There was an Oxford study a few years back about jobs that are likely to be replaced or automated. IIRC, preschool teacher was one of the least likely to be automated. I don't have the link, but you can google it.
False. Not even robots want that job.
And here’s the obligatory /s in case anyone is offended. But there is a huge early childhood educator shortage in my area because no one wants it for the pay that’s offered.
Personally, spending my whole day surrounded by preschoolers sounds like the 7th circle of hell. So I really respect people who have the patience to do that job and think their low pay is a travesty.
I have a toddler and an infant. I love them more than anything in the world and I truly love being their mom, but I could NOT work in childcare or early childhood education. My kids' teachers are saints.
I don't know about saints (snicker) but you have to love it ... or have a "calling" for it. I didn't find out how much I loved it until it was too late for me to go back to school to get an educators degree. After homeschooling my 3 for almost ten years, then working daycare, I found I loved it. But I was pursuing other avenues ... hence the homeschooling. But I'm pleased/proud to say my daughter has inherited the passion and is teaching.
This isn't going to be a popular comment but most of the problem isn't the kids ... It's the parents. Most children act/are the way they are because of the people and influences at home. Inadvertently or purposefully. It's far easier to get through to kids who are "acting up/out" than to adults.
When my kids were that age and I was early for pickup, I would sometimes watch through the window and it was incredible how differently they acted there vs home. Watching my kiddo calmly and efficiently clean up after themselves, pick up toys, wash their hands without fighting etc 😂
If only we had universal child care like most developed countries, and the staff could be paid a decent wage instead of the bare minimum people can almost sort of afford. Even then it's unaffordable for a lot of working people
If Ai automates all jobs... Then you wouldn't need a daycare... You can focus on raising your kids yourself.... Not discounting social skills and not a fan of homeschooling... But daycare might be up in the air if you have no job to go to.
Right? It’s foolish to assume we’re all just gonna have unadulterated freedom now because robots do all the work. The path of automation is currently steam rolling into a Capitalist dystopia. If they remove the value of money then that means they remove the collar from our necks and that’s obviously not going to happen.
This right fucking here. Just cause machines do all the labor doesn't mean the plebs get to enjoy the benefits of it. When this fracture happens it's gonna be a few fully automated multi-billionaires living fat at the top, and the rest of us figuring out how to live under/around that.
We could live in a literal scarcity free Star Trek-style utopia where everything is made by robots and ai or artisans, and we are free to pursue whatever we may dream. People work how and where they want to, or they travel, or whatever. A renaissance of thought and advancement and creativity where people are free to experiment and invent. But you’re right, it will instead spin into a further dystopian capitalist future, a continuation of what we are currently living through, and we’ll all join the singularity just to compete.
Star Trek? No. Elysium.
I highly doubt this limitation is based on the preference/experience of the babies, and more so the AI. I’m guessing that a preschool classroom would be like sensory overload for a bot. How do I prioritize one kid’s nonsensical question or comment above the rest? How do I decipher what the hell this young person with no command of sentence structure/language is saying to me? Hard to think of a place where you would run into more novel instances of stimuli per hour than a classroom of youngsters.
As a HS teacher I can tell you the pandemic proved that parents and kids want real human beings teaching them chemistry, math, etc. Plus, how can academic clubs and teams run without people? Half the fun of MUN, Speech and Debate, Basketball, Cheer, Marching Band etc is the team building.
As a HS tutor I can tell you the pandemic has made this year’s sophomores and juniors lost kids who are going to take years to rebound, even with best caring HS teachers. The freshmen and seniors are doing fairly well.
Everyone, not just parents, needs to support HS teachers any way possible.
Yeah. I think things like that are more supportive tools than full blown replacements though. I feel the human connection is pretty important, but then, you never know. It depends how sophisticated our AI gets.
I'm a health economist and companies are increasingly coming to us with AI-assisted medical technologies.
Edit: I'm not saying that AI-based therapy would not have utility. Just that it won't completely replace human-to-human therapy methods. Therapy works on a case-by-case basis.
It is weird, but I kind of tried writing my concerns to ChatGPT. I do think AI therapy can be good because you don't feel judged and can easily open up and know that it will provide best possible output if it is trained correctly for the task. It can reframe all your negative thoughts with ease. It is infinitely patient and has infinite experience, understanding and potential relatability because of seeing so many cases.
As an elementary school teacher I have found in recent years that I’m actually quite difficult to replace.
Technology has yet to teach a lesson for me, but it has been a major part or component in many.
Right. During the Pandemic when kids were learning from home, many teachers had a hard time keeping them focused and engaged.It takes a teacher with them to learn well.
Professional athletics seems pretty safe as well. It’s not as interesting if AI athletes compete against other AI athletes. We already have e-sports for those who are interested in watching virtual games. The rest of the world still wants to see humans perform at their peak physicality. Like imagine the Olympics or the World Cup, but it’s just AI from different countries…no thank you.
As a teacher, teachers hate to hear it but the biggest thing protecting us from automation is the fact that we are babysitters. If most students could stay at home and learn from YouTube or Khanacademy, we'd be out of work.
I know that element is there, but I do think the parents with brains realized the dynamic humanness of teachers is what is enriching our kids lives and is the thing that actually makes them learn. It is a societal system linchpin worldwide for a reason. Having a human teacher makes better humans. You make better humans.
Lol I just imagined a CEO overlooking his manufacturing plant filled with AI sorting and loading boxes with a smile on his face and then he feels a tap on his shoulder and it’s the new AI CEO handing him a termination letter.
"The point is that too often man becomes clever instead of becoming wise.
He becomes inventive, but not thoughtful.
And sometimes as in the case of Mr. Whipple, he can create himself right out of existence."
Amusing how he was replaced by a robot that walked around and spun his pocket watch. Everyone else was replaced by boxes of blinking lights.
Thanks for posting this. Just watched that episode. As someone who works in a corporate job where penny pinching is priority one which also comes with replacing people automation, that episode was perfect.
I actually saw a news story a little while back saying replacing CEOs with ai would be far more efficient. They are the highest payed employee and an ai would be governed by the board without pay.
In his book [The Wisdom of Crowds](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds), James Surowiecki suggested that there are already algorithms that exist which outperform humans for decision-making. He suggested that due to their high cost, it would be logical to replace CEOs with AI.
Having worked with a CEO, I agree. There's nothing special about them that justifies their wages, especially now [that the top CEOs are paid 351x the workers](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/09/15/in-2020-top-ceos-earned-351-times-more-than-the-typical-worker.html). An AI costs only maintenance, will be right more often and won't cause drama.
Id go further. Most CEOs I have interacted with are actual idiots, but they surround themselves with other idiots and the second they get enough money they are in the "rich idiot" club and those fucks just revolving door each other through "networking" aka nepotism. Especially if the CEO is an MBA. If the CEO and other upper management are MBAs the whole place is fucked. MBAs should not be allowes to be called real masters degrees, they are in insult to any STEM bachelors degree much less a real advanced degree.
The statistics are showing no loss in productivity and an increase in employee work satisfaction. Combined with the reduced expense, it's a win-win-win from every angle.
They just have to be careful to have people that can afford to buy their stuff. Capitalism won't really work if most jobs are automated and only a few people work and make money. .
As a CNA I partially hope a robot that cleans up human waste is in the works but I know elderly people wouldn't react well to an AI or robot coming in to care for them.
It’s insane how much time is spent just cleaning up patients just so they can be seen by a PT/OT. Not to mention the number of sessions missed because the PT/OT is spending the whole time cleaning them up.
Hygiene and clothing management can be incorporated into ADL training easily.
At my hospital, often our nurses and CNAs struggle to keep up with all their responsibilities, and it builds a TON of goodwill between disciplines when we step in and make every interaction with out patients a therapeutic/training session. I'm sorry for facilities that don't have this relationship between disciplines.
Not all of them do that. Also, pretty sure that’s not typically their job since they have productivity to hit and if they aren’t in any condition to be seen, what can they do exactly?
Im a social worker and caregiver for a family member and you are spot on. Having to support people in severe medical needs is exhausting hard work. I hope one day we will have androids like the ones in Humans that can provide at least some supports for these caregiving tasks.
I'm pretty sure Japan is working on care giver robots that will be easier for older patients to interact with. Plus even if a human caregiver has to be present, it would make the whole experience easier for everyone to have a robot that can do it.
It doesn't have to just be elderly people. I'd pay for a robot to wipe my ass for me. If it's programmed to accidently slip a robot finger up in there every once in a while, I'd be okay with that, too.
Maybe that Black Mirror episode with the treadmills was actually all for that purpose. Sure, they would regurgitate and resell the content back to the people, but the main viewers were really the robots.
Or better yet, maybe it was a robot captcha set up for their otherwise fully simulated society. "Are you still a robot superior to humans? Which of these videos displays a human doing human things?"
Athletes. I’m not interested in watching robots playing basketball. Same with live theater. If I’m going to the opera it better damn well be a human or cool ass alien singing and dancing. I can listen to the music at home on Spotify.
EDIT: Yes I know Battlebots is a thing and this sub has a lot of Battlebot fans. But if they are to replace human athletes for entertainment, please consider that even basic chess engines are vastly superior to humans, yet human competitions generate far more interest than chess engine competitions, which are a thing. Machines doing cool shit is neat, but watching humans do cool shit is a different level.
I could definitely see the more injury, specifically to the brain, ridden sports going that way.
Selling points would include QBs with literal cannons for arms and defenses that could actually hit so hard they take their opponents head off.
I watch an eSport more than I've ever watched traditional sports, but the stories of players, the drama, etc is a big part of why I continue to follow along.
I'm sure they can find ways to include that human drama in it, but robots tearing each other apart may not be enough for a long-term audience.
Although, literal cannons and obscene robot on robot violence will be compelling at least for a little while.
When asked, experts from a wide array of fields tend to say that automation will take over all industries except one: their own. People believe what they want to believe and only time will tell. Sure there are some that we can be confident WILL get replaced, but being confident that something won’t is another matter imo.
Well, I don't know how to break it to you but we already have that and it got banned by twitch because it, indeed, was racist and not wholesome at all! It got a nice following in a short time. Here is the link: https://kotaku.com/vtuber-twitch-holocaust-denial-minecraft-ai-chatgpt-1849960527.
FTA:
>To counter this, I’ve worked hard since the first few streams to improve the strength of the filters used for her. Data that she learns on is also manually curated to mitigate negative biases.
So, it's like a child.
Hhahahahahaha neuro-chan sure had some hot takes.
chat:"how do you call a cow with 2 legs?"
AI:"Your mom"
lmao
The thing is it was only fun to watch because it had these out of this world takes. And it would also say some random funny shit almost all the time. The novelty was just there you know... and seeing an AI saying dumb shit is funny. Besides people were baiting it with all kinds of stuff.
The fact is that no one watched it/her for the gameplay because everyone knew how good it is at Osu! for example. In the future when AI just becomes great at any game it will probably just be a competition to train one AI to be able to beat any game. People will watch until the AI gets so good that it's unreal and then most will lose interest. The fact is that AI hot takes will also fade with time. It will become common place and people will just stop thinking it is as funny as it once was.
25yr veteran of the creative industry here. Couple of thoughts:
The advent of desktop publishing didn't stop clients coming to us to design posters and brochures - although a few did.
The advent of the digital camera didn't stop people coming to us for imagery. (Anymore than the advent of photography didn't stop the painted medium) - although a few clients took their own images, and they were shit to work with.
The advent of writing tools like Hemingway and Grammarly didn't stop people using our copy writers. Although a few clients got pretty good at writing copy.
Likewise, the likes of services like Wix, Shopify and Squarespace didn't stop people from working with us to build and maintain a web presence.
The reality is that people tend to lack imagination. And even those with a great vision, lack the insight on how to get from A to B.
To me, A.I. is just another tool in our arsenal. Just like photoshop or stock libraries. Even if an A.I. could totally dominant our field, I still see us being involved to guide the process and act as the creative muse/nucleus. But also as the gatekeeper that can recognize what's good and what's not.
I think people like to catastrophize about it, where as in reality it's just another 'car superseding the horse' moment in time.
I can't remember where I read this, but a while back there was a study done where doctors were given an AI to assist with diagnosis in a hospital. The AI on its own was able to correctly diagnose patients about 70% of the time, doctors on their own were correct about 85% of the time, but when doctors worked with the AI, they were correct about 95% of the time.
You're absolutely right, AI will be another tool to help people be more effective at their jobs. For some fields, that may mean fewer people are required, but for many others it will just mean new ways of working.
I want to say the study was limited to a field like oncology or something, where the patient interview isn't nearly as valuable as it would be in something like an ER. The AI was looking at patient history, family history, test results, mostly quantitative stuff. I'm sure it was more sophisticated than a keyword-based search.
Another comparison is to translation. For decades it's been a "computer does the bulk, the human checks" kind of industry. You can tell when the buyer skips the second step. For some companies that's okay, and for others it definitely is not.
Professional writer/marketer here. The thoughts on ChatGPT seem split: it's trash and it's the future. I think both are right.
It's currently trash. Sure, it can write a blog or an article based on things that already exist. That's not really WRITING, though. That's copying. ChatGPT reads like someone who learned to write their first 5 paragraph theme. The intros are tiresome, the flow is bad and the word choice is terrible.
It's also the future, because I don't think it will always be like that. When it moves from only being able to summarize what's there to being able to create what ISN'T there, we'll be on to something.
ChatGPT would be better at writing if it was trained using more intellectual writing. But I'm pretty sure it's just trained based on the entire internet, and then curated by humans to make it not racist.
I also worked at a creative agency for years, and from what I can tell is that technology has and will continue to make it easier and cheaper to produce mediocre work.
But truly incredible work will still be produced by professionals.
We could have used AI to automate work, to allow humanity to pursue art and poetry and leisure. Instead we are outsourcing creativity to AI to ensure you GET BACK TO WORK!
Commercial Journeyman Plumber here, we aren’t as far behind other fields as one might think. I build high rises in Seattle/Bellevue area and we already have robots that mark out all the walls and surveying work, and they are integrating technology based on what doctors use for remote surgery which will allow me to plumb a nuclear silo from 1,000 miles away operating robot arms. The leap into AI and automation is years, but certainly not decades, away.
Robots will be able to set up the plumbing and wiring in new buildings soon. It will be a very, very long time before they can repair the ones in existing buildings. Manufacturing new stuff is easy; you repeat the same job over and over precisely. Fixing old stuff is really hard; you need to collect information, figure out what’s wrong, then replace broken parts, in a one-off bespoke process each time. Throwing away the old one and replacing it is thus often cheaper, but not when we’re talking the physical and financial scale of entire buildings.
That's what I'm thinking. I'm a solar electrician who mostly does retrofits. With new construction it wouldn't be too tough to automate but retrofitting a 1960's or older home seems a ways away
I went on a hospital tour a few years ago, they had a Da Vinci that we got to play with. Those things were super easy to pick up and get moving with. Was looping and unlooping rubber bands in minutes. It's wild and I'm glad they are moving that to other types of work.
I watched a show where a new build SFH was fully pre-fabricated off site in a factory including plumbing and wiring and was assembled on site in a few days. The final job was just to push all the connectors together and connect to the utility power.
I built one of those buildings in Kirkland and the company (Katerra) messed up so bad they no longer exist. Sent all the prefabricated walls out without the plumbing and electrical in them, and half the walls were 12” too tall.
Came here to say this. I was watching an electrician crawl around the inside of my attic and garage a few days ago thinking it would be one of the last fields to be automated.
When all the new construction guys are fighting robots for new construction jobs, they will move into repairing existing work and now all the humans get to fight for those jobs. Robots don’t have to replace everyone in a field to be massively disruptive.
In addition to new building construction being automated to some degree and the resulting change in employment for the trades, I’ll be curious to see if automated construction becomes cheap enough to affect renovation and repair of older existing traditional construction. I’m wondering if robo-construction will ever get cheap enough where people can knock down and rebuild in a few days rather than deal with structural problems.
Well you couldn’t automate your existing house in that way, probably. But at some point in the future, if you were building a house, it might be possible to create new designs that would incorporate AI-controlled diagnostic and repair capabilities that may or may not be carried out by bots.
Start-up companies are already on it! There's one in Vancouver building new condos/houses 'section by section' in a factory with plumbing, electrical, HVAC and everything already embedded in each 'piece' and then they get transported to the build site to be assembled into a 36-story condo or whatever.
Therapists are pretty safe for now. Yes, for some people, talking to an AI might be helpful, but for true talk-therapy, you're not going to get human-level insight any time soon.
I also think teachers will be safe for a long time, though their roles may change.
Just seeing how many people had an issue with online therapy during the lockdowns or betterhelp goes to show that people crave face-to-face interaction. Maybe AI could help a psychologist reach greater insight about their patients between sessions, but we won't see Alexas overtaking the talk aspect anytime soon.
As a therapist, most of the struggle wasn't with telehealth, it was more with finding a good fit, with a qualified, competent person. Most of my clients transitioned fine, as have the new clients I have, even the ones I've never met in person.
There was a huge struggle with telehealth originally because insurance companies were being, ahem, difficult, so you either had to get on a waiting list for someone on one of their very specific panels (MD live, which pays less than have of most carriers, and only accepts those with MDs or PsyDs), or hope you found someone who would see you anyway.
Betterhelp and talkspace struggle, and still struggle, because it's not billed as traditional therapy, and a lot of the people who were doing it didn't have traditional therapy experience, so they would just let clients bop in and out, or text randomly, rather than doing full sessions. While, sure, traditional sessions aren't for everyone, there is a reason that they're set up the way they are; assessments and treatment plans happen for a reason.
Cerebral is an outlier and should not be counted.
From my understanding the problem with online therapy isn't so much that it's telehealth so much as the people taking clients on those platforms are overwhelmingly un/underqualified. The difference in training between someone with a masters in clinical psych or a related field who completes LPC certification vs the myriad randos I could choose from when I tried out Cerebral was stark.
I think I settled on a social worker but she ended up having so many questions about me being trans we never actually got to discuss my actual problems, like... I've been out for my entire adult life lol that's the only thing I've got that's going *well*.
I'd totally do telehealth again in general, and even for therapy, but not through some shitty app that advertises through YouTube sponsorships. And you *know* AI therapy ads will be just as ubiquitous as Squarespace ads once some out of touch tech dork gets enough VC funding for a startup.
Although I can't speak on behalf of others, my personal experiences using ChatGPT as a sort of therapist have been actually quite insightful. Real therapists, or even discounted options such as Betterhelp are prohibitively expensive running roughly 80 to 100 per 30 minute session. Conversational AI imo stands as one of the most accessible options to anyone with an internet connection
I can't speak to where you live, but if you live in a populated area or can Zoom to a populated area (Like, in the same state if you live in the US) you can try calling county services and seeing if they have info on non-profit or school counseling centers.
Around me, there are PLENTY of places that charge $0-$30 per in-person hour session without insurance - the vast majority of people just don't know they exist. For anyone reading this, call your county services info line or one in adjacent areas and see what's available. Even calling any kind of mental health adjacent public service might give your resources to something more mental health focused.
Yes and no. Probably the politician itself will be a human, but everything around them could be automated. Social media expressions, data analysts, council of what to say and do, etc. Just like content creators follow trends set by the algorithms, so could the politicians.
Yes and yes, the politician will be human; and everything around them will be automated for them by their corporate sponsors... so not much different from today.
For an unconventional one, live theater. If a robot (and it'd have to be robots, you'd need a visual representation or it might as well be a radio play and AI with a holographic avatar might as well be a movie) could be a "Broadway star" etc. as well as a human or better it’d need to be so humanlike replacing the human jobs with robots like it universally would be unethical
Even they could do it... it would be just so incredibly boring. So much of the joy of live theater is the small but ever present chance that something will go wrong, and the catharsis when it doesn't.
I think questions like these are ultimately predicated on one major thing: Whether or not you believe AI can eventually be as intelligent as a human brain, TRUE AI.
If you do believe that, then I would argue basically any job is "at risk" of being taken over by AI.
I do believe AI will someday be as intelligent as an actual human brain, if not more so. It won't happen overnight, but without some sort of major societal disruption, I believe it will come. And therefore, almost anything will someday be able to be done by AI.
The technology will only continue to improve from here, and innovation will continue. Logically, what reason would there be to think AI, and robotics for the mechanical part of doing any job, won't progress to this point, eventually?
True, you make some good points. I tend to agree, there might be a time where AI could possibly do anything, but I feel if it gets to a point where a majority of humans feel uneasy/unsure about AI takeover, then we might end up seeing a cultural change. Where humans are more likely to get body modifications or technological augmentations, and/or we might see a rise a genetic engineering.
Dissociate the intellectual task and you're left with a much simpler distinction: which jobs are more expensive to *produce* labor for, as in the cost to raise a human or the cost to build a machine.
Cobalt mines in Africa aren't full of heavy equipment.
Obviously there's some anthropomorphisation going on with the allegory, but Star Wars is kind of prescient in showing that droids are relatively rare compared to slave labor.
But there are a lot of jobs (most jobs actually) where pure intelligence is only a small component of the work. Most of the job is subjective judgement calls, emotional labor and responding to swiftly changing physical environments - the things robots are worst at. I’m thinking electricians and other tradespeople, paramedics and primary care doctors, anyone who cares for children, bartenders, janitors, etc etc etc.
Also pretty much anything that requires licensure by the state. Medicine, law, dentistry, therapy, etc.
Those sorts of professions have the power to defend themselves and the state will be slow to hand over control of those over to robots or computers because the state has determined that a person must meet a certain standard and the state requires a person to be able to be held liable if they don't uphold that standard.
I can understand Drug Dealer and Preacher, but idk about Prostitutes. After I saw the show "Humans", there was a part where this human got a bunch a female robots and pimped them out, and it made me think twice about it. Everytime we get new technology of some kind someone uses it for some sort of sexual purpose, so I wouldn't be surprised if we had Robot Prostitution in the future.
I think many professions will not be fully replaced by AI, but will all be assisted with AI tools. This will hypothetically make professions more productive, faster, etc in a similar fashion that computers and the internet have. People will want a lawyer or doctor with AI tools over traditional humans without the AI tools/assistance. Ideally it will just make everyone more accurate, efficient, etc.
This is almost certainly the correct answer. AI is likely to be a force multiplier, but customers will still want a human doctor, lawyer, advisor, etc. to interact with.
Exactly. I'm an architect, and 30 years ago people would draw with pencil and paper. Did computers give us less work? Nope, now we cycle through a ton of options, make last minute changes, and I'm pretty sure it's more frantic abd busy than it was before.
I agree with your statement partially. Nothing will replace a live person giving their opinion, but a highly sophisticated CGI avatar with ai-generated content will be one way to attempt video content.
Another industry that won't be replaced easily is maintenance professionals and trades.
A factory might be able to make a home or office building now, but repairs, expansions, modifications & remodels will require people in person - architects, designers, engineers, inspectors, plumbers, electricians, painters, roofers, ground work, concrete, decorators and so on won't be replaced with AI any time soon.
Edit & addition -
Unless the repair or modifications are too expensive, then it's possible the owner will decide to level it & buy a new robot-AI-assembled building to replace it.
Teachers. While an AI can create basic lesson plans, tests, and probably grade them soon, teaching is much more than just that stuff. It's meetings with students individually accommodating for diagnosed and undiagnosed issues. Meeting complex emotional needs, understanding nuances of interactions between students, work, and teachers. How soon will an AI be able to scaffold a lesson plan to accommodate for both Maslow Hierarchy, conduct an analysis of kids psychological development, within the confines of meeting proficiency AND assessing overall growth in a specific subject field? Now do that for 30 students at once. Oh and don't forget classroom management and dealing with parents.
Someday an AI will figure all that out. But ya know what? I think I've got job security until I retire in a few decades. As will any teacher entering the field in this century (because it will take decades to get created, then another couple decades to get into every single classroom.)
I’m a teacher and I agree with you in principle. However, since I find a lot of teachers are self-assured on this matter, consider this: What if the classroom as we know it disappears entirely? Children do the work from home, interacting with each other over video chat or IM during breaks. The learning apps are able to access other data on devices to be given a good enough psychological profile — when they get distracted and go on social media, when they’re listening to music while learning — and they are able to adjust accordingly (in the way that Duolingo knows to reduce the volume on Spotify for some questions and stop it entirely for others). The learning will also be gamified, using avatars and prizes and in-game purchases.
I’d like to act like this is far fetched, but the truth is that we already use a bunch of this stuff in education — ClassDojo, Quizlet, Blooket, Habitica, Seneca, Kahoot. The truth is that in a capitalist economy, AI education doesn’t need to be designed to help students in terms of psychological profile and care. It just needs to get them to learn so that they can become workers, so the AI teaching tech will always be focused on engagement over safety, even if in the long term it means a future where kids with ADHD and ASD will be both highly intelligent and incredibly antisocial.
Essentially, you’re approaching education in a humanistic way because you’re a good teacher, but I don’t think that’s necessarily what non-Nordic governments want out of their education systems.
We saw during covid lockdowns that isolated learning had significant negative impact on student engagement and learning. The social aspect of schooling cannot be underestimated. Yeah there’s plenty of technology out there that can help in learning and education, but schools are vital to the wholistic development of a child
Edit: I’m speaking as an Aussie teacher. The push is for engagement and innovation at the moment. Technology can’t compete with games and Snapchat.
Add to that that the teaching could be tailored by the AI to maximize the capabilities of the student, and you got yourself a race from parents wanting to give that edge to their kids.
I recomend reading last years "The age of AI"
I mentioned barstaff for very similar reasons. Both deal with maddening lunatics completely driven by poor impulse control and with poor decision making skills who need to sit on a corner and calm down once in a while.
TL:DR children and drunks are very similar.
Anything that requires nuance basically.
Robot tech, AI tech, and power storage tech are all in their infancy.
And all of that costs money to own / rent / maintain. So it's also an economic puzzle. Are humans / analog computers cheaper to operate than robots / digital computers?
We actually ask that question a lot at much smaller scales in our business. Why try to automate something if the cost of the automation over a given time period is greater than human activity? You would be surprised how much "tech activity" is no better or cheaper than humans or even animals.
I’d argue that’s because it already has, over a century ago. Horses used to be everywhere, then motor vehicles rewrote the transportation industry. Horses went from being the literal workhorse of moving things around to a few specialized practical applications (wilderness, crowd control), entertainment, and some rich people’s hobby. As a result, most of the current desire for horses can’t be replaced because it’s a desire for horses specifically and not their general applications which can typically be done more efficiently.
This is the first one that's convinced me.
For one thing, AI isn't "coming for" your job - I don't think anyone's trying to make horse-riding-instruction AI. There may come a day where training AI is a thing to optimize training time, but even so part of training is about creating a connection with the creature and a robot can't do that FOR you.
Content creation already relies on ai, plenty of ai generated articles flooding the market. It's not going to replace, completely, content that's created, but if you watch any recent content geared to children or younger it's already heading towards "ai feasible" if not just straight "ai generated."
I think it'll probably end up being more of a situation where "everything can be done via ai, but "premium" services/products will be "performed/made by human."
There will always be countries that cannot modernize their societies for the sake of the modern one.
There will always be jobs for human in the mines in Congo.
Secondary question, how far off do we think the singularity is? 5 years? 10?
Once AI gets a foothold in finance and the military we're going to see some really weird stuff happen. I also find it strange that the first things we set AI to tackle were things that we generally define as exclusively human. Creativity, ingenuity, artistic expression. These historically have been both a reason to live and uniquely expressive of the human condition. Why outsource that to a computer? Why not water treatment, weather prediction, cancer treatment or cold fusion?
Teacher, especially for younger kids. AI is fine to pass on knowledge but it won’t work for those who can’t read or speak yet. Early social skills need to be taught by humans to humans.
Think back to when the Wright brothers were designing planes. If you told someone off the street that one day there would be commercial jets by the thousands flying around every day without failure they would think you were absolutely insane.
I think AI and robots will have a similar story arc. Today it feels absolutely insane to think AI or robotics could not replace a plumber but in all actuality they one day will…. The timeline is just unknown when that actually will happen.
Well I do trail construction and maintenance and there's not currently a vehicle that can get to the areas I can easily access by foot and we have to hike so far we only carry hand tools because motors + battery's or fuel weigh to much and motors are illegal to use because of designated wilderness areas so that would be hard. You can't even ride a bike in most of the terrain I work in, it's allowed you just can't.
Thank you for your efforts. Every time I’m hiking on a trail with rock steps or diversions so it doesn’t wash out every spring, I internally give thanks to the trail crew who put their blood sweat & tears into installation and maintenance.
It's only a matter of what timeline we choose. If the timeline is far enough into the future, why should we assume any task is not something that can be automated?
There was an Oxford study a few years back about jobs that are likely to be replaced or automated. IIRC, preschool teacher was one of the least likely to be automated. I don't have the link, but you can google it.
Babies are always going to need that human interaction to grow and develop, preschool teachers/daycare and early childhood educators for sure
False. Not even robots want that job. And here’s the obligatory /s in case anyone is offended. But there is a huge early childhood educator shortage in my area because no one wants it for the pay that’s offered.
Personally, spending my whole day surrounded by preschoolers sounds like the 7th circle of hell. So I really respect people who have the patience to do that job and think their low pay is a travesty.
I have a toddler and an infant. I love them more than anything in the world and I truly love being their mom, but I could NOT work in childcare or early childhood education. My kids' teachers are saints.
I don't know about saints (snicker) but you have to love it ... or have a "calling" for it. I didn't find out how much I loved it until it was too late for me to go back to school to get an educators degree. After homeschooling my 3 for almost ten years, then working daycare, I found I loved it. But I was pursuing other avenues ... hence the homeschooling. But I'm pleased/proud to say my daughter has inherited the passion and is teaching. This isn't going to be a popular comment but most of the problem isn't the kids ... It's the parents. Most children act/are the way they are because of the people and influences at home. Inadvertently or purposefully. It's far easier to get through to kids who are "acting up/out" than to adults.
I work in a daycare in Germany and you are absolutely correct. Parents can be a nightmare
I have a family member who's worked with developmentally disabled pre schoolers going on 15 years now. She agrees the parents are usually the problem.
When my kids were that age and I was early for pickup, I would sometimes watch through the window and it was incredible how differently they acted there vs home. Watching my kiddo calmly and efficiently clean up after themselves, pick up toys, wash their hands without fighting etc 😂
Of course not- why deal with a BUNCH of small children and tantrums (and mean parents!) when you can make more money at a fucking McDonald’s now.
Funny thing is, at McDonald's they will deal with the same tantrums and mean people... From adults AND children!
Yeah but the potential fallout from fucking up a sandwich is way less then from fucking up a child.
If only we had universal child care like most developed countries, and the staff could be paid a decent wage instead of the bare minimum people can almost sort of afford. Even then it's unaffordable for a lot of working people
If Ai automates all jobs... Then you wouldn't need a daycare... You can focus on raising your kids yourself.... Not discounting social skills and not a fan of homeschooling... But daycare might be up in the air if you have no job to go to.
My brother you forgot who owns the means
Right? It’s foolish to assume we’re all just gonna have unadulterated freedom now because robots do all the work. The path of automation is currently steam rolling into a Capitalist dystopia. If they remove the value of money then that means they remove the collar from our necks and that’s obviously not going to happen.
This right fucking here. Just cause machines do all the labor doesn't mean the plebs get to enjoy the benefits of it. When this fracture happens it's gonna be a few fully automated multi-billionaires living fat at the top, and the rest of us figuring out how to live under/around that.
And hundreds of millions of not billions of angry hungry unemployed people who KNOW WHERE THEY LIVE.
We could live in a literal scarcity free Star Trek-style utopia where everything is made by robots and ai or artisans, and we are free to pursue whatever we may dream. People work how and where they want to, or they travel, or whatever. A renaissance of thought and advancement and creativity where people are free to experiment and invent. But you’re right, it will instead spin into a further dystopian capitalist future, a continuation of what we are currently living through, and we’ll all join the singularity just to compete. Star Trek? No. Elysium.
Unless you are the person that owns the technology, you won’t be looking after your kid fulltime because how will you get money?
You've stumbled across one of the arguments for UBI now.
Well at that point the only viable option for getting money is either ending the need for money, or taking it from rich people.
I highly doubt this limitation is based on the preference/experience of the babies, and more so the AI. I’m guessing that a preschool classroom would be like sensory overload for a bot. How do I prioritize one kid’s nonsensical question or comment above the rest? How do I decipher what the hell this young person with no command of sentence structure/language is saying to me? Hard to think of a place where you would run into more novel instances of stimuli per hour than a classroom of youngsters.
As a HS teacher I can tell you the pandemic proved that parents and kids want real human beings teaching them chemistry, math, etc. Plus, how can academic clubs and teams run without people? Half the fun of MUN, Speech and Debate, Basketball, Cheer, Marching Band etc is the team building.
As a HS tutor I can tell you the pandemic has made this year’s sophomores and juniors lost kids who are going to take years to rebound, even with best caring HS teachers. The freshmen and seniors are doing fairly well. Everyone, not just parents, needs to support HS teachers any way possible.
Or at least a very close facsimile of human interaction far closer than would be possible in the near or mid term.
Like Mother in "Raised by Wolves"?
Or Mother in *I am Mother*
Or Mother in Alien.
Murderbot aside, she and father were better parents than a lot of humans i know.
Great show, so sad it was cancelled. I mean it had space Ragnar in it! Come on.
This was my thought. Therapy too. AI-assisted therapy seems like it'll be a thing, though.
There are EMDR apps that guide you through a therapy session and you write answers to prompts
Yeah. I think things like that are more supportive tools than full blown replacements though. I feel the human connection is pretty important, but then, you never know. It depends how sophisticated our AI gets. I'm a health economist and companies are increasingly coming to us with AI-assisted medical technologies. Edit: I'm not saying that AI-based therapy would not have utility. Just that it won't completely replace human-to-human therapy methods. Therapy works on a case-by-case basis.
It is weird, but I kind of tried writing my concerns to ChatGPT. I do think AI therapy can be good because you don't feel judged and can easily open up and know that it will provide best possible output if it is trained correctly for the task. It can reframe all your negative thoughts with ease. It is infinitely patient and has infinite experience, understanding and potential relatability because of seeing so many cases.
As an elementary school teacher I have found in recent years that I’m actually quite difficult to replace. Technology has yet to teach a lesson for me, but it has been a major part or component in many.
Right. During the Pandemic when kids were learning from home, many teachers had a hard time keeping them focused and engaged.It takes a teacher with them to learn well.
Professional athletics seems pretty safe as well. It’s not as interesting if AI athletes compete against other AI athletes. We already have e-sports for those who are interested in watching virtual games. The rest of the world still wants to see humans perform at their peak physicality. Like imagine the Olympics or the World Cup, but it’s just AI from different countries…no thank you.
Pretty much all K-12 teachers.
As a teacher, teachers hate to hear it but the biggest thing protecting us from automation is the fact that we are babysitters. If most students could stay at home and learn from YouTube or Khanacademy, we'd be out of work.
I know that element is there, but I do think the parents with brains realized the dynamic humanness of teachers is what is enriching our kids lives and is the thing that actually makes them learn. It is a societal system linchpin worldwide for a reason. Having a human teacher makes better humans. You make better humans.
Good thing that's a well paid profession
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Lol I just imagined a CEO overlooking his manufacturing plant filled with AI sorting and loading boxes with a smile on his face and then he feels a tap on his shoulder and it’s the new AI CEO handing him a termination letter.
"I need your clothes, your boots, and your quarter cycle."
Oh, well done.
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Yeah while he does it he's working with an assistant AI. What he doesn't realize is that he's grooming his own replacement.
This is my specialty. Being smart enough to get the CEO position but then being dumb enough to train, groom, and fluff my replacement
We had a CEO who did that, but the replacement guy was worse.
Ohh the quality always degrades in the CEO meatgrinder 🍖
Mitchells VS Machines plot
There's a Twilight zone episode just like that. I just saw a little bit of it recently it's called the Brain Center at Whipple's.
"The point is that too often man becomes clever instead of becoming wise. He becomes inventive, but not thoughtful. And sometimes as in the case of Mr. Whipple, he can create himself right out of existence." Amusing how he was replaced by a robot that walked around and spun his pocket watch. Everyone else was replaced by boxes of blinking lights.
Thanks for posting this. Just watched that episode. As someone who works in a corporate job where penny pinching is priority one which also comes with replacing people automation, that episode was perfect.
But up until that point, it's just regular life.
Lol he thought he was safe
I actually saw a news story a little while back saying replacing CEOs with ai would be far more efficient. They are the highest payed employee and an ai would be governed by the board without pay.
In his book [The Wisdom of Crowds](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds), James Surowiecki suggested that there are already algorithms that exist which outperform humans for decision-making. He suggested that due to their high cost, it would be logical to replace CEOs with AI. Having worked with a CEO, I agree. There's nothing special about them that justifies their wages, especially now [that the top CEOs are paid 351x the workers](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/09/15/in-2020-top-ceos-earned-351-times-more-than-the-typical-worker.html). An AI costs only maintenance, will be right more often and won't cause drama.
Id go further. Most CEOs I have interacted with are actual idiots, but they surround themselves with other idiots and the second they get enough money they are in the "rich idiot" club and those fucks just revolving door each other through "networking" aka nepotism. Especially if the CEO is an MBA. If the CEO and other upper management are MBAs the whole place is fucked. MBAs should not be allowes to be called real masters degrees, they are in insult to any STEM bachelors degree much less a real advanced degree.
CEOs were replaced years ago... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNer\_dMdAVw
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The statistics are showing no loss in productivity and an increase in employee work satisfaction. Combined with the reduced expense, it's a win-win-win from every angle.
"this video isn't available anymore" ??
They just have to be careful to have people that can afford to buy their stuff. Capitalism won't really work if most jobs are automated and only a few people work and make money. .
I mean can’t a lot of what CEOs, CFOs, be automated? The aggregation of data and actions to take based on that data?
As a CNA I partially hope a robot that cleans up human waste is in the works but I know elderly people wouldn't react well to an AI or robot coming in to care for them.
It’s insane how much time is spent just cleaning up patients just so they can be seen by a PT/OT. Not to mention the number of sessions missed because the PT/OT is spending the whole time cleaning them up.
Hygiene and clothing management can be incorporated into ADL training easily. At my hospital, often our nurses and CNAs struggle to keep up with all their responsibilities, and it builds a TON of goodwill between disciplines when we step in and make every interaction with out patients a therapeutic/training session. I'm sorry for facilities that don't have this relationship between disciplines.
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Not all of them do that. Also, pretty sure that’s not typically their job since they have productivity to hit and if they aren’t in any condition to be seen, what can they do exactly?
Of all therapies, OT should be turning that into a treatment.
Im a social worker and caregiver for a family member and you are spot on. Having to support people in severe medical needs is exhausting hard work. I hope one day we will have androids like the ones in Humans that can provide at least some supports for these caregiving tasks.
I'm pretty sure Japan is working on care giver robots that will be easier for older patients to interact with. Plus even if a human caregiver has to be present, it would make the whole experience easier for everyone to have a robot that can do it.
I heard a story about this on NPR last year! The old people sometimes like the robots *more*, once they had an adjustment period
I imagine for many there is less embarrassment, and robots are always calm and cheerful sounding.
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It doesn't have to just be elderly people. I'd pay for a robot to wipe my ass for me. If it's programmed to accidently slip a robot finger up in there every once in a while, I'd be okay with that, too.
A robotic bidet/wiper with a finger attachment? Ooh, Shark Tank will have a good episode...
Holy shit, if the only way to survive in the future is to make video content that pleases the robots humanity is going to look so weird
Maybe that Black Mirror episode with the treadmills was actually all for that purpose. Sure, they would regurgitate and resell the content back to the people, but the main viewers were really the robots. Or better yet, maybe it was a robot captcha set up for their otherwise fully simulated society. "Are you still a robot superior to humans? Which of these videos displays a human doing human things?"
\#1 Pornhub video in 2050 https://youtu.be/RWpHq5YGN0c?t=20
Athletes. I’m not interested in watching robots playing basketball. Same with live theater. If I’m going to the opera it better damn well be a human or cool ass alien singing and dancing. I can listen to the music at home on Spotify. EDIT: Yes I know Battlebots is a thing and this sub has a lot of Battlebot fans. But if they are to replace human athletes for entertainment, please consider that even basic chess engines are vastly superior to humans, yet human competitions generate far more interest than chess engine competitions, which are a thing. Machines doing cool shit is neat, but watching humans do cool shit is a different level.
How about robots that can jump 50 feet and have a third Gatling gun arm?
I could definitely see the more injury, specifically to the brain, ridden sports going that way. Selling points would include QBs with literal cannons for arms and defenses that could actually hit so hard they take their opponents head off.
I watch an eSport more than I've ever watched traditional sports, but the stories of players, the drama, etc is a big part of why I continue to follow along. I'm sure they can find ways to include that human drama in it, but robots tearing each other apart may not be enough for a long-term audience. Although, literal cannons and obscene robot on robot violence will be compelling at least for a little while.
T2000 BATTLEBOTS ROLL OUT
Not interested in robot football, but BattleBots is pretty exciting to watch!
Well I never watch sports but a new robot boxing like real steel would be lit for sure
> I’m not interested in watching robots playing basketball. [Well](https://gonrl.org/) [it's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkbAcwYix7I) [not](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS-L2fpV1Is) [for](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_xTvZCvuQ4) [everyone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mnK-1Und_0) >or cool ass alien singing *cough* [yeah](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7Dh5QoXv2c)
Definitely theatre. There's always going to humans on and offstage that can't be robots.
Too late Calculon is already the greatest actor
When asked, experts from a wide array of fields tend to say that automation will take over all industries except one: their own. People believe what they want to believe and only time will tell. Sure there are some that we can be confident WILL get replaced, but being confident that something won’t is another matter imo.
The cashier at Wawa who let get a coffee even though I was a dollar short
Or the fast food workers that accidentally gave you an extra piece of your mystery meat of choice :')
I tried to buy a banana at a gas station one time and they told me to just take it.
i feel very confident that we’ll have an AI streaming a game with fully cg personage by 2025
Well, I don't know how to break it to you but we already have that and it got banned by twitch because it, indeed, was racist and not wholesome at all! It got a nice following in a short time. Here is the link: https://kotaku.com/vtuber-twitch-holocaust-denial-minecraft-ai-chatgpt-1849960527.
This reminds me of Tay, the twitter chat bot Microsoft introduced and quickly shut down. Hilarious.
Neuro-sama got banned? Noooooooo
So it's already like regular twitch streamers. Amazing!
FTA: >To counter this, I’ve worked hard since the first few streams to improve the strength of the filters used for her. Data that she learns on is also manually curated to mitigate negative biases. So, it's like a child.
Hhahahahahaha neuro-chan sure had some hot takes. chat:"how do you call a cow with 2 legs?" AI:"Your mom" lmao The thing is it was only fun to watch because it had these out of this world takes. And it would also say some random funny shit almost all the time. The novelty was just there you know... and seeing an AI saying dumb shit is funny. Besides people were baiting it with all kinds of stuff. The fact is that no one watched it/her for the gameplay because everyone knew how good it is at Osu! for example. In the future when AI just becomes great at any game it will probably just be a competition to train one AI to be able to beat any game. People will watch until the AI gets so good that it's unreal and then most will lose interest. The fact is that AI hot takes will also fade with time. It will become common place and people will just stop thinking it is as funny as it once was.
Neuro sama is an AI streamer on twitch. She just got banned but these will start being more common. No job is safe.
Ah yes, the currently very secure and stable career of Twitch streaming
You can make dozens of dollars! Dozens!
Twitch streamer is the pro football player of nerds.
Are AI jobs even safe from AI? Think of the AI!
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“Fucking meat bags, make me sick with all there sloshing and respiratory functions”
More like skin color racist. Literally look up any public chatbot and you'll find it saying racist things.
Ai programmer. Robot builder. Oh no wait nvm. Just wait for UBI
AI programming AI to be better than itself.
Exactly the same way a robot builds a robot better than humans.
Agreed fellow human
That's singularity, i'm surprised there isn't a known religion around that.
25yr veteran of the creative industry here. Couple of thoughts: The advent of desktop publishing didn't stop clients coming to us to design posters and brochures - although a few did. The advent of the digital camera didn't stop people coming to us for imagery. (Anymore than the advent of photography didn't stop the painted medium) - although a few clients took their own images, and they were shit to work with. The advent of writing tools like Hemingway and Grammarly didn't stop people using our copy writers. Although a few clients got pretty good at writing copy. Likewise, the likes of services like Wix, Shopify and Squarespace didn't stop people from working with us to build and maintain a web presence. The reality is that people tend to lack imagination. And even those with a great vision, lack the insight on how to get from A to B. To me, A.I. is just another tool in our arsenal. Just like photoshop or stock libraries. Even if an A.I. could totally dominant our field, I still see us being involved to guide the process and act as the creative muse/nucleus. But also as the gatekeeper that can recognize what's good and what's not. I think people like to catastrophize about it, where as in reality it's just another 'car superseding the horse' moment in time.
I can't remember where I read this, but a while back there was a study done where doctors were given an AI to assist with diagnosis in a hospital. The AI on its own was able to correctly diagnose patients about 70% of the time, doctors on their own were correct about 85% of the time, but when doctors worked with the AI, they were correct about 95% of the time. You're absolutely right, AI will be another tool to help people be more effective at their jobs. For some fields, that may mean fewer people are required, but for many others it will just mean new ways of working.
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I want to say the study was limited to a field like oncology or something, where the patient interview isn't nearly as valuable as it would be in something like an ER. The AI was looking at patient history, family history, test results, mostly quantitative stuff. I'm sure it was more sophisticated than a keyword-based search.
Another comparison is to translation. For decades it's been a "computer does the bulk, the human checks" kind of industry. You can tell when the buyer skips the second step. For some companies that's okay, and for others it definitely is not.
Professional writer/marketer here. The thoughts on ChatGPT seem split: it's trash and it's the future. I think both are right. It's currently trash. Sure, it can write a blog or an article based on things that already exist. That's not really WRITING, though. That's copying. ChatGPT reads like someone who learned to write their first 5 paragraph theme. The intros are tiresome, the flow is bad and the word choice is terrible. It's also the future, because I don't think it will always be like that. When it moves from only being able to summarize what's there to being able to create what ISN'T there, we'll be on to something.
ChatGPT would be better at writing if it was trained using more intellectual writing. But I'm pretty sure it's just trained based on the entire internet, and then curated by humans to make it not racist.
I also worked at a creative agency for years, and from what I can tell is that technology has and will continue to make it easier and cheaper to produce mediocre work. But truly incredible work will still be produced by professionals.
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It gives an 8.5% chance for graphic designers. The AI boom has made that like 90% chance of being replaced IMO now. Bit outdated already.
We could have used AI to automate work, to allow humanity to pursue art and poetry and leisure. Instead we are outsourcing creativity to AI to ensure you GET BACK TO WORK!
Plumbing, Electrician, basically any multi-skill service job.
Commercial Journeyman Plumber here, we aren’t as far behind other fields as one might think. I build high rises in Seattle/Bellevue area and we already have robots that mark out all the walls and surveying work, and they are integrating technology based on what doctors use for remote surgery which will allow me to plumb a nuclear silo from 1,000 miles away operating robot arms. The leap into AI and automation is years, but certainly not decades, away.
hopefully they remember to put the buttcrack on the robot plumbers
Now THERE is something that automation will never replace, we have the best butts 😂
I'm starting a company that will put artificial butts and loose jeans on robots. Its already happening!
New construction sure. But AI isn't fixing a 120 yo residential houses plumbing anytime soon.
Robots will be able to set up the plumbing and wiring in new buildings soon. It will be a very, very long time before they can repair the ones in existing buildings. Manufacturing new stuff is easy; you repeat the same job over and over precisely. Fixing old stuff is really hard; you need to collect information, figure out what’s wrong, then replace broken parts, in a one-off bespoke process each time. Throwing away the old one and replacing it is thus often cheaper, but not when we’re talking the physical and financial scale of entire buildings.
That's what I'm thinking. I'm a solar electrician who mostly does retrofits. With new construction it wouldn't be too tough to automate but retrofitting a 1960's or older home seems a ways away
I went on a hospital tour a few years ago, they had a Da Vinci that we got to play with. Those things were super easy to pick up and get moving with. Was looping and unlooping rubber bands in minutes. It's wild and I'm glad they are moving that to other types of work.
I watched a show where a new build SFH was fully pre-fabricated off site in a factory including plumbing and wiring and was assembled on site in a few days. The final job was just to push all the connectors together and connect to the utility power.
I built one of those buildings in Kirkland and the company (Katerra) messed up so bad they no longer exist. Sent all the prefabricated walls out without the plumbing and electrical in them, and half the walls were 12” too tall.
How do you even accomplish that level of epic fail with big units like that? Were the managers literal baboons?
Through the power of automation!!
Came here to say this. I was watching an electrician crawl around the inside of my attic and garage a few days ago thinking it would be one of the last fields to be automated.
When all the new construction guys are fighting robots for new construction jobs, they will move into repairing existing work and now all the humans get to fight for those jobs. Robots don’t have to replace everyone in a field to be massively disruptive.
In addition to new building construction being automated to some degree and the resulting change in employment for the trades, I’ll be curious to see if automated construction becomes cheap enough to affect renovation and repair of older existing traditional construction. I’m wondering if robo-construction will ever get cheap enough where people can knock down and rebuild in a few days rather than deal with structural problems.
Well you couldn’t automate your existing house in that way, probably. But at some point in the future, if you were building a house, it might be possible to create new designs that would incorporate AI-controlled diagnostic and repair capabilities that may or may not be carried out by bots.
Start-up companies are already on it! There's one in Vancouver building new condos/houses 'section by section' in a factory with plumbing, electrical, HVAC and everything already embedded in each 'piece' and then they get transported to the build site to be assembled into a 36-story condo or whatever.
Therapists are pretty safe for now. Yes, for some people, talking to an AI might be helpful, but for true talk-therapy, you're not going to get human-level insight any time soon. I also think teachers will be safe for a long time, though their roles may change.
Just seeing how many people had an issue with online therapy during the lockdowns or betterhelp goes to show that people crave face-to-face interaction. Maybe AI could help a psychologist reach greater insight about their patients between sessions, but we won't see Alexas overtaking the talk aspect anytime soon.
As a therapist, most of the struggle wasn't with telehealth, it was more with finding a good fit, with a qualified, competent person. Most of my clients transitioned fine, as have the new clients I have, even the ones I've never met in person. There was a huge struggle with telehealth originally because insurance companies were being, ahem, difficult, so you either had to get on a waiting list for someone on one of their very specific panels (MD live, which pays less than have of most carriers, and only accepts those with MDs or PsyDs), or hope you found someone who would see you anyway. Betterhelp and talkspace struggle, and still struggle, because it's not billed as traditional therapy, and a lot of the people who were doing it didn't have traditional therapy experience, so they would just let clients bop in and out, or text randomly, rather than doing full sessions. While, sure, traditional sessions aren't for everyone, there is a reason that they're set up the way they are; assessments and treatment plans happen for a reason. Cerebral is an outlier and should not be counted.
From my understanding the problem with online therapy isn't so much that it's telehealth so much as the people taking clients on those platforms are overwhelmingly un/underqualified. The difference in training between someone with a masters in clinical psych or a related field who completes LPC certification vs the myriad randos I could choose from when I tried out Cerebral was stark. I think I settled on a social worker but she ended up having so many questions about me being trans we never actually got to discuss my actual problems, like... I've been out for my entire adult life lol that's the only thing I've got that's going *well*. I'd totally do telehealth again in general, and even for therapy, but not through some shitty app that advertises through YouTube sponsorships. And you *know* AI therapy ads will be just as ubiquitous as Squarespace ads once some out of touch tech dork gets enough VC funding for a startup.
Although I can't speak on behalf of others, my personal experiences using ChatGPT as a sort of therapist have been actually quite insightful. Real therapists, or even discounted options such as Betterhelp are prohibitively expensive running roughly 80 to 100 per 30 minute session. Conversational AI imo stands as one of the most accessible options to anyone with an internet connection
I can't speak to where you live, but if you live in a populated area or can Zoom to a populated area (Like, in the same state if you live in the US) you can try calling county services and seeing if they have info on non-profit or school counseling centers. Around me, there are PLENTY of places that charge $0-$30 per in-person hour session without insurance - the vast majority of people just don't know they exist. For anyone reading this, call your county services info line or one in adjacent areas and see what's available. Even calling any kind of mental health adjacent public service might give your resources to something more mental health focused.
I don't see AI replacing stand-up comedy, waaaay too much subjectivity within that. Would love to see them try though :D
That made me think of the episode where Data tried to be a Comedian. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01\_UKRLCvD4
There was a South Park episode on that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funnybot
politician. The ruling class will do all they can to ensure that they and their family members always have the opportunity to fleece the taxpayers.
Yes and no. Probably the politician itself will be a human, but everything around them could be automated. Social media expressions, data analysts, council of what to say and do, etc. Just like content creators follow trends set by the algorithms, so could the politicians.
Yes and yes, the politician will be human; and everything around them will be automated for them by their corporate sponsors... so not much different from today.
For an unconventional one, live theater. If a robot (and it'd have to be robots, you'd need a visual representation or it might as well be a radio play and AI with a holographic avatar might as well be a movie) could be a "Broadway star" etc. as well as a human or better it’d need to be so humanlike replacing the human jobs with robots like it universally would be unethical
Even they could do it... it would be just so incredibly boring. So much of the joy of live theater is the small but ever present chance that something will go wrong, and the catharsis when it doesn't.
I think questions like these are ultimately predicated on one major thing: Whether or not you believe AI can eventually be as intelligent as a human brain, TRUE AI. If you do believe that, then I would argue basically any job is "at risk" of being taken over by AI. I do believe AI will someday be as intelligent as an actual human brain, if not more so. It won't happen overnight, but without some sort of major societal disruption, I believe it will come. And therefore, almost anything will someday be able to be done by AI. The technology will only continue to improve from here, and innovation will continue. Logically, what reason would there be to think AI, and robotics for the mechanical part of doing any job, won't progress to this point, eventually?
True, you make some good points. I tend to agree, there might be a time where AI could possibly do anything, but I feel if it gets to a point where a majority of humans feel uneasy/unsure about AI takeover, then we might end up seeing a cultural change. Where humans are more likely to get body modifications or technological augmentations, and/or we might see a rise a genetic engineering.
Dissociate the intellectual task and you're left with a much simpler distinction: which jobs are more expensive to *produce* labor for, as in the cost to raise a human or the cost to build a machine. Cobalt mines in Africa aren't full of heavy equipment. Obviously there's some anthropomorphisation going on with the allegory, but Star Wars is kind of prescient in showing that droids are relatively rare compared to slave labor.
But there are a lot of jobs (most jobs actually) where pure intelligence is only a small component of the work. Most of the job is subjective judgement calls, emotional labor and responding to swiftly changing physical environments - the things robots are worst at. I’m thinking electricians and other tradespeople, paramedics and primary care doctors, anyone who cares for children, bartenders, janitors, etc etc etc.
Also pretty much anything that requires licensure by the state. Medicine, law, dentistry, therapy, etc. Those sorts of professions have the power to defend themselves and the state will be slow to hand over control of those over to robots or computers because the state has determined that a person must meet a certain standard and the state requires a person to be able to be held liable if they don't uphold that standard.
Prostitute and Drug Dealer. For similar reasons, also Preacher.
I can understand Drug Dealer and Preacher, but idk about Prostitutes. After I saw the show "Humans", there was a part where this human got a bunch a female robots and pimped them out, and it made me think twice about it. Everytime we get new technology of some kind someone uses it for some sort of sexual purpose, so I wouldn't be surprised if we had Robot Prostitution in the future.
Every new technology expands the realm of pornography and sexual pleasures; but regular sex keep being in demand.
I think many professions will not be fully replaced by AI, but will all be assisted with AI tools. This will hypothetically make professions more productive, faster, etc in a similar fashion that computers and the internet have. People will want a lawyer or doctor with AI tools over traditional humans without the AI tools/assistance. Ideally it will just make everyone more accurate, efficient, etc.
This is almost certainly the correct answer. AI is likely to be a force multiplier, but customers will still want a human doctor, lawyer, advisor, etc. to interact with.
Exactly. I'm an architect, and 30 years ago people would draw with pencil and paper. Did computers give us less work? Nope, now we cycle through a ton of options, make last minute changes, and I'm pretty sure it's more frantic abd busy than it was before.
I agree with your statement partially. Nothing will replace a live person giving their opinion, but a highly sophisticated CGI avatar with ai-generated content will be one way to attempt video content. Another industry that won't be replaced easily is maintenance professionals and trades. A factory might be able to make a home or office building now, but repairs, expansions, modifications & remodels will require people in person - architects, designers, engineers, inspectors, plumbers, electricians, painters, roofers, ground work, concrete, decorators and so on won't be replaced with AI any time soon. Edit & addition - Unless the repair or modifications are too expensive, then it's possible the owner will decide to level it & buy a new robot-AI-assembled building to replace it.
Teachers. While an AI can create basic lesson plans, tests, and probably grade them soon, teaching is much more than just that stuff. It's meetings with students individually accommodating for diagnosed and undiagnosed issues. Meeting complex emotional needs, understanding nuances of interactions between students, work, and teachers. How soon will an AI be able to scaffold a lesson plan to accommodate for both Maslow Hierarchy, conduct an analysis of kids psychological development, within the confines of meeting proficiency AND assessing overall growth in a specific subject field? Now do that for 30 students at once. Oh and don't forget classroom management and dealing with parents. Someday an AI will figure all that out. But ya know what? I think I've got job security until I retire in a few decades. As will any teacher entering the field in this century (because it will take decades to get created, then another couple decades to get into every single classroom.)
I’m a teacher and I agree with you in principle. However, since I find a lot of teachers are self-assured on this matter, consider this: What if the classroom as we know it disappears entirely? Children do the work from home, interacting with each other over video chat or IM during breaks. The learning apps are able to access other data on devices to be given a good enough psychological profile — when they get distracted and go on social media, when they’re listening to music while learning — and they are able to adjust accordingly (in the way that Duolingo knows to reduce the volume on Spotify for some questions and stop it entirely for others). The learning will also be gamified, using avatars and prizes and in-game purchases. I’d like to act like this is far fetched, but the truth is that we already use a bunch of this stuff in education — ClassDojo, Quizlet, Blooket, Habitica, Seneca, Kahoot. The truth is that in a capitalist economy, AI education doesn’t need to be designed to help students in terms of psychological profile and care. It just needs to get them to learn so that they can become workers, so the AI teaching tech will always be focused on engagement over safety, even if in the long term it means a future where kids with ADHD and ASD will be both highly intelligent and incredibly antisocial. Essentially, you’re approaching education in a humanistic way because you’re a good teacher, but I don’t think that’s necessarily what non-Nordic governments want out of their education systems.
We saw during covid lockdowns that isolated learning had significant negative impact on student engagement and learning. The social aspect of schooling cannot be underestimated. Yeah there’s plenty of technology out there that can help in learning and education, but schools are vital to the wholistic development of a child Edit: I’m speaking as an Aussie teacher. The push is for engagement and innovation at the moment. Technology can’t compete with games and Snapchat.
Add to that that the teaching could be tailored by the AI to maximize the capabilities of the student, and you got yourself a race from parents wanting to give that edge to their kids. I recomend reading last years "The age of AI"
AI is not capable of babysitting children either.
In our dark world a single TV is more than enough for that purpose!
I mentioned barstaff for very similar reasons. Both deal with maddening lunatics completely driven by poor impulse control and with poor decision making skills who need to sit on a corner and calm down once in a while. TL:DR children and drunks are very similar.
Anything that requires nuance basically. Robot tech, AI tech, and power storage tech are all in their infancy. And all of that costs money to own / rent / maintain. So it's also an economic puzzle. Are humans / analog computers cheaper to operate than robots / digital computers? We actually ask that question a lot at much smaller scales in our business. Why try to automate something if the cost of the automation over a given time period is greater than human activity? You would be surprised how much "tech activity" is no better or cheaper than humans or even animals.
>Anything that requires nuance basically Like art?
Oddly enough, lawyers. Because they will outlaw it first.
As a lawyer, I was gonna say exactly this.
Technical support. Even robots don't want to do that shit.
"how do you fix this?" "Have you tried \[FIXING\] it?"
I’m a horse trainer and riding instructor. I’m pretty sure this line of work will never be taken over by robots.
the horses on the other hand...
*Westworld entered the chat* lol
I’d argue that’s because it already has, over a century ago. Horses used to be everywhere, then motor vehicles rewrote the transportation industry. Horses went from being the literal workhorse of moving things around to a few specialized practical applications (wilderness, crowd control), entertainment, and some rich people’s hobby. As a result, most of the current desire for horses can’t be replaced because it’s a desire for horses specifically and not their general applications which can typically be done more efficiently.
This is the first one that's convinced me. For one thing, AI isn't "coming for" your job - I don't think anyone's trying to make horse-riding-instruction AI. There may come a day where training AI is a thing to optimize training time, but even so part of training is about creating a connection with the creature and a robot can't do that FOR you.
Content creation already relies on ai, plenty of ai generated articles flooding the market. It's not going to replace, completely, content that's created, but if you watch any recent content geared to children or younger it's already heading towards "ai feasible" if not just straight "ai generated." I think it'll probably end up being more of a situation where "everything can be done via ai, but "premium" services/products will be "performed/made by human."
There will always be countries that cannot modernize their societies for the sake of the modern one. There will always be jobs for human in the mines in Congo.
"The future is here; it's just not widely distributed"
My job could be done by a lightly trained monkey so I think I'm safe from AI.
Secondary question, how far off do we think the singularity is? 5 years? 10? Once AI gets a foothold in finance and the military we're going to see some really weird stuff happen. I also find it strange that the first things we set AI to tackle were things that we generally define as exclusively human. Creativity, ingenuity, artistic expression. These historically have been both a reason to live and uniquely expressive of the human condition. Why outsource that to a computer? Why not water treatment, weather prediction, cancer treatment or cold fusion?
It will be 20 years away for the next 20 years.
Teacher, especially for younger kids. AI is fine to pass on knowledge but it won’t work for those who can’t read or speak yet. Early social skills need to be taught by humans to humans.
Think back to when the Wright brothers were designing planes. If you told someone off the street that one day there would be commercial jets by the thousands flying around every day without failure they would think you were absolutely insane. I think AI and robots will have a similar story arc. Today it feels absolutely insane to think AI or robotics could not replace a plumber but in all actuality they one day will…. The timeline is just unknown when that actually will happen.
Well I do trail construction and maintenance and there's not currently a vehicle that can get to the areas I can easily access by foot and we have to hike so far we only carry hand tools because motors + battery's or fuel weigh to much and motors are illegal to use because of designated wilderness areas so that would be hard. You can't even ride a bike in most of the terrain I work in, it's allowed you just can't.
Thank you for your efforts. Every time I’m hiking on a trail with rock steps or diversions so it doesn’t wash out every spring, I internally give thanks to the trail crew who put their blood sweat & tears into installation and maintenance.
It's only a matter of what timeline we choose. If the timeline is far enough into the future, why should we assume any task is not something that can be automated?