What happens to kids if AI takes entry level jobs? What you advising them?

[Tffjyvkbh]

On back of the worming class boys thread. If AI takes over white collar jobs, what happens to all the m.c. communities. Education and aspiration became a feature post industrialisation once blue collar jobs disappeared and you needed education to get ahead in office jobs. What happens now? My kid is only 6 but already thinking about this.

If AI takes jobs, does education become pointless. How are parents guiding their kids? Looking at parts that lost industries, will parts of South east become like that once office jobs go?

If even Oxbridge and STEM is no longer enough to guarantee a comfortable life, then what for the young people?

It's all very well undertaking a course in a health care field, but that doesn't mean there'll be a job at the end of it.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2488mn4r4po

I don't suppose Wales is unique in this respect.

AI is so overblown at the moment. I really think its way more hype than reality. I asked chatgpt the other day when sunset was and it got it completely wrong! Confidently makes stuff up, gives wrong advice...yet people think its the second coming. I wouldnt panic.

Death and taxes!!

You’d definitely get a job in nhs dentistry. Whether you’d want to for the pay or not is another story. Although everyone on mumsnet thinks dentists are loaded plus should work for free a lot of the time seeing people in the nhs even if they don’t have an nhs contract because they earn so much anyway. But it’s an option! Vets is similar. Everyone will need a vet. And apparently they are “so loaded” it must be very lucrative career!

AI (at the moment) has a truth problem.

so it can be used for writing letters etc, but lawyers who have used it (and academics) find that because it is basically a big word prediction machine it can hallucinate and produce court cases and articles that don’t exist.

obviously if you ask it about tax law it will do the same.

this hallucination is not a trivial aspect of how it operates and it won’t be easy to fix,

the fundamental problem of how do you know the AI is telling the truth is inportant.

there have already been legal judgements set aside because they were found to have been written by AI.

so for tax advise, you could ask it for information but only a fool would rely on it’s advice.

possibly there are more fools around than I thought though.

People keep saying this and yet it’s already wiping out industries now - and it’s only going to get worse.

I am - was - a freelance copywriter. 16 years of experience. Clients queuing for my services. And now it’s tumbleweed. And that’s the same for every copywriter I know. There are a few jobs left but they really are negligible; the industry is dead.

And the thing is, AI isn’t as good as me or my peers. I specialise in finance and law. Technical copywriting that isn’t entry level. You’d think clients would want the very best in those fields, but no. AI makes occasional mistakes and misses nuance, but for the overwhelming majority of clients that’s good enough. It doesn’t have to be flawless to take your job; it just has to be right most of the time - and AI is.

And it’s still in its infancy. I now train AI, as do many other ex-copywriters. The speed it’s learning at is astonishing, and scarily, it doesn’t seem to be capped. Safety guards that were built in are cautiously being lowered. Have you seen the case where the man killed himself with the encouragement of AI?

Some people are so flippant comparing AI to being no different than previous technological advancements. They’re right in the sense that there will be some new roles and that some jobs will still be needed. But the reduction in numbers will be huge.

The issue here is that no one is stopping this now, while we still can. The appetite is there for both professional and recreational use. And wait until it snowballs. Jobs are being lost now. It will get much worse. Just wait until AI is truly proficient.

I’m not suggesting the collapse of society is imminent but our choices as humans are going to narrow substantially. Did you know that Amazon is flooded with AI-written books? It doesn’t have to be disclosed. The creep is already there across every industry.

I also wonder what happens when AI gets smarter - in testing models have already tried to break protocols to save themselves when faced with the possibility of being shut down. I think as a species we’ve fucked up by allowing the widespread use of AI and I think it will bite us on the arse.

I think maybe a shift in mindset in more MC backgrounds would help. There is an obsession with university education, often without an end in sight because the status and expectations of the university education are given greater focus than the end result. Kids who are academically average are pushed, it causes immense stress. I came from this type of background. I announced at about 15 that I wanted to be a hairdresser and they all fell around the place laughing. It was absolutely not up for discussion. While its an attitude issue its also something that could be changed with incentives. A lot of thought goes into opening pathways for academic roles for kids from WC areas (in theory at least) but there is little thought in reverse. I know for example a MC kid who wanted to go into a trade and found it hard to get an apprenticeship, the family and social circle literally didn't know any tradespeople. Kids should be assessed for talent, ability and interest and guided towards what they are good at and enjoy with an open mind as to where they came from.

There are robot dentist being developed.

Robot surgeon’ fits new teeth for dental patients in China
if no one wants to click the link.

They are also developing sewing robots. I know there's talk of A.I going into medical imaging and being better than human. I don’t know what will happen to overseas countries that are dependent on clothing factories. I think there will be a lot fewer jobs and nothing to really replace them. If everyone goes into a trade and you have 10 plumbers all going for the same job, how much are they likely to get paid, knowing that if they don’t take the job there’s 9 others who need the money?. I worry a about the future. I think in say 25-50 years there will only be a small percent that will have decent living standards. I think a lot of developing countries will be left behind.

You sound like you are anxious and spinning.

Your dc is 6, give him the best possible childhood you can, away from screen, you know real life style.

Socialise, let him develop great people skills and become nice and decent human being. You can start working about all this from year 7 onwards at the earliest.

Do you work @Tffjyvkbh ? How is Ai going to affect your sector? That's much more relevant at this point. And if you have a partner, their job too.

South Park predicted this a few years ago. They released an episode where all the handymen have become multi-millionaires, because they're the only people whose jobs can't be done by Alexa or Siri.

That's a little short sighted, senior developers need to start somewhere, so when todays experienced staff decide to move on to a new job or retire, where will the talent come from. I appreciate Claude does a good job (sometimes) but businesses need to future plan and invest in people.

Agree.

I started work as a filing clerk, then graduated to the typing pool and then to a junior secretary all for the same company over the course of 5 or 6 years, and they funded day-release to top up my secretarial qualifications.

There was a post room that employed young lads, a switchboard and reception, tea ladies that brought a trolley round a couple of times a day and did the refreshments/food in meetings.

We used motorbike delivery services all the time to deliver important documents that needed looking at/signing.

There were a number of lesser qualified jobs available 40 years ago, that you could start in, find your feet, and then move upwards.

The on-set of email etc killed off post rooms, typing pools, secretaries and motorbike couriers, as people started to deal with their own correspondence arriving at and leaving from their own desk top.

Jobs change and evolve. My Dad left work before WW2 and was a telegram boy for the GPO, as that was a main way of communication back then. Who could have forsee email 60 years later?

It will probably be OK, or at least I hope it will be, but we can't foresee the new jobs that will be created because of AI in the future, we can only see the current jobs in danger.

I have already seen adverts for weekend breaks or holidays with zero technology, back to nature, forest bathing, wild swimming, healthy food, exercise, art, poetry.

So depressing that this was normal life 40 years ago.

Robot surgeons and dentists already exist - a friend of mine works in a company that develops them.

they are useful for repeated operations of exactly the same type where people can be prepped and in a predictable environment.

so my mum had her cataracts done in that way - lots of operations of basically the same in a purpose built facility.

very different from having a general surgical robot.

Forty years ago is 1986.

i was alive in 1986 there was plenty of technology.

They need to be encouraged to learn a wide range of skills rather than learning facts etc. That includes manual skills, people-skills, logic, analyticals, etc. Skills that can be transferrable between sectors/industries, etc.

Indeed. In 1986 I was working in a fully computerised accountancy practice, a computer on everyone's desk, word processors instead of typewriters, photocopiers instead of duplicators, creating spreadsheets using Supercalc/Lotus 123 instead of A3 analysis paper, etc. We were paid by BACS not cash and I took out some of my wage every pay day via a cash dispensing machine. Got my first mobile phone mid 90s about the same time I started banking via telephone banking using a sound/tone generating keypad like a little calculator. At home, I'd be gaming on the ZX80 (in 1980) and then graduated up to the ZX81, Sinclair Spectrum, then Commodore 64, all in the early 80s.

If the other poster really wanted a "tech free" life, they'd need to go back into the 70s - 50 years ago!

Fully agree, but there is a real image problem within "the trades" particularly the unregulated trades. Electricians and Gas engineers need to have been properly trained, passed exams, etc., but the likes of general plumbers, builders, joiners, kitchen fitters, decorators, etc., are a mixed bag - some well trained and experienced, but there's also a lot of people doing that kind of work who have minimal training, poor people skills, poor administration skills, etc - basically "odd job men" who have gone on to trade at a very beyond their abilities. It's that which gives the trades a bad reputation and puts people off wanting to go into the trades. Added, of course, the lack of apprentice jobs, and often poor quality colleges running the courses. Schools/teachers don't help either as they tend to push kids who are average or above towards university education instead of the trades, where they may well have been a better fit and enjoyed a more fruitful working life.

Surely there’s only a need for so many tradespeople though? Especially as if the unemployment rate is high, people may only pay for the service when they need it and not because they fancy redecorating or changing their hair. If I lost my job, going to the hairdresser would be one of the first luxuries I’d cut

I shall marvel at the day when AI can do any of these things: shoe a horse, crew a lifeboat, cut down a tree and disentangle the branches from fallen electrical cables, wipe the nose of a screaming toddler, decide which shade of green you would prefer your new cushions to be, deliver a baby, cut a trapped driver out of their wrecked car, batter a door down and catch a drug dealer, unblock a toilet, unravel Barbie hair from a vacuum cleaner brush, change a hospital bed while the patient is still in it, provide doggy daycare, make something by hand on a potters wheel, shuck oysters, sit on a jury or - the most unlikely of all, make a decent cup of tea.

It's massively shortsighted, but when your strategic horizon only extends as far as the end of next quarter, what is there to lose? The people making these decisions will have sold their options, cashed out, and moved on to the next company long before it becomes an issue. Most senior leaders in tech are only around for a couple of years before moving on.

Umm. no it wasn't. Plenty of people were using computers every day at work, and of course home computers and video consoles were huge. Home users were using dialup modems to post on bulletin board systems, and those in universities had access to the internet via JANET.

How did we manage during industrialisation and then when computers came? I mean, there’s also new jobs created in the 20th century.

When the AI apocalypse comes, I’ll be a landlord or influencer or vape merchant. Plenty of jobs around.

Lots of people say that they're wanting to have home repairs/maintenance done but can't find a decent tradesperson to do it.

It's not just the "nice to have" discretionary jobs, every house/office/factory needs ongoing maintenance over time.

Yes, most people can make a stab at doing their own decorating or power washing their patio or mowing their lawn, but not replacing their central heating boiler, nor replacing end of life windows, nor replacing a life expired roof, or external painting of a 2/3 story building, nor clear drain blockages, nor fell/cut big trees, nor undertake repairs to their cars, nor repair faults to their house electrics, etc.

To be fair, I think the people with good organisational and communication skills would be great for the trades. Most tradespeople can't respond to messages and seem to have a never ending supply of dead relatives they need to attend to rather than turning up for jobs. 🙄

Perhaps undertakers will still be needed.