To be utterly despondent about AI

In news today 17,000 jobs gone at Amazon due to AI

Even if any of this magic was possible (it’s not, it’s marketing), we won’t have the energy for it. Partly because of their massive use of it.

Just came here to post that exact same link. What the FUCK, who are these fucking nutters?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/28/patrick-gelsinger-christian-ai-gloo-silicon-valley

What could possibly go wrong? 😬

And people wonder why some of us are worried.....

The real issue is if/when ‘it’ becomes self aware & that’s what, conservatively 100 years in future?

@robinibor

Totally agree. No one is safe.

Governments are not slow at all - it is the new arms race. No country will want to fall behind.

The impact of jobs is already being felt. Young people are struggling to find jobs and at present are probably being helped out by their parents more than they were 10/ 20 years ago. It will only take a small step in that direction to have a serious impact on jobs because people will stop using the service industries etc due to lack of income. Those businesses will fold and then people will scrabble for the remaining jobs in other sectors which will also continue being replaced by AI.

No one is safe and the impact will hit everyone as pay will plummet due to over supply of the workforce.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/25/ai-models-may-be-developing-their-own-survival-drive-researchers-say

Umm...... 😳

It’s not going to actually replace many people or jobs.

AI absolutely will replace jobs. Huge numbers of jobs.

It's already happening.

As I understand things, that'll depend on many factors:
What human-led directions it goes in;
What self-led directions it goes in;
Whether they crack the affordable quantum computing challenge;
How much power is available;
Whether governments will throttle its usage.

And a lot more besides, I'm sure. There are so many considerations to weigh up, and governments are notoriously slow to take action on developing phenomena. They're also terrible at co-operating, which would likely be required for any sort of managed evolution.

It's tempting to imagine AI could solve the problems of power, computing, management of its own development and constructive social/economic strategies. But I don't see that happening.

It is very possible that the world will run out of ideas - seriously! Even the most brilliant AIs reshuffle pre-existing work, they don't originate. Before long, all the work available for reshuffling will be the work of AIs, which are already derivative. With things getting stale, human opportunities could arise in doing fresh things in original ways, purely to generate new seeds for AI. That would be weird.

What sort of timescale are we looking at? What will its capabilities be, conservatively, in 20 years?

Well increasingly no longer, not fully.

They used to pay musicians to do advert music & similar - no longer.

It will evolve, therein the danger.

I don't like the way it is, a threat to the creativity of artists. My son is a musician who writes his own songs and music but now anyone can write a few words, type them in and a song is written for them.

Duplicate

I have been involved in an AI related project at work in the last few weeks. It’s the first time I’ve taken it seriously.

i have learned a ton in the last few weeks about how to use it effectively. I’m not really scared of it anymore, instead I see how it will enable me to do a better job. I want to make sure I have up to date skills on how to use it so I’m not one of the ones left behind.

It’s not going to actually replace many people or jobs. It is going to mean 1 person can do what might today be considered 2 or 3 or more people’s jobs. In the short term that will cause reallocations of people from 1 job to a different one. That will be bumpy, but it’s not going to mean lots of people aren’t working, it’s going to improve productivity.

I have a shorthand definition of AI-

Think of it like a baby with near perfect language skills and access to everything on the internet.

It can't think, it doesn’t know anything, it doesn’t understand anything. But if you ask it a clear, well structured query it can give you extremely detailed answers. You still have to be the one figuring out what to ask it and whether the answer makes sense.

Learn to use it well and you will have nothing to worry about.

It’s taken 40 years (?) to go from the first mobile phone to the Iphones in our pocket. How long for this evolution & what will be the tangible changes in 40 or 50 years. Is this the ‘Great Filter’?

I don’t think humans can imagine the consequences of AI.

Will there be a need to educate the population? Probably not. We will just need crowd control as most will not go on to be productive.

Not being literate doesn’t seem to inhibit a lot of people - eg recent arrivals to the country: if you can stab and scroll on a phone you’re good.

A good point upthread about AI books and music. AI can do both pretty well - if not better in some cases! I don’t think 95% of people would notice or care if their content was computer-generated tailored to their taste.

Some "high performing" academies would appear to disagree, but that's a whole other can of worms, and I don't want to de-rail.

I think there is no doubt that every aspect of life will be impacted by AI, and it will be an insidious, chaotic creep, badly legislated and potentially causing more problems than it solves. Nothing I have seen so far, and I'm keeping close eyes on it, can currently convince me otherwise.

Yeah because kids need to interact

What I’m finding a conundrum is the power that AI needs. Many countries are transitioning to more renewable generation, but if spare capacity is immediately mopped up by data centres, how will domestic power needs as households move away from gas, and of other parts of the economy be accommodated?

Will classes be needed?