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22HitchSlaps t1_j9w2gdl wrote

Reply to comment by AllanfromWales1 in The Job Market Apocalypse: We Must Democratize AI Now! by Otarih

Well that's actually fairly reasonable then. I'd say though that the idea that AI will do "some stuff sure but not MY STUFF" is shortsighted. Sufficiently advanced AI will do everything better than humans and the thing is the tech is like an avalanche that has already started. I'm 40 years younger than you, there's no job I could ever do that won't be better done by AI by the time I'm finished learning it to the level you could have in your life time. Such is life...now.

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AllanfromWales1 t1_j9w35w6 wrote

My work is facilitating a particular type of technical safety audit (HAZOP) in the process engineering industry. There's no reason why AI couldn't do it, but the demand isn't great and the complexity of learning is such that it would be unlikely to be cost-effective even in the medium term.

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22HitchSlaps t1_j9w4onh wrote

With how narrow AI is now I tend to agree with you. No one is going to pay for that. But the thing is we just don't know when AGI is coming, maybe a long way off. To me though I still see even the continued prevalence of narrow AI as so destabilising that it'll affect every sector and job, even if it doesn't specifically take it over. Whether agi or this kinda paradigm shifting destabilisation happens in the next 10 years, who knows but I do see it as inevitable. We need an entirely new approach to society, jobs and capitalism.

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skunk_ink t1_j9x62ij wrote

>But the thing is we just don't know when AGI is coming, maybe a long way off.

This is what I feel a lot of people don't get. We have literally no idea what the threshold for consciousness is. We don't even know how to identify it in other humans let alone another species. Without knowing what that threshold is, there is absolutely no way for us to determine how close or far away from it we are. All we do know is that if and when AI reaches that level, it will intellectually outpace humans at a significant rate.

When the first atomic bomb was created, scientists knew precisely under what conditions a nuclear reaction would go critical. Now imagine if those scientists had absolutely no way of know when or if the reaction would go critical and blow up in their face. That is exactly what we are doing with AI. Racing towards a criticality point which we cannot identify.

Long story short, it could happen in 10 years or 100 years. We literally have no means knowing when.

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skunk_ink t1_j9x4zep wrote

>My work is facilitating a particular type of technical safety audit (HAZOP) in the process engineering industry.

You had me here. I was about to jump in pointing out that things like auditing is probably one of the easier tasks for AI. Glad I read the rest before commenting though because I think you're spot on with what you said. Lots of things could be replaced by AI, but until AI becomes more advanced and lower cost to train, many of those applications just won't be feasible from a financial point of view.

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jl_theprofessor t1_j9w2w1o wrote

You better learn how to hunt and fish since you're not going to be able to get a job.

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v_maria t1_j9y81vw wrote

saying "AI will replace every job soon" is equally shortsighted though. There is a lot of job niches where it's not worth it to train AI for, it wouldn't be profitable.

For these things to be properly automated you would need "artificial general intelligence" which is still speculative.

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22HitchSlaps t1_j9y8fqy wrote

Actually replacing jobs Vs 'better than human' is different I'd say. It's not so much that overnight everything will disappear but you can easily see how disruptive it'll be, even in narrow examples. Two companies doing the same job, one with AI one without is not going to be the same.

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v_maria t1_j9ybagn wrote

I still think it's a matter of how the AI is used. The company using it has a higher potential but they have to realize it too

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