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Ex-Google Exec Says "The Idea That AI Will Create New Jobs Is 100% Crap"

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Re: Ex-Google Exec Says "The Idea That AI Will Create New Jobs Is 100% Crap"

#131

Post by noichnoich »

Lu2025 wrote: post #130
kingstnap wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a profound number of people who now seem to just spend all day giving interviews and yapping about their AI takes. Geoffrey Hinton seems to be in the headlines constantly going "godfather of AI" and giving some random obtuse warning or call for action. Eric Schmidt also spends a lot of time yapping. And of course people like Gary Marcus. Simon Willison also does a lot of writing but at least his blog is act…

These are sales speeches. They are over hyping it. AI has its niche but they are trying to plug it everywhere. Maybe they have a point. Maybe hooking people up on software tools so they are incompetent without will pay off.

[dead]

Re: Ex-Google Exec Says "The Idea That AI Will Create New Jobs Is 100% Crap"

#132

Post by csa »

ethbr1 wrote: post #102
BurningFrog wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You never know beforehand. Before they existed, few would have believed the disappearing jobs would be replaced by web designers, uber drivers, youtubers, drone pilots etc.

>> But what did happen is that people were freed up to do different things. Those jobs were indirectly created by the fact that people did not need to spend so much time growing food. That allowed people to do other things to create value and improve our lives. The key point here is that "create value" -- new jobs are created if there are new human jobs that create value . The bifurcation of incomes pre-AI should be…

> The bifurcation of incomes pre-AI should be a warning that we're reaching a point where the average human (in physical ability and knowledge) can no longer efficiently create value.

IMHO, the value will be in creating f2f human interactions — stuff that AI and robots will only be able to simulate but never replicate.

That may sound flippant, but real human interactions are already being sought after (relatively) widely, and I think that this trend will continue.

The masses will always be the masses, the elite will always be the elite, and there was a small anomalous blip in this trend in the mid- to late-20th century that has dribbled over into the early 21st century.

The vibe in the movie Titanic for how the upper decks and lower decks lived pre-collision (and to some extent post-collusion) is pretty much how I imagine life will be in an AI/robot-powered future.

[Note that the Titanic example can be nitpicked, but the upper deck people were shown to be having stuffy fun in a relatively posh setting, while the lower deck people were letting loose in a very relaxed and social way. That is my point in mentioning it.]

Re: Ex-Google Exec Says "The Idea That AI Will Create New Jobs Is 100% Crap"

#134

Post by nerfellicat »

kingstnap wrote: post #27
throwaway29303 wrote: post #13

Can someone, more informed than me, about the job landscape, name these jobs people keep claiming AI is creating? Thank you in advance.

There are a profound number of people who now seem to just spend all day giving interviews and yapping about their AI takes. Geoffrey Hinton seems to be in the headlines constantly going "godfather of AI" and giving some random obtuse warning or call for action. Eric Schmidt also spends a lot of time yapping. And of course people like Gary Marcus. Simon Willison also does a lot of writing but at least his blog is act…

Hinton talks are hilarious. He goes from explaining perceptrons to huge claims like "this is what understanding is", "that's how our brain works", "linguists are cranks if they don't agree", and "this proves there is no god" but the last one as some weird little anecdote involving some religious migrant worker, and implies heavily that disagreeing with him is equivalent with having religious beliefs.

It's pretty wild.

Re: Ex-Google Exec Says "The Idea That AI Will Create New Jobs Is 100% Crap"

#135

Post by ahartmetz »

Lu2025 wrote: post #129
drdec wrote: post #36

Think about what happened when we got advances in agriculture. We have gone from something like 90% of people employed growing food to something in the single digits (I'm too lazy at the moment to get exact figures, but this is close enough for my point). Did all those advances in agriculture create jobs? I would say yes and no. For the specific industry the advances happened in? No, definitely not. There are way few…

>> Without those agriculture advances Funny thing is, it wasn't agricultural advances, at least initially. It was chemistry and mechanics. Haber-Bosch process of ammonia synthesis created cheap fertilizer, mechanization dramatically increased productivity. New plant varieties with higher yields came later.

Synthetic fertilizer and mechanization are commonly seen as agricultural advances in the same way that quantum computing is an advance in the field of computer science even though much of the implementation is physics.

Re: Ex-Google Exec Says "The Idea That AI Will Create New Jobs Is 100% Crap"

#136

Post by tim333 »

drdec wrote: post #36

Think about what happened when we got advances in agriculture. We have gone from something like 90% of people employed growing food to something in the single digits (I'm too lazy at the moment to get exact figures, but this is close enough for my point). Did all those advances in agriculture create jobs? I would say yes and no. For the specific industry the advances happened in? No, definitely not. There are way few…

Yeah, it's not the ag-tech that created new jobs, it's that human's like to be useful and get paid so they'll come up with new things like web dev or instagram influencer. Come AGI people will still probably come up with things to do. The wages and payment bit will likely need to be modified along the UBI or to each according to their needs lines.

Re: Ex-Google Exec Says "The Idea That AI Will Create New Jobs Is 100% Crap"

#137

Post by BurningFrog »

tcfhgj wrote: post #124
BurningFrog wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The science of Economics has good, empirically based explanations for how new jobs get created when technology makes older jobs unnecessary. And yes, it is a real science!

just explanations, i.e. with hindsight? astrology can do this as well ;) what about rules/laws which allow predictions?

A simple top level explanation is that unemployed people are an unused resource, and free market capitalism is very good at finding ways to make money from that.

Maybe one day unemployed people will be truly useless to other people, but for the last 250 years, new professions have always emerged.

Re: Ex-Google Exec Says "The Idea That AI Will Create New Jobs Is 100% Crap"

#138

Post by bigbadfeline »

BurningFrog wrote: post #137
tcfhgj wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just explanations, i.e. with hindsight? astrology can do this as well ;) what about rules/laws which allow predictions?

A simple top level explanation is that unemployed people are an unused resource, and free market capitalism is very good at finding ways to make money from that. Maybe one day unemployed people will be truly useless to other people, but for the last 250 years, new professions have always emerged.

> Maybe one day unemployed people will be truly useless to other people, but for the last 250 years, new professions have always emerged.

Free market capitalism lacks anything approaching a clear and exhaustive definition and the term is used for many arrangements - from market oligarchy to market anarchy but there is one thing that is absolutely certain about it:

"Past performance is no guarantee of future results"

In effect, the most enduring tenet of free market capitalism negates your argument. You need to provide material evidence, not glorious promises of some unknowable bright future, North Korean style.

Re: Ex-Google Exec Says "The Idea That AI Will Create New Jobs Is 100% Crap"

#139

Post by red-iron-pine »

ethbr1 wrote: post #101
nerevarthelame wrote: post #77

The full interview this comes from is off the rails. Gawdat says we'll have AGI by 2026 at the absolute latest, and that we will have artificial super intelligence in the immediate future. He guarantees that after destroying jobs, within 15 years we will be in a "utopia" controlled by AI. It's an absurd level of confidence for an extremely bold prediction. In his last interview from this series in 2023, Gawdat said t…

> He guarantees that after destroying jobs, within 15 years we will be in a "utopia" controlled by AI. Given the Holocaust took ~12 years (including all the legal/political groundwork) and the Holodomor a year, the "between" doesn't fill me with confidence...

the Rwandan genocide took place between 7 April to 19 July 1994

it's been only ~6 months or so since Trump took office and he's already annihilated the US Fed Gov and is now declaring martial law.

and he's concerned with appearances, sorta. AI won't be.

shoutout to Paul Virilio and how technology drives speed which drives war and destruction

Re: Ex-Google Exec Says "The Idea That AI Will Create New Jobs Is 100% Crap"

#140

Post by red-iron-pine »

tim333 wrote: post #109
pjmlp wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like in Detroit, and Germany's Ruhrgebiet? Two examples out of plenty others, where people had to move out as means of survival.

Detroit's decline wasn't really caused by tech. More that unions jacked the wages and other costs for car production there so the production moved elsewhere.

the rustbelt was caused by the rest of the world catching up after being bombed back to the stone age during WW2.

unions kept wages high and led to offshoring, but inefficient garbage tier cars from Detroit lost ground to better engineering and no planned obsolesce coming from European and Japanese models. A lot of that came from a decline in steel, coal, and acute pain points related to the oil crises in the 70s.

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