To be utterly despondent about AI

It's what's always annoyed me about Star Trek - Captain Picard with his lovely ancestral chateau burbling on about how great it is to live in a post-money utopia. But nobody else ever seems to find it problematic, which I find problematic!

It's difficult to see how an uprising could succeed, even now it would be nigh on impossible to overthrow the tech tycoons and their pet president. I can't see it getting any easier with the rise of autonomous weapons. If we don't start doing something very soon, we may well just be waiting for consciences to kick in and suggest to their owners that destroying humanity for the sake of their bank balances isn't very nice. May be waiting a while though.

And this is exactly what will happen. There will be an uprising, imo.

It's not about men will suffer this more than women
It's the aspects of jobs that will be replaced by AI are the aspects of jobs that have been talked about as being more important and more valuable than the aspects of jobs AI will struggle to replace.
I also think, in this case, it's not fair to talk about Bros skewing this in their favour. In reality some people will do very well out of this. They are mostly men. But jobs like haulage drivers that are majority male are as vulnerable as some majority female jobs. You just have to look at videos from 3 years ago where Peterson et al said that it was because women weren't willing to do difficult jobs like driving or "boring" jobs like coding that the gender gap exists. Well, when the difficult jobs, and the boring jobs and the "critical thinking" jobs are gone then its a machine-flesh gap not a gender gap. And yes, in reality lots of women do coding and will be affected in reality just as there were more women at uni (if that =critical thinking). But the argument even recently was that men were better at/more interested in those jobs and thats why they earned more overall.

I think our entire outlook will change but we can’t imagine it yet. If you took someone from a village in the 1800s and asked them to plan their lives in modern London, there’s a million things that wouldn’t even cross their minds. We’re like that when we try to think about 2050.

I do think about this, not least because I am a freelancer doing a job that in theory, AI could do with its eyes closed. In reality it can’t do my job yet but I’m sure it’ll get there. I don’t worry about it though because to quote Baz Lurhman:

’The real troubles in your life
Are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind
The kind that blindsides you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday’

Yeah, some jobs will be replaced by AI. However it will also create new jobs. The important thing is to have the mindset of owning the technology rather than blindly following it.

It wasn't a criticism of you actually. But boat work is well paid now. If everyone was competing for those jobs (because other jobs are gone) wages are likely to fall. I meant its more of a Tradegy of the Commons situation. In the general, you (or anyone) can see the pitfalls in AI job losses/wage deflation. On an individual level would you (or me or anyone) willingly pay extra to keep wages high. I was talking to someone who was saying how much the high street had declined since they were last there. The last time they had been there was over a year ago because they mostly do online shopping. Well... No wonder the high street declined. But on an individual level it's understandable.
The comment about intelligence was tongue in cheek. It's clearly skilled work. But people have never been paid according to how skilled the work is. Its a mix of market forces and unions and legislation. My point is "Intelligence" is being defined as something that large learning computer models are good at because that makes it easier to define what they do as "Artificial Intelligence". Stuff the computing models are unable to be good at gets redefined as less important/valuable. So the complicated calculations/real time workings involved in making sure a boat floats could be done by AI. A humans input in that process is still needed but is less measurable, and therefore outside the definition of intelligence. So one can argue less pay is needed because now its grunt work.

I agree on the tax. We need to tax corporations more anyway based on where they actually operate to avoid the whole tax haven issue. but any party trying to do that would invite an algorithmic storm on their heads (since the owners of social media platforms are also invested in AI). I think people could see Elon Musk complaining about extra tax for what it is
But endless posts from other people being promoted that criticises everything about a party or country is scary for politicians.

(Edited for grammar mistake)

It's called UBI and people are already working on it

To what end though? Why have humans at all if they don’t work and contribute to the economy? Doesn’t make sense. We are then nothing more than pets

I think we probably should all be terrified having listened to the Godfather of AI talking on a podcast with Stephen Bartlett. He is VERY concerned but said there is nothing we can do. So we’ll have to ride it alongside climate change and impending war with Russia and China.

But I thought there was a move away from tech jobs and instead go into trades - with more women in Uni than men, and fewer women inclined/able to go into trades...and AI far less likely to take over trades work, seems to me that the bros have once again skewed it in their favour? The junior coding roles, testing, etc. in tech will have already gone, or be ready to be gone, which are sadly probably a lot of women.

But what jobs? Presumably lots of people are going to want more than UBI, so there will a lot of competition. You could say we currently have UBI - we have benefits which are supposed to cover the basics. But most people don't want to sit on benefits, they want to get a job and earn more money. But if there was massive competition for the few jobs the machines can't do, they wouldn't pay much. So we'd all find ourselves doing stuff like farming, cutting hair or care work, and getting paid peanuts for it. Whilst the business owners live lives of unimaginable wealth and luxury. Pretty much like before the Industrial Revolution...

How what?

the industrial revolution INTRODUCED child labour in factories, it didn’t end it. Before that, children worked on farms and in the home etc, but children being herded down mines and into factories was a product of the industrial revolution.

You be a universal basic income so you don’t need to worry about covering the basics. If you want more than that, you train to do something you want to do, and monetise it by starting your own business or working in one of the millions of jobs AI doesn’t do.

Yes. Manual work, anything that requires you to use your hands, caring roles etc will all be safe.

We are already thinking about how to advise our year 8 child on picking options at GCSE because of the changes up ahead.

They said it about the printing press. And the weaving loom. The advent of factories. The mechanisation of factories. The computer.

It never happened, it never will. Humans will fuck up the planted long before they invent enough stuff to replace workers.

And how would basic income work? Would we all have enough to go on holiday whenever we wanted? What if everybody who wanted to go on holiday suddenly had the time and money to go on holiday; there would be far too many people and flights, hotels, transport etc couldn't cope. So how will you choose whose turn it is to go on holiday, and where they can go? Same with restaurants, same with theatre etc.

What if I decided I wanted something more. Say for example when all the jobs go and I'm put on UBI, I'm living in a crummy little flat. Maybe I want to live in a nice big house with a nice big garden. Let's say that you have a nice big house with a nice big garden, because that's what you were in when money became obsolete. How do I buy your house, or one like it, if I can't earn any money? How can I ever become as wealthy as you if I can't get a job? Surely what has to happen is that all the people who are rich when the switch comes keep all their wealth, and nobody else can ever accumulate any at all. Sounds great...

I am one of these. We are LIVID that our books were used to 'train' AI in how to better be able to mimic writing books to do us out of a job. We were given no recompense, or warning. We were just told 'tough'.

Having seen some AI-written content though, I am not unduly worried just yet, as AI can't yet mimic convincing human growth and character development, but it is only a matter of time, since it scraped content from hundreds of thousands of books.

At the moment, AI is the bane of my life at work.The software I use has added loads of AI functions that don't even work and it is a total faff to turn them off. More like Artificial Bullshit and Stupidity.

AI will decimate employment. I employ juniors and the tedious grunt work of research and putting information together is already reducing their utility in a significant manner. It will only get worse in my view.

I am very happy that my taxes go towards basic income. I am well off now but I grew up on a council estate and I don't want to see anybody struggle.

I know you're assuming that boat work is a low paid job but I can assurey you it is not. I small 100 litre fuel tank will cost you around 600 just to have made, fitting it probably a few thousand. I used to do a lot of the work myself as I enjoy it but I've been too busy this time. There's also the fees when it goes onto the dock. It's extremely expensive nobody is being ripped off. Of course it involves intelligence and I'm saddened that you don't realise the engineering that goes into even simple undertakings when the thing has to be balanced and float. Do you somehow think I get a discount because I'm well off? I have not implicated that anybody should be paid. As said if you read my whole post, corporations that use ai to replace people should be forced to pay more than that persons job would have generated in tax. The money that they save on wages by using ai would mean they could certainly afford it. This would pat the shortfall for reduancies related to ai and make something like a universal basic income possible.

Yep. Such shit, anodyne crap which people are using because it's cheap.

It’s a massive blow to environmentalism, just as we were starting to gain real traction. AI needs a stable power grid which just isn’t possible without fossil fuels. Up to now big tech has been pro- renewables, albeit greenwashing their consumption, but as a large and influential economic group they were driving change. I think this will be the biggest setback.

I’m baffled and a little suspicious about why this latest effort has been marketed and accepted as “artificial intelligence” when it continues to fall short of the standards set for decades. In the past, with each advance, we looked and said “impressive, but that’s just programming, not intelligence”. These are impressive language processing models, but they still fall short of any reasonable standard of intelligence. So why are we being manipulated to accept it as such?

I find myself increasingly glad I'm in my fifties with retirement in my sights, albeit several years away yet. If I had 20+ working years ahead of me I would be very concerned. As it is I should be able to coast towards retirement in a job that can't be done by AI (currently). And there will probably still be a state pension then. And I'll have shuffled off this mortal coil by the time the worst effects of climate change hit.