OT: Hurricanes Lounge XL. 99 Luftballons

[Navin R Slavin]

I hate to sound like a luddite, but these AI systems are going to put so many out of a job in such a short amount of time that the biggest effect they may have is societal upheaval. It could get very ugly.

The automation sales pitch is always the same: "automation doesn't put people out of work, it just moves people to higher leverage work." In my experience, that's largely true.

The amount of work that society can accomplish is massive, and human capacity is only ever a small percentage of the theoretical work that could be done. So long as humans are *actually* more capable of reasoning than computers are, humans will "move up the stack" to more creative work that is unlocked by automation tools. This has been true throughout human history, and I think will continue to be true for some time yet.

Someday we may get to a point where AI systems can actually replace humans entirely, and when that happens, we'd better hope that we've trained them well and have universal basic income in place.

 

[MinJaBen]

The automation sales pitch is always the same: "automation doesn't put people out of work, it just moves people to higher leverage work." In my experience, that's largely true.

The amount of work that society can accomplish is massive, and human capacity is only ever a small percentage of the theoretical work that could be done. So long as humans are *actually* more capable of reasoning than computers are, humans will "move up the stack" to more creative work that is unlocked by automation tools. This has been true throughout human history, and I think will continue to be true for some time yet.

Someday we may get to a point where AI systems can actually replace humans entirely, and when that happens, we'd better hope that we've trained them well and have universal basic income in place.

Yeah, sure. The next guy/gal will not get trained to do the jobs that tech displaces, so they won't be hurt much by newer technologies. But the worker already in place in those industries/jobs has to pivot. That can work as well if there is some time as the new technologies are ramped up. But the key is time. These AI displacements could be in a blink of the eye compared to previous disruptions. Companies won't have to buy equipment which tends to slow things down. They will subscribe to OpenAI or whoever and it could happen tomorrow. And when 10 million people are suddenly out of work looking to feed their families and get retrained, that will have an effect. It isn't the change that is the problem with AI, it is the suddenness of the change that could be the real problem. It is not like democracies around the world are super stable at the moment.

 

[Deon Thompson]

It already knows US military doctrine. I asked it to pretend it was Robert E Lee before the Battle of Gettysburg and identify his Priority Intelligence Requirements, which it did flawlessly (I forget if I posted those here already) and then to switch roles to his intelligence officer and answer those requirements, which it did a fairly good job. It could straight up eliminate the need for an S-2 section eventually.

I wanna read those if you've posted em! My great-uncle died at Gettysburg. Did his fake intelligence officer say that Jeb Stuart was an overrated glory-hunting clown?

 

[Navin R Slavin]

Yeah, sure. The next guy/gal will not get trained to do the jobs that tech displaces, so they won't be hurt much by newer technologies. But the worker already in place in those industries/jobs has to pivot. That can work as well if there is some time as the new technologies are ramped up. But the key is time. These AI displacements could be in a blink of the eye compared to previous disruptions. Companies won't have to buy equipment which tends to slow things down. They will subscribe to OpenAI or whoever and it could happen tomorrow. And when 10 million people are suddenly out of work looking to feed their families and get retrained, that will have an effect. It isn't the change that is the problem with AI, it is the suddenness of the change that could be the real problem. It is not like democracies around the world are super stable at the moment.

I just don't see it. The vast majority of businesses don't just cut employees gratuitously if they're reasonably profitable, because cutting employees is an incredibly painful process. Most companies are profitable with a fair amount of productivity loss.

You can put businesses into three categories:

1. The business that has no reason to do ChatGPT;

2. The business that is profitable and turns to ChatGPT to improve margins;

3. The business that is unprofitable and turns to ChatGPT to lower headcount.

Business 1 will never use ChatGPT. Maybe they are in a category that can't benefit much from ChatGPT; maybe they're just tech averse and will be outcompeted at some point.

Business 2 will first ask current employees to learn to leverage ChatGPT. If it becomes clear that ChatGPT has value, employees will have plenty of time to get up to speed on maximizing its value to the company, thereby potentially extending their margins because they have a workforce that rapidly adds value. Maybe at some point in the future competitive pressure to use ChatGPT ramps up sufficiently that they have to trim margins to compete and cut some fat, but this is rarely a quick process.

Business 3 is already in trouble and likely shedding employees anyway, and ChatGPT may or may not allow those business to pivot successfully.

Software has been obsoleting categories of jobs for years, and still somehow there's always a shortage of skilled workers, and good plumbers continue to make six figures.

I wanna read those if you've posted em! My great-uncle died at Gettysburg. Did his fake intelligence officer say that Jeb Stuart was an overrated glory-hunting clown?

If someone said that on Reddit once, then yes, probably.

 

[Boom Boom Apathy]

I hate to sound like a luddite, but these AI systems are going to put so many out of a job in such a short amount of time that the biggest effect they may have is societal upheaval. It could get very ugly.

People have been saying the same thing since the invention of the wheel (or so I'm told). Seriously though, farm machinery, automobile, robotics, computers, computer automation, etc... Maybe you are right this is the one that finally causes the social upheaval that people have lamented about technology for ages, but I'll believe it when I see it.

 

[Boom Boom Apathy]

My idea is turn it loose on all military manuals, and have it be able to answer stuff like "Here is a picture of a bridge we'd like to blow up- how much explosives do I need and where to place them?"

A few years ago when I was doing a whirlwind tour through multiple southern states to visit friends and relatives, I stopped in Vicksburg MS on the way back to visit with a cousin. As we sat around with pizza and beer, he was talking about the various supercomputers he uses daily in his job. I didn't really know what he did but he told me that he was a civilian employee of the Army and his job was to do extensive modeling of all ground explosions and I presumed it was for the exact reason you stated above.

 

[tarheelhockey]

The automation sales pitch is always the same: "automation doesn't put people out of work, it just moves people to higher leverage work." In my experience, that's largely true.

The amount of work that society can accomplish is massive, and human capacity is only ever a small percentage of the theoretical work that could be done. So long as humans are *actually* more capable of reasoning than computers are, humans will "move up the stack" to more creative work that is unlocked by automation tools. This has been true throughout human history, and I think will continue to be true for some time yet.

Someday we may get to a point where AI systems can actually replace humans entirely, and when that happens, we'd better hope that we've trained them well and have universal basic income in place.

You may be right and I certainly hope you are.

But I think there's very good reason to believe there's an upper limit to productive human work, at which point humans will be surpassed by AI in the same way that robots have surpassed most of our physical labor (including, nowadays, things like piloting a vehicle or delivering food items).

From a white collar standpoint, what can a human really productively do better than an advanced AI? Yes we can move up the stack to more creative work, but so can AI. What part of that race are we actually winning? At some point we run into the upper limit of human ability for anything other than the "personal touch", which even then is of dubious value compared to the electronic competition.

More importantly, there's a reason for that "stack" to exist. Maybe 1 out of 10 employees is actually capable of moving up. What happens to the other 9? At some point there is an endgame where there is simply not a productive job to be done, and the person is stuck outside the labor system. We have seen this happen within a manageable scale before (e.g. mass layoffs of factory workers who never found good work again) but the endgame is now in sight where this will impact an un-manageable number of people.

UBI may be too simple of an answer, but something like that surely seems to be on the horizon. When there are far more people than productive jobs, it follows that some portion of the population (or, more to the point, a fraction of their time) will have to be sustained unproductively. In an ideal world, perhaps that simply translates to people generally working less per capita, which would reduce employment pressure. Again we have already seen this happen in the transition from an industrial to a post-industrial workforce, with working hours dropping from historic highs in the developed nations. UBI, or some similar alternative, would be the next logical step along that path.

 

[Navin R Slavin]

More importantly, there's a reason for that "stack" to exist. Maybe 1 out of 10 employees is actually capable of moving up. What happens to the other 9? At some point there is an endgame where there is simply not a productive job to be done, and the person is stuck outside the labor system. We have seen this happen within a manageable scale before (e.g. mass layoffs of factory workers who never found good work again) but the endgame is now in sight where this will impact an un-manageable number of people.

I think you dramatically underestimate humans.

Humans are the cheapest and most powerful multifunction machine ever devised. We are a long long LONG way away from a robot that can come in and clean your house as well as a conscientious maid. And even when that day arrives, there will always be reasons to prefer some humans. The days of Organic Nonrobot Certified versions of everything will arrive right when we realize all the shit about robots that we hate.

Here's a question to consider: what is value?

We are well past the point at which automation could more than provide "basic living needs" for every person on the planet, were those tools properly harnessed. We will continue to progress past that point.

But still humans desire more and different things, so humans devise more and different things, and somehow other humans "value" them.

What is a "content creator"? Most content is objectively garbage to most people, and yet content continues to proliferate. People are always interested in original stories from other humans that speak to their common humanity.

No one "needs" new hairstyles. No one "needs" a bidet. No one "needs" Fortnite. No one "needs" Facebook. No one "needs" hot dog casserole. But these things have value, because people have decided that they have value.

There will never be an endgame where we decide that there's "no productive work to be done" because we will, if necessary, simply change the conception of "productive work" to allow room for ourselves.

 

[NotOpie]

I hate to sound like a luddite, but these AI systems are going to put so many out of a job in such a short amount of time that the biggest effect they may have is societal upheaval. It could get very ugly.

The automation sales pitch is always the same: "automation doesn't put people out of work, it just moves people to higher leverage work." In my experience, that's largely true.

The amount of work that society can accomplish is massive, and human capacity is only ever a small percentage of the theoretical work that could be done. So long as humans are *actually* more capable of reasoning than computers are, humans will "move up the stack" to more creative work that is unlocked by automation tools. This has been true throughout human history, and I think will continue to be true for some time yet.

Someday we may get to a point where AI systems can actually replace humans entirely, and when that happens, we'd better hope that we've trained them well and have universal basic income in place.

Mark Andreessen on "Why AI won't cause Unemployment"

People have been saying the same thing since the invention of the wheel (or so I'm told).

I'm pretty certain you witnessed it first-hand....I know because I saw you there....[old guy joke]

 

[tarheelhockey]

We are a long long LONG way away from a robot that can come in and clean your house as well as a conscientious maid.

Are we really that far away? One lifetime ago, "conscientious maid" was a full-time, typically live-in profession which involved manual labor in all of the functions of a household. In that single lifetime, we've automated everything from cooking to dishwashing, laundry to sweeping. The temperature of a home can be changed at the push of a button, the lighting of a home runs on an automated schedule, home security is completely remote. Hell, even grocery shopping and delivery can be done from one's couch with zero labor. The overall organization of a home, everything from to-do lists to bank transactions, can be done almost entirely from a smartphone.

So what is a "conscientious maid" in the modern context? Certainly a lot less than it was as the turn of the 20th century. At this point it's really just someone to scrub the hard-to-reach places, and to do a bit of light interior design to help brighten up the place. Instead of a full-time job it's more like a couple of hours every couple of weeks. How many maids are there in 2023 compared to 1923?

It's a poignant example because housekeeping used to be an actual profession, with a fair amount of pride involved for those who did it as their life's work (and certainly for the generations of women who were supposedly outside the workforce while homemaking). Today it's marginal work which most people do on their own during their "free" time, and some can afford to outsource. All of that was the effect of simple automation, not AI.

Now think forward to the next step in this process... what happens when instead of machines and sensors which react to our needs, we have an in-home AI which actively anticipates and responds to us? How much less work is there to be done when the AI is fully running our home, sending a Roomba to sweep up cracker crumbs before we notice it, or prompting the automated lawnmower to get started the day after a heavy rain? Those traditional labor roles are already disappearing bit-by-bit. With AI it will be more like chunk-by-chunk.

And even when that day arrives, there will always be reasons to prefer some humans. The days of Organic Nonrobot Certified versions of everything will arrive right when we realize all the shit about robots that we hate.

Here's a question to consider: what is value?

We are well past the point at which automation could more than provide "basic living needs" for every person on the planet, were those tools properly harnessed. We will continue to progress past that point.

But still humans desire more and different things, so humans devise more and different things, and somehow other humans "value" them.

What is a "content creator"? Most content is objectively garbage to most people, and yet content continues to proliferate. People are always interested in original stories from other humans that speak to their common humanity.

No one "needs" new hairstyles. No one "needs" a bidet. No one "needs" Fortnite. No one "needs" Facebook. No one "needs" hot dog casserole. But these things have value, because people have decided that they have value.

There will never be an endgame where we decide that there's "no productive work to be done" because we will, if necessary, simply change the conception of "productive work" to allow room for ourselves.

I'm sure that will indeed happen in the grand scheme of things, but the question is what kind of catastrophic middle-phase has to occur first? It's not like one day we say "OK folks, there's no longer any need for a banking industry... all you finance folks need to find new work" and the next day those people are all happy and healthy in their new jobs as TikTok influencers. There will be an entire generation of finance bros in a stark raving panic about their future, and that doesn't get solved by telling them they need to learn to code. Something has to be done with those people.

This is the sort of thing that destabilizes an entire society. Arguably the political shocks of the past several years are closely tied to nascent phase of this process, which has already hit blue-collar workers first and hardest. When the white collar economy gets pulled into the vortex, it's kind of hard to predict what the reaction will look like, but if history is any indication the bottom line is that people will act badly and do things their descendants aren't terribly proud of.

 

[LostInaLostWorld]

GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models

Tyna Eloundou, Sam Manning, Pamela Mishkin, Daniel Rock Abstract

We investigate the potential implications of Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) models and related technologies on the U.S. labor market. Using a new rubric, we assess occupations based on their correspondence with GPT capabilities, incorporating both human expertise and classifications from GPT-4.

Our findings indicate that approximately 80% of the U.S. workforce could have at least 10% of their work tasks affected by the introduction of GPTs, while around 19% of workers may see at least 50% of their tasks impacted. The influence spans all wage levels, with higher-income jobs potentially facing greater exposure. Notably, the impact is not limited to industries with higher recent productivity growth.

We conclude that Generative Pre-trained Transformers exhibit characteristics of general-purpose technologies (GPTs), suggesting that as these models could have notable economic, social, and policy implications.

link: [2303.10130] GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models

 

[Negan4Coach]

Possible, but more likely they're still in growth mode and haven't transitioned their business model yet. I don't think they were expect ChatGPT to blow up like it did; they only managed to get an hourly pricing model together last month. And besides, they probably don't need sales right now because they're adding tons of paid daily users without a sales force.

In the case of DoD, they may never sell directly to them. There are probably multiple FedRAMP compliant resellers banging down OpenAI's door for partner work. I might expect OpenAI to build a partner enablement org before they build a direct sales org anyway.

In fact, in looking a bit more closely, Bain announced a services partnership with them last month:

Bain & Company announces services alliance with OpenAI to help enterprise clients identify and realize the full potential and maximum value of AI

Global partnership combines the power of OpenAI’s industry-leading AI technology advancements with Bain’s world-renowned capabilities in strategy and digital application delivery; The Coca-Cola Company announced as the first company to engage with the alliance

www.bain.com

No need for FedRAMP right away. I'd bring that shit on-prem, put it on SIPR and JWICS. Once you get a toe-hold, get a sponsor for the FedRamp piece if they want to use it on the dirty commercial cloud.

I wanna read those if you've posted em! My great-uncle died at Gettysburg. Did his fake intelligence officer say that Jeb Stuart was an overrated glory-hunting clown?

I guess I didn't post those here- I'll try to find the screenshots. They just nuked all the historical conversations on the thing so can't pull them up directly.

Yeah it would have been interesting to see what would have happened if Stuart actually did his job prior to that battle. You ever go there? Took my kids on a horseback tour of it couple years ago- they really dug it.

You may be right and I certainly hope you are.

But I think there's very good reason to believe there's an upper limit to productive human work, at which point humans will be surpassed by AI in the same way that robots have surpassed most of our physical labor (including, nowadays, things like piloting a vehicle or delivering food items).

From a white collar standpoint, what can a human really productively do better than an advanced AI? Yes we can move up the stack to more creative work, but so can AI. What part of that race are we actually winning? At some point we run into the upper limit of human ability for anything other than the "personal touch", which even then is of dubious value compared to the electronic competition.

More importantly, there's a reason for that "stack" to exist. Maybe 1 out of 10 employees is actually capable of moving up. What happens to the other 9? At some point there is an endgame where there is simply not a productive job to be done, and the person is stuck outside the labor system. We have seen this happen within a manageable scale before (e.g. mass layoffs of factory workers who never found good work again) but the endgame is now in sight where this will impact an un-manageable number of people.

UBI may be too simple of an answer, but something like that surely seems to be on the horizon. When there are far more people than productive jobs, it follows that some portion of the population (or, more to the point, a fraction of their time) will have to be sustained unproductively. In an ideal world, perhaps that simply translates to people generally working less per capita, which would reduce employment pressure. Again we have already seen this happen in the transition from an industrial to a post-industrial workforce, with working hours dropping from historic highs in the developed nations. UBI, or some similar alternative, would be the next logical step along that path.

Yikes. The UBI may be unavoidable one day (hopefully funded solely by a "robot tax") but the last time we paid everybody to sit at home and do nothing it didn't work out so great.

I tend to think humans are really good at inventing new crap to do when the old stuff goes away. It may just be that AI merely radically increases the productivity of your run of the mill white collar worker, and instead of cutting back workforce to fit productivity...they just expand productivity as much as possible.

It may also create all kinds of mind numbing bullshit bureaucratic jobs like "AI compliance officer" and "AI ethics professional"

But I also think if they don't get a handle on this shit most rickey-tick this could get real ugly real fast, especially considering how unstable society is already.

I think you dramatically underestimate humans.

Humans are the cheapest and most powerful multifunction machine ever devised. We are a long long LONG way away from a robot that can come in and clean your house as well as a conscientious maid. And even when that day arrives, there will always be reasons to prefer some humans. The days of Organic Nonrobot Certified versions of everything will arrive right when we realize all the shit about robots that we hate.

Here's a question to consider: what is value?

We are well past the point at which automation could more than provide "basic living needs" for every person on the planet, were those tools properly harnessed. We will continue to progress past that point.

But still humans desire more and different things, so humans devise more and different things, and somehow other humans "value" them.

What is a "content creator"? Most content is objectively garbage to most people, and yet content continues to proliferate. People are always interested in original stories from other humans that speak to their common humanity.

No one "needs" new hairstyles. No one "needs" a bidet. No one "needs" Fortnite. No one "needs" Facebook. No one "needs" hot dog casserole. But these things have value, because people have decided that they have value.

There will never be an endgame where we decide that there's "no productive work to be done" because we will, if necessary, simply change the conception of "productive work" to allow room for ourselves.

LOL, I never knew I "needed" a bidet until I finally got one and now I am like "wow I really needed this damn thing a long time ago". Its kind of barbaric to think that we just use paper to smear it around when you could just have a jet of water!

Well on the upside- maybe there will be enough electricians and HVAC guys and carpenters soon that I don't have to wait for weeks to get crap fixed like has been happening for the last decade.

 

[Svechhammer]

Russian pop star who criticized Putin found dead after drowning

But yes, remind me again why we should demand Russian players to speak out against the war in order to play in the NHL....

 

[Anton Dubinchuk]

LOL, I never knew I "needed" a bidet until I finally got one and now I am like "wow I really needed this damn thing a long time ago". Its kind of barbaric to think that we just use paper to smear it around when you could just have a jet of water!

I started realizing that when I had a kid and started changing diapers. Like, if you got a bit of poop on your hand, would you just walk over to the kitchen, grab a paper towel, and wipe it off and wait until the next time you would've naturally washed your hands to actually use soap and water? Nope. Yet for some reason that's what we do to our butts. While I don't have a bidet I do like the flushable wet wipes now.

 

[MrazeksVengeance]

Russian pop star who criticized Putin found dead after drowning

But yes, remind me again why we should demand Russian players to speak out against the war in order to play in the NHL....

I just want them to shut up.

Given how strong is my opinion on the subject, I think that is a fair request.

 

[Anton Dubinchuk]

Ineloquent rambling alert:

I went to this link: Historical US Unemployment Rate by Year

I noticed that none of the "Notable Events" impacting the unemployment rate included things like "everyone had to start using computers and a bunch of old people couldn't keep up so they were fired." Employments rates have hovered back and forth around the same rates forever, even when we had so little automation that it was someone's job to run down the hall to hand a handwritten note from one person to another.

Generally speaking, technology makes our lives easier. When we find easier ways to do things, we get to go work on other things. Technology props the human part of work up the value chain. There's lots and lots of ways in which we've made technological advances that could have been feared to put people out of jobs, but have ended up just fine. Anecdotally, a given fast food restaurant seems to me to need the same staff/shift size as it did 20 years ago. Been in a Chick-fil-A lately? They've embraced technology more than almost any other QSR, and they still have like 20 folks behind the counter buzzing around like bees to make it all work. Fast food restaurants have more technology than many ever thought necessary, and yet the worker shortage is still causing early closures, limited menus, etc. Humans are still needed.

It'll enable more things than it "removes." While of course we have to be careful introducing any new technology, there's a very real probability that this ends up being more humanizing to folks in the workforce. A lot of my anecdotes are from the "white collar" perspective, but for example, take one of these hoity toity consulting firms where you have to "cut your teeth" by working 18 hour days putting together slide decks and collating research for bigger partners to come in and steal credit for. If GPT can get that work to the point that it's an hour instead of 18 hours, do you think those firms are suddenly going to hire less college grads? Nope. Because many advancements have already made that easier (like "the Internet") and it hasn't happened thus far. I think they'll divert them to something where they can better use their smarts to help the company and provide value. Or, more likely, they'll have them collate 18 presentations in 18 hours instead of 1 presentation, and make 18x sales pitches than they usually do... and make 18x the money, help their customers 18x as much, which in turn provides 18x to the economy, etc.

We make fun of "AI compliance officer" and whatnot (and that sounds like a brutally boring job to me personally). But also... there are more than 4.4m software developers in the US. A job that virtually didn't exist 70 years ago. People adapt to their surroundings. "Maybe we'll get to the point where AI controls everything and at that point we need UBI." Nonsense (IMO). Define "everything." "Everything" in 1950 was like... nothing compared to today. We like to work. We will find more things to work on. Someone has to direct the AI in the direction of human value/interests. We are so far removed from a completely automated economy at this point it's only a thought experiment. Fine, we don't have housekeepers as often because we have Roombas. Who builds the Roombas? Oh, ok, now it's 2045 and we've figured out a way for AI to completely build the Roombas without humans. Where does it get the raw material? Etc. Oh cool, it's 2075 and now the mining industry is completely automated? Good thing the entire world has ascended to a level of technological wizardry that instead of software developers there are 4.4m people doing a job that I can't even make up for purposes of an example right now because it's so foreign to our current sensibilities. The world has a lot for people to work on. Technology/AI just helps to redefine (forgive the term) the "bitch work" and move human actions up the value chain.



As a related aside, we talk about the economy in "era-adjusted" terms and focus a lot on equity (which is a worthy focus), but in absolute terms things like this make everyone's lives better. A lower-middle class citizen in the US today might as well be George Jetson to a rich guy in 1970 in a lot of ways. To use the hockey analogy, we focus a lot on comparing whether Alexander Ovechkin is "better" than Gordie Howe, without acknowledging that if you actually put them on the ice together Ovechkin would score 824 goals per game.

 

[Derailed75]

I started realizing that when I had a kid and started changing diapers. Like, if you got a bit of poop on your hand, would you just walk over to the kitchen, grab a paper towel, and wipe it off and wait until the next time you would've naturally washed your hands to actually use soap and water? Nope. Yet for some reason that's what we do to our butts. While I don't have a bidet I do like the flushable wet wipes now.

We thats because most people don't go but to mouth, to be fair

 

[Anton Dubinchuk]

We thats because most people don't go but to mouth, to be fair

I’d want to use a wet paper towel, not a dry one, if I got poop on my leg, too. Lol.

 

[raynman]

We thats because most people don't go but to mouth, to be fair

#canesafterdark

 

[MinJaBen]

I started realizing that when I had a kid and started changing diapers. Like, if you got a bit of poop on your hand, would you just walk over to the kitchen, grab a paper towel, and wipe it off and wait until the next time you would've naturally washed your hands to actually use soap and water? Nope. Yet for some reason that's what we do to our butts. While I don't have a bidet I do like the flushable wet wipes now.

Well, until the current generation came along, our butts were covered by clothing and we weren't licking them, so it was relatively hygenic compared to your hand example. Then millennials came along and started licking the butts...


Edit: @Derailed75 beat me to it.

 

[MinJaBen]

Ineloquent rambling alert:

I went to this link: Historical US Unemployment Rate by Year

I noticed that none of the "Notable Events" impacting the unemployment rate included things like "everyone had to start using computers and a bunch of old people couldn't keep up so they were fired." Employments rates have hovered back and forth around the same rates forever, even when we had so little automation that it was someone's job to run down the hall to hand a handwritten note from one person to another.

Generally speaking, technology makes our lives easier. When we find easier ways to do things, we get to go work on other things. Technology props the human part of work up the value chain. There's lots and lots of ways in which we've made technological advances that could have been feared to put people out of jobs, but have ended up just fine. Anecdotally, a given fast food restaurant seems to me to need the same staff/shift size as it did 20 years ago. Been in a Chick-fil-A lately? They've embraced technology more than almost any other QSR, and they still have like 20 folks behind the counter buzzing around like bees to make it all work. Fast food restaurants have more technology than many ever thought necessary, and yet the worker shortage is still causing early closures, limited menus, etc. Humans are still needed.

It'll enable more things than it "removes." While of course we have to be careful introducing any new technology, there's a very real probability that this ends up being more humanizing to folks in the workforce. A lot of my anecdotes are from the "white collar" perspective, but for example, take one of these hoity toity consulting firms where you have to "cut your teeth" by working 18 hour days putting together slide decks and collating research for bigger partners to come in and steal credit for. If GPT can get that work to the point that it's an hour instead of 18 hours, do you think those firms are suddenly going to hire less college grads? Nope. Because many advancements have already made that easier (like "the Internet") and it hasn't happened thus far. I think they'll divert them to something where they can better use their smarts to help the company and provide value. Or, more likely, they'll have them collate 18 presentations in 18 hours instead of 1 presentation, and make 18x sales pitches than they usually do... and make 18x the money, help their customers 18x as much, which in turn provides 18x to the economy, etc.

We make fun of "AI compliance officer" and whatnot (and that sounds like a brutally boring job to me personally). But also... there are more than 4.4m software developers in the US. A job that virtually didn't exist 70 years ago. People adapt to their surroundings. "Maybe we'll get to the point where AI controls everything and at that point we need UBI." Nonsense (IMO). Define "everything." "Everything" in 1950 was like... nothing compared to today. We like to work. We will find more things to work on. Someone has to direct the AI in the direction of human value/interests. We are so far removed from a completely automated economy at this point it's only a thought experiment. Fine, we don't have housekeepers as often because we have Roombas. Who builds the Roombas? Oh, ok, now it's 2045 and we've figured out a way for AI to completely build the Roombas without humans. Where does it get the raw material? Etc. Oh cool, it's 2075 and now the mining industry is completely automated? Good thing the entire world has ascended to a level of technological wizardry that instead of software developers there are 4.4m people doing a job that I can't even make up for purposes of an example right now because it's so foreign to our current sensibilities. The world has a lot for people to work on. Technology/AI just helps to redefine (forgive the term) the "bitch work" and move human actions up the value chain.



As a related aside, we talk about the economy in "era-adjusted" terms and focus a lot on equity (which is a worthy focus), but in absolute terms things like this make everyone's lives better. A lower-middle class citizen in the US today might as well be George Jetson to a rich guy in 1970 in a lot of ways. To use the hockey analogy, we focus a lot on comparing whether Alexander Ovechkin is "better" than Gordie Howe, without acknowledging that if you actually put them on the ice together Ovechkin would score 824 goals per game.

How many of those previous examples didn't require capital investments to make happen and could be implemented almost immediately? Anybody with a browser (that's everybody) can use it right now with a small fee. Cars, assembly lines, computers, internet....none of those examples compare to the rapidity of the change that we could see.

 

[Navin R Slavin]

So what is a "conscientious maid" in the modern context? Certainly a lot less than it was as the turn of the 20th century. At this point it's really just someone to scrub the hard-to-reach places, and to do a bit of light interior design to help brighten up the place. Instead of a full-time job it's more like a couple of hours every couple of weeks. How many maids are there in 2023 compared to 1923?

It's a poignant example because housekeeping used to be an actual profession, with a fair amount of pride involved for those who did it as their life's work (and certainly for the generations of women who were supposedly outside the workforce while homemaking). Today it's marginal work which most people do on their own during their "free" time, and some can afford to outsource. All of that was the effect of simple automation, not AI.

This assertion both dramatically undervalues the work that current maid services do, and romanticizes the work that previous generations of maids did.

Being a maid in the olden days was backbreaking work, and was a crystal clear dividing line of class (and frequently race). Sure, people took pride in being maids, because people always take pride in the jobs they do, but did they want their children to be maids? They absolutely did not; they wanted their kids to go to college.

Being a maid now is still hard work, but it's also incredibly effective when done by professionals with the right tools and knowledge, and has been democratized to the point that anybody who can afford $50 a week can benefit from maid services. And it's as easy as going to an app or a website, putting in your credit card info, and boom, the cleaning service is there the next day. That's why the home cleaning services industry continues to grow as a segment.

Further, ambitious cleaning folk can and do start their own franchises and earn a very good living. By the way, that's what business usually is: the folks who want to earn more money take on the risks and headaches of running a business that provides employment to others. For example: The Financial Breakdown of a The Maids Franchise – Franchise Theory

 

[Navin R Slavin]

As a related aside, we talk about the economy in "era-adjusted" terms and focus a lot on equity (which is a worthy focus), but in absolute terms things like this make everyone's lives better. A lower-middle class citizen in the US today might as well be George Jetson to a rich guy in 1970 in a lot of ways.

 

[Anton Dubinchuk]

"How quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only 10 seconds ago..." my jaded brain when I started thinking of what people will consider a human necessity as a part of "UBI" while simultaneously lamenting how AI has ruined everything.

 

[Anton Dubinchuk]

How many of those previous examples didn't require capital investments to make happen and could be implemented almost immediately? Anybody with a browser (that's everybody) can use it right now with a small fee. Cars, assembly lines, computers, internet....none of those examples compare to the rapidity of the change that we could see.

I think you're underselling the investment not just of capital but also just of inertia it's gonna take to adopt this stuff at a larger, corporate level. It could be rapid changes... we're also dealing with a brand new thing that corporations weren't planning on doing this year. RPA as an accelerator has by and large been a failure. This is like RPA 8.0, but it's still got a lot of limitations and companies won't let the unknown of those limitations impact their business. We're going to see a lot of internal POCs, a lot of dipping the toe in the water... not a lot that is customer-facing for quite awhile and not a lot that impact critical internal systems either. It'll start by just being an accelerator. Help your dev write a line of code that's stumping them. An optional content management/search functionality to help you find that one document on your company's intranet that you just can't find. Plug-ins to Office 365 to accelerate tasks that you're still very much in control of. There won't be this big cutover overnight.