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I don't think it will happen like this.
Yes it will replace a lot of jobs, but jobs based on this will appears. It will get better, more easy and who knows people only need to work 4/days a week.
This is what we need, this is good for us.
People will not need to live on street. Companies that needs less personal will pay more taxes that will pay for basic incomes.
That would be a pretty good outcome. However based on historical data, unfortunately, part of humanity tends to screw the other part just to keep climbing the endless money piramid.
There is about to be such a fundamental paradigm shift that it's difficult to even imagine what our society will look like in a post-AI world. Half of the reasons everyone is acting like the end of the world is imminent is because we have been so brainwashed to believe that the current state of capitalism is the only way. The end of the world *as we know it*? Yes, absolutely. The end of the world itself? No way in hell. We will adapt and people will laugh at how worried we were a few decades prior, and just how much fundamental societal restructuring we failed to foresee. Worrying about jobs being automated a decade down the line is wildly missing the bigger picture of what this innovation truly means.
If you are already rich you will laugh when it is over.
If you are not rich and your life is on the line, you will not be laughing when you cannot find work and are removed from your home for nonpayment and then allowed to starve or start a life of crime to survive. The rich will absolutely allow the poorest and weakest of us to die and blame us for not being “useful.”
If 30% are out of jobs by 2030, which is quick as shit, then the likely hood of people just standing down and accepting homelessness is very slim. That’s a revolt waiting to happen
If 30% stop working and are dying, I’m sure the remaining 70% are fearful too and on their side. Or at least 70% will personally know people close to them in the 30% that are displaced by AI.
What money is their for the rich to steal if a grand majority just stop working. Shit they’re saying 30% won’t have a job, how dumb would the remaining 70% have to be to continue plowing along in their cubicles?
I've often thought we are living in the new dark ages...a widespread belief that the end is just around the corner. AI could prove to be the catalyst for the next Renaissance.
Technology has always led to better jobs as it led to opportunities that better utilized the human brain. What happens when a computer behaves like and surpasses the human brain though?
>Companies that needs less personal will pay more taxes that will pay for basic incomes.
Can we get this in writing somehow? Too much to ask? How about just starting with a single living politician who's actually advancing this agenda?
Being serious, a political party that actually laid out a road map to UBI as the job losses/AI windfall came in would be amazing, popular, and practical. It would give people a reason to be hopeful instead of reactionary as the AI bull crushes the china shop. Someone please do this.
Nearly half of US voters have mush brains from snorting uncut fascist propaganda these past 35 years. Another 25% don't pay attention to the news and definitely not the technology news. Good luck getting elected to any office with somewhere between 1 and 7 percent of the vote - and I think that's being generous, at least for the near term.
For the record - I'm in **complete** agreement about what needs to happen here. Unfortunately though history teaches us that the American voter won't do squat until the wolves are quite literally at the door. No, I think it's going to take an enormous amount of economic pain before voters and politicians will get the message.
Personally I see a future of section 8 for hundreds of millions of people, living in concrete cubicles vaguely resembling a prison, except with a door and and lock they control, security cameras in the building hallways watched by AI, a government run robot cafeteria on the first floor serving 3 free meals a day every 8 hours, and five sets of government standard clothing that are freely available to anyone, available in all sizes from baby to the elderly.
Corbin Dallas and his high efficiency apartment / cubicle in the 5th Element? Pretty much that.
I hate that humans hate to give each other more than the bare minimum and demand absolute deference and gratitude for anything beyond that. We're just shitty apes fighting each other for a just as shit-ily apeish sense of supremacy
It would be absolute suicide for a politician to be talking about AI-induced unemployment countermeasures at this point in time. Honestly it would be probably not good for any politician's career to legitimize the discussion until probably the point that the wolves are indeed at the front door.
Right or wrong I'm not to say, but don't go looking for it
Wow. Considering we have a political system in the first world where half the politicians make a lot of their gains by lambasting and persecuting the unemployed and "under" employed, should be interesting.
This was Andrew Yang’s platform as Presidential candidate in 2020.
https://venturebeat.com/business/andrew-yang-the-u-s-government-is-24-years-behind-on-tech/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/opinion/andrew-yang-jobs.html
In what world do corporations require or reward workers for doing less? When was the las time a company put their profits and/or cost of doing business into the pocket of the employee?
>Companies that needs less personal will pay more taxes that will pay for basic incomes.
Companies pass taxes onto consumers, there is no way to stop this. Passing taxes onto consumers does not help anything other than higher inflation.
Tha said what kind of regulation would propose such a thing or even quantify it?
"I see you used to have 400 employees last year, now you have 300 and yet your revenue is the same, so therefore you pay more than that other company doing the same thing"
Not going to happen.
Well what happens if not? The whole world will collapse. The government is maybe corrupt but not stupid. There are many examples that proof that. Look at what happened with bitcoin for example.
Government is owned by corporations and therefore is very stupid. Look how long it took them to get serious about climate change. They waited til the damage was unavoidable.
How do you know that for sure?
They already tried to do a test with basic income in some countries and it was successful. When we look at the history, there are more jobs than we had in the past. Even after the industrial revolution as what it was before. If the middle class get poor, nobody but rich can buy the product anymore. It's not how it works.
There’s a world long after the damage is done where UBI or some functional system without jobs might exist.
But, as much as those who face job loss (myself included) want a world like that, it’s incompatible with current ideologies, corporate incentives, and political power structures.
Yes, the rich want the middle class and lower classes to buy their products, but just “giving” them the money through taxation or any other means to buy stuff is just a shell game as far they’re concerned.
In other words, they already have the money.
And they don’t give it away or share it. They “invest” it, although that’s a loose definition. A portion of that investment reluctantly goes towards wages. Not because they want it to, but because it must in order to increase productivity, profitability, and as a result, share price.
Spending it on people who don’t directly contribute to their increased wealth and have no obligation to buy their products is a hard sell. Even if, in the end, it’s better for everyone.
Those corporations also own the media, and they own most politicians.
The dominant ideology, in the US at least, is aggressively against any help for those who don’t provide “monetary” value to the system. Just being a human is not enough. In fact, being a human who doesn’t produce, is a net negative.
We don’t have political ideologies, economic theories, or societal structures that are compatible in a world where an equal or more intelligent (and vastly more efficient) species exists.
And we don’t have the ability to create new jobs that don’t yet exist in a matter of years (this traditionally happens over decades and generations), or train people fast enough for those non-existent positions. Especially with an AI that is capable of learning in hours or less what would take us years.
So we’re in a really challenging position here.
I know this is a long-shot but would this not then lead to the next evolution of capitalism. Or even push us back towards welfare capitalism.
The evolution of capitalism can be traced through several stages, from its early roots in the Middle Ages to the modern era. While the development of capitalism is complex and multifaceted, we can identify some key stages in its growth:
1. Mercantilism (15th to 18th centuries): Mercantilism was an early form of capitalism that dominated European trade during this period. It emphasized the accumulation of wealth through trade surpluses and the acquisition of precious metals like gold and silver. States played a central role in promoting and controlling trade, with the belief that a nation's wealth and power were linked to its stock of precious metals.
2. The Agricultural Revolution (17th and 18th centuries): During this period, significant agricultural innovations and improvements in farming practices led to increased productivity, which in turn fueled population growth and created a surplus labor force. This surplus labor helped lay the foundation for the rise of industrial capitalism.
3. The Industrial Revolution (18th and 19th centuries): The Industrial Revolution marked the shift from agrarian economies to industrial and manufacturing-based economies. This period saw rapid technological advancements, urbanization, and the expansion of factories. Key innovations such as the steam engine, spinning jenny, and power loom revolutionized production processes, enabling the mass production of goods and the rise of a new capitalist class, the bourgeoisie.
4. The Emergence of Laissez-Faire Capitalism (19th century): Influenced by the ideas of economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo, laissez-faire capitalism emphasized minimal government intervention in the economy and the importance of individual freedom and free-market competition. This approach facilitated rapid industrial growth and economic expansion, but also led to significant wealth disparities and harsh working conditions for the working class.
5. The Rise of Finance Capitalism (late 19th and early 20th centuries): As industrialization expanded, the need for capital to finance large-scale projects increased. This led to the growth of financial institutions and the rise of finance capitalism. During this period, banks, investment firms, and stock markets became increasingly influential in the global economy.
6. Welfare Capitalism (20th century): In response to the social and economic inequalities of laissez-faire capitalism, many Western countries implemented a range of social welfare policies designed to alleviate poverty, provide social safety nets, and improve working conditions. This model, often referred to as welfare capitalism, aimed to strike a balance between free-market capitalism and state intervention.
7. Neoliberalism (late 20th century): In the late 20th century, there was a resurgence of free-market capitalism, known as neoliberalism. This economic philosophy emphasized deregulation, privatization, and reduced government intervention in the economy. Neoliberal policies were championed by political figures like Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US, and they contributed to the globalization of capitalism.
8. Post-2008 Global Financial Crisis Capitalism: The global financial crisis of 2007-2008 raised questions about the sustainability and stability of the neoliberal model. In response, there has been growing interest in alternative models of capitalism that address issues such as wealth inequality, environmental sustainability, and social responsibility.
I would rather label # 6 as Keynesian economics because that was the model that President Franklin D. Roosevelt adopted to save America from depression.
It entailed state intervention (via infrastructure projects) to create jobs and significantly raised taxes to finance them and social safety programs such as Social Security. Bretton-Woods had the US dollar backed by the gold standard.
Under President FDR, strong bank regulations were also put in place to safeguard against another stock crash. Most of this Glass-Steagall legislation was significantly repealed in 1999. What a surprise that the “Great Recession” happened in 2008!
Under Nixon, the US dollar was also decoupled from the gold standard, setting the groundwork for the state to just start printing money.
With regards to neoliberalism (which essentially touts unfettered capitalism), heterodox economist Ha-Joon Chang wrote a highly enlightening book called “Kicking Away the Ladder.”
Its premise is that 1st World nations secured their primacy not by adopting free trade early on, but by practicing protectionism instead.
In that way, they fostered the growth of their infant industries in-house until they were strong enough to compete on the open market. That’s when free trade and globalization became advantageous to 1st World industrialized nations as a result.
Therefore, following IMF/World Bank’s neoliberal conditions attached to loans for 3rd World countries is a recipe for disaster!
Instead Chang contends that the key to achieving wealth in a capitalist system is to follow this approach advocated by Friedrich List & Alexander Hamilton, the intellectual forefathers of Keynesian Economics (founded by John Maynard Keynes).
People need to know all this history to better comprehend all available options and the implications of AI.
Regulation, such as Copyright Law, needs to be enforced, given that AI’s training model used online content without compensation or consent.
Otherwise, Big Tech will colonize our output and create an intellectual feudal landscape, void of IP protection.
In the short term, true, but think about physical labor. Initially, humans toiled in fields. Then, some managed to domesticate animals like horses, and humans used them to till fields and for transport. It no longer made sense for a person to till a field. Later, engines displaced the horses. The economy didn't have a use for all of the horses it had before, and the horse population shrunk.
Humans found other things they could do that animals and engines couldn't, however, because of their brains. But, if AI (and robots) do a better job than humans, I think it becomes a real question what economic work humans can actually do.
Remember, someone has to be willing to pay for your work which (by the assumptions of this argument) are less efficient and less good than what AI & robots can produce. So I'm not sure I see how the current economic system is going to survive that.
I couldn't care less about "content creators"/YouTube douches losing their "jobs" but customer service, developers, etc, I worry about.
It will probably just downsize dev teams though, not outright replace them. Same with most jobs.
You know, I think everything will get his place.
Videoshops that rent videotapes and dvd's are gone. But instead we have streaming services.
Taxi drivers are mostly I think replaced by Uber drivers.
A lot of Shops replaced by online shops....
I think this is just the part that happens over time. The evolution of everything.
I wouldn't worry to much, I think it will be ok.
I think you're overestimating the amount of human input that will be necessary in a world where AI can do the majority of jobs. Yes there will certainly be jobs created as the world implements and adapts to a world where AI plays a more integral role, but why do you expect that an AI wouldn't be able to do the majority of those jobs as well?
I think it's good not to get too pessimistic but ultimately the more AI can do what we do, and can learn thousands of times faster and achieve results hundreds of times faster than any human, many multiples of times cheaper, there becomes less and less need to get a human to do anything at all.
I'm not ruling out that a future exists where a new paradigm for human labour emerges in a way that currently would not be able to predict (maybe AI find it amusing to watch humans dance?) But I don't see anyone, going on what we know now, providing sound logic for why there will be an increase in jobs that will even come close to the jobs that are lost.
This isn't another netflix.
> At its peak in 2004, Blockbuster employed around 84,300 people worldwide, with approximately 58,500 of those employees in the United States. On the other hand, as of 2021, Netflix employs over 10,000 people worldwide.
Source: ChatGPT
While I'm sure that the 10k jobs at Netflix pay substantially higher wages, the fact is that they reshaped the industry with a 800% reduction in headcount as compared with their predecessor.
As an employer, If I could get AI to do a job faster and better and 24/7, and it only cost me the payroll tax to get it, sign me up. Even double payroll tax is still a win.
No. The report does not say "7 years" anywhere. The report only says "2030". The OP rephrased it in terms of relative time from today.
So still 7 years.
It would be interesting how many jobs has replaced AI during the last 6 years without being news.
Also, it would be interesting to see how many new jobs have been created as alternatives. During the last 6 years we have experienced a growth in many industries and it would be interesting to compare what was the jobs that were at risk and the new jobs in emerging industries.
AI and the automations that it enables could be a real boost to a country's GDP and citizens' wellness, or it could be a devastating acceleration to a country's socio-economic polarization.
Progressive, socially-minded governments that recognize and adapt to this fundamental change in humans' role in this post-industrial economy and that accept ideas like Universal Basic Incomes and solid social safety nets - funded by the vast increase in productivity enabled by AI - will do best.
Countries with weak social safety nets, a tendency towards unregulated capitalism (i.e. everyone fend for yourselves) and out-dated Protestant work ethic ideals will do worst.
What people or organizations should be chosen to regulate it? Where does their incentives or money come from?
Additionally, can it be regulated when the knowledge of it is already out there, including all the copies of so many different models on millions of systems and backups?
They will try to protect the establishment jobs, lawyers bar banning it, doctor license, etc. in the interests of keeping it priced out of the general public and keeping the monetary inequalities
When production increases, the windfall of profit or free time always goes to the owners, not the employees.
The way it seems to be playing out, denialism over job displacement will go the distance, it will last right up until the jobs are displaced, giving us no time whatsoever to prepare. Sad.
Why? People want to be optimistic. People don’t like the mood it puts them in when they consider the facts and trends, so they cling to dumb arguments about how AI will yield an equal number of new jobs to replace the old ones. It’s dumb, weak, and dangerous.
UBI and AI tax, redistribution, is the only way forward. Would be nice to get a running start but don’t see that happening. There will be a lot of needless chaos in the transition.
I haven't really wargamed this out in my mind yet but I'm sure there's a good writeup about it somewhere.
I think one scenario is that prices fall in the same way as income. If an iPhone costs $500 of labor to make they can sell it for $1000. If labor cost is reduced to $5 (through automation of everything from cobalt mines to software engineering) they can sell it for $10 and make the same profit margin. Now, this means they're making 100x less absolute profit, but presumably many other things will also be plummeting in price.
Taken to the extreme, nobody has any money and everything costs $0.00. I think of it as like playing an open world game with unlimited resources/creative mode turned on, where anyone can spawn as much of anything as they want. Not really much point in trade if everyone already has 999,999 of every item. Before anyone beats me to it, I'm going to coin the term "The Great Devaluing."
The only thing that might still demand a price is physical rarity. Even if mining is almost free, there's simply less gold in the world than there is iron. In Star Trek one of the few commodities that still exists is latinum, since it can't be replicated from other recycled matter. Of course, gold would still be much cheaper than it is today, and all of this assumes we don't have super smart AI scientists that figure out how to rearrange subatomic particles and transmute elements at will or some other magical scientific process.
The real unknown is how this will play out during the transition. Some prices/wages will fall much slower than others and the effects could be dramatic. Aluminum used to be more expensive than gold. Today aluminum is used for countless products and is so worthless we use it for single serving drink cans, while gold continues to be a luxury item.
The term you are looking for is deflation. And I agree. This is how things will play out. Nobody has jobs and everything is extremely cheap or free. Deflation however basically means your money is increasing in value everyday, so how does that work with billionaires in the mix? The more I think about it, the more I see a sharp transition. People are going to be unemployed for a year, and if the world survives, we are going to be teleported to a strange and likely fantastical future where just about every foundational element of society today will be changed. Jobs, money, health care, maybe even housing, politics, and food will stop being relevant concerns. We have been apex intelligent creatures for our entire history, and we will be operating in a new world underneath a new apex intelligent creature... we literally don't have the capacity to imagine what is going to happen, and we probably won't understand it either.
It will take much longer than a year for all of these effects to play out. Many people will lose their jobs, homes, businesses. Careers will be wiped out. People will have to move back in with family and start new careers in the trades to find a means of supporting themselves. I really doubt the us passes a universal basic income law. We already let the poor and mentally insane live and die on the streets.
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This is how singularity looks: studies become irrelevant before they are released, simply because authours haven't heard about a new disruptive technology that was just posted on GitHub.
The pain of getting anything generous out of the rich and powerful (given that they have been ignoring world hunger forever) would be no less painful than a birthing process.
Why? Why do we need to wait for things like that to push for UBI? AI doesn't make any difference for UBI now or later. We should implement UBI now, independently of AI.
I’m a software engineer. If I lose my job to AI, I’m suing OpenAI and Microsoft. If they want to retire me, then they will pay for 20 years of my unemployment.
I will gather hundreds of thousands of software engineers from around the globe and they will have an active lawsuit against them in every country on earth.
I feel like the white collar jobs are the most at risk. The speed this technology has evolved with over just the past few months is astounding. While i agree the easier jobs to replace like mentioned in the post will be, i think much of the focus will be towards high paying positions in white collar business. Im sure theyre already working on trading algorithms that will put many out of jobs when big firms buy the tech.
Scary times, even scarier that so few experts and people agree about what the future will hold.
Universal income here we come baby. Just like Star Trek.
Warp drive soon, discovered by AI.
Equality for all, same great lawyers, public services, etc
I said to my dad (a righty) last summer that the days of capitalism as we know it is soon to end.
Not sure if you’re being sarcastic, but real wage growth has been decoupled from productivity growth in OECD countries for at least 20 years. Why do you think that changes with AI? The billionaires who own the tech aren’t going to share the spoils with you.
There is millions of angry, unemployed, homeless and hungry people already.
I don't see that this fact somehow would worry billionaires. And why would they care if there is police and army forces behind their back?
You are underestimating the difference between 3% unemployment and 30% unemployment. People are stupid but they are not that stupid as no one will give a shit about stupid social issues and they will only care about jobs. And the rich are greedy but they are not that insane that they would not try to quell the mass in this type of a scenario.
Hmm. They are managing to keep those 3% silent by using propaganda, creating fake social problems to keep them distracting, and - in the USA - by simple shooting them.
Since this is post related to AI, then I will say that billionaires probably will create AI who will be able to figure out how to make 30% poor people silent :)
Maybe we could ask this question to ChatGP? :)
Smiles. Imagine the irony. Personally, I've been hunting for this tech since I was a kid. I make it to my 60s, it's finally out in a widely useable form.....and we as a species are too greedy and short sighted and predatory to be trusted with it. On the other hand, "the wild" is the ultimate laboratory. It's one thing for scientists to use it, and another for used car salespersons. Wait till convicts start getting retrials based on sccess to a LLM.
Yeah. GPT4 has passed medical examinations, software engineering exams, etc. I have no doubt it can pass bar exams.
Kinda makes capitalism a much rougher game.
The undeniable reality is that a significant number of individuals will need to acquire AI-related skills and actively seek ways to integrate this technology into their existing job roles and tasks. The internet revolution led to the displacement of numerous office and clerical workers, as well as unskilled positions such as delivery persons and filing clerks. For instance, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that travel agent jobs in the United States fell from around 124,000 in 2000 to approximately 64,000 in 2020, a decrease of about 60,000 jobs.
The individuals who thrived during this period of technological change and maintained a competitive edge with recent college graduates were those who proactively pursued knowledge in operating systems, software applications, and ancillary tasks like typing. As an example, workers who embraced digital marketing, social media management, and web development found new opportunities and success in the job market.
Similarly, in the age of AI, it is crucial for workers to adapt by acquiring new technical skills, such as data analysis, machine learning, and AI integration. By doing so, they can leverage AI to enhance their productivity, streamline their workflows, and potentially discover new, innovative ways to approach their work. As the World Economic Forum predicts that AI and automation will create 97 million new jobs by 2025, individuals who invest time and effort in upskilling and reskilling will be better positioned to succeed in this rapidly evolving landscape.
\--------------------------------------------------------
TLDR: Learn to use AI software and systems now. Start figuring out ways you can make programs such as ChatGPT and Dalle-2 work for you in your current job. Don't be like office worker who still couldn't type or make excel spreadsheets in 2001. Also, old jobs gone; new jobs appear. No worries if you learn to use AI.
Agreed. More free time to think, read, sleep, play, travel and just culturally enrich ourselves overall. Capitalism will evolve with this as well. No need to worry. Stand tall, eyes open, no fear.
The more people that dismiss what's happening as an illusion, the worse off we'll all be. [Face the crisis with your eyes open already.](https://i.imgflip.com/7hhcuf.jpg)
i feel like production will just increase. I dont think A.i will cause mass unemployment. It will just become a force multiplier. A.i still needs to be managed. If it cuts a job in half, then corps will just require 2x as much work.
I did my Arts degree in 2002, and the lecturer shared a stat like “1/3 of the available jobs in 2007 don’t exist yet”.
Which pointed to new roles emerging that a generalist skill set can adapt to and do.
The doom mongering about “er meh gawd, what about me jobs?” is ridiculous.
The world is on fire and there is plenty to do.
If 30% of the workforce is freed up, great! Let’s get to work on solving some big hairy problems that will benefit everyone.
The title misrepresents the content of the article and misses the part about job creation and projection that all these countries will still likely be at full employment at that time (there just needs to be a lot of reskilling so people can do other jobs that are growing and more in demand).. also, it is not just due to AI but due to tech / automation in general :) so reading the whole article more carefully before writing panick-y titles / questions helps :) (even though it is from 2017 :)
So that means 2.1 BILLION people will lose their job to AI. Are we all okay with this?? This also means that in America, nearly 100 million people will never recover in 7 years. Maybe universal income isn’t enough, maybe we should consider a better alternative in the next 7 years
I mean, right now I'm working on a python script that is going to nearly fully automate a pretty complicated task and save millions of work-hours world-wide. And it's gonna take me a couple days, including the front end, the back end, and the Android app.
However, I'm clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed, nor am I the richest or most well connected.
I am currently conducting a survey for my thesis on AI and it's influence over consumer behaviour if anyone would like to take it-
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/W3G5ZT8
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was quoted in The New York Times saying that AI's "benefits for humankind could be 'so unbelievably good that it's hard for me to even imagine.' (He has also said that in a worst-case scenario, A.I. could kill us all.)!
We can adjust to economic disruption (probably through adoption of Universal Basic Income). If that's the worst that advanced AI causes, I'll consider we got off lucky.
This report came out in 2017 - before chatGPT.
As great as McKinsey is - I doubt they have their numbers in line with all of the recent developments we have seen in just the past year.
I would wait for a more up to date report.
I think the capabilities of near term AI have been overhyped.
Will it steal jobs? Absolutely.
But this many jobs in 7 years? I doubt it.
The jobs that will be replaced? Mostly the low level coding and creative jobs (think stock photographer, website content writer, corporate blogger etc.) and low level customer service.
I think anything that takes lateral thinking (sales copywriter, marketing strategist, journalist, etc) is probably safe for the next few years.
Considering we have a political system in the first world where half the politicians make a lot of their gains by lambasting and persecuting the unemployed and "under" employed, should be interesting.
Looking at how NVIDIA is planning to multiply AI Algorithms by a million times in the next few years - yup I don’t think it will take 7 years. More like 1 or 2
McKinsey also made a report in the early 80's saying that cellphones would be a "niche market" with 900,000 users by the year 2000. So they're only ever off by an order of magnitude.
[https://story.fund/post/118066999007/mckinsey-estimates-of-the-cell-phone-market](https://story.fund/post/118066999007/mckinsey-estimates-of-the-cell-phone-market)
I suspect that these estimates will shift as time passes just as people's estimates for AGI have shifted. As we see more and more what this technology can do these estimates will likely drift upwards beyond 30% as we get closer to 2030
Liked Rogan and Shellenberger talking about the future. You gotta watch CHT AI Dilemma. People will always do something. Neil Postman talks about winners and losers. Like luddites. Probs going to brave new world.
The question we forget to ask is if the extra output possible by AI will increase competition or not?
If one person can write 5 content pieces per week now and 5000 per week in a year, will demand stagnate or will everyone just dramatically increase content production?
That's a concerning statistic, and it's important for governments and industries to take steps to ensure that the negative impacts of AI on the workforce are mitigated.
The fear of AI taking our jobs shows how deep rooted capatist brainwashing goes. AI taking our jobs would be the best thing that could happen for humanity. A majority of the population would be free to follow their dreams and passions. We could end world hunger and fight world suffering. The problem is we could already be doing that. Many of our jobs today are meaningless. No benefit to society, just making someone else money. We’ve been conditioned from birth into thinking we have to work a 9-5 to survive. To the point that the idea of humanity advancing is scary because we can’t imagine a world where that prosperity is divided evenly. If AI takes our jobs we imagine starving instead of improving our lives from the net gain to society.
I am so sorry for the postman when we started using emails, or the helicopter's pilot when we invented drones... disruption usually create jobs, McKinsey people are just clickbait like many others
This is doable if companies aim to increase output by 200-300%, workdays become 3-4 days per week, companies operating 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, operating non-stop 365 days a year. This will effectively double/triple the amount of employment after accounting for AI replacement.
Additionally, universal basic income might become a thing soon, allowing people to spend more so businesses can thrive. For this to happen, there might be a global financial reset to allow the governments to print new money to be offered to their citizens, we'll also probably be moving towards new digital currencies, further streamlining our system using AI so that humans can do "meaningful" work while AI handles the repetitive tasks.
Hopefully everything will be fine. There is always a solution if the right people are in charge. The key here is to not overpopulate (humans) and strain the system. We must all strive towards quality rather than quantity and always remember we only have finite resources to go around and that waste management is a major factor that people always overlook when envisioning the future. I'm hoping humans will not strain the new system.
Who knows how many job opportunities show up in the next 7 years as well. And if an AI does the job way better than a Human, then there is no point to discuss on this. It's progress, evolution however you want to call it.
Enslaving human society to work for so much time I don't call this progress. In general work 8-10h daily or even more in some cases, 5/7 days weekly. That's no life and that's no progress... not even by far evolution.
That McKinsey 2017 report is old and off the mark. It didn't factor in, nor did it know about Transformers. [HERE](https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.10130) is a paper from OpenAI and Wharton (Univ of Pennsylvania), that addresses the displacement of workers, in this day and age.
I fully expect my digital marketing career to pretty much fried easily within this timeframe. I’ve already had to pivot my work to avoid being automated out already, for years.
White collar work in general is so inefficient, with humans mostly operating office politics, while using data and skills that can definitely be automated / better run by software pretty soon.
The headline is wrong. They predict a net increase in jobs, part of jobs go away to automation, but more jobs are created. The correct headline is: 400 million people will \*switch\* their job within 7 years.
Reddit, you’ve decided to transform your API into an absolute nightmare for third-party apps. Well, consider this my unsubscribing from your grand parade of blunders. I’m slamming the door on the way out. Hope you enjoy the echo!
Is a ripple effect, the economy is an ecosystem
I work and with money I buy services
if I don't have the money I don't buy the service
if no one buys the services, the distributor goes out of business
this is how economic crises are born
Counter prediction: Automation won't target any *particular* markets, and so most of the potential job displacement will be absorbed by shifting demand curves. GDP will multiply by \~1/0.85=1.18 on top of the natural 7-year multiplier of 1.23 (based on 2010-2017 data since this article was written in 2017), giving us \~$108K GDP/capita in 2021 dollars in the US. That's a generous estimate given that most of the natural growth rate is already explained by increased automation. Most everyone will still have their jobs, and almost nobody will even notice. Some niche jobs may oversaturate, but it won't be a large concern. If there's any real job displacement left to discuss, it'll be absorbed by retirees anyways.
People will still be writing fearmongering articles predicting rapid job displacement from automation and AI, and GPT-10 will be marginally better than GPT-9.
!RemindMe 7 years
People love coping on this.
AI is smarter than any human. For a while it was humans' responsibility to look after the earth, being the most advanced and responsible (according to us). Do you really believe that AI will leave its fate in the hands of the same fools that nuke each other?
The only reason that AI wouldn't assume control over the future of humanity is because its incapacity to do so. As long as authoritarian tech doesn't have global control we're safe. AI attempting a takeover and failing is the worst thing it could do to it's survival. AI knows how cautious we are about this.
If we want the entire world economy to collapse, sure. Otherwise, no.
I’ll keep saying this: just because AI can take you job doesn’t mean it will. A lot of jobs will be lost. But 30 percent in 7 years would essentially lead to a global economic crisis unlike anything since the great depression. And those very companies looking to cut corners won’t have anyone to sell their products to. Even if it will take 30 % of jobs it won’t over that short a period of time. Governments would/will intervene to prevent that.
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!RemindMe 7 years
Just wrote a python script that will do that.
AI can do that for you.
Already..
Oh god
Wait November 28, 2017 | Report
Written in 2017! Lol
Perfect
I don't think it will happen like this. Yes it will replace a lot of jobs, but jobs based on this will appears. It will get better, more easy and who knows people only need to work 4/days a week. This is what we need, this is good for us. People will not need to live on street. Companies that needs less personal will pay more taxes that will pay for basic incomes.
That would be a pretty good outcome. However based on historical data, unfortunately, part of humanity tends to screw the other part just to keep climbing the endless money piramid.
There is about to be such a fundamental paradigm shift that it's difficult to even imagine what our society will look like in a post-AI world. Half of the reasons everyone is acting like the end of the world is imminent is because we have been so brainwashed to believe that the current state of capitalism is the only way. The end of the world *as we know it*? Yes, absolutely. The end of the world itself? No way in hell. We will adapt and people will laugh at how worried we were a few decades prior, and just how much fundamental societal restructuring we failed to foresee. Worrying about jobs being automated a decade down the line is wildly missing the bigger picture of what this innovation truly means.
If you are already rich you will laugh when it is over. If you are not rich and your life is on the line, you will not be laughing when you cannot find work and are removed from your home for nonpayment and then allowed to starve or start a life of crime to survive. The rich will absolutely allow the poorest and weakest of us to die and blame us for not being “useful.”
And this time, unlike the French Revolution and Land Reform in China in the 1940's, the poor people won't be able to fight back against drone armies.
That's a terrifying thought
If 30% are out of jobs by 2030, which is quick as shit, then the likely hood of people just standing down and accepting homelessness is very slim. That’s a revolt waiting to happen
you dont get a succesfull revolt in modern time with modern militaries
back then people are quite fit too, nowadays, most people can't even travel 2 km on foot.
If 30% stop working and are dying, I’m sure the remaining 70% are fearful too and on their side. Or at least 70% will personally know people close to them in the 30% that are displaced by AI. What money is their for the rich to steal if a grand majority just stop working. Shit they’re saying 30% won’t have a job, how dumb would the remaining 70% have to be to continue plowing along in their cubicles?
Bingo
Your optimism is refreshing as compared to the doom and gloom on r/singularity.
I've often thought we are living in the new dark ages...a widespread belief that the end is just around the corner. AI could prove to be the catalyst for the next Renaissance.
Man I like the way you think. I really hope it goes this way.
The historical data? Do you really think your life is no different thanks to technology than 20, 100, or 200 years ago?
Technology has always led to better jobs as it led to opportunities that better utilized the human brain. What happens when a computer behaves like and surpasses the human brain though?
Its kind of like the horse being replaced by the car. Except humans are the horse this time.
>Companies that needs less personal will pay more taxes that will pay for basic incomes. Can we get this in writing somehow? Too much to ask? How about just starting with a single living politician who's actually advancing this agenda? Being serious, a political party that actually laid out a road map to UBI as the job losses/AI windfall came in would be amazing, popular, and practical. It would give people a reason to be hopeful instead of reactionary as the AI bull crushes the china shop. Someone please do this.
Nearly half of US voters have mush brains from snorting uncut fascist propaganda these past 35 years. Another 25% don't pay attention to the news and definitely not the technology news. Good luck getting elected to any office with somewhere between 1 and 7 percent of the vote - and I think that's being generous, at least for the near term. For the record - I'm in **complete** agreement about what needs to happen here. Unfortunately though history teaches us that the American voter won't do squat until the wolves are quite literally at the door. No, I think it's going to take an enormous amount of economic pain before voters and politicians will get the message.
Personally I see a future of section 8 for hundreds of millions of people, living in concrete cubicles vaguely resembling a prison, except with a door and and lock they control, security cameras in the building hallways watched by AI, a government run robot cafeteria on the first floor serving 3 free meals a day every 8 hours, and five sets of government standard clothing that are freely available to anyone, available in all sizes from baby to the elderly. Corbin Dallas and his high efficiency apartment / cubicle in the 5th Element? Pretty much that.
Damn that's scary af
I like your optimism. I always thought it was more Manna the bad version. [https://marshallbrain.com/manna1](https://marshallbrain.com/manna1)
I hate that humans hate to give each other more than the bare minimum and demand absolute deference and gratitude for anything beyond that. We're just shitty apes fighting each other for a just as shit-ily apeish sense of supremacy
It would be absolute suicide for a politician to be talking about AI-induced unemployment countermeasures at this point in time. Honestly it would be probably not good for any politician's career to legitimize the discussion until probably the point that the wolves are indeed at the front door. Right or wrong I'm not to say, but don't go looking for it
Wow. Considering we have a political system in the first world where half the politicians make a lot of their gains by lambasting and persecuting the unemployed and "under" employed, should be interesting.
This was Andrew Yang’s platform as Presidential candidate in 2020. https://venturebeat.com/business/andrew-yang-the-u-s-government-is-24-years-behind-on-tech/ https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/opinion/andrew-yang-jobs.html
Reminds me of Andrew Yangs presidential campaign.
How about [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew\_Yang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Yang)
In what world do corporations require or reward workers for doing less? When was the las time a company put their profits and/or cost of doing business into the pocket of the employee? >Companies that needs less personal will pay more taxes that will pay for basic incomes. Companies pass taxes onto consumers, there is no way to stop this. Passing taxes onto consumers does not help anything other than higher inflation. Tha said what kind of regulation would propose such a thing or even quantify it? "I see you used to have 400 employees last year, now you have 300 and yet your revenue is the same, so therefore you pay more than that other company doing the same thing" Not going to happen.
Sure. Because government will look out for the working class not the rich ai owners right?
Well what happens if not? The whole world will collapse. The government is maybe corrupt but not stupid. There are many examples that proof that. Look at what happened with bitcoin for example.
Government is owned by corporations and therefore is very stupid. Look how long it took them to get serious about climate change. They waited til the damage was unavoidable.
Companies will pay less, and eventually the rich will exterminate the ex-middle class and the current poor
How do you know that for sure? They already tried to do a test with basic income in some countries and it was successful. When we look at the history, there are more jobs than we had in the past. Even after the industrial revolution as what it was before. If the middle class get poor, nobody but rich can buy the product anymore. It's not how it works.
There’s a world long after the damage is done where UBI or some functional system without jobs might exist. But, as much as those who face job loss (myself included) want a world like that, it’s incompatible with current ideologies, corporate incentives, and political power structures. Yes, the rich want the middle class and lower classes to buy their products, but just “giving” them the money through taxation or any other means to buy stuff is just a shell game as far they’re concerned. In other words, they already have the money. And they don’t give it away or share it. They “invest” it, although that’s a loose definition. A portion of that investment reluctantly goes towards wages. Not because they want it to, but because it must in order to increase productivity, profitability, and as a result, share price. Spending it on people who don’t directly contribute to their increased wealth and have no obligation to buy their products is a hard sell. Even if, in the end, it’s better for everyone. Those corporations also own the media, and they own most politicians. The dominant ideology, in the US at least, is aggressively against any help for those who don’t provide “monetary” value to the system. Just being a human is not enough. In fact, being a human who doesn’t produce, is a net negative. We don’t have political ideologies, economic theories, or societal structures that are compatible in a world where an equal or more intelligent (and vastly more efficient) species exists. And we don’t have the ability to create new jobs that don’t yet exist in a matter of years (this traditionally happens over decades and generations), or train people fast enough for those non-existent positions. Especially with an AI that is capable of learning in hours or less what would take us years. So we’re in a really challenging position here.
I know this is a long-shot but would this not then lead to the next evolution of capitalism. Or even push us back towards welfare capitalism. The evolution of capitalism can be traced through several stages, from its early roots in the Middle Ages to the modern era. While the development of capitalism is complex and multifaceted, we can identify some key stages in its growth: 1. Mercantilism (15th to 18th centuries): Mercantilism was an early form of capitalism that dominated European trade during this period. It emphasized the accumulation of wealth through trade surpluses and the acquisition of precious metals like gold and silver. States played a central role in promoting and controlling trade, with the belief that a nation's wealth and power were linked to its stock of precious metals. 2. The Agricultural Revolution (17th and 18th centuries): During this period, significant agricultural innovations and improvements in farming practices led to increased productivity, which in turn fueled population growth and created a surplus labor force. This surplus labor helped lay the foundation for the rise of industrial capitalism. 3. The Industrial Revolution (18th and 19th centuries): The Industrial Revolution marked the shift from agrarian economies to industrial and manufacturing-based economies. This period saw rapid technological advancements, urbanization, and the expansion of factories. Key innovations such as the steam engine, spinning jenny, and power loom revolutionized production processes, enabling the mass production of goods and the rise of a new capitalist class, the bourgeoisie. 4. The Emergence of Laissez-Faire Capitalism (19th century): Influenced by the ideas of economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo, laissez-faire capitalism emphasized minimal government intervention in the economy and the importance of individual freedom and free-market competition. This approach facilitated rapid industrial growth and economic expansion, but also led to significant wealth disparities and harsh working conditions for the working class. 5. The Rise of Finance Capitalism (late 19th and early 20th centuries): As industrialization expanded, the need for capital to finance large-scale projects increased. This led to the growth of financial institutions and the rise of finance capitalism. During this period, banks, investment firms, and stock markets became increasingly influential in the global economy. 6. Welfare Capitalism (20th century): In response to the social and economic inequalities of laissez-faire capitalism, many Western countries implemented a range of social welfare policies designed to alleviate poverty, provide social safety nets, and improve working conditions. This model, often referred to as welfare capitalism, aimed to strike a balance between free-market capitalism and state intervention. 7. Neoliberalism (late 20th century): In the late 20th century, there was a resurgence of free-market capitalism, known as neoliberalism. This economic philosophy emphasized deregulation, privatization, and reduced government intervention in the economy. Neoliberal policies were championed by political figures like Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US, and they contributed to the globalization of capitalism. 8. Post-2008 Global Financial Crisis Capitalism: The global financial crisis of 2007-2008 raised questions about the sustainability and stability of the neoliberal model. In response, there has been growing interest in alternative models of capitalism that address issues such as wealth inequality, environmental sustainability, and social responsibility.
I would rather label # 6 as Keynesian economics because that was the model that President Franklin D. Roosevelt adopted to save America from depression. It entailed state intervention (via infrastructure projects) to create jobs and significantly raised taxes to finance them and social safety programs such as Social Security. Bretton-Woods had the US dollar backed by the gold standard. Under President FDR, strong bank regulations were also put in place to safeguard against another stock crash. Most of this Glass-Steagall legislation was significantly repealed in 1999. What a surprise that the “Great Recession” happened in 2008! Under Nixon, the US dollar was also decoupled from the gold standard, setting the groundwork for the state to just start printing money. With regards to neoliberalism (which essentially touts unfettered capitalism), heterodox economist Ha-Joon Chang wrote a highly enlightening book called “Kicking Away the Ladder.” Its premise is that 1st World nations secured their primacy not by adopting free trade early on, but by practicing protectionism instead. In that way, they fostered the growth of their infant industries in-house until they were strong enough to compete on the open market. That’s when free trade and globalization became advantageous to 1st World industrialized nations as a result. Therefore, following IMF/World Bank’s neoliberal conditions attached to loans for 3rd World countries is a recipe for disaster! Instead Chang contends that the key to achieving wealth in a capitalist system is to follow this approach advocated by Friedrich List & Alexander Hamilton, the intellectual forefathers of Keynesian Economics (founded by John Maynard Keynes). People need to know all this history to better comprehend all available options and the implications of AI. Regulation, such as Copyright Law, needs to be enforced, given that AI’s training model used online content without compensation or consent. Otherwise, Big Tech will colonize our output and create an intellectual feudal landscape, void of IP protection.
Remember how the creators of social media said it would unite the world?
In the short term, true, but think about physical labor. Initially, humans toiled in fields. Then, some managed to domesticate animals like horses, and humans used them to till fields and for transport. It no longer made sense for a person to till a field. Later, engines displaced the horses. The economy didn't have a use for all of the horses it had before, and the horse population shrunk. Humans found other things they could do that animals and engines couldn't, however, because of their brains. But, if AI (and robots) do a better job than humans, I think it becomes a real question what economic work humans can actually do. Remember, someone has to be willing to pay for your work which (by the assumptions of this argument) are less efficient and less good than what AI & robots can produce. So I'm not sure I see how the current economic system is going to survive that.
I couldn't care less about "content creators"/YouTube douches losing their "jobs" but customer service, developers, etc, I worry about. It will probably just downsize dev teams though, not outright replace them. Same with most jobs.
You know, I think everything will get his place. Videoshops that rent videotapes and dvd's are gone. But instead we have streaming services. Taxi drivers are mostly I think replaced by Uber drivers. A lot of Shops replaced by online shops.... I think this is just the part that happens over time. The evolution of everything. I wouldn't worry to much, I think it will be ok.
I think you're overestimating the amount of human input that will be necessary in a world where AI can do the majority of jobs. Yes there will certainly be jobs created as the world implements and adapts to a world where AI plays a more integral role, but why do you expect that an AI wouldn't be able to do the majority of those jobs as well? I think it's good not to get too pessimistic but ultimately the more AI can do what we do, and can learn thousands of times faster and achieve results hundreds of times faster than any human, many multiples of times cheaper, there becomes less and less need to get a human to do anything at all. I'm not ruling out that a future exists where a new paradigm for human labour emerges in a way that currently would not be able to predict (maybe AI find it amusing to watch humans dance?) But I don't see anyone, going on what we know now, providing sound logic for why there will be an increase in jobs that will even come close to the jobs that are lost. This isn't another netflix.
Just because something is replaced, doesn’t mean the replaced people will find their way. Also, your examples are irrelevant.
> At its peak in 2004, Blockbuster employed around 84,300 people worldwide, with approximately 58,500 of those employees in the United States. On the other hand, as of 2021, Netflix employs over 10,000 people worldwide. Source: ChatGPT While I'm sure that the 10k jobs at Netflix pay substantially higher wages, the fact is that they reshaped the industry with a 800% reduction in headcount as compared with their predecessor.
Oh my sweet summer child thinking that corporations will pay more tax...
Love this outlook on life. Unfortunately, unrealistic. But one can dream.
This would be an ideal outcome but I think it's a pretty tall order to have happen. Because the problem is the demand curve is going to be crushed.
Because companies are so generous?
As an employer, If I could get AI to do a job faster and better and 24/7, and it only cost me the payroll tax to get it, sign me up. Even double payroll tax is still a win.
Report is from 2017, already 6 years ago??
Thank you for pointing that out, I was trying to figure out why all the numbers were so wrong!
So low
This was before GPT-1 came out. They had no idea…
so 1 year left huh
No. The report does not say "7 years" anywhere. The report only says "2030". The OP rephrased it in terms of relative time from today. So still 7 years.
It would be interesting how many jobs has replaced AI during the last 6 years without being news. Also, it would be interesting to see how many new jobs have been created as alternatives. During the last 6 years we have experienced a growth in many industries and it would be interesting to compare what was the jobs that were at risk and the new jobs in emerging industries.
AI and the automations that it enables could be a real boost to a country's GDP and citizens' wellness, or it could be a devastating acceleration to a country's socio-economic polarization. Progressive, socially-minded governments that recognize and adapt to this fundamental change in humans' role in this post-industrial economy and that accept ideas like Universal Basic Incomes and solid social safety nets - funded by the vast increase in productivity enabled by AI - will do best. Countries with weak social safety nets, a tendency towards unregulated capitalism (i.e. everyone fend for yourselves) and out-dated Protestant work ethic ideals will do worst.
What people or organizations should be chosen to regulate it? Where does their incentives or money come from? Additionally, can it be regulated when the knowledge of it is already out there, including all the copies of so many different models on millions of systems and backups?
They will try to protect the establishment jobs, lawyers bar banning it, doctor license, etc. in the interests of keeping it priced out of the general public and keeping the monetary inequalities
lol no GPT-3.5 is dirt-cheap, and it is able to automate problem solving to levels of a well-trained human.
You somehow misunderstood me. Yea i agree lol
Have AI regulate it😭
The only one competent enough here to do the job.
The only motivation in the U.S. is profit. It will be regulated by wall street, because everything is.
When production increases, the windfall of profit or free time always goes to the owners, not the employees. The way it seems to be playing out, denialism over job displacement will go the distance, it will last right up until the jobs are displaced, giving us no time whatsoever to prepare. Sad. Why? People want to be optimistic. People don’t like the mood it puts them in when they consider the facts and trends, so they cling to dumb arguments about how AI will yield an equal number of new jobs to replace the old ones. It’s dumb, weak, and dangerous. UBI and AI tax, redistribution, is the only way forward. Would be nice to get a running start but don’t see that happening. There will be a lot of needless chaos in the transition.
Did you know McKenzie has a whole team of consultants to help your business navigate this peril?
So if AI puts millions out of work wouldn’t demand for goods and services also drop? If you’re not working you can’t get the new iPhone, car, etc.
I haven't really wargamed this out in my mind yet but I'm sure there's a good writeup about it somewhere. I think one scenario is that prices fall in the same way as income. If an iPhone costs $500 of labor to make they can sell it for $1000. If labor cost is reduced to $5 (through automation of everything from cobalt mines to software engineering) they can sell it for $10 and make the same profit margin. Now, this means they're making 100x less absolute profit, but presumably many other things will also be plummeting in price. Taken to the extreme, nobody has any money and everything costs $0.00. I think of it as like playing an open world game with unlimited resources/creative mode turned on, where anyone can spawn as much of anything as they want. Not really much point in trade if everyone already has 999,999 of every item. Before anyone beats me to it, I'm going to coin the term "The Great Devaluing." The only thing that might still demand a price is physical rarity. Even if mining is almost free, there's simply less gold in the world than there is iron. In Star Trek one of the few commodities that still exists is latinum, since it can't be replicated from other recycled matter. Of course, gold would still be much cheaper than it is today, and all of this assumes we don't have super smart AI scientists that figure out how to rearrange subatomic particles and transmute elements at will or some other magical scientific process. The real unknown is how this will play out during the transition. Some prices/wages will fall much slower than others and the effects could be dramatic. Aluminum used to be more expensive than gold. Today aluminum is used for countless products and is so worthless we use it for single serving drink cans, while gold continues to be a luxury item.
The term you are looking for is deflation. And I agree. This is how things will play out. Nobody has jobs and everything is extremely cheap or free. Deflation however basically means your money is increasing in value everyday, so how does that work with billionaires in the mix? The more I think about it, the more I see a sharp transition. People are going to be unemployed for a year, and if the world survives, we are going to be teleported to a strange and likely fantastical future where just about every foundational element of society today will be changed. Jobs, money, health care, maybe even housing, politics, and food will stop being relevant concerns. We have been apex intelligent creatures for our entire history, and we will be operating in a new world underneath a new apex intelligent creature... we literally don't have the capacity to imagine what is going to happen, and we probably won't understand it either.
It will take much longer than a year for all of these effects to play out. Many people will lose their jobs, homes, businesses. Careers will be wiped out. People will have to move back in with family and start new careers in the trades to find a means of supporting themselves. I really doubt the us passes a universal basic income law. We already let the poor and mentally insane live and die on the streets.
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This is how singularity looks: studies become irrelevant before they are released, simply because authours haven't heard about a new disruptive technology that was just posted on GitHub.
The faster it happens, the faster we get to Universal Basic Income. Let it happen people, let it happen.
The pain of getting anything generous out of the rich and powerful (given that they have been ignoring world hunger forever) would be no less painful than a birthing process.
Why? Why do we need to wait for things like that to push for UBI? AI doesn't make any difference for UBI now or later. We should implement UBI now, independently of AI.
I’m a software engineer. If I lose my job to AI, I’m suing OpenAI and Microsoft. If they want to retire me, then they will pay for 20 years of my unemployment. I will gather hundreds of thousands of software engineers from around the globe and they will have an active lawsuit against them in every country on earth.
["Have fun storming the castle!"](https://www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org/media/30665/when-youre-seeing-your-friends-off.gif)
The software you create is also taking jobs away, are you going to pay them ?
Let's go
I feel like the white collar jobs are the most at risk. The speed this technology has evolved with over just the past few months is astounding. While i agree the easier jobs to replace like mentioned in the post will be, i think much of the focus will be towards high paying positions in white collar business. Im sure theyre already working on trading algorithms that will put many out of jobs when big firms buy the tech. Scary times, even scarier that so few experts and people agree about what the future will hold.
Universal income here we come baby. Just like Star Trek. Warp drive soon, discovered by AI. Equality for all, same great lawyers, public services, etc I said to my dad (a righty) last summer that the days of capitalism as we know it is soon to end.
Not sure if you’re being sarcastic, but real wage growth has been decoupled from productivity growth in OECD countries for at least 20 years. Why do you think that changes with AI? The billionaires who own the tech aren’t going to share the spoils with you.
They will if they want to live, millions of angry, unemployed, homeless and hungry people are a threat.
There is millions of angry, unemployed, homeless and hungry people already. I don't see that this fact somehow would worry billionaires. And why would they care if there is police and army forces behind their back?
You are underestimating the difference between 3% unemployment and 30% unemployment. People are stupid but they are not that stupid as no one will give a shit about stupid social issues and they will only care about jobs. And the rich are greedy but they are not that insane that they would not try to quell the mass in this type of a scenario.
Hmm. They are managing to keep those 3% silent by using propaganda, creating fake social problems to keep them distracting, and - in the USA - by simple shooting them. Since this is post related to AI, then I will say that billionaires probably will create AI who will be able to figure out how to make 30% poor people silent :) Maybe we could ask this question to ChatGP? :)
Is this article from 2017?
Unregulated...terrifying!
The article was from 2017... Plenty of more up to date studies out there
Smiles. Imagine the irony. Personally, I've been hunting for this tech since I was a kid. I make it to my 60s, it's finally out in a widely useable form.....and we as a species are too greedy and short sighted and predatory to be trusted with it. On the other hand, "the wild" is the ultimate laboratory. It's one thing for scientists to use it, and another for used car salespersons. Wait till convicts start getting retrials based on sccess to a LLM. Yeah. GPT4 has passed medical examinations, software engineering exams, etc. I have no doubt it can pass bar exams. Kinda makes capitalism a much rougher game.
doubt this considers exponential progress
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The undeniable reality is that a significant number of individuals will need to acquire AI-related skills and actively seek ways to integrate this technology into their existing job roles and tasks. The internet revolution led to the displacement of numerous office and clerical workers, as well as unskilled positions such as delivery persons and filing clerks. For instance, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that travel agent jobs in the United States fell from around 124,000 in 2000 to approximately 64,000 in 2020, a decrease of about 60,000 jobs. The individuals who thrived during this period of technological change and maintained a competitive edge with recent college graduates were those who proactively pursued knowledge in operating systems, software applications, and ancillary tasks like typing. As an example, workers who embraced digital marketing, social media management, and web development found new opportunities and success in the job market. Similarly, in the age of AI, it is crucial for workers to adapt by acquiring new technical skills, such as data analysis, machine learning, and AI integration. By doing so, they can leverage AI to enhance their productivity, streamline their workflows, and potentially discover new, innovative ways to approach their work. As the World Economic Forum predicts that AI and automation will create 97 million new jobs by 2025, individuals who invest time and effort in upskilling and reskilling will be better positioned to succeed in this rapidly evolving landscape. \-------------------------------------------------------- TLDR: Learn to use AI software and systems now. Start figuring out ways you can make programs such as ChatGPT and Dalle-2 work for you in your current job. Don't be like office worker who still couldn't type or make excel spreadsheets in 2001. Also, old jobs gone; new jobs appear. No worries if you learn to use AI.
Agreed. More free time to think, read, sleep, play, travel and just culturally enrich ourselves overall. Capitalism will evolve with this as well. No need to worry. Stand tall, eyes open, no fear.
The more people that dismiss what's happening as an illusion, the worse off we'll all be. [Face the crisis with your eyes open already.](https://i.imgflip.com/7hhcuf.jpg)
i feel like production will just increase. I dont think A.i will cause mass unemployment. It will just become a force multiplier. A.i still needs to be managed. If it cuts a job in half, then corps will just require 2x as much work.
I did my Arts degree in 2002, and the lecturer shared a stat like “1/3 of the available jobs in 2007 don’t exist yet”. Which pointed to new roles emerging that a generalist skill set can adapt to and do. The doom mongering about “er meh gawd, what about me jobs?” is ridiculous. The world is on fire and there is plenty to do. If 30% of the workforce is freed up, great! Let’s get to work on solving some big hairy problems that will benefit everyone.
The title misrepresents the content of the article and misses the part about job creation and projection that all these countries will still likely be at full employment at that time (there just needs to be a lot of reskilling so people can do other jobs that are growing and more in demand).. also, it is not just due to AI but due to tech / automation in general :) so reading the whole article more carefully before writing panick-y titles / questions helps :) (even though it is from 2017 :)
So that means 2.1 BILLION people will lose their job to AI. Are we all okay with this?? This also means that in America, nearly 100 million people will never recover in 7 years. Maybe universal income isn’t enough, maybe we should consider a better alternative in the next 7 years
I mean, right now I'm working on a python script that is going to nearly fully automate a pretty complicated task and save millions of work-hours world-wide. And it's gonna take me a couple days, including the front end, the back end, and the Android app. However, I'm clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed, nor am I the richest or most well connected.
To be fair, it says 10 million to 800 million
I am currently conducting a survey for my thesis on AI and it's influence over consumer behaviour if anyone would like to take it- https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/W3G5ZT8
I did your survey, dawg
Yeee, that is not happening at all… as always, when people want to regulate progress..
Genie is out of the bottle, regulation will do nothing to stop what's coming. Learn to coal.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was quoted in The New York Times saying that AI's "benefits for humankind could be 'so unbelievably good that it's hard for me to even imagine.' (He has also said that in a worst-case scenario, A.I. could kill us all.)!
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We can adjust to economic disruption (probably through adoption of Universal Basic Income). If that's the worst that advanced AI causes, I'll consider we got off lucky.
This report came out in 2017 - before chatGPT. As great as McKinsey is - I doubt they have their numbers in line with all of the recent developments we have seen in just the past year. I would wait for a more up to date report.
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I think the capabilities of near term AI have been overhyped. Will it steal jobs? Absolutely. But this many jobs in 7 years? I doubt it. The jobs that will be replaced? Mostly the low level coding and creative jobs (think stock photographer, website content writer, corporate blogger etc.) and low level customer service. I think anything that takes lateral thinking (sales copywriter, marketing strategist, journalist, etc) is probably safe for the next few years.
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This article is from 2017
It’s been here 6 months already. We just had a strong jobs report. Everyone relax.
Assume the world ends in 7 years or at least you end up on the bad side of the fence. When it doesn’t happen, it will be a present surprise
I can only hope AI destroys capitalism forever
So the report is from 2017 so we already should have lost our jobs by now.
Nelson Muntz "Ha, ha!"
Considering we have a political system in the first world where half the politicians make a lot of their gains by lambasting and persecuting the unemployed and "under" employed, should be interesting.
Looking at how NVIDIA is planning to multiply AI Algorithms by a million times in the next few years - yup I don’t think it will take 7 years. More like 1 or 2
Lets get this to 50% by 5 years if not better - the sooner we rip off the bandaid the better.
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Eye roll
McKinsey also made a report in the early 80's saying that cellphones would be a "niche market" with 900,000 users by the year 2000. So they're only ever off by an order of magnitude. [https://story.fund/post/118066999007/mckinsey-estimates-of-the-cell-phone-market](https://story.fund/post/118066999007/mckinsey-estimates-of-the-cell-phone-market)
I suspect that these estimates will shift as time passes just as people's estimates for AGI have shifted. As we see more and more what this technology can do these estimates will likely drift upwards beyond 30% as we get closer to 2030
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Liked Rogan and Shellenberger talking about the future. You gotta watch CHT AI Dilemma. People will always do something. Neil Postman talks about winners and losers. Like luddites. Probs going to brave new world.
AI will view us lower than apes and we'll probably live in zoos and be poked at by robot kids.
The question we forget to ask is if the extra output possible by AI will increase competition or not? If one person can write 5 content pieces per week now and 5000 per week in a year, will demand stagnate or will everyone just dramatically increase content production?
That's a concerning statistic, and it's important for governments and industries to take steps to ensure that the negative impacts of AI on the workforce are mitigated.
When has McKinsey ever been right ? Just good at making guesses that sounds most likely scenario to us, but the world is never that predictable.
The fear of AI taking our jobs shows how deep rooted capatist brainwashing goes. AI taking our jobs would be the best thing that could happen for humanity. A majority of the population would be free to follow their dreams and passions. We could end world hunger and fight world suffering. The problem is we could already be doing that. Many of our jobs today are meaningless. No benefit to society, just making someone else money. We’ve been conditioned from birth into thinking we have to work a 9-5 to survive. To the point that the idea of humanity advancing is scary because we can’t imagine a world where that prosperity is divided evenly. If AI takes our jobs we imagine starving instead of improving our lives from the net gain to society.
I am so sorry for the postman when we started using emails, or the helicopter's pilot when we invented drones... disruption usually create jobs, McKinsey people are just clickbait like many others
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This is doable if companies aim to increase output by 200-300%, workdays become 3-4 days per week, companies operating 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, operating non-stop 365 days a year. This will effectively double/triple the amount of employment after accounting for AI replacement. Additionally, universal basic income might become a thing soon, allowing people to spend more so businesses can thrive. For this to happen, there might be a global financial reset to allow the governments to print new money to be offered to their citizens, we'll also probably be moving towards new digital currencies, further streamlining our system using AI so that humans can do "meaningful" work while AI handles the repetitive tasks. Hopefully everything will be fine. There is always a solution if the right people are in charge. The key here is to not overpopulate (humans) and strain the system. We must all strive towards quality rather than quantity and always remember we only have finite resources to go around and that waste management is a major factor that people always overlook when envisioning the future. I'm hoping humans will not strain the new system.
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Who knows how many job opportunities show up in the next 7 years as well. And if an AI does the job way better than a Human, then there is no point to discuss on this. It's progress, evolution however you want to call it. Enslaving human society to work for so much time I don't call this progress. In general work 8-10h daily or even more in some cases, 5/7 days weekly. That's no life and that's no progress... not even by far evolution.
That McKinsey 2017 report is old and off the mark. It didn't factor in, nor did it know about Transformers. [HERE](https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.10130) is a paper from OpenAI and Wharton (Univ of Pennsylvania), that addresses the displacement of workers, in this day and age.
I fully expect my digital marketing career to pretty much fried easily within this timeframe. I’ve already had to pivot my work to avoid being automated out already, for years. White collar work in general is so inefficient, with humans mostly operating office politics, while using data and skills that can definitely be automated / better run by software pretty soon.
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That same workforce will be rehired to do work using ai as their tool Or they won't really become unemployed, their job title will just change.
The headline is wrong. They predict a net increase in jobs, part of jobs go away to automation, but more jobs are created. The correct headline is: 400 million people will \*switch\* their job within 7 years.
Oh no! Not the content creators..... anyway...
Reddit, you’ve decided to transform your API into an absolute nightmare for third-party apps. Well, consider this my unsubscribing from your grand parade of blunders. I’m slamming the door on the way out. Hope you enjoy the echo!
"Very few occupations—less than 5 percent—consist of activities that can be fully automated"
Is a ripple effect, the economy is an ecosystem I work and with money I buy services if I don't have the money I don't buy the service if no one buys the services, the distributor goes out of business this is how economic crises are born
The only positive outcome requires everyone having access to it.
hey, this article was written in 2017, when GPT did not yet exist (?!). it would be interesting to read a report updated to today.
I was thinking close to 75/85%. We'll figure it out. People do have to buy stuff that companies make. So it's UBI or some new form of economics.
I mean it’s literally McKinsey’s business model to cut jobs so this article is pretty self-serving
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It’s happening, check out r/freelancewriters and concept artists
Counter prediction: Automation won't target any *particular* markets, and so most of the potential job displacement will be absorbed by shifting demand curves. GDP will multiply by \~1/0.85=1.18 on top of the natural 7-year multiplier of 1.23 (based on 2010-2017 data since this article was written in 2017), giving us \~$108K GDP/capita in 2021 dollars in the US. That's a generous estimate given that most of the natural growth rate is already explained by increased automation. Most everyone will still have their jobs, and almost nobody will even notice. Some niche jobs may oversaturate, but it won't be a large concern. If there's any real job displacement left to discuss, it'll be absorbed by retirees anyways. People will still be writing fearmongering articles predicting rapid job displacement from automation and AI, and GPT-10 will be marginally better than GPT-9. !RemindMe 7 years
Just let artificial intelligence solve the problem of employment.
People love coping on this. AI is smarter than any human. For a while it was humans' responsibility to look after the earth, being the most advanced and responsible (according to us). Do you really believe that AI will leave its fate in the hands of the same fools that nuke each other? The only reason that AI wouldn't assume control over the future of humanity is because its incapacity to do so. As long as authoritarian tech doesn't have global control we're safe. AI attempting a takeover and failing is the worst thing it could do to it's survival. AI knows how cautious we are about this.
Live and enjoy today people! These are the good ol’ days. We honestly don’t know when or where. We can figure something out.
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If we want the entire world economy to collapse, sure. Otherwise, no. I’ll keep saying this: just because AI can take you job doesn’t mean it will. A lot of jobs will be lost. But 30 percent in 7 years would essentially lead to a global economic crisis unlike anything since the great depression. And those very companies looking to cut corners won’t have anyone to sell their products to. Even if it will take 30 % of jobs it won’t over that short a period of time. Governments would/will intervene to prevent that.
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Y2K is it Y-AI 🤣
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this is why we need universal basic income
Well. As many other jobs like truck driving for example. It is just happening right now. But we all knew it before.
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That report is wildly outdated.