At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer

I don't think the specific example matters. Obviously, you couldn't build a skyscraper without machinery or fly through the air in a metal tube. I'll grant that the US middle class is only 2 orders of magnitude above subsistence (~$2 / day) living.

> Plumbers, electricians - just don't see it happening.

Like many other "optimistics" about AI I think reality will be much more of a hybrid one, i.e. plumbers or electricians will be aided, not replaced, by AI and robots. It's like the 100 horses in your car, it didn't kill the transportation industry but took it to a whole other level. Imagine as a plumber having an army of tiny drones to fix things you can't even see, let alone reach, as a human; from diagnosis to actual repair. You would wield such power that eventually one man could fix/maintain a whole skyscraper alone and still be home for dinner with the kids.

It's the difference between what an office worker could do with pen and paper and the post office, and what they could do once came the telephone: suddenly you could talk to hundreds of people every day without moving. Then came computers, internet, now AI and robots... A century ago, thousands of men couldn't do some of what you alone accomplish in your office today.

The most menial tasks will be automated for sure, however whether or not a given job is entirely made of such tasks is another matter entirely.

I, for one, don't think it a bad thing that we eliminate brainless or skill-less jobs, I'd much rather pay for UBI for these people until they learn new skills more likely to be rewarding on a self-growth level. I also think it a good thing that we supplement most professions with ever better tools -- think what a doctor or lawyer can do with a computer and a few ad hoc databases that they couldn't do without. Even as an assistant, if you are freed from most menial tasks (e.g. "computer, send a thank you email to these customers with our classic style") then you can focus on creating more value for the person you assist. You can reclaim your worth as a highly-functioning human being, add much more value to the table, while robots and AI takes care of things your kid could do (but never will, and that is a good thing).

It's basically what allowed civilizations to work twice less (in time, work hours) and actually keep growing that GDP. I don't know where AI takes us in this regard, but I wouldn't be surprised if on average we could eventually maintain the same level of growth working orders of magnitude less. But since humans love doing stuff, I'm sure most won't work less, they'll just do so much more --and we might yet reconnect with double-digit growth in western countries.

Most of these discussions revolve around when and how sufficiently intelligent AI will be available to revolutionize society, but what about the hardware? As in, is there a limit to our ability to design and create (cost-effectively) the mechanical and other physical components that are required for building the precise robots and other machines of this automated future? At what point do we hit a physical limit of cost prohibitive machinery for full automation?

I'm not sure what "full automation" really entails, but those who envision to inevitable automation future don't really explain it either. Everyone focuses on the software without considering if there may be limits to the hardware, and by that I don't just mean the computing machines but everything in meatspace.

> A robot will soon be able to be trained to flip burgers, or drive a car, or take a customer's order, etc, etc.

From what I've read, we're not going to have completely driverless cars anytime soon (too much difficulty with all the potential edge cases). If we look at productivity growth, it's actually somewhat slow at the moment. People are claiming that soon it will be rapidly increasing, but they've been claiming that for several years now and it's yet to materialize. The evidence of a "robot revolution" is pretty weak at the moment.

And that's not even getting into the question of what effect this would have on the job market. The horse population might have crashed, but that's because you can't retool horse to weld skyscrapers or make advertisements. You can use humans for a variety of tasks, and until we have a post-scarcity society there's always going to be a desire for more production. And even in a post-scarcity society there will probably be a demand for more researchers or artists.

Sure, you might not be able to imagine what people of the future will do, but that's not surprising. If you told someone 150 years ago that less than 2% of the population would be involved with agriculture, they probably would imagine a mass employment catastrophe. They wouldn't imagine jobs like social media manager or video game developer, nor would they probably imagine that there would be enough offices to provide employment to so many administrative assistants. If you go back far enough, people would probably have a hard time believing that so many people could be employed in work that required reading and writing - surely the vast majority of humans can not be trained to read and write!

You could also have much better safety systems - I.e. total oxygen evacuation for grease fires. No need to worry about people getting hurt. In fact, you might be able to make food in a 100% neutral environment (N2?) and have no fire risk at all. Then, you can use closed-loop air filtration and not exhaust grease and combustion byproducts into the atmosphere.

OTOH, the nice dining experiences will be done by people who can improvise and improve day-to-day based on their own tastes. eventually, the stuff people do will be the "good" stuff, and the stuff robots do will be the "bad" stuff. Hopefully. A more negative viewpoint says that robots will do the "high value" stuff and the people will only do the "low value" bad stuff.