AIs gunning for our precious freelancers

[zompist]

Consultants are the low-hanging fruit here... who really cares if they can be replaced by AI? I just expect it'll be done one rung lower than the big consultancy companies. E.g. Accenture employs 738,000 people. How many of those could ChatGPT (or its next iteration) replace? Half? Three quarters?

BTW, I wasn't just being snarky here. My best friend worked for Accenture for years. He had a macabre job: helping companies offsource or consolidate officeworkers. And ironically, the biggest part of his job was... writing. Turns out that a big part of that consultancy was writing new job descriptions and documentation on workflow. Could that be done by (or assisted by) ChatGPT? Probably! It's exactly the sort of thing large language modals are good at: highly dependent on previous work, no interest in originality or deep thought.

Plus, the company didn't exactly care deeply about its consultants. It made a big deal of bringing them on-site (this was before Covid)— I suspect that there was a psychological effect there; when you pay millions to a huge consultancy firm you expect to see a bunch of guys in suits coming in and working all day. But if the work could be done in half the time, they'd do it, and probably charge just as much, because "AI-assisted" still sounds like a positive. (Also because business-to-business software is absurdly expensive.)

[malloc]

It really baffles me that everyone here is so blasé about this issue. With this invention, the people in charge have made their intentions clear. They have no further use for us and they will dispose of us without hesitation. Anyone who thinks they will keep us around for sentimental value is incredibly naïve. The battle lines have been drawn between humanity and the machine. Whose side are you on?

[rotting bones]

It really baffles me that everyone here is so blasé about this issue. With this invention, the people in charge have made their intentions clear. They have no further use for us and they will dispose of us without hesitation. Anyone who thinks they will keep us around for sentimental value is incredibly naïve. The battle lines have been drawn between humanity and the machine. Whose side are you on?

A socialist state could use an AI to allocate resources for maximizing production while minimizing exploitation. Its use could be circumscribed by direct democracy.

Why are you worried about AI instead of capitalism?

[Raphael]

A socialist state could use an AI to allocate resources for maximizing production while minimizing exploitation. Its use could be circumscribed by direct democracy.

Why are you worried about AI instead of capitalism?

Trying to talk reason into malloc usually doesn't end well. It usually ends with an endless back-and-forth between malloc and the people trying to talk reason into malloc.

[malloc]

A socialist state could use an AI to allocate resources for maximizing production while minimizing exploitation. Its use could be circumscribed by direct democracy.

Why are you worried about AI instead of capitalism?

Because capitalism has uncontested control of the world and there is no meaningful opposition to it currently. Our only options are capitalism that needs us alive and capitalism that can freely dispose of us. Show me the revolutionary movements today that could feasibly overthrow capitalism before AI renders us obsolete.

[bradrn]

It really baffles me that everyone here is so blasé about this issue. With this invention, the people in charge have made their intentions clear. They have no further use for us and they will dispose of us without hesitation. Anyone who thinks they will keep us around for sentimental value is incredibly naïve. The battle lines have been drawn between humanity and the machine. Whose side are you on?

I think you’re being far too pessimistic about all this. It’s not some vast conspiracy to eliminate humanity; it’s simply a new area of technology. At this point we have no clue how it will affect humanity, and probably it will have both hugely positive and hugely negative consequences, like all new technologies have had. Since the Luddites, we’ve known that it’s impossible to stop new technologies from being developed; all we can do is to figure out how to cope with the transition.

[Raphael]

I think you’re being far too pessimistic about all this. It’s not some vast conspiracy to eliminate humanity; it’s simply a new area of technology. At this point we have no clue how it will affect humanity, and probably it will have both hugely positive and hugely negative consequences, like all new technologies have had. Since the Luddites, we’ve known that it’s impossible to stop new technologies from being developed; all we can do is to figure out how to cope with the transition.

See my response to rotting bones.

[bradrn]

Show me the revolutionary movements today that could feasibly overthrow capitalism before AI renders us obsolete.

Oh, and as for this, remember that people have been rendered obsolete many times before. The printing press obsoleted scribes; mechanical mills obsoleted weavers; mechanical calculators obsoleted human calculators; email has largely obsoleted secretaries. Humans have survived this in the past, and we will survive it again. None of this is new.

[malloc]

Oh, and as for this, remember that people have been rendered obsolete many times before. The printing press obsoleted scribes; mechanical mills obsoleted weavers; mechanical calculators obsoleted human calculators; email has largely obsoleted secretaries. Humans have survived this in the past, and we will survive it again. None of this is new.

How will we survive? What the hell is our niche now that we've been forced out of jobs based on intelligence and creativity along with all the physical jobs that previous forms of automation have eliminated? Everyone once criticized my anarchist position because I couldn't point to functioning examples of anarchy. Yet these same people defend automation and AI even though they can't point to replacement jobs that require neither brain nor brawn. You expect me to have faith that plutocrats like Elon Musk and Donald Trump will find it in the goodness of their vantablack hearts to keep us on the payroll even when technology has eliminated all our economic advantages.

[bradrn]

Oh, and as for this, remember that people have been rendered obsolete many times before. The printing press obsoleted scribes; mechanical mills obsoleted weavers; mechanical calculators obsoleted human calculators; email has largely obsoleted secretaries. Humans have survived this in the past, and we will survive it again. None of this is new.

How will we survive? What the hell is our niche now that we've been forced out of jobs based on intelligence and creativity along with all the physical jobs that previous forms of automation have eliminated? Everyone once criticized my anarchist position because I couldn't point to functioning examples of anarchy. Yet these same people defend automation and AI even though they can't point to replacement jobs that require neither brain nor brawn. You expect me to have faith that plutocrats like Elon Musk and Donald Trump will find it in the goodness of their vantablack hearts to keep us on the payroll even when technology has eliminated all our economic advantages.

As a counterpoint: manual work has proved unexpectedly difficult for AI to replace. As I recall, your own job is in semiconductor manufacture — there’s something right there that AI will find very difficult to replace, given that it sits at the intersection of several unrelated physical and mental skills. And this applies to all kinds of experimental science in general. People have been making progress with ‘lab-on-a-chip’ kinds of things, but there will always be experiments which don’t fit into that paradigm. The argument applies to ‘unskilled’ labour too, which turns out to require a lot more skill than we might think: even fruit-picking is an immensely difficult job for non-humans. The AIs will get there eventually, but it’s hard to know whether they’ll ever become the preferred choice over humans — we’ll always have certain intrinsic advantages over artificial machines.

[rotting bones]

How will we survive? What the hell is our niche now that we've been forced out of jobs based on intelligence and creativity along with all the physical jobs that previous forms of automation have eliminated? Everyone once criticized my anarchist position because I couldn't point to functioning examples of anarchy. Yet these same people defend automation and AI even though they can't point to replacement jobs that require neither brain nor brawn. You expect me to have faith that plutocrats like Elon Musk and Donald Trump will find it in the goodness of their vantablack hearts to keep us on the payroll even when technology has eliminated all our economic advantages.

The capitalist answer is that we will all find high paying jobs with tech CEOs painting their shoes and shining their nails.

My suggestion is that we should setup a service similar to Patreon. Instead of getting paid by fans, citizens can directly support services by vote as shareholders in the commons. The employees of these services will receive a government salary.

The standard "leftist" answer these days is that the government should keep capitalism and render jobs irrelevant. Personally, I don't think these people understand how capitalism functions as a global system.

[rotting bones]

Oh, and as for this, remember that people have been rendered obsolete many times before. The printing press obsoleted scribes; mechanical mills obsoleted weavers; mechanical calculators obsoleted human calculators; email has largely obsoleted secretaries. Humans have survived this in the past, and we will survive it again. None of this is new.

How will we survive? What the hell is our niche now that we've been forced out of jobs based on intelligence and creativity along with all the physical jobs that previous forms of automation have eliminated? Everyone once criticized my anarchist position because I couldn't point to functioning examples of anarchy. Yet these same people defend automation and AI even though they can't point to replacement jobs that require neither brain nor brawn. You expect me to have faith that plutocrats like Elon Musk and Donald Trump will find it in the goodness of their vantablack hearts to keep us on the payroll even when technology has eliminated all our economic advantages.

As a counterpoint: manual work has proved unexpectedly difficult for AI to replace. As I recall, your own job is in semiconductor manufacture — there’s something right there that AI will find very difficult to replace, given that it sits at the intersection of several unrelated physical and mental skills. And this applies to all kinds of experimental science in general. People have been making progress with ‘lab-on-a-chip’ kinds of things, but there will always be experiments which don’t fit into that paradigm. The argument applies to ‘unskilled’ labour too, which turns out to require a lot more skill than we might think: even fruit-picking is an immensely difficult job for non-humans. The AIs will get there eventually, but it’s hard to know whether they’ll ever become the preferred choice over humans — we’ll always have certain intrinsic advantages over artificial machines.

Aren't manufacturing and agricultural jobs increasingly automated?

[malloc]

As a counterpoint: manual work has proved unexpectedly difficult for AI to replace. As I recall, your own job is in semiconductor manufacture — there’s something right there that AI will find very difficult to replace, given that it sits at the intersection of several unrelated physical and mental skills. And this applies to all kinds of experimental science in general. People have been making progress with ‘lab-on-a-chip’ kinds of things, but there will always be experiments which don’t fit into that paradigm. The argument applies to ‘unskilled’ labour too, which turns out to require a lot more skill than we might think: even fruit-picking is an immensely difficult job for non-humans. The AIs will get there eventually, but it’s hard to know whether they’ll ever become the preferred choice over humans — we’ll always have certain intrinsic advantages over artificial machines.

Relegating humans to intellectually unsophisticated jobs hardly sounds much better. Is future you want one where everyone is uneducated and flips burgers all day while machines do all our thinking for us? Sorry if this sounds like moving the goalposts, but the loss of dignity strikes me as hardly preferable to extermination or starvation.

[rotting bones]

As a counterpoint: manual work has proved unexpectedly difficult for AI to replace. As I recall, your own job is in semiconductor manufacture — there’s something right there that AI will find very difficult to replace, given that it sits at the intersection of several unrelated physical and mental skills. And this applies to all kinds of experimental science in general. People have been making progress with ‘lab-on-a-chip’ kinds of things, but there will always be experiments which don’t fit into that paradigm. The argument applies to ‘unskilled’ labour too, which turns out to require a lot more skill than we might think: even fruit-picking is an immensely difficult job for non-humans. The AIs will get there eventually, but it’s hard to know whether they’ll ever become the preferred choice over humans — we’ll always have certain intrinsic advantages over artificial machines.

Relegating humans to intellectually unsophisticated jobs hardly sounds much better. Is future you want one where everyone is uneducated and flips burgers all day while machines do all our thinking for us? Sorry if this sounds like moving the goalposts, but the loss of dignity strikes me as hardly preferable to extermination or starvation.

Engineering AIs doesn't sound like an intellectually unrewarding job to me. Installing and servicing AIs also sounds more interesting than being a car mechanic. If AIs become universal, so will jobs in AI.

[bradrn]

How will we survive? What the hell is our niche now that we've been forced out of jobs based on intelligence and creativity along with all the physical jobs that previous forms of automation have eliminated? Everyone once criticized my anarchist position because I couldn't point to functioning examples of anarchy. Yet these same people defend automation and AI even though they can't point to replacement jobs that require neither brain nor brawn. You expect me to have faith that plutocrats like Elon Musk and Donald Trump will find it in the goodness of their vantablack hearts to keep us on the payroll even when technology has eliminated all our economic advantages.

As a counterpoint: manual work has proved unexpectedly difficult for AI to replace. As I recall, your own job is in semiconductor manufacture — there’s something right there that AI will find very difficult to replace, given that it sits at the intersection of several unrelated physical and mental skills. And this applies to all kinds of experimental science in general. People have been making progress with ‘lab-on-a-chip’ kinds of things, but there will always be experiments which don’t fit into that paradigm. The argument applies to ‘unskilled’ labour too, which turns out to require a lot more skill than we might think: even fruit-picking is an immensely difficult job for non-humans. The AIs will get there eventually, but it’s hard to know whether they’ll ever become the preferred choice over humans — we’ll always have certain intrinsic advantages over artificial machines.

Aren't manufacturing and agricultural jobs increasingly automated?

There still seem to be plenty of people around, though, especially in more niche areas.

As a counterpoint: manual work has proved unexpectedly difficult for AI to replace. As I recall, your own job is in semiconductor manufacture — there’s something right there that AI will find very difficult to replace, given that it sits at the intersection of several unrelated physical and mental skills. And this applies to all kinds of experimental science in general. People have been making progress with ‘lab-on-a-chip’ kinds of things, but there will always be experiments which don’t fit into that paradigm. The argument applies to ‘unskilled’ labour too, which turns out to require a lot more skill than we might think: even fruit-picking is an immensely difficult job for non-humans. The AIs will get there eventually, but it’s hard to know whether they’ll ever become the preferred choice over humans — we’ll always have certain intrinsic advantages over artificial machines.

Relegating humans to intellectually unsophisticated jobs hardly sounds much better. Is future you want one where everyone is uneducated and flips burgers all day while machines do all our thinking for us?

Whenever did I say that? I highlighted experimental science specifically because that’s a job which requires close coordination between intellectual and practical work.

[rotting bones]

There still seem to be plenty of people around, though, especially in more niche areas.

Sure, but are there practical barriers to automating everything eventually?

Whenever did I say that? I highlighted experimental science specifically because that’s a job which requires close coordination between intellectual and practical work.

There are already chemical labs that take orders as code and do the experiments with robots. The results can then be processed by AI.

[bradrn]

There still seem to be plenty of people around, though, especially in more niche areas.

Sure, but are there practical barriers to automating everything eventually?

Yes; I already mentioned the case of the fruit-pickers. IIRC, the problem there is that fruit are just too sensitive for machines to easily manipulate. I’m sure there are other similar cases too.

Whenever did I say that? I highlighted experimental science specifically because that’s a job which requires close coordination between intellectual and practical work.

There are already chemical labs that take orders as code and do the experiments with robots. The results can then be processed by AI.

Which ones would those be?

[rotting bones]

Yes; I already mentioned the case of the fruit-pickers. IIRC, the problem there is that fruit are just too sensitive for machines to easily manipulate. I’m sure there are other similar cases too.

But Google is full of results about people working on fruit harvesters. It doesn't look like they gave up. (Edit: At least at first glance.)

Which ones would those be?

Er, I saw an ad for one many years ago while watching YouTube videos on biomechanical engineering. Even if I could find it again, that's probably not practical on my phone.

All I can recommend now is Googling laboratory robotics.

[bradrn]

Yes; I already mentioned the case of the fruit-pickers. IIRC, the problem there is that fruit are just too sensitive for machines to easily manipulate. I’m sure there are other similar cases too.

But Google is full of results about people working on fruit harvesters. It doesn't look like they gave up. (Edit: At least at first glance.)

Oh, they haven’t given up… I just doubt they’ll replace humans and all their advantages.

Which ones would those be?

Er, I saw an ad for one many years ago while watching YouTube videos on biomechanical engineering. Even if I could find it again, that's probably not practical on my phone.

This reminds me of Ginkgo Bioworks. I went to a talk by Tom Knight a few months ago on their technology; it’s truly impressive, but does need significant human oversight, not to mention the huge amount of communication required to figure out exactly what they want the machines to do!

All I can recommend now is Googling laboratory robotics.

It exists, definitely, but in practice from what I’ve seen it’s mostly autosamplers and other such machines which eliminate repetitive work. The non-repetitive work is much trickier.

[Ares Land]

It really baffles me that everyone here is so blasé about this issue. With this invention, the people in charge have made their intentions clear. They have no further use for us and they will dispose of us without hesitation. Anyone who thinks they will keep us around for sentimental value is incredibly naïve. The battle lines have been drawn between humanity and the machine. Whose side are you on?

Automation is worrying, first because of job disruption, second because automated service really sucks.

It's also largely overrated. There are plenty of jobs that aren't automated nor will be in the foreseeable future. Right now there's a shortage of daycare workers, nurses and tradespeople. (At the very least.) None of these jobs can be replaced by robots with current technology.

We like to dismiss manual jobs, but frankly we shouldn't. One of my friend is an electrician, the other's a carpenter. These are jobs that require a lot of know-how; I'd add that building a house is a great deal more satisfying then, I don't know, writing a really good business report. It doesn't pay that bad either. (Both of my friends own their own companies and business is pretty good.)