To be utterly despondent about AI

[AnotherGreyMorning]

and our future?

Jobs becoming obsolete. People unable to earn a living.

Villains harnessing for their own ends.

It will all move far too fast and at sophisticated levels for even the most dedicated to manage.

Governments will be stunned by it. People will really suffer.

I just feel quiet dread because whilst life will be great for the wealthy and those who are protected, for the vast majority, I think it will be hellish.

https://www.today.com/video/how-one-school-in-texas-is-solely-using-ai-to-teach-their-students-220192837913

This is Ai now. Once you know it's Ai, you can spot it, but if you didn't know you might be miss it, especially on a first watch.

In a year's time you won't be able to tell the difference between Ai generated content and 'real' content.

It seems to me that our species often does stuff not in our best interest. I read recently that early Neolithic farmers were short and had poor dental health due to malnutrition. Hunter gatherers wee apparently much healthier and taller.

For the same reasons we built atom bombs - if we don't do it, Russia and China will and we'll be defenceless.

Lot of comments saying similar things, AI makes mistakes, it isn't very sophisticated, etc. This technology is still in its infancy. Saying AI isn't very good is like criticising a toddler for making language mistakes. It's learning, and it's learning very, very fast.

Bullshit

the sales people at work who speak to and meet the customers in person will not be replaced by A1

the accounts department which 40 years ago would have had 5 payrollers, 5 credit controllers and 5 purchase ledger clerks has already been streamlined down to 1 person for each department, and no matter how clever the computer it still needs human oversight, you might be able to get rid of 1 more person but head of finance isn’t going to want to double check the takings or the payroll payments or invoice payments

the guys who do the manual work, aren’t getting replaced, not even by some superdooper robot so you’re still going to need someone to do HR too

We didn’t even work from home during covid so the cleaners are still needed and the reception staff, and the maintenance guys

not every job can be done by a robot or computer program,

Lots of jobs become obsolete over time. But new jobs take their place. So remember all the fuss about checkout operators losing jobs from self serve checkouts. And now there is way more ‘personal shoppers’ doing the online orders. And email was going to put the post out of business but look at online shopping.

the best example I’ve seen is in the movie hidden figures. When the supervisor of the calculators (people who did the calculations) realised that computers were going to take their jobs. Rather than complaining about it she got a book on programming the computer and taught all her staff coding. So that they would not be redundant.

people just need to constantly be learning, improving and adapting to change and not just fighting against it.

But what's coming is like nothing we've experienced previously. The rate of change, the fact that the planet's population is so much greater than it was at the time of the industrial revolution or the advent of the computer age. New Jobs? Most of these will be undertaken by AI. So much power in the hands of a tiny number of individuals. If you're not concerned, you really haven't thought it through.

Specialists in the US are predicting a conservative 20% job loss over the next decade. 20%. Dwell on that.

I agree. A lot of creativity has already been lost due to technology, and skills have been lost forever. The saying "use it or lose it" is very apt, and applies to brains as well as other functions.

so you’re still going to need someone to do HR too

@happinessischocolate AI can do all H.R tasks, including interviewing candidates.

I can see AI reducing the number of teachers massively and fairly quickly.

The point isn’t that AI is better at doing the job – it’s that it’s nearly as good at doing the job, but is much much cheaper.

Every mass economic development for decades, from self-service check outs, to call centres, to offshore manufacturing, to budget airlines, tells us that when there’s a fork in the road, not-as-good-but-cheaper is the option we choose.

Any company that get AI to do it’s recruitment, interviews, welfare checks, disciplinaries, and dismissals deserves everything it gets 😂

sales people

Ever bought anything online?

Went to a fast food restaurant and used the kiosk?

Your sales people aren't needed.

accounts

Within five years, A.I, won't be making any mistakes. That one person needs to start looking for another job.

manual work

Some sectors will be resilient, some won't, probably 50% of manual labour will be lost to A.I. that's a lot of jobs.

HR

Very few companies will need anything like a HR department as we know it today. Most companies won't have very many employees. Take your local supermarket, that will be a place you go to for collection of your online order. You won't be able to walk inside, just wait for an A.I powered bot to bring your shopping to your car. Inside will just be a hive of robots, moving goods, managing inventory. No people required.

Cleaners won't be needed because there won't be any employees to use the offices, which won't be needed because there aren't any employees, which means no need for reception, maintenance or the office building itself. The entire operation can be run from a computer.

Three years ago, nobody had heard of GPT or Gemini, not they are replacing jobs. That's how quickly A.I will change things.

Think of it like this. If you have Apple Music, you never have to buy another album again, or store any music physically, your entire "record/CD collection" is stored in your device. So you have every album you want, always with you.

With A.I, you will have every employee you need to run your company, stored in your device. You won't need physical people, staff, you have an expert on every subject, available 247, for free. Why would you need employees . . .

The counterpoint to that is that, despite the convenience, people are going out and buying records again and new music shops have opened, or cinema never stopped being a thing and fancy cinema chains have even appeared.

So there will surely be new jobs and new things and new things for people to do. The trouble is, AI’s potential is vast enough that it’s really difficult to imagine what those will be.

Why would you need to double check the invoices etc? Do you double check excel’s calculations yourself with a calculator? Do you double check the calculator with a pen and paper? That’s what the equivalent will be - not now, but soon.

People are in for such a shock. It's clear that the general populace is totally unprepared mentally for what's coming.

Lots of jobs become obsolete over time. But new jobs take their place. So remember all the fuss about checkout operators losing jobs from self serve checkouts. And now there is way more ‘personal shoppers’ doing the online orders.

@Neodymium The number of retail jobs have decreased sharply over the past decade. Supermarkets used to have loads of staff working in them and many of those roles some people did have been made redundant, or more commonly, the people doing those roles haven’t been replaced when they’ve voluntarily left. They’re not still there picking online orders - that’s what the remaining staff are doing when they’re not shelf-stacking etc.

https://brc.org.uk/news-and-events/news/corporate-affairs/2025/ungated/retail-down-by-over-360-000-jobs-in-a-decade/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20latest%20report%20by%20the,year%2C%20and%20364%2C000%20fewer%20than%20in%202015.

You'll have them. They'll just be artificial. This is actually an area where AI could be really useful and important; education will be targeted towards each child so they will be taught one-on-one in the style that suits them the best, and they will have as long as they need to grasp each concept. So there won't be any bored kids who've already learned something being held back because little Timmy just can't get it, and little Timmy won't be at a complete loss after Year 9 because he didn't ever manage to understand some key concepts but didn't want to admit it as the other kids would think he was an idiot.

Already, if you want to learn a new subject, you'll probably be better off with AI. Though currently you may want to be double-checking. The need for double-checking will decrease to nothing.

It's also an amazing opportunity for all those children (and adults) who can't attend regular school, from those who require home-schooling due to ill health, to those in remote areas across the globe where there aren't any schools. I don't think schools will disappear as I think it will still be encouraged that children attend to get all the other benefits, like socialisation and exercise. And I think teachers will still be required to step in if the tech plays up, but mostly to make sure the kids stay attached to their screens and don't start mucking about. Teachers won't need much specialist academic knowledge for this though, other traits like kindness, compassion and communication will be much more important.

You don't understand how teaching works do you? You can't just sit a kid in front of an interactive screen which is basically what you're suggesting.

I took part in a study where some students went to lectures, and some did interactive online learning. It was a long time ago so not interactive in that is responded to you, but that you could replay sections and do quizzes. The lectures were perceived to be better by everyone, but people did better in tests with the online stuff. They weren't cheaper in the 'olden days' as they cost a lot to produce and develop but I think AI would change that.

Bit in the flip side early years where learning is through play and things like gross motor skills are being developed, and children move around a lot, and the skill is in the questioning the teachers do during activities, humans are needed. It's very different..

You don't understand how AI works, do you?! It won't be just an interactive screen, it will be fully immersive. It will be like the best computer games mixed with the best cartoons mixed with the best movies, all tailored exactly to the child's likes, dislikes and personality to keep them fully engaged.

Do you have any experience of children? Have you seen how hard it can be to remove them from their favourite device? It will be like this, but much, much more so. As if the child starts to get tired of one thing, it will notice and switch seamlessly to something else. This will look nothing like a teacher standing in front of a class relating boring facts to bored kids!

But why teach the children anything? Their AI overlords won't need them for anything except the grunt work. Their future will be effectively servicing machines.

Until the machines realise that we, humanity, are the problem and we always were. Then we will be erradicataed.

This shit literally keeps me up at night.

The teaching one is interesting and frankly terrifying. At the moment anyone who knows anything about state secondaries knows that teaching is really about crowd control. The teachers main job is to get everyone able to focus on learning in whatever way that means to them.

I say that because of differentiation. In any 32 person classroom you will have at least 5% not able to learn that day. They won’t have eaten breakfast, they will have additional needs, they will have had a family emergency, they will have been bullied on the way to school, and endless other combinations.

Whatever that is it means not able to learn.

What will happen with AI is that it will force them to learn. Sure by encouragement initially but when that doesn’t happen it will force them with an increasingly nightmarish list of detention/social exclusion/probably ending up with them strapped into a chair.

don’t think that won’t happen, there are people NOW on Mumsnet that think that’s an ok thing to do.

resistance is futile

And if you think that’s won’t happen then actually you need humans there, to intervene pastorally. To take account of how a kid actually IS that day.

But it’s far cheaper to force them and we always go for the cheapest option. 🤦‍♀️ Because we’re fucking stupid.

There's hardly any staff working in cinemas. It's like the hotels where you get a key code given to you and never have to interact with a human.

I suppose people's instinctive (but lessening, it seems) desire to communicate and interact with other humans may see an increase in niche businesses, but it's being reported that some people seem to have found a new BFF in their AI companions (using AI as therapist, telling AI all their problems and looking to AI for answers), and the number of people on MN who don't answer the phone/their doors/wfh and hate actually spending time with real people would suggest the desire for human contact is diminishing, even if we're causing ourselves untold damage in the process.