Artificial Intelligence and the future of Human Endeavor

[Stalker0]

This year saw a real push of AI into the general marketplace. With things like AI artwork now a reality, AI that can write simple stories, and even AI that can code all coming to a forefront this year... AI is moving quickly from sci-fi to reality.

What does the future of Human endeavor look like in such a world?


The "New Industry" model doesn't work anymore
Anytime people get concerned about automation and AI, the most common retort is "just like when robots replaced us in the industrial revolution and we moved to service jobs, there will be all sorts of new jobs for humans to do in the future, jobs we can't even dream of yet."

I think this is a fallacy in the new paradigm.

Will there be new jobs and industries, absolutely, 100%. They just won't be done by humans. At the end of the day, all labor ever created has two components, a physical and a mental one. Robots largely replaced human physical labor during the industrial revolution, so humans moved to more mental jobs. Well now AI is started to take over the mental side....and once they can do that as well (or nearly as well) as a human.....what's left?

Sure there will be new jobs, and perhaps for a little while humans will do them. Until someone teaches an AI to do it (or the AIs are smart enough to just learn it themselves), and then once again that job will belong to the machines. And that window will close over time, as AIs get better and faster, it will come to a point where new industries would have to be created constantly to keep humans employed....and eventually AIs may learn so quickly even that wouldn't be viable anymore, it would be economically better not to have humans do it at all, but wait a short timespan and let the AIs take it on.

You don't need to replace ALL jobs to have major disruption
Another common retort is, "people still do physical jobs in the post robot world, there will still be jobs". And that is true, its unlikely every single human on the planet would be jobless. But even if just 10% of the market was taking over by machines....that is still a MASSIVE disruption. That is still more unemployment than we have seen since depression times, its a massive shakeup in the economy and people's way of life.

What do humans do in a post labor society?
Now lets assume we get over the hump. We transition into a world where AI does all the main work, and humans now have infinite luxury. That sounds pretty good right?

However, there is a problem....what do humans actually "do" in that society? Creative jobs....AI once sophisticated enough could generate songs, poems, artwork so beautiful it would likely dwarf anything a human could generate. Exploration of teh galaxy, eh machines can do that better to. Lounge about all day and do nothing?.... a lot of people depend on "purpose" as a part of their psycological wellbeing. Without an endeavor that has meaning (whether its for the good of society or just to increase your wealth)...I fear that many humans would flounder, suicide rates would increase, depression would skyrocket.

Most people need something to do... so how does it work in a world that no longer needs them to do anything?


Is Chess the Savior of Humanity?
So far I've painted a pretty bleak picture, but I think chess may offer us the light of hope.

Chess is a scenario where the AI has already "won". There is not a Grandmaster alive that can beat even a stock standard chess computer you could get on your phone. There is literally no reason for humans to play chess, we "suck" compared to machines. And yet.... people do play chess. We have grandmasters that are famous and respected for doing something "that technically has no value".

Perhaps in a world where all labor is taken over by AI, humans will simply create purpose. Just as we play chess even though there is no reason too, we will continue to paint, create, tell stories etc. Not because our work is better than an AIs (it won't be), but because we are creators at heart, and will continue to create for ourselves and others....even in a world without need of it. Some have argued purpose has always been a construct of the mind....no reason it cannot continue to be in an AI driven world.

 

[payn]

Jobs change, but we always create our own purpose.

 

[MarkB]

This is a very crude, blanket view of AI. The programs that are melding art into new images or prose into new stories are specialised tools, a far cry from anything capable of actual intelligent thought. Generalised artificial intelligence is still far enough away that we can't even truly define an end-point, let alone estimate it - decades at best.

There's no switch that's going to be thrown and we're suddenly all out of a job, this will be a gradual process that we'll adapt to as we go along. And guess what, by the time those AI are sophisticated to take over our intellectual jobs, they'll also be getting smart enough to attend to our psychological needs. By the nature of the problem itself, it's not one we'll have to solve by ourselves.

Assuming they want to, of course. True AIs are going to think very differently than we do, in ways we literally can't even imagine.

 

[Aeson]

I don't think many, if any, of us on this board will see that day. Some here, me included, have said they'll probably never be able to retire. We'll work until we can't anymore. Hopefully AI will have grown enough to be able to tend to our needs in the end. I want my android nurse to look like Gal Gadot.

 

[aco175]

I saw a video on the news about a 100% automated McDonalds complete with a creepy blow-up doll looking teller. The future is now. I also see where countries are not repopulating themselves and are losing the working 20s and 30 somethings. Most of Europe and Japan already went through some of this and China looks to be next. America seems to have the Millennials and lots of immigration to keep this age floating for a while. Eventually though AI will come. We will start to plug them into these jobs to serve the retiring groups and in 100 years- I do not know.

 

[Stalker0]

This is a very crude, blanket view of AI. The programs that are melding art into new images or prose into new stories are specialised tools, a far cry from anything capable of actual intelligent thought. Generalised artificial intelligence is still far enough away that we can't even truly define an end-point, let alone estimate it - decades at best.

There's no switch that's going to be thrown and we're suddenly all out of a job, this will be a gradual process that we'll adapt to as we go along. And guess what, by the time those AI are sophisticated to take over our intellectual jobs, they'll also be getting smart enough to attend to our psychological needs. By the nature of the problem itself, it's not one we'll have to solve by ourselves.

Assuming they want to, of course. True AIs are going to think very differently than we do, in ways we literally can't even imagine.

General AI is really not necessary. We can do it using the "toolbox" approach, creating very specialized AIs to do very specific things. But you have enough of them, and suddenly they are handling everything.

I could make a impressionist Art AI, or pick another art style AI (hehe not an art history guy . You could make an AI for every specific style you can think of, as well as an AI that just thinks of new style. You don't have to have one super AI.

When you say gradual, I think you also seriously underestimate the pace of progress. We aren't measuring success in decades, they are in years, sometimes in months. The power of the machine is its speed, getting it to do something is very hard, but once it learns to do something well it takes off like a shot....especially with software where you don't have to pay for it to make copies of itself. The replication is relatively "free".

Now that we have art AIs, you are going to see rapid rapid progress in their development, measured in months, maybe years, but not longer than that.

Further, we have to understand the notion of scope here. Once you have an AI good at a certain kind of decision making for example, that doesn't affect just one industry, it effects dozens. Change will not be that gradual once this ball really starts rolling down the hill.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

AI are improving all the time and many things can be done, to a degree, by AI. Generally, as far as I can tell, there is really nothing (except may be chess) that can be done completely by AI. It is very good at pre-screening data for human specialists.
So AI wrangling will become a job.

Will there be enough jobs for people to do at some point in the future. I do not know? I think that the cultural meaning of "job", "career" will change over time as part of the social and cultural adjustment to further automation.
What will look like, I have no idea, and I doubt anyone else has either.
One think I have speculated is that handcrafted and hand made stuff could come back in to fashion as a status signifier. That you have to wealth to pay someone for their time to make all handcrafted furniture and stuff like that.

The other is that we will have to take jobs in our old age as barmen in the Metaverse equivalent of D&D taverns.

 

[J.Quondam]

I saw a video on the news about a 100% automated McDonalds complete with a creepy blow-up doll looking teller.

"Would you like fries with that?"

 

[Aeson]

AI wrangler? Can I wear a cowboy hat and chaps?

 

[MarkB]

General AI is really not necessary. We can do it using the "toolbox" approach, creating very specialized AIs to do very specific things. But you have enough of them, and suddenly they are handling everything.

I could make a impressionist Art AI, or pick another art style AI (hehe not an art history guy . You could make an AI for every specific style you can think of, as well as an AI that just thinks of new style. You don't have to have one super AI.

When you say gradual, I think you also seriously underestimate the pace of progress. We aren't measuring success in decades, they are in years, sometimes in months. The power of the machine is its speed, getting it to do something is very hard, but once it learns to do something well it takes off like a shot....especially with software where you don't have to pay for it to make copies of itself. The replication is relatively "free".

Now that we have art AIs, you are going to see rapid rapid progress in their development, measured in months, maybe years, but not longer than that.

Further, we have to understand the notion of scope here. Once you have an AI good at a certain kind of decision making for example, that doesn't affect just one industry, it effects dozens. Change will not be that gradual once this ball really starts rolling down the hill.

These aren't AIs capable of real decision making. They're not even close to that. The term "AI" gets attached to lots of things that aren't, in any meaningful sense, intelligent. They're just very good at some very specific pattern recognition and replication.