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Ask HN: Last industries to be taken over by AI?

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Re: Ask HN: Last industries to be taken over by AI?

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a consumer I'd nearly always prefer a machine take care of my needs than a person or an animal. It's fun to talk with my friends, family or other diners at a restaurant, it's not usually fun to talk with the staff. At least in Chicago they usually seem miserable, incompetent, or a mix of both. It might be fun to have niche locations with humans serving people and taking orders but I imagine it'd be more like horse…

Maybe you visit the wrong restaurants or other parts of the US are very different than Chicago? I have had mostly excellent staff experiences in the US to such a point that I use US examples to train our restaurant staff. Also, although I would like to see far more automation, I would suppose your opinion in this particular case is rather unique? Obviously I do not know that for sure but experience says it is in my f…

I live in North Carolina and see a full spectrum of restaurant service quality. In the end, you tend to get what you pay for. Though my biases and sister tell me we're nicer and happier down here than in Chicago ^^

Re: Ask HN: Last industries to be taken over by AI?

#33

Law will take some time as often questions are more nuanced than simply applying the law to a problem.

That, and it's going to be really hard to extract the facts of a case through automated means.

There are two big benefits to AI in the legal realm -- automation of rote tasks, such as constructing simple contracts, that companies like LegalZoom already do; and predicting outcomes of trials based on the lawyers and judges involved in the case.

Re: Ask HN: Last industries to be taken over by AI?

#34
post #18

Marketing, which is basically applied psychology.

You're absolutely right, and sadly, this (IMHO) is to the detriment to humanity as a whole. The ease and accuracy with which the fitness function provides feedback (did this change result in more money being spent?) means that this field will grow to be very accurate in an extraordinary time-frame.

It's not just the fact that this will be used to drain the wealth from society. The same techniques used in marketing to get people to purchase a product can be applied to convince them to do anything. We've already seen how fake new can be used to convince people to bring rifles into pizza places full of young children.

If these techniques can be applied in an automated and targeted fashion, the results could be absolutely devastating to society. Imagine what happens when a company develops the technology that could mine social media profiles, identify people that would likely commit mass murders, then use automated tools the subtly influence their behavior in such a way as to promote that outcome. Then they sell it to the highest bidder.

I consider that to be a scary world to create. And I think it is totally plausible, if not inevitable.

Re: Ask HN: Last industries to be taken over by AI?

#36
I think the touch of human labor has a value of its own, especially in high-end manufacturing and services. If high tech automation allows us all to have precisely perfect mass produced tables and chairs, for example, the value of handmade furniture with its "imperfections" will rise. Just as mega-scale agribusiness produces ever more perfect fruits, vegetables, and grains, has been accompanied by more and more people taking an interest in farmers' markets and local producers.

Now, certainly the mass producers are making money, so I'm not suggesting those industries are poor investments. I'm just thinking that strategically, if you want to find a niche that won't be eliminated by technology, look at the high-quality end of any particular market.

Re: Ask HN: Last industries to be taken over by AI?

#37
post #18

Marketing, which is basically applied psychology.

You're absolutely right, and sadly, this (IMHO) is to the detriment to humanity as a whole. The ease and accuracy with which the fitness function provides feedback (did this change result in more money being spent?) means that this field will grow to be very accurate in an extraordinary time-frame. It's not just the fact that this will be used to drain the wealth from society. The same techniques used in marketing to…

I work in marketing and personally budget out 8 figures+ a year in direct marketing spend. The truth is it's really hard to persuade people of things. Direct Marketing is 50% about finding people who already agree with you and want your product, 25% getting their attention, and 25% is testing which product messaging most jibes with people.

Re: Ask HN: Last industries to be taken over by AI?

#39

Entertainment will be early to go. As soon as we can get realistic video and audio why employ 100+ people to do the show. It'll all be CGI. One person can do Game of Thrones. This is why I think CG audio will be an amazing jump for humanity whole new content will be created and make other content obsolete.

Okay, so the grunt work of entertainment (manually creating models, rigs, applying textures, shaders, etc) might eventually be reduced (although the current trend is the opposite, despite better and better software), but the creative aspects of entertainment (not just coming up with something 'different', but making it a meaningful difference) will be damn difficult to replicate in a consistent and repeatable way by…

Computer aided storylines will be the start?
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