We have been automating at the beginning of the production chain , mostly.
This is the first automation that targets directly knowledge workers, and hit almost all of them but those in profession where error can cause people deaths.
Traditionally knowledge workers were the bulk of the middle class, because well it takes 30 years to produce one and not all make the cut, so they are paid market prices instead of minimum wages.
And by that nature, knowledge workers cannot reinvent themselves overnight, there will nowhere left to go for them.
Maybe lawyers and medics and a few other can entrenche themselves with legislation, but if you are a knowledge worker in a non union field things look scary.
Real human level strong AI would be that, but the LLMs we have now are nowhere close. They are just a powerful new software tool in the hands of specialists.
Maybe GPT10 might get there, but I suspect we’ll quickly reach diminishing returns with current and near future architectures.
This is a real hand wavy way to look at it. How about on the individual level? How is an individual affected by this and can you put yourself in their shoes?
I can’t tell you which individual people will lose their jobs, or even which specific jobs will end up being cut and why. Can you? We’re both just making different estimates of the likely overall effects. I’m basing mine in the known historical effects of automation on economies and employment, and the fact that previous arguments that were all doomed by it have every single time turned out to be false.
No, nobody can and that’s the point. Except the flaw in your thinking is your applying what happened in the past to the present. Nobody has every automated a human brain before, they mostly automated muscles away. This time is different so therefore you cannot assume that since a welding robot didn’t destroy the world that AI won’t. Automation and AI are not the same and we should quit calling it as such.
This is the first automation that targets directly knowledge workers, and hit almost all of them but those in profession where error can cause people deaths.
Traditionally knowledge workers were the bulk of the middle class, because well it takes 30 years to produce one and not all make the cut, so they are paid market prices instead of minimum wages.
And by that nature, knowledge workers cannot reinvent themselves overnight, there will nowhere left to go for them.
Maybe lawyers and medics and a few other can entrenche themselves with legislation, but if you are a knowledge worker in a non union field things look scary.