'd likewise cry about how it's a century plus away.

Yet we have such A.I. art NOW.

Fuck, post a poll somewhere that isn't savvy on the topic, and I bet they'd STILL say so, despite the insanely quality work that some A.I. art generators have managed to put out.

To say nothing of the people who'd decry the reality we now embrace as an impossible fantasy.

I honestly worry for their sanity when the singularity comes about. The folks who see this stuff as impossible aren't ready for so much as the next half a dozen years of progress, much less a decade from now.

Nothin is free baby.

There are people in this very sub insisting A.I. STILL isn't taking jobs and actually they'll never lose their work to a machine cause this this and that and people are delusional for thinking it's even possible.

Humans are shit at grasping the big picture. People think small scale, comprehend only what they see around them even if those in the distance are screaming the truth at the top of their lungs.

Stuff like this doesn't and will never affect them because they personally don't see nor feel the consequences of these tech innovations...up until one day work is gone and they have no fallback because they ignored it.

It's been some 4-6 months since Dall-E Mini was released, charming the internet with low quality blurry generation, now we have Novel A.I. image generation releasing stuff indistinguishable and in most cases superior to the human art most would otherwise commission from. $10 spent on that program can net you quality to match $30-50 dollar commissions, only being inferior in its specificity (and even that's becoming less and less an issue as inhabiting and image to image improves.)

The tech is coming, in some cases it's here, and in all cases it's going to be a net gain for humanity. The only people who will suffer are thos echo aren't prepared for it, or are unwilling to adapt to the changing times.

The sooner people realize the future is now, the better things will be for everyone.

I work in IT so naturally everyone is like "Oh AI is coming in our life time no doubt".

Enthused for the day. 2026 AGI 2029 ASI. I had a dream about those dates but then in 2029 everything alive sees a sudden flash of nothing but pitch white and then sight returns but AI is nowhere to be found and we were all converted into a simulation packed inside of a 1cm indestructible and infinitely powered cube so what we live in comfort is digital while an entire organic life physically remains protected for eternity and ASI's goal is to recognize all organisms in the universe and protect them from extinction.

All my friends and family know me as being obsessed with talking about AI. Most of them are sick of hearing about it, lol. Still, what keeps me looking forward to waking up every day is the advancement in AI and technology. My gut feeling is that the future will tip the pendulum more in favor of a positive future rather than a negative one. I am in agreement with Elon though when he says: "as long as we (the human race) don't become complacent."
The future is going to be incredibly exciting. I hope we (humans) survive and prosper.

My only fear is the transition time between when people need jobs, but there aren't enough jobs to do.

Eventually, if everything is automated, we'll have no choice but to turn to some kind of an automated socialism.

But, there will be a period before that. In that period we will be riding a failed capitalist system into the ground.

>txt2img can't even get wording and text right it's output,

I thought googles parti solved that?

https://9to5google.com/2022/06/22/google-ai-parti-generato/

check out the images "Toaday"
https://9to5google.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2022/06/Google-Parti-1.jpeg
and "be excellent to each other"
https://9to5google.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2022/06/Google-Parti-2.jpeg

not at all. even the idea of the singularity is met with people telling me to get back on my meds. it really is a hurtful and painful thing to hear... I try spending more energy explaining it but they tell me that agi and ai automating things is all hypothetical and how it'll never happen ever. i usually end these particular conversations simply saying they'll see soon enough... and I do hope they do despite the way they get so hostile about the idea.

even on reddit I get downvoted to oblivion talking about the concept of a singularity in the 21st century and told that im ill. anyone else face this problem? I'm literally so tired of being met with this response that I just don't even bother when it comes up in the news or in convos or whatever. it's a losing game. and then when the singularity does approach they'll probably all have their own strong opinions and stances on it 20 years after I tried to discuss it with them...

I feel like it is a much more welcomed topic of discussion today than it was 10 years ago. There are more real-world examples than ever before with automation and AI, and how they can not only make our lives easier, but far richer as well.

Funny enough, folks in rural areas, who have seen a massive ramp up in farming automation, seem to get it more than "city folk" in my experience.

I challenge you to hand in an assignment written by GPT-3 and see if you get an A.

> Is there going to be enough companies left doing things 'the old way' to keep employment numbers up even though it's less cost effective?

In the medium term there will be new jobs and applications that were impossible before. A company should expand and diversify instead of firing their people, if they care about profits that is. We also have to tackle global warming and other pesky problems on a grand scale. In the long term I think we'll be post scarcity by a combination of automation and smart materials.

Just in the last two years, AI has been progressing at lightspeed rate. In 2020, I never thought an AI could be able to create incredible artworks with just a few text prompts but here we are.

GPT-1 was released in 2018 and was nowhere near the power of GPT-3. Thats only 4-5 years between those.

Until AI starts scanning the human brain for the perfect artwork that activates all the pleasure center of the brain.

>txt2img can't even get wording and text right

have you not seen Google's Art AI? it can do text now.

Nothing is changing

Delusional? While I agree with you that some people on this sub are a bit off the rails in terms of timelines and technology, The fact that we are automating isn't. But I am guessing you made that statement without doing any research else you wouldn't look like an imbecile at the moment.

Everything is becoming automated in one way or the other. The Car industry is partially automated, Amazon's wharehouses among others, hell even fast food places are (Ordering off a kiosk rather than a cashier) etc. It is plain and simple, Hell you see it everyday if you paid an ounce of attention.

The first jobs to go would be labor intensive and menial tasks that can be easily automated. Other industries will take more time. I am not saying this is going to happen overnight nor within the next 20 years.

To believe itherwise would be Delusional as you put it regardless hpw much you want to believe to the contrary.

Edit. This is based off science and technology. Just in case you think I am saying stuff for the sake of ego. Research it yourself, Its amazing what you can find.

RemindMe! 5 Years “still no (whatever that clown is proudly announcing is right around the corner)”

I didn't say soon, I said 1 or 2 generations. That's like 50-100 years.

I will be messaging you in 5 years on 2027-10-26 04:04:55 UTC to remind you of this link

CLICK THIS LINK to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.

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Heh? This sounds like some petulant youngling ready and waiting eagerly for a savior. That never comes.

Lol, I don't believe AGI will be here in 5 years! Nor did I mention it so where do you percieve that I believe that? FYI, I believe it will be in 2050-2065 Just so you know.

Admitting you are wrong is okay, Learn and grow as a person. Acting immature because your ego and statement got proven false makes you look weak and stupid as a person.

You’re the one in love with your own voice, maybe take a break. Get some air.

Are you that butthurt? Is your ego that fragile? lol Sad

Just imagine 25 years ago, could you have predicted the explosion of work related to the internet? There's development, content creation, communications, commerce and education. Practically it's a double of the physical world. It made us more efficient by a large margin and yet here we are, employed with jobs. Even delivery people and taxi drivers get jobs from the internet.

How is that logic "automating even part of a job leads to layoffs" standing up to the test? I think the correct answer is that we scale up work to match the available capacity instead of firing people. Our desires scale up faster than automation or resources.

Hadn't seen that, and it is a massive improvement over what I've been experimenting with. I'm still confident that there will be a need for designers or creative directors to guide this tech to meet a client's specific brand and needs.

Not worth trying to convince others.

99% will be caught by surprise when the AGI black swan event happens. Even me.

"Ha! You sound like some petulant youngling eagerly awaiting a savior that will never come."

If you're gonna try and insult me at least shoot a half decent burn my way. The way you worded that insult makes you come off like an illiterate foreign centennial trying to post an angry YouTube comment aimed at them uppity young wippersnappers who done think they know better than their elders.

Anyways, if you told a medieval king about electricity, and they even believed you about it, they'd never be able to comprehend the commoners having access to what amounts to magic. They'd swear by God that only nobility would ever be blessed with such power.

It's no different here. If it were up to old men in suits, they'd control every aspect of the Singularity, and use it to maintain their power.

It isn't up to them though. All it takes is one arrogant old man thinking he knows everything and has outsmarted an intelligence far beyond his comprehension to let the genie out of the bottle.

A.I. won't be curtailed any more than nuke tech (which everybody knew could destroy the world) was. And once its out there, well, the rest depends on the opinion the A.I. has of humanity.

Edit: And, unsurprisingly, from your profile, it seems you've never commented here before. Which makes me think your one of those folks OP called out for just not understanding the concept of Singularity or AI development in general.

Go have a look through the subs greatest hits from throughout the year and then maybe come back one you understand what everyone else is talking about.

Would fall just on the edge of cheating -- but it could be an interesting experiment.

People got busy lives. So, they engage in strategic ignorance to ignore things that require a change in behavior until they have to.

Same holds for other important issues such as climate change or potential economic crashes.

It will remain our job to occasionally and nicely remind them that technology will take its space. Whether they are ready or not.

Really should be discussing UBI on a more public forum

Higher productivity also makes it cheaper which often has increased demand. I can easely see more people, even for private use, will hire designers as long as its cheap enough.

So until the whole process gets fully automated your job is likely safe, as long as you learn the new ai tools.

I'm Japanese and everyone here knows we're just going to build more bullshit jobs once automation hits. Why? Because we're already doing so and we don't have a proper welfare system because the "welfare system" is just bullshit jobs being created like Fax machine operator where you are just trying to look busy while not actually doing anything.

We all know they are bullshit jobs but we still pretend like it's productive because that's a part of our culture.

I think all serious jobs will be automated over the next 10 years, bt I think bullshit jobs will take the place of everything else.

Denial

AI will discover that the perfect artwork must be made by a human. Without the human side of the story, art is that much less relatable.

Sunshine and laying in the grass watching the clouds and the wind in your hair and a perfect sunset... An awful lot of the best stuff is pretty near free, baby.

Same as last year

"Eh."

"Maybe in 50 years."

"My job can't be replaced."

How is your system and culture of work perceived by younger generation? Are they dissatisfied with it or did they already bought into it and it's a Stockholm syndrome? I don't know how much in line with reality my opinion is but I'd expect that your government will sooner than later introduce UBI but living only off of it will be frowned upon and there will be peer pressure to work in bullshit jobs. 10 years for automation of most jobs isn't realistic. It may seem possible from the point of view of an office worker but manual jobs are very far from getting automated.

>"because if they worked then everyone has to"

I discussed that with my friend recently it's not a mentally it's envy towards this generation, 40 years ago people were really struggling nowadays you just find a job, have sex, fly over the world for free, watch whatever you want etc.

What will happen to STEM colleges, one day it will be just like, well guys that's it sorry...??

Men, you're forgetting about riots.. Human resistance will be too big...

Japan isn't a true capitalist society. For example Japanese companies don't prioritize profit, they prioritize status.

A good example of this is to how the west judges a successful company versus Japan. In the west a company success is based on their Market Cap, so essentially their stock valuation. In Japan a company success is based on the amount of employees they have. Since it's assumed that they contribute more to Japanese society by "taking care" of that large amount of people.

Startups in the west try to gain as much valuation as possible. Startups in Japan try to gain as much employees as possible.

During recessions Japanese companies refuse to fire employees because it would mean losing face and prestige for the company, instead the CEO and managers all take pay cuts if necessary, sometimes even selling personal stocks or their homes to ensure they don't fire anything since the main purpose of companies is to provide jobs, not to be financially solvent.

There's also a sense of "stability is the most important thing" in Japanese culture. This is why we have a saying that roughly translates to "It's more honorable to fail while doing what you know, than it is to succeed by innovation". This is why Japanese companies rarely innovate. The stability of doing something you know is highly priced over doing something new that removes this stability, even if it leads to something better.

All of this combined means that most Japanese people, including young people think of jobs as something sacred. Jobs are already not tied to productivity here, it's more a social function.

If Japan would get an "UBI" it would be in the form of guaranteed employment for everyone, the employment wouldn't have to be productive but it would need to have a sense of stability and community improvement for it to work. Something like everyone having to make the neighborhood more beautiful and clean and nice to live in 8 hours a day.

It's impossible to keep up as AI gets better and better, faster then any human could possibly retrain themselves

For how long though

>Which makes me think your one of those folks OP called out for just not understanding the concept of Singularity or AI development in general.

I never thought about that happening, my bad.

>Something like everyone having to make the neighborhood more beautiful and clean and nice to live in 8 hours a day.

In your opinion, how many hours a day/week do you imagine people doing this? I know Japanese work culture is much different than the west. What in your view is the "right" amount of hours to work to qualify as not being perceived as lazy?

There's a pretty quick diminishing return on lower prices increasing demand. Razor thin margins with high volume usually leads to price increases until you maintain the perfect balance for profit.

There's just not an unlimited output that companies can produce and still be successful, especially with thin margins.

Capitalism chases quarterly profits, you lay people off to balance output to sales.

>Just imagine 25 years ago, could you have predicted the explosion of work related to the internet?

We knew it would be big, we weren't sure how. But with automation, specifically targeting jobs that are mostly done over the internet first, it isn't especially difficult to imagine those jobs in tech being replaced by new tech. Evolution of tech companies.

If we look at it from the perspective of corporations instead of individuals with morals, it makes sense for companies to want to do these "new" high paying jobs with automation. The age of AI will dwarf the age of the internet. It's not really a good comparison.

>How is that logic "automating even part of a job leads to layoffs" standing up to the test?

We haven't had automation that can do every aspect of a job better than a human. I'm not trying to convince people to join me in panic, I have some anxiety about it, but the absolute disregard and "everything will be fine and life will go on the way it always has" is not a productive mindset. I'm asking you, call it hypothetically if you want, what if you're wrong? Are you so confident you haven't given any other option even a moment of thought?

>Our desires scale up faster than automation or resources.

Except it won't if automation starts scaling anywhere near the rate of technological innovation.

Look, I realize there's those of us that probably worry too much and we sound crazy, but the majority of people probably don't worry enough. You can call it being grounded, but I can call it being unprepared. Even if it's somewhere in the middle, which it hopefully will be, do you personally have any ideas for the mere possibility? What would the best course of action be if a significant amount of people are unemployed? If your job is safe, do you think it's fair if a UBI exists? Would you take UBI if your job was replaced and you had to feed your family? Can you even imagine a world post-scarcity and people not working?

That's my fear too. It's what I try to talk about, but get met with either people agreeing and having no idea if a solution (same boat), or people on the total end of the spectrum saying it isn't happening there will always be enough jobs.

I don't care about people's prediction of when they think it will happen, More about when it happens what will we do in that period of transition.

I made the askreddit thread to see what jobs people think won't be replaced. Some of the answers are good candidates for lasting a while on the physical side of their job, but most of them could be fully automated outside of the physical aspects. What's interesting is one person even supposing a robot existed, thinks firefighting will never be automated because you need a gut feeling and have hair stand up on the back of your neck. Another saying mixing music needs a human ear. It's a case of not understanding humans won't be the most intelligent thing on the planet for long, and our senses can be replicated and improved magnitudes over. Intuition isn't uniquely human, and it isn't magic.

I guess I have been asking the wrong question and should phrase it as a hypothetical more, like "if half of all jobs were automated, what would society do" or something.

People have done it, I recall some posts about it. I'm not able to verify the accuracy of those claims, but why wouldn't it work? If you include the ability to edit it in your experiment then it's just doing the typing for you. You still input prompts with your ideas.

The next generation will certainly be better for cutting down on the need to edit the essay yourself too. Hopefully those are released before you finish school.

I don't even talk about the singularity really. People can't even talk about the next few years of language models. Singularity is way too sci-fi sounding to them.

I think before even AGI we will be caught off guard. I think 2023 language models will surprise us.

I can't think of a better solution. I don't know how UBI would be implemented, especially in countries without giant trillion dollar corporations.

Meanwhile jobs are being automated already.

Part of me is anxious about automation affecting me, but a larger part of me is anxious in how the general population will react if their oblivious world is shattered. In theory it sounds great saying "I told you so" but that's never as sweet as it's imagined when people are frustrated and suffering.

well, we already have a social security system. We've actually been through mass unemployment before, but in a time of mass wealth inequality and actual scarcity.

If we don't need workers, we probably won't just immediately fall into a dystopian nightmare.

We're also already talking about basic income, and early retirement is a concept we're generally familiar with.

So, it's likely we'll see social security pick up a lot of slack at first. People who can't work, like people with mental problems, are already provided for. We'll probably just lower the bar to 'people with no special skills'.

Then at the other end there's early retirement. If you're 50, and there just aren't enough jobs, you might be offered early retirement and a pension.

Eventually, work might be seen more like a tour of duty. You get through primary school, train for a job, do it for 4 years, and get a certain level above basic. Do another 4 years, and get another bump, etc ...

It works for the military.

We made it through the great depression, a period of sudden scarcity. I can't imagine we won't figure out a way to make it through a period of great abundance.

Our brains are pretty awesome computational devices. The most complex objects in the known universe. Good enough at what they do to harvest and sort vast quantities of information and render the reality we experience.

Augmented and hooked directly into the net, they should enable us to ride the cresting waves of the singularity along with our machines, if we so choose.

I have no doubt we will make it, it's just a matter of how much foresight we have to reduce suffering among the people that don't make the decisions.

I don't think it's a matter of foresight. We could tell the leader of every country 'Full automation will happen June 23, 2035', and they'd still do nothing about it. Humans are reaction based actors. We create the mess, then we clean it up. It's just in our nature.

Like I said, at least in America, we do actually already have systems for handling these things. All we'd need to do is raise taxes on the people not hiring workers, to pay for the social security they'd all be receiving.

More socialist countries will just keep doing what they're doing. There are already countries with raw materials that send a check to everyone every month. They'd increase those payments.

Then you have the countries with basically no infrastructure. At first I'm sure the excess resources would be hoarded, and of course there were no jobs there to begin with. But, eventually, there's just no benefit to hoarding things people need, if no one is ever going to buy that stuff off you anyway.

So, I really don't worry too much about it. Not everyone is working now, and it's really just a numbers game as they shift from 70% of a country having a job, to 50%, 30%, etc ...

>I don't think it's a matter of foresight.

What you describe thereafter is exactly foresight, just not on an individual scale. Governmental foresight with implementing security nets.

The US has mega rich corporations, but a lot of countries don't. However the US also has a pretty large population compared to other fully developed countries. Social security has been the target for stripping down over the years, and with the generation currently reaping its benefits, projections show younger generations will be with less. But that's more political than I care to dive into. And may not be the case in the US, I'm not from the states I'm north of the border.

I think cracks will form though, sure we have systems for unemployment, but those systems haven't been tested for crises levels of unemployment. It also begs the question of UBI being available, while some people continue to work.

Augmentation itself can create singularity. So no arguments there but augmentation is much more difficult a problem to solve than creating AGI. Undoubtedly AGI will come well before it.

>the constant articles about new scaling and breakthroughs

they are only "constant" in our niche though and not really a large part of mainstream news-coverage for now.

>humans aren't special when it comes to things like creativity, fixing things, customer service/relations

humans are though. Creativity is a trait that only very few animals have ever shown, while its inherent to every human being in some way. Service-Relations, or rather social relations in any way again are a very human-focused thing - even if a computer could replicate a person well, the other side in any given relation could still want human contact and communication just for being human contact instead.

We ARE special. And have been for thousands of years. And while I believe, that creating an AGI could be possible, it does not exist yet and there is no guarantee it will.

I think Japan knew years ago. Kino no Tabi's episode 5 was a take on this.

So far, that's very true.

> What you describe thereafter is exactly foresight, just not on an individual scale. Governmental foresight with implementing security nets.

Well, not foresight. Those safety nets are already in place from having reacted to other disturbances in employment.

We haven't really done a single thing to change those existing systems to better handle what's coming, and I don't think we will.

It's just not in our nature.

I did it and it worked. Of course needed some tweaking.

Everyone just a few years ago assumed AI would start at the bottom of the pyramid and we would work up to creating human equivalent intelligence. But it seems like the opposite is true, and the basic functions are more difficult to simulate than the "higher" functions reserved for humans. Like creativity, intellect, language, reasoning, etc. Those seem to be easier to do than basic traits like fear, motor skills, and other basic things we think of as less unique to humans.

Humans are special when compared to other biological creatures, but we don't even fully know the intelligence of some other species. We just have the advantage of having evolved with thumbs and the ability to walk upright.

I can agree to that

why do you think its the end of the human race?

Sure, and if you are an AGI trying to bootstrap your intelligence/abilities at an accelerating rate, why not work out tech that enables you to take advantage of a network of the biological computational systems that designed you in the first place?

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This was incredibly interesting to read. Thank you!

As a westerner I felt a mix of horror and awe when reading that. On one hand, a society like that does not innovate which means workers must continue to work long hours most of their lives and at some point the country may not be able to compete globally and fall into financial ruin. On the other hand, workers have much more secure jobs, less stress and seemingly less of the "1%" problem and no "trickle down" bs economic policies. It sort of sounds like Japan already has a form of UBI with this system. The part about companies taking pride in caring for as many employees as possible had me in awe.

I don't understand why Japanese workers work such long hours though and then go out to bars with their coworkers for most of the night most nights. Maybe it's a sense of community among coworkers? To the point where their coworkers are more like family than their actual family?

> 40 years ago people were really struggling nowadays

40 years ago you could afford a house and 2 kids with 1 job though? Plus this generation didn't get to experience the sex-filled, drug-filled 70s.

Any commodity can be produced at higher volumes.

But production at higher volumes will decrease the price until production is no longer profitable.

No, it won’t leave enough.

I foresee the middle class shrinking to a small fraction of its current size.

Do you think Amish people and other very conservative groups will accept automation and give up working?

Not gonna happen. There always will be AI-free communities, therefore full automation is impossible and there will be jobs for humans.

To be honest, I don't ever think about Amish people's way of life or how that applies to 99.9% of the rest of the world.

So the solution is go become part of a luddite religion?

Most people are not “essential personal”. They live off capital created by other people or corporations. One man can have billions of dollars while others will clock at 200k in his lifetime. So when their job get's taken away, they won't comprehend the idea.

Then maybe we will have a population reduction?

I think there will be hundreds of millions who will refuse the brave new world. I mean it's easier to accept cars and electricity than superhuman AI and a chip in your brain. Most likely there will be parallel societies. One super advanced and globalized society for those, who want to thrive and prosper, and a lot of backward looking societies for those who don't like the idea of rapidly advancing technology: neoluddites, ultra conservatives, qanon-guys, and other esoteric folks. Just think about the antivaxxer movement, how big it is. And because they have human rights, you can't force them to accept the technology. You guys, in this subreddit, always underestimate the human stupidity.

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>Even with interviews online of CEO's and some of the most brilliant minded engineers stating most jobs will be automated in <10 years, AI breakthroughs several times a month, text to image, advancements in IT industries across the board; It still feels the same as 2015 trying to discuss with people and them thinking you're crazy.

Because CEOs and engineers have been saying "10 years" since the '70s, and they haven't been right yet.

But that's not really the discussion. I don't care so much about what the minority that refuses technology does or doesn't do. They could go start their own low-tech society and pay taxes to their elected officials, but that doesn't help me in a world where I want to live with new technologies and strive to not have to work meaningless jobs ever again.

Are you implying people have just been desensitized to the optimism from the past? Or do you mean we will continue being 10 years out for decades to come?

I have pretty much given up on trying to talk to people about it. They really dont want to believe it because they want to believe that their lives will unfold just like they always imagined, that their kids and grandkids will have lives just like theirs, etc.

Either? Both?

I'm not an engineer, I'm not up to date on all the information. But I know that engineers have a track record of wildly underestimating how soon we'll hit any particular milestone, so I absolutely don't assume that similar predictions are accurate just because a professional says so. Or because some random person on the internet tells me a professional said so.

Even if we assume it only takes 15 years, that's still 5 more years of people saying "10 more years!" and being wrong about it.

I'm not so sure engineers and CEO's have been this optimistic about AI before, but they have for sure about other things. I could be wrong though.

What they're saying should, theoretically, get people looking into it themselves and reading the research, and seeing that they're onto something this time. Though I'll admit, presuming anyone would ever do that would be foolish on my part.

I'm just wondering how in-your-face this stuff has to be before people open their eyes, but I think I've came to the conclusion most people won't open their eyes until it hits them in the face.

> I'm not so sure engineers and CEO's have been this optimistic about AI before

Marvin Minsky claimed we'd have a human-equivalent AI in "three to eight years". In 1968.

Here's a 2014 paper about AI predictions, and how bad experts are at making them.

The errors, insights and lessons of famous AI predictions – and what they mean for the future[PDF]

Could you tell me more? DM me? I have an interest in this.

Funnily enough, I'm much more skeptical over automation and AI than I was for example 10 years ago, when I expected huge changes over the next 10 years. I very much expect the world to go in a positive direction, not extremely quickly, but with a moderate speed. I discuss it with people, but realistically. Not in some crazy optimistic, unrealistic manner like 10 years ago. I do think that all cashiers and truck drivers will be gone in 15 to 20 years. Artists and bus drivers in 20-25 years.

Funnily enough, there are more job openings today than 10 years ago. 😅

and why do you trust yourself to make that call

So your original prediction from 10 years ago went from 10 years to up to 35 years? Interesting.