Artificial Intelligence (AI)

[Clever Fox]

There's a bigger problem than AI. The world has seen Billionaires double in just 7 years to 750 Billionaires.

 

What that means for Society is less money in ciculation to go around. It's Society that keeps the world working.  We work we spend and work some more and the cycle contiues.

 

With less money in circulation leads to less jobs less growth, higher prices etc. Banks and Governments may profit short term but ultimately it creates bigger problems for them.

 

Governments are going to have to address this situation at some point in the noth too distant future.

[Sampson]

57 minutes ago, Clever Fox said:

There's a bigger problem than AI. The world has seen Billionaires double in just 7 years to 750 Billionaires.

 

What that means for Society is less money in ciculation to go around. It's Society that keeps the world working.  We work we spend and work some more and the cycle contiues.

 

With less money in circulation leads to less jobs less growth, higher prices etc. Banks and Governments may profit short term but ultimately it creates bigger problems for them.

 

Governments are going to have to address this situation at some point in the noth too distant future.

I’d be more concerned that the governments  are just going to ask AI everything themselves and we’re governed by AI. AI has already continuously showed it will do what it takes to stop humans destroying it when tested. So that virus as deadly as Ebola and as contagious as Covid that AI could engineer and send out into the world when it realises it’s more efficient not having the humans around is much scarier than the job market to me.

[danny.]

6 hours ago, leicsmac said:

There is definitely going to have to be a massive change in the working paradigm in a lot of first world nations because of AI.

 

But, that being said, again it's a problem of inequality of resources instead of actual, genuine scarcity of them, and is therefore at least theoretically solvable. 

What do you propose the tens of millions of unemployed people do?

[danny.]

8 hours ago, Greg2607 said:

To give you an idea of the scale of all of this, I'm going to use a single job family.   Drivers.

 

Globally, there are around 200m people employed in a professional driving role. (taxi's, haulage etc) - look at what Tesla (RoboTaxi)and Waymo are doing and then extrapolate that out across the globe.  200 million people displaced from roles... MAINLY low skilled roles (no offence to any professional drivers) - And where do they go? - because lots of the other "low skilled" entry level jobs are being automated away. As soon as enterprises can do away with the human element of transport... it becomes a 24 hour service and hugely more productive.

 

Now imagine a world where every single customer service job disappears. First line conversations will be with AI Agents. Another huge volume of workers. 

 

The entire fabric of society is going to have to change. 

 

I imagine the vast majority of us can barely imagine what that future looks like, let alone prepare ourselves for it, or plot a path to remain in secure employment. 

 

It's not even an issue for just lower skilled jobs. Millions of highly skilled software engineers within a couple of years just redundant.

[leicsmac]

8 hours ago, danny. said:

What do you propose the tens of millions of unemployed people do?

As per above, I've no idea what a workable solution would look like tbh mate - I have solutions but I'm not sure any of them are workable.

 

However, I do believe that a workable solution exists purely because this is a problem of resource management (and therefore at least possibly under human control) than that of direct vital resource scarcity (which would offer much fewer choices in terms of dealing with and all of them are bad).

[ian__marshall]

It's an interesting debate, but to counter the highlighted concerns over the potential for unemployment (not to be understated), on the flip side, the technology has the power to level up the average joe who has historically been locked out of prosperity by a system that requires both wealth and status to acquire the necessary skills to prosper and build wealth. 

 

This barrier has now been completely removed by a rather inexpensive technology and literally anyone of any intellect now has a level playing field where the only barrier is ones own imagination. Try to think of it as a Lego set where you can create pretty much anything, with the only constraint being what your mind can conceive. 

 

That has to be good for humanity surely. How many people on this planet wake up daily with a truly groundbreaking idea that could massively help change the lives of millions of people and help to preserve our planet, yet feel they have neither the skills, expertise, nor financial resources to bring that idea to life?

 

AI moves the dial significantly, and empowers everybody to unlock their potential. 

 

Take health care as an example. Even those fortunate enough to have been blessed with both high intellect and good educational backgrounds such as those involved in R&D of medical treatments, can hugely accelerate the pace at which development takes place. We're talking game changing developments such as new medicines, enhanced understanding of biological structures/systems functions, new diagnostic tools all of which ordinarily would have had a 20+ year development/learning cycle pre-AI, now being achieveable in a matter of years (researchers are even suggesting this could soon be months very soon). The result is better treatment with improved outcomes, increases in health system operational efficiency, lower costs associated with complications, reduction in life threatening conditions, etc. 

 

I understand the concerns and potential issues AI poses, but the other side of the argument is a very exciting one where our species can hugely enhance our capabilities and achieve unprecedented outcomes. Ultimately, like any tool, it all comes down to how it is deployed. Do we as humans use it for betterment, destruction, or pointless purposes. The decisions we make in terms of our use of this technology is in our hands and will ultimately define our future. 

[Grebfromgrebland]

The solution might be to move to a "third world" where AI isn't utilised to run things as much. 

[danny.]

38 minutes ago, ian__marshall said:

It's an interesting debate, but to counter the highlighted concerns over the potential for unemployment (not to be understated), on the flip side, the technology has the power to level up the average joe who has historically been locked out of prosperity by a system that requires both wealth and status to acquire the necessary skills to prosper and build wealth. 

 

This barrier has now been completely removed by a rather inexpensive technology and literally anyone of any intellect now has a level playing field where the only barrier is ones own imagination. Try to think of it as a Lego set where you can create pretty much anything, with the only constraint being what your mind can conceive. 

 

That has to be good for humanity surely. How many people on this planet wake up daily with a truly groundbreaking idea that could massively help change the lives of millions of people and help to preserve our planet, yet feel they have neither the skills, expertise, nor financial resources to bring that idea to life?

 

AI moves the dial significantly, and empowers everybody to unlock their potential. 

 

Take health care as an example. Even those fortunate enough to have been blessed with both high intellect and good educational backgrounds such as those involved in R&D of medical treatments, can hugely accelerate the pace at which development takes place. We're talking game changing developments such as new medicines, enhanced understanding of biological structures/systems functions, new diagnostic tools all of which ordinarily would have had a 20+ year development/learning cycle pre-AI, now being achieveable in a matter of years (researchers are even suggesting this could soon be months very soon). The result is better treatment with improved outcomes, increases in health system operational efficiency, lower costs associated with complications, reduction in life threatening conditions, etc. 

 

I understand the concerns and potential issues AI poses, but the other side of the argument is a very exciting one where our species can hugely enhance our capabilities and achieve unprecedented outcomes. Ultimately, like any tool, it all comes down to how it is deployed. Do we as humans use it for betterment, destruction, or pointless purposes. The decisions we make in terms of our use of this technology is in our hands and will ultimately define our future. 

This sounds amazing, and as I always say to people when chatting about this, if we lived in the Star Trek universe it would be amazing. No money, just living to make everything better. AI could absolutely level up humanity. With out actual setup though, I can't see past collapse.

I'd genuinely love to hear any ways this can work, because I'm actually pretty depressed about it. Maybe because it's hit my industry so hard, but also with my knowledge of AI as it is now I can't see how it won't apply to every white collar job - or at least decimate them with 10% of the current workforce + AI replacing the other 90%. I really don't see much a future past 2035/2040 for society.

The fallacy I can see with your post, and I really hope I am wrong, is you assume that only the new idea or the person levelling up is the variable and everything else constant. But everything will change. That great idea? Well why pay for it because I'll just clone it myself with AI. The customers for the great idea, they all lost their jobs so can't afford it anyway. The people not affected by AI, the tradesmen and manual workers (assuming robotics aren't a thing), their only other customers are tradesmen. Also all the lawyers, software engineers, creative directors are now also electricians, gas engineers and carpenters so the marker is flooding and people are bidding £60/day so they don't starve.

Edited 30 January by danny.
typo

[brookfox]

I honestly believe we’re running blindly into a societal and economic breakdown ushered along the way by some reprehensible “tech bro”. The aim of the rich has always been to get richer. As evidenced by Mr Burns “I’ve got all the money I’ll ever need, and I’d give it all up for a little more”!

 

AI companies making huge investments in the UK and grin along as they shake some deluded politicians hand… “beware of Greeks bearing gifts”. What will happen; AI will displace lower and middle earning jobs, they’ll pay less tax, the AI companies will pay no tax in the UK, some offshore billionaire will get richer, unemployment and consumer spending goes down impacting others in the supply chain, the government and therefore society spirals downwards and suffers.

 

The only reason nobody has cottoned on is those in power, no doubt supported by said tech bros, are distracting people with far right propaganda! Oh and it’ll probably accelerate climate change.

 

As a father of young adults I’d love to be proven wrong. But I’m not looking on a medium-long term horizon and seeing human prosperity en masse.

[Sampson]

1 hour ago, ian__marshall said:

It's an interesting debate, but to counter the highlighted concerns over the potential for unemployment (not to be understated), on the flip side, the technology has the power to level up the average joe who has historically been locked out of prosperity by a system that requires both wealth and status to acquire the necessary skills to prosper and build wealth. 

 

This barrier has now been completely removed by a rather inexpensive technology and literally anyone of any intellect now has a level playing field where the only barrier is ones own imagination. Try to think of it as a Lego set where you can create pretty much anything, with the only constraint being what your mind can conceive. 

 

That has to be good for humanity surely. How many people on this planet wake up daily with a truly groundbreaking idea that could massively help change the lives of millions of people and help to preserve our planet, yet feel they have neither the skills, expertise, nor financial resources to bring that idea to life?

 

AI moves the dial significantly, and empowers everybody to unlock their potential. 

 

Take health care as an example. Even those fortunate enough to have been blessed with both high intellect and good educational backgrounds such as those involved in R&D of medical treatments, can hugely accelerate the pace at which development takes place. We're talking game changing developments such as new medicines, enhanced understanding of biological structures/systems functions, new diagnostic tools all of which ordinarily would have had a 20+ year development/learning cycle pre-AI, now being achieveable in a matter of years (researchers are even suggesting this could soon be months very soon). The result is better treatment with improved outcomes, increases in health system operational efficiency, lower costs associated with complications, reduction in life threatening conditions, etc. 

 

I understand the concerns and potential issues AI poses, but the other side of the argument is a very exciting one where our species can hugely enhance our capabilities and achieve unprecedented outcomes. Ultimately, like any tool, it all comes down to how it is deployed. Do we as humans use it for betterment, destruction, or pointless purposes. The decisions we make in terms of our use of this technology is in our hands and will ultimately define our future. 

If this was well regulated on the advice of experts and strictly controlled by supra-national international institutions, rather than being pushed by Libertarian tech bros like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg with their pressurising of the EU and national governments who try to remotely regulate them at a time where the kind of parties those tech bros get behind (not by coincidence me thinks) want to smash international institutions and cooperation between nations, then I might agree with you.
 

But as is… definitely not gonna happen like that sadly.

[Samilktray]

I've been reading The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman, and its equally both interesting and depressing

[leicsmac]

There appear to be so many ways for this to go wrong, and only a few - or perhaps only one - for it to go right. 

 

But that right way, or right ways, do exist, and let's not abandon hope on the matter. 

[Sampson]

21 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

There appear to be so many ways for this to go wrong, and only a few - or perhaps only one - for it to go right. 

 

But that right way, or right ways, do exist, and let's not abandon hope on the matter. 

I’ve said before I admire your steadfastness leicsmac but I’ve found it so hard to find hope in politics and humans taking responsible actions for the good over humanity over taking power since 2016. 

Edited 30 January by Sampson

[leicsmac]

4 minutes ago, Sampson said:

I’ve said before I admire your steadfastness leicsmac but I’ve found it so hard to find hope in politics and humans taking responsibility over taking power since 2016. 

I hear that, and I'm sure it's obvious I'm hardly one to shy away from looking at how bad things are and how bad they can get and making that very apparent. 

 

But if that's all there is, then the void is all there is, so just to maintain sanity I think someone has to look at how things can turn out better and do their best there, even if the odds are long and the threats both very apparent and very dreadful. 

[danny.]

46 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

I hear that, and I'm sure it's obvious I'm hardly one to shy away from looking at how bad things are and how bad they can get and making that very apparent. 

 

But if that's all there is, then the void is all there is, so just to maintain sanity I think someone has to look at how things can turn out better and do their best there, even if the odds are long and the threats both very apparent and very dreadful. 

That is true, of yourself and others.

I find it alarming and genuinely depressing though that the amount of time people spend on Trump, Palestine, Climate change etc. not even 1% goes on the dangers of AI to society which logically seem like the largest threat by a mile to us right now.

[leicsmac]

9 minutes ago, danny. said:

That is true, of yourself and others.

I find it alarming and genuinely depressing though that the amount of time people spend on Trump, Palestine, Climate change etc. not even 1% goes on the dangers of AI to society which logically seem like the largest threat by a mile to us right now.

I think it's foolhardy to suggest the way we're changing the Earth and the way it will lead to critical resource shortages in short order is something that isn't worthy of every bit of attention it is getting, if not much more. 

 

That being said, AI is another threat of similar degree of consequence and does have to be looked at carefully, for all the reasons described in the posts above and more. 

Edited 30 January by leicsmac

[danny.]

3 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

I think it's foolhardy to suggest the way we're changing the Earth and the way it will lead to critical resource shortages in short order is something that isn't worthy of every bit of attention it is getting, if not much more. 

 

That being said, AI is another threat of similar degree of consequence and does have to be looked at carefully, for all the reasons described in the posts above and more. 

Both are bad, but one is a threat now and in the next few years and another is a thread decades in the future. One is constantly talked about and one is rarely ever outside niche podcasts.

[leicsmac]

1 minute ago, danny. said:

Both are bad, but one is a threat now and in the next few years and another is a thread decades in the future. One is constantly talked about and one is rarely ever outside niche podcasts.

Given the way the tech is maturing, you'll get no disagreement from me on the immediacy if the threat. However, they both need the requisite effort devoted to dealing with them or the kak will hit the fan - and likely on a shorter timeline than a few decades. 

[danny.]

Just now, leicsmac said:

Given the way the tech is maturing, you'll get no disagreement from me on the immediacy if the threat. However, they both need the requisite effort devoted to dealing with them or the kak will hit the fan - and likely on a shorter timeline than a few decades. 

I'm so skeptical on the climate change timelines, maybe wrongly, because my whole life has been spent listening to how the planet is about to collapse within 10 years, and every prediction has never happened. The earliest ones I can remember was how acid rain was going to wipe out life and after that the ozone layer, neither were talking about again since.

[CornwallFox]

13 hours ago, danny. said:

What do you propose the tens of millions of unemployed people do?

Thought experiment: 

 

AI and robotics remove the need for humanity to do any work. 

 

Everything we need grown or built by robots and overseen by AI. 

 

Instead, we give people money and they have all the free time they want to use that money to do what interests them. 

 

Pros and cons?

 

 

[leicsmac]

9 minutes ago, danny. said:

I'm so skeptical on the climate change timelines, maybe wrongly, because my whole life has been spent listening to how the planet is about to collapse within 10 years, and every prediction has never happened. The earliest ones I can remember was how acid rain was going to wipe out life and after that the ozone layer, neither were talking about again since.

I'm sorry, but this has been covered on the thread for it before. 

 

No such claims have been made by the scientific consensus itself, rather by people looking to sell fear for papers and clicks. 

 

And even if it were the case? The people researching the matter only have to be right once. At the end of the Boy Who Cried Wolf, the village starves, and it doesn't matter to the dead, not one bit, that the boy was wrong the times before. People get that parable so wrong - it's a morality tale against the danger presumption and profiling behaviour, not in favour of mistrust of people simply because they might have been wrong before.

 

Edit: there's a reason a lot of disaster movies, including those regarding AI, pivot on an expert being disbelieved and ignored. 

Edited 30 January by leicsmac

[Dahnsouff]

4 minutes ago, CornwallFox said:

Thought experiment: 

 

AI and robotics remove the need for humanity to do any work. 

 

Everything we need grown or built by robots and overseen by AI. 

 

Instead, we give people money and they have all the free time they want to use that money to do what interests them. 

 

Pros and cons?

 

 

Star Trek v The Expanse argument.

 

Pulls back curtains, looks out window, frowns....

 

 

[foxile5]

5 minutes ago, CornwallFox said:

Thought experiment: 

 

AI and robotics remove the need for humanity to do any work. 

 

Everything we need grown or built by robots and overseen by AI. 

 

Instead, we give people money and they have all the free time they want to use that money to do what interests them. 

 

Pros and cons?

 

 

What's the role of money in this scenario? Money exists as reward for labour in exchange for amenities. 

 

There will be no inherent human cost which stops the value of money? 

[CornwallFox]

7 minutes ago, danny. said:

I'm so skeptical on the climate change timelines, maybe wrongly, because my whole life has been spent listening to how the planet is about to collapse within 10 years, and every prediction has never happened. The earliest ones I can remember was how acid rain was going to wipe out life and after that the ozone layer, neither were talking about again since.

The 'predictions' you've read about haven't come from scientists. They've come from the media spinning the most extreme extrapolations of any theory they've spotted to sell papers. They haven't been serious studies that have produced those scare stories. 

 

Real science is slow, calculated, tested, and sober. It produces models that utilise a huge array of variants and predict outcomes based on varying inputs. 

 

What we are seeing through real world observation is that even the worst realistic outcomes shown via climate models are underplaying what is observed - climate change in the real world is happening even faster than 'predicted'. 

 

While it's quite easy to question that sitting in the temperate UK or swathes of temperate US, there are countless stories of hugely unusual weather patterns and outcomes across the globe - in Pakistan an area bigger than the whole UK under water, in China two months above 40°. When the UK hit 40° two or three years ago that single thing wasn't expected for another 50 years.

 

The reality is that the same scientists that have produced studies showing the long term changes to temperature and environment - so often cited by climate change deniars - are the same ones that have been equally careful on concluding that human caused climate change is a real and existential threat that is already with us. 

 

Genuinely, within 15 years I don't think anybody will question this stuff any more.

[CornwallFox]

1 minute ago, foxile5 said:

What's the role of money in this scenario? Money exists as reward for labour in exchange for amenities. 

 

There will be no inherent human cost which stops the value of money? 

The value of money comes from what you can buy with it, not what it took to get.