To think that AI is taking over jobs far, far, FAR quicker than we anticipated?

[Themarchoftime]

Obviously, am aware of AI's presence for some time. But I'm shocked how AI features seem to be on all platforms now, email/web etc, and how many roles are being diminished by the use. It seems week on week it's progressively spreading.

Someone who works with AI suggested to me that it's happening so much quicker than anyone expected, that we could all be looking at no jobs across many sectors in 10-12 years.

This has totally depressed me, especially as I'm early fifties, looking to skill up/change roles! And scared me, a bit, also for my kids.

Am i being a catastrophic thinker?

@lljkk yes and no. If you can specify what you want your code to do in discrete chunks, and write tests for it, then generate the code, then that is fine. I know very good programmers that now barely code by hand at all. They get AI to generate about 90% of it. Sure there is supervision role required and there are advantages to having someone oversee things and plumb them together with experience, but you can have a less skilled/experienced worker doing this. It doesn't even matter if the code is a heap of dung as long as it does what you want it to do. And you can iterate on it with the same tools. You can ask an AI what the code does. People are quick to write off AI, but there's a lot of fear of the new. And fear of technology. And lots of the time that is from people that haven't even used the technology or haven't that much of a grasp of it. And like most tech it can be used for good, evil and garbage. I'd recommend people just trying out co-pilot, or gemini play around with it and get a feel for what it does. It takes a while to get to grips with prompting, just like it takes a while to get to grips with how to use something like a traditional search engine. You then get a bit of a nose for AI generated content. I'm not enjoying people trying to game outlets like Youtube, by producing thousands and thousands of videos of automated content for long tail clicks and views. I'm not sure if this will further poison/weaken the LLMs. In some ways it would be more useful if people could pubilsh their prompts, and/or definitely label their content if it is AI generated. I was laughing at X's grok. where it may try and summarise a concise tweet in three paragraphs and totally read it wrong.

That’s very Black Mirror! 😬

My local Sainsburys has had Smartshop (where you use a handset to scan as you go, thus saving time at the checkout) for many years, but I noticed yesterday that the handsets now have a "search" function, so if you can't find miso paste, for example, you type it in and the handset tells you immediately that it's in aisle 24. No more searching for an employee to help you find the more obscure items on your shopping list! But also, if there are fewer demands on the shopping order pickers to help customers find miso paste etc, they will complete their order picking more quickly, so fewer of them will be required, so fewer supermarket jobs will be available...

I want a world where AI does everything and our job is just to experience the world.

I don't! It sounds idyllic, but in reality I think hordes of bored and under-occupied people roaming the countryside would be disastrous. The devil finds work for idle hands, and all that. Also, many studies have shown that working or having a similar purpose in life is essential for good mental and physical health, and that both deteriorate quite quickly on retirement, if retirees don't find a similar role (eg volunteering) to get them out of bed in the morning and keep them busy and stimulated.

If you look at the UK workforce it is rapidly ageing and shrinking.
Supermarkets are cutting staff but there is still very high employment
(even allowing for long term sick)
My local Sainsburys has almost no daytime staff under 40

Interestingly the ladies who help at the self check love the fact that they are not sitting at a till getting RSI all day
and one of them credits running around the tills for her improved health and lower weight (they are very chatty souls)

Exactly. If the UK population was 10 million instead of 70 million that would be different, especially if they were all nice, gentle, and intelligent. They'd read, paint, grow flowers, learn languages, learn the guitar, go fishing or birdwatching, play with their children, etc. But what about the violent, ignorant, anti-social people? The people who not only don't care if they upset their neighbours but thoroughly enjoy it. What about the boy racers who woke me up at 3am in cars with giant exhaust pipes that screech and explode? There is so much evil, destructiveness and madness in human nature that it needs to be channeled somewhere.

But it's it the way society is that creates the situations for people like this? Maybe if I had a crap job and crap pay and couldn't see a way out, I'd be like this.
If AI takes all the good, interesting jobs and I have to do a brainless one, I may well turn to attacking AI.

i get what your saying but then to be fair humans have had the market on writing for years and some of the books is omg, if humans were perfect then in theory the quality alone would mean no one would use AI for books

Having some intense lockdown, ferals-on-furlough PTSD reading this… Half the country wanking on about their bloody sourdough, half of them as you say revving their souped-up motors outside my house. But this time, with AI robot overlords!

Freelance proofreaders who work on journals have been replaced by AI 'proofreading'. It's not nearly as good as trained people but hey, who cares so long as it's cheap?

Also, small time artists. I see a lot of greetings card about now that are AI generated. Same with colouring books, cross stitch patterns etc. That is just on Etsy.
People who take the time to design and draw these things struggle to compete with people who use AI.

I’m surprised they are even paying for proofreading done by anything at all to be honest, in education and public life generally the trend has been to minimise the whole idea of needing spelling and literacy has not been respected for decades now. Anyway. As you were.

The other alternative to a UBI is direct distribution of the actual resources that money was meant to represent, ie food, water, shelter. It’s been done in societies in the past. Since the whole idea of markets and currency will be upturned and fiat currencies are already a very weak idea, we probably need to go back to basics.

Also the loss of competence and skilss

@WaryCrow, well, that's how I make my living! Clients are generally very happy to pay me to proofread.

And academic journals should have higher standards: they are supposed to be accurate and correct.

@WaryCrow said

When I was born, not that long ago, the population of Britain was 50 million. Now officially it is 70 million and reliable estimates put the true figure at 80 million.

I'm so intrigued.
What is the reliable source for true figure = 80 mln?
The official estimate of UK residents is about 67 million. PP says there actually exist an extra 13 million, or 1 in 6 ppl physically on Great Britain UK soil is undocumented. Are they all adults without need of education or social care or NHS, and managing financially without ever engaging with officialdom?

I had to go back to 1952 to find an "official" (says google) estimate of UK population that was 50 mln. 73 years seems like "long ago" to me. Or did PP mean that even in early 20th century 1/6 ppl on British soil was undocumented. In which case we'd be going back to when British population was 42 mln officially (and therefore 50 mln unofficially). I had to go back to 1940s to find British popn estimates around 42 million. Is that not long ago?

I have seen the figure if 80 million widely reported in the past. It was based on a supermarket chain and something about water waste produced.

I have no idea how accurate it was though or why all these people were supposedly not registered in any way. It was pre brexit so the reports all used to hint at it being lots of eastern Europeans who had a right to be here.

I agree. It feels like the Dot Com Bubble atm.

Undoubtedly things will change and potentially at soeed. Some things for the better. Some things with very dubious results.

If it does go deep, I can see that sort of two tier society so often depicted in Sci fi - those who benefit from it v those who opt out.

I wish I could agree with you (fellow author). But I read a book very recently that was completely written by a new form of AI and genuinely wouldn’t have known. This new AI book writing software is now for sale to anyone. Ready scary for non fiction writers in particular.

I was thinking about this post since I read it.
I hate to be the harbourer of doom. A conversation I had with someone recently who is working on AI in another industry, so pinch of salt is needed. But there’s alot of excitement around the abba holograms and the potential for that. It means shows can be put on without the performer being there. Once that technology becomes cheaper, you’ll have elvis in vegas. No sick days, no worries of people quitting or getting ill.

If you met me at work you would imagine that I am having a great time. I have a chat and a cheery smile, I am super happy to help. But I am not stimulated or happy inside. I am working for money and if I know that middle-aged women like me are ten a penny. If I was grumpy or moodyI could be replaced in a day. Please don't patronise those women by thinking they are enjoying the exercise, or whatever. It is just work. and probably not what they wanted to do in life or trained for.

I have (against all evidence!) faith in humanity: I think people will always want the real thing, the human connection. Artists, writers, actors, musicians. The way Posy Fossil explains in Ballet Shoes (which AI could never!) that audiences come to see her, not an understudy.

Holograms are a novelty – and no one will want new hologram artists, if they want holograms, they want ones who are already stars. To become a star, you have to be human.

There are undoubtedly benefits of AI - but the tech companies racing to develop it aren’t primarily concerned with how it benefits society, They’re concerned with how marketable it is and how much money it’s going to make for a privileged few.
This will drive what is available and how it will be used - so yes we might have greater convenience for some but at the cost of rising unemployment, an increase in insecure, low paid work and increasing numbers of people living below the poverty line.

We’ve seen industries become redundant in this country - I can understand its progress overall but not for those left behind. Just ask some of the communities affected by the decline in mines, factories etc. Did they all move on to great new jobs with lots of opportunities? Was anyone interested in training them for new careers? Unlikely.

I hope so.
I think we might end up with a mixture of both, like the cinema and theatre.

I can't fathom a world where people want to read an AI book. I can understand one where artists might manipulate it as another tool to make work.

Ultra Processed Art for Ultra Processed People. It's like junk for the soul.

We all saw this coming with self checkout. I can think of ways AI will be able to take huge swathes out of most jobs, scanning bodies in pathology as it is starting to do to diagnose scans and patient history in medicine, for example. The only jobs that seem to be safe are the purely physical ones - building, plumbing and other trades, farming and care roles. I'm sure there must be a few others but they aren't what would traditionally be called "high skilled". This means we will have a highly educated society with no roles to carry out, already with huge MH issues post covid, being unable to earn and pay for higher costs of food.I can't see the benefits if we all live longer due to AI improved healthcare but can't afford to survive.