[HN Gopher] IBM CEO Says It's a 'Good Thing' If AI Takes Your Job
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IBM CEO Says It's a 'Good Thing' If AI Takes Your Job
Author : adrian_mrd
Score : 21 points
Date : 2023-02-18 21:23 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gizmodo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gizmodo.com)
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| The problem with jobs being replaced by machines is that
| historically, there have always been other jobs that either (a)
| people could switch into that were still somewhat fulfilling or
| failing that, (b) at least the next generation could switch into.
|
| However, we have never tested the "limiting case" of this
| phenomenon, where there is a machine (AI) that is so good that it
| could take over most jobs. Are we there yet? No, but we are not
| far off either.
|
| Now, I'm not saying this is inevitable, but we have to ask the
| question: what if we CAN get to the limiting case where the only
| jobs left are a few coveted technical jobs or manual labor? Is
| there even a _remote_ possibility that this could happen? I
| believe it 's likely, and if it is, then what are we going to do?
|
| The best-case scenario is some sort of UBI scheme where most
| people don't work, but if you think about it, that's actually a
| horrible thing because most people need some kind of purpose in
| life, and very few people can find their purpose independently
| from a system which allows them to trade their comparitive
| advantages for those of others.
|
| Concluding, IBM's CEO is despicable of the highest order. He
| might be right in that AI taking your job is good for the
| economy, but if we unpack that statement, it basically means that
| AI is good as a mechanism to make our system more efficient for
| concentrating wealth into his pocket at the cost of long-term
| stability.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> there have always been other jobs that either (a) people
| could switch into that were still somewhat fulfilling_
|
| That may have been the case till post-WW2 economy, but most of
| the jobs left in the west today, that haven't been offshored or
| automated away, are highly specialized ones that require years
| of training or higher education, and there's no way you can
| simply switch to those jobs without that specialized training
| the employers with those jobs are expecting.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Barbers do require months (though not years) of training, but
| obviously there is no reason for that to be the case.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| UBI will never come because we'll always have jobs. Sure the
| jobs won't pay as well, but the idea that there won't be jobs
| and masses of people will be forced into the street is
| laughably implausible.
|
| Why? Because the oligarchs won't allow that to happen.
|
| They'll invent jobs for everyone. Low paying jobs without
| benefits for sure, but they'll make sure you have a job. Simply
| because of the fear of a populace that has enough time and
| energy to be fed up with their lot.
|
| Jobs make people busy and tired. And busy and tired people
| don't rock the boat. Now they'll say something about the luxury
| of human touch, or some other clap trap. But then they'll also
| talk about, needing to learn the dignity of work, or giving
| people something to do keep people off the street. Or saying
| how making people work for the bare necessities in life makes
| them appreciate it more.
|
| It's the same moralizing bullshit they always say about poor
| people.
|
| It's why productivity has gone up, but wages and working hours
| have stayed constant.
|
| They FEAR a population that's screwed over and has the time to
| organize.
| zaphirplane wrote:
| CEO of company on a long death spiral talks about a bright future
| when ability to attract talent and execute doesn't make a
| difference.
|
| A future where a company needs a great visionary CEO and an AI
| larve wrote:
| I wouldn't care at all if IBM's CEO was actually an AI. But I
| sure as hell care that the person I have on the phone when
| inquiring about something is a human.
| dusted wrote:
| Tell me you haven't been on the phone with a customer support
| person recently, without telling me you haven't been on the
| phone with a customer support person recently ;)
| atemerev wrote:
| A "job" is when you are doing something useful for other people,
| and you are rare enough so it makes sense to pay you money for it
| for a long time. Nobody ever guarantees you a "job" if you are
| not useful anymore for some specific field of work. It doesn't
| make any business sense. If you continue to get money for
| something while not being useful enough for your employer, this
| is not a "job", this is charity.
|
| And since jobs were a XX century social construct where one could
| expect that people would have professions which are useful enough
| for most of their lives -- there will be no more "jobs" soon.
| Only contracts, alms, charities, and war mercenaries.
|
| And there is no way to turn this around, until we invent new ways
| of doing business, without relying on "jobs".
| Sunspark wrote:
| This guy is making a statement from his position of elite
| privilege. He already got his bag.
|
| When the Europeans came to feudal China they were mystified that
| the Chinese had all this technology they weren't using. It was
| intentional. The reason is because the Chinese were smart enough
| to know that if they automated and outsourced everything they
| would end up with roving bands of unemployed men causing trouble
| in the countryside.
|
| So yes, AI and ML can take many people's jobs today. Absolutely
| and in some areas it would be a beneficial improvement, e.g.
| guided medical procedures. But for other stuff, maybe not so
| much. What are these now unemployed people to do?
|
| There's only so many hamburgers that can be flipped, and you have
| to have money to buy one anyway. Is the IBM CEO's vision of the
| future an economy where everyone works at a hamburger joint and
| then goes to another one to spend their pay to eat a hamburger
| made elsewhere?
|
| Our society is not set up to allow for mass unemployment. Basic
| income needs to happen first.
| schemescape wrote:
| > if they automated and outsourced everything they would end up
| with roving bands of unemployed men causing trouble in the
| countryside
|
| Tangent: I'm not even sure that Universal Basic Income would
| solve this problem. If you browse Financial Independence
| forums, you'll see many anecdotes of early retirees who go back
| to work for one reason or another. So even (some? Most? Not
| sure...) people with enough money to _not_ have to work, want
| to work. It seems like a large cultural change around work
| would be needed.
|
| Having said that, it's also possible that we just keep
| inventing new jobs and a huge unemployment spike never comes.
| That doesn't seem likely to me, but I'm fairly certain most of
| my predictions will end up being wrong.
| pixelfarmer wrote:
| There are many misconceptions about work, and one of the big
| ones is that work actually often means "paid work". There is
| tons of unpaid work being done. And there is a certain
| percentage of people who cannot sit still and have to do
| something. If that gets paid or not is a whole different
| matter.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Unemployed people can plant potatos and feed themselves from
| the land. Men were able to do so with very little technology
| for thousands of years. Surely they can do that with today tech
| even more efficiently.
| nadermx wrote:
| I'm not sure what utopia you envision. But the reality is it
| takes an extreme amount to do none trivial things that arent
| just on a screen.
| Sunspark wrote:
| Where I live, McDonald's and other stores have already
| started replacing cashiers with touchscreens.
|
| Not everyone can be a doctor or a lawyer. What about all
| those people who used to do a job that is now replacing them
| with a touchscreen or a "chat bot"? What do you envision for
| them? That they go back to school to train to be a doctor or
| a lawyer? Sure, will you agree to making education and
| training free or accessible, or will this require continued
| privilege where it's a requirement to be born into a rich
| family first?
|
| There's over 8 billion people on the planet. How many blue
| collar jobs do you envision as being available to people if
| all the white collar jobs are replaced by AI and ML and
| automation and outsourcing and offshoring? Am I supposed to
| be a bricklayer now when I'm already too old physically for
| the punishing demands of that job?
|
| A long time ago I knew a guy whose job was off-shored to the
| Philippines from Canada. He actually moved to the Philippines
| to keep it, but this isn't an option available to most
| people.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > What about all those people who used to do a job that is
| now replacing them with a touchscreen or a "chat bot"? What
| do you envision for them?
|
| With fertility rates below replacement level in the west...
| nothing! We'll need these workers in more lucrative and
| useful industries.
|
| > That they go back to school to train to be a doctor or a
| lawyer?
|
| Interesting you chose the two professions with the most
| gatekeeping. How about the hundred of skilled trades making
| civilized life possible?
| jml7c5 wrote:
| This quote is relevant:
|
| >The make-work bias is best illustrated by a story, perhaps
| apocryphal, of an economist who visits China under Mao Zedong.
| He sees hundreds of workers building a dam with shovels. He
| asks: "Why don't they use a mechanical digger?" "That would put
| people out of work," replies the foreman. "Oh," says the
| economist, "I thought you were making a dam. If it's jobs you
| want, take away their shovels and give them spoons."
|
| I think you are wrong in saying "Basic income needs to happen
| _first_. " [emphasis mine] We have continually increased
| efficiency for hundreds of years without causing mass
| unemployment. I think there's still quite a ways to go before
| we have more bodies than we can find a use for. Not to mention
| there's a shorter, 32-hour week on the horizon that could
| negate the effect of less demand for labor.
| pixelfarmer wrote:
| You are decades out of touch with reality, because I read
| years ago already that some guys estimated we hit the break
| even point (in the "western world") in the mid 90s already.
| That is almost 3 decades ago by now, and automation hasn't
| stopped during that time. Do you see the effects? Very much
| so, if you start looking for the signs of that.
|
| Furthermore, the idea that we went through a number of such
| changes and this one is all the same is merely wishful
| thinking. Economy exists because humans divide work. Why do
| we work? To fulfill our needs, you know, stuff like not being
| thirsty, hungry, having shelter, being healthy, having some
| entertainment, this kinda stuff. The more we automate all
| these things, the less humans are involved, and following
| that it means the economy will shrink. As said: humans divide
| work, or more correctly: Their time, which is the ultimate
| currency in this whole thing. It is only during the phase of
| ramping up the automation that we need to do more than for
| our needs: We have to have additional economy and thus work
| to make the automation happen.
|
| Following that it is clear that a basic income people can
| actually live from MUST happen during the transition phase
| towards "full" automation, not after. Even more so with the
| system as it is currently, because no work means no income,
| and if the government doesn't keep people alive, you can just
| wait for civil war to happen, and before that a big raise in
| all kinds of crimes. There are more than enough examples of
| that out there, some of them pretty recent.
| xwdv wrote:
| Not sure what you mean. If we end up with roving bands of
| unemployed men raising trouble, the next step for them is
| incarceration. The law is the law, no matter your
| circumstances.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| I don't care what IBM has to say about the future. It is a
| company from the past.
| worksonmine wrote:
| I agree with him, but this also implies there's a sustainable
| plan for everyone out of work going forward. I'd love a world
| where having a career is an active choice. Not everyone can and
| should work, with all the progress we've made we should try to
| work less and let the machines do more for us.
|
| Unfortunately not many people can imagine a world like that so we
| end up chasing growth just for the sake of growth. Meanwhile the
| world we're supposed to share is shrinking.
|
| For reference, 8 people own half of the so-called resources (yes
| I know it's not liquid) on the planet. Before covid that number
| was around 30.
| more_corn wrote:
| For him
| boh wrote:
| The idea of AI taking over customer service jobs essentially just
| means "we need an excuse to stop providing customer service". The
| open secret is that AI isn't very good at anything. That's why
| you're not getting driven by a driverless car, and you still have
| to yell at your Alexa to actually do what you asked it to do.
| This CEO's statement isn't for the public, it's to pretend to
| IBM's B2B clients that they have something that could actually
| cut costs. Thankfully it can't and it won't. The social
| implications are besides the point given that they're nowhere
| near to what they pretend they're capable of. Watson was a
| failure, Alexa is just bleeding money and ChatGPT is already
| losing its luster. AI is all hype, cheap labor overseas will take
| your job way before AI does.
| sublinear wrote:
| It would be even better if the AI actually worked as advertised.
| There's zero progress towards that though so this article is the
| purest of hot air.
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| AI will most likely eliminate most white collar workers up to and
| including CEOs when they are "good enough". I look forward to a
| board of directors replacing this try hard with AI.
| rcarr wrote:
| 80% of CEOs are indistinguishable from Sydney Bing, change my
| mind.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| CEOs are just a punching bag. They get punched on behalf of the
| board of directors.
|
| Everything they say will offend someone so they can't say
| anything. And they have to live in hiding with bodyguards.
|
| Being the CEO of a large corporation is probably the worst job
| in the world.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| Maybe you could ask ChatGPT to help with that.
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