Basically, any white-collar job (management, technical, administrative, whatever) is under threat.
Mo Gawdat, the former chief business officer of Google X, has a stark message for white-collar professionals: Artificial intelligence isn't just coming for entry-level work — it's coming for everyone, including software developers, CEOs, and podcasters.
In a Monday conversation on the "Diary of a CEO" podcast, Gawdat predicted that most knowledge workers would be replaced in the next decade and said many still underestimated just how rapidly this transformation would unfold.
He cited his own startup, Emma.love, which builds emotional and relationship-focused artificial intelligence and is run by just three people.
"That startup would have been 350 developers in the past," he said.
. . .
But he warned that AI was being deployed by people and institutions driven by profit and ego, not ethics.
"Unless you're in the top 0.1%, you're a peasant," Gawdat said. "There is no middle class."
He predicted a "short-term dystopia" beginning around 2027, driven by mass unemployment, social unrest, and an economic structure that fails to adapt.
There's more at the link.
We're already seeing this in operation in many knowledge-driven fields such as finance, real estate, etc. A professional is now expected to use AI to augment or supplement his training and experience, conducting searches, market research, etc. in the background while he applies himself to current problems in the foreground. It's reported that productivity improvements of up to several hundred per cent are being claimed - and those who aren't "getting with the program", learning to use AI to work smarter, are already finding their careers being sidelined or cut short.
It's not just in America, either.
The latest Office for National Statistics data shows that job vacancies in the UK have fallen for 36 consecutive months, obliterating the previous record of 16, which was the result of the global financial crisis in 2008.
At the same time, the past three years has seen the rate of redundancies almost double from 55,000 people per month to 114,000, and the impact has fallen disproportionately on middle-aged and older workers. More than one million people have been made redundant over the past three years, with 34 per cent of the job losses hitting people between 35-49, while 30 per cent were aged 50-plus.
What is truly frightening is that all of this has occurred during a period of economic growth, albeit weak growth. The general consensus is that when an economy grows, jobs are added, and when it shrinks, jobs are lost. Yet this relationship appears to have broken down and experts believe this is down to a convergence of factors, including the rapid advance of AI.
Again, more at the link.
The AI conundrum is of particular interest to writers, people like myself. There are already literally thousands of books self-published on Amazon that were "written" entirely by artificial intelligence software. One AI program can be given broad outlines, then produce a novel set in dozens of different genres, using different character names, settings, etc., but all basically the same book. It can generate them in a matter of a few days. Amazon tries hard to intercept such books and stop them from being dumped on the market, but an acquaintance there tells me it's getting harder and harder to detect them. Early AI "composers" (for want of a better word) were amateurish, couldn't parse grammar very well, and were relatively easy to spot. Newer software is much more capable, and it learns from its mistakes, becoming even better with every iteration. I won't use such software - I take pride in producing original work, thank you very much - but many people out there have no such scruples.
Food for thought.
Peter
8 comments:
Category Romances were already basically the same plot, same characters, different costumes, and they were the Romances written for the Romance addicts. (I worked in a used bookstore that specialized in Romance, we had three ring binders with ‘if you like this you might like this’ info for the patrons)
One important facet of work is that is a communal activity. When I work I take care of the people around me. I'm retired and worked for a bit at a big box store. How they tried to sap any purpose or reward out of helping your neighbors. AI is following the trend. As a manager, I had to learn my people and what motivated them. Do you want an AI bot to motivate you? Monitor you? Decide you talked to a lonely widow customer too long?
AI is coming, but it does no better than it is trained. I think an organization that puts its people and community first will remain competitive. Companies now advertise they are green, what happens when they advertise they are silicon free?
AI could easily replace all teaching positions from pre-school through graduate school but what, in most cases, would be the point in educating people?
I'm not as pessimistic about AI taking jobs. I mean yes it going to take some of course but it is worth noting that the current mass investment in AI datacenters seems to be burning enormous sums of money for very little revenue. It is not at all impossible that the AI bubble will pop as the world discovers that people are not willing to pay for AI at a rate that allows payback on that investment because that cost is the same as, or greater, than the cost of hiring humans
I did some calculations a few months ago - https://ombreolivier.substack.com/p/ai-actively-incinerating-cash?r=7yrqz -and nothing I've seen since has shown me that I'm wrong
I've seen many new engineers (real engineers, not the software geeks) get completely locked up because there's not always a clear and correct answer for the problems you find in the field. The textbooks from school all had neat and tidy problems, the real world has messy weird overlapping problems. I come from a long and distinguished line of "I don't know, let's try it and see what happens" style of engineering. I really don't see AI replacing that. But then again, I don't see many new engineers replacing that either. Once I retire (soon), they'll have to either get messy or give up.
The book thing is new to me, but I guess I'm not reading high literature anyway. I'll have to look back at some of the trashy sci-fi / fantasy stuff I've read recently to see if there's anything weird there. I can't see AI getting humor correct, but what do I know?
AI is a computer program. As all programs, it is biased in the original coding and is bound by the law of garbage in garbage out.
Yes, AI programs check all over the web and then produces an answer. The problem is that the answer is just an answer, not a true, correct, verifiable answer.
So, we are pushing toward making business actions even more ignorant than in the past.
Dave
We already know that AI makes stuff up (as several lawyers have learned to their chagrin) and it discriminates in hiring (as Workday is finding out). 9 times out of 10, the AI summary at the top of any Google search I do for work is incorrect. I recall reading an article by a data scientist where a company had the same data analyzed by a team of people and by an AI, and within a few months, the AI data was so far off it was basically fiction.
AI is only as good as the prompt and the data it has access to. will it get better? Yes, eventually. In the meantime, companies relying on AI over human intelligence are going to face tough times.
Call me when AI gets advanced enough for self-driving trains, which have only three settings: forward, stop, and backwards.
We won't even talk about more complicated functions.
AI will only replace actual retards with virtual retards, on its best day.
Period.
If you have a make-work job, you're in jeopardy.
If your work product is hash in the first place, AI's got your number.
And that's it.
AI can't bake a cake, change a tire, let alone think an original thought. It won't write Romeo and Juliet, War and Peace, nor Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, nor anything like.
Skills will remain untouchable.
And humans using it will break the Three Laws Of Robotics with it before breakfast.
It will, in short order, become the mark of the crook and con-man, and be about as career-ending as being found with a running iron in your saddlebag in cattle country circa 1880: one order of rope necktie in 3, 2, ...
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