... you might not have noticed that reality is catching up to prediction rather faster than we might want to believe.
A couple of weeks ago I cited Matt Shumer's blog article about the current state of artificial intelligence (AI). His article went viral, and has been quoted in many mainstream news media outlets. Here are a couple of excerpts, followed by real-world examples of how his predictions are already happening in the corporate world.
I am no longer needed for the actual technical work of my job. I describe what I want built, in plain English, and it just... appears. Not a rough draft I need to fix. The finished thing. I tell the AI what I want, walk away from my computer for four hours, and come back to find the work done. Done well, done better than I would have done it myself, with no corrections needed. A couple of months ago, I was going back and forth with the AI, guiding it, making edits. Now I just describe the outcome and leave.
. . .
The experience that tech workers have had over the past year, of watching AI go from "helpful tool" to "does my job better than I do", is the experience everyone else is about to have. Law, finance, medicine, accounting, consulting, writing, design, analysis, customer service. Not in ten years. The people building these systems say one to five years. Some say less. And given what I've seen in just the last couple of months, I think "less" is more likely.
. . .
Amodei has said that AI models "substantially smarter than almost all humans at almost all tasks" are on track for 2026 or 2027.
Let that land for a second. If AI is smarter than most PhDs, do you really think it can't do most office jobs?
Think about what that means for your work.
How does this translate to the real world, right now? Go read this article:
Want another one?
That last one's a doozy. Dorsey is cutting almost half of his company's work force, because he no longer needs them to do the work they used to do. AI is replacing them.
[Dorsey] said in his note that the job cuts are "one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company: we're reducing our organization by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000. that means over 4,000 of you are being asked to leave or entering into consultation."
. . .
Dorsey said that the "intelligence tools we're creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that's accelerating rapidly."
There's more at the link.
Block's layoffs affect every department and every kind of work within the organization. They're not confined to IT workers, computer specialists and the like. From secretarial to marketing to management to product development, all jobs are on the line.
What does this mean for your job? For your kids' education and preparation for the workforce? We'd better all be paying attention . . . and preparing Plans B, C and D for personal development if we want to be employed in the future.
Peter
12 comments:
Call me when AI can fix a transmission, put your house out when it's on fire, start an IV, or prune and graft a fruit tree. I'm guessing that'll be a few centuries from now. Meanwhile AI cars run over jaywalkers, and have been captured by a pound of white salt. So even cabbies' jobs are safe.
AI may get good at make-work jobs. Great. Sux to be you if that's your rice bowl. You're going to put TV and screenplay writers, stockbrokers, insurance weenies, manual makers, lawyers, and other flotsam into the slinging-cokes-and-french-fries end of work?
But only when the grid can handle 300% of current peak, and AI sucks in all available RAM manufactured worldwide for the next 50 years? Sh'yeah, pull the other one, it has bells on it.
Boo frickin' hoo.
In the First World, this calls into question the nature and need of work, and its relation to operative economics. Will we now be born into retirement? In second and third worlds, how much traction will AI have, and to what effect? Could AI exert a leveling effect? Or is a world of Eloi and Morlocks approaching? Inquiring minds are sort of concerned.
Rich the retired electronic Morlock.
Aesop, I hear you . . . but the fact remains that these developments are happening now, not in some imaginary future. Nobody is waiting for extra grid power, or bells-and-whistles robots that are pie in the sky. They're actually doing it right now, as we speak. Elon Musk closed a car plant in California manufacturing Tesla cars, and intends to produce a million Optimus robots there every year, starting right now. The conversion process is already under way. I don't know about you, but I see that as further proof that AI and its associated machines are moving and developing far faster than any of us anticipated. As for the future? I guess we'll see soon enough.
And just how much of these job cuts are actually getting rid of useless cubical residents? It allows a company to cut entire DIE departments without political backlash. Many companies also have "assistants" hired for make work, to pad the size of a department, or employ a nephew of somebody important.
We are at the point where we need to ask is it okay to reduce the 40 hour work week to 30 or 20 hours? What happens when we have excess labor? Our laws force employers to have as few people as possible working as many hours as possible. Will works slaves work 40 or more hours a week for the proles who don't work at all?
Aesop, where is your compassion? When people don't work, are they part of the community? What purpose do they have? People work sucky jobs to take care of their families (or did before ridiculous college debt became a thing)
Humans are still needed for creativity, that's a plus. But do you want to work for a human or an AI. Leadership versus management. So far AI is making stuff up based on who has programmed it, it follows a consensus even when the consensus is wrong. Do you want to trust your health to a computer that believes COVID came from pangolins?
Business is going whole hog to save money by laying off employees. No one is asking what kind of world are we building for our grandchildren. It would be nice to think ahead.
If you read the 2nd link down in the article Dorsey states "...the company "over-hired during covid because i incorrectly built 2 separate company structures (square & cash app) rather than 1, which we corrected mid 2024. but this misses all the complexity we took on through lending, banking, and BNPL."
So the layoffs are as much they are correcting for massive overscale in their systems as much as AI, but blaming it on AI is the current sexy thing...
It is indeed happening faster than I expected. AI plus robotics are now starting to plant and pick produce. It's handling lettuce and celery, root crops have already been automated. Corn is being worked on. Wheat and other grains are already there.
AI is also learning when to fertilize and spray pesticides, when to plant and harvest. Chicken farms are next.
Repair and maintenance still requires humans. That can be minimized with planned obsolescence and continuing along the path of making things impossible to repair. Medbots have so far failed to appear, and I think those will be a long time coming.
We shall see. For my part, I will continue working on my place in the Ozarks. As jobs go away, having a family refuge that can produce the majority of food and such may be sorely needed.
What the boomer mechanic retard doesn't realize is the loss of all the other jobs means nobody can afford to come in to the shop so he will starve with the rest of us. Also F him for not caring. Its time to literally eat the rich.
I have linked this article and post over at Bustednuckles. My summary "Go read the rest of the article. I have noticed an increase in using AI in medical charting for diagnoses and patient treatment plans. I will admit using AI in diagnoses is removing doctor’s biases and refusal at times for alternative treatments and alternative protocols that could benefit patients." I headed it with "The Birth of Skynet."
I work a boring, repetitive desk job. I receive applications both electronically and in person, check them for accuracy and, if correct, approve them to move along in the process. AI could do my job tomorrow, except for one thing--an astonishing percentage of my applicants (all between the ages of 14-18) cannot carry out very basic computerized work. Many cannot enter information into a fillable PDF. This means that I get hand-written paper copies of the applications, which I then have to decipher. Incredible ignorance and incompetence may keep me in my job until retirement age.
We can imagine all we want but the future is just days ahead and you can be sure it’s not going to be what any of us expect. Could be the greatest thing mankind has ever seen or the end of society. My God be compassionate on us all
I strikes me that NO ONE saw the movie "Terminator".
Whatever. I will probably be dead by then. Hopefully.
Tom762
Post a Comment