AllanfromWales1 t1_j9w35w6 wrote on February 24, 2023 at 11:44 PM

Reply to comment by 22HitchSlaps in The Job Market Apocalypse: We Must Democratize AI Now! by Otarih

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.

22HitchSlaps t1_j9w4onh wrote on February 24, 2023 at 11:55 PM

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.

skunk_ink t1_j9x62ij wrote on February 25, 2023 at 4:59 AM

>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.

skunk_ink t1_j9x4zep wrote on February 25, 2023 at 4:49 AM

>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.