[HN Gopher] DeepMind Co-Founder: AI Is Fundamentally a "Labor Re...
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DeepMind Co-Founder: AI Is Fundamentally a "Labor Replacing Tool"
Author : terseus
Score : 20 points
Date : 2024-01-21 20:07 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gizmodo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gizmodo.com)
| SilverBirch wrote:
| I really worry that we're discussing these topics like idiots. I
| totally understand why you would look at a peice of technology
| that can enable 1 worker to do the work of 5 and panic. But...
| we're not living in Dickensian Britain. We _know_ what happens
| when technology enables massive productivity improvements and the
| answer isn 't mass unemployment. We're not living in some
| dystopia where typewriters caused mass unemployment.
|
| I actually think to a large extent the corporate world is putting
| the cart before the horse. Unemployment is at an historic low,
| wages are growing fast and so this is a great story to tell as to
| how you're going to continue to exploit labour to enrich capital.
| surfingdino wrote:
| AI fact-checkers of the world unite!
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> wages are growing fast _
|
| We clearly live in different countries.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| We've gone from a single person being able to buy a house and
| feed a family, to two salaries in many cases not being
| sufficient in the past 50 years. While you're right that mass
| unemployment didn't happen, wage stagnation certainly did.
| true_religion wrote:
| This seems like a very American perspective. So may I suggest
| that wage stagnation came from no longer having a underclass
| of women and people of color to be underpaid for their labor,
| and frozen out from the general market? Additionally, the US
| went from being one of the few industrial nations to not have
| bombed our factories and streets to having competition from
| other countries. Americas golden age is not really a time
| with conditions that are easy to replicate.
| alexwhb wrote:
| Wages may be growing... but buying power is definitely
| declining.
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| More than a year into ChatGPT and... unemployment is at historic
| lows.
|
| I don't remotely see the present generation of LLMs as being
| "labor replacing tools." I'm aware of empirical work which shows
| them to be useful _complements_ to human judgment, not
| substitutes for the same. I'm also aware of one study showing
| (iirc) less work for illustrators on an online job board. That
| latter case is the only case im aware of where workers have been
| replaced though if you have citations to actual empirical
| evidence for job _losses_ please comment!
|
| An alternative theory: Part of what AI CEO's are doing is
| _marketing_ their products. If you want to get investors and
| customers to pay your very expensive compute bill you'd better
| sell your product. You can sell your product by claiming it can
| replace workers. That doesn't mean it can do it. If the current
| generation of LLMs can replace workers, that is not obvious.
|
| Perhaps some future generation might be, but that will require
| something fundamentally different than what's currently
| available. (And no I don't think "more data" is enough.)
| aatd86 wrote:
| I'm always wondering when people speak about (un)employment.
| Like ok non-farm payroll numbers may look good but what kind of
| jobs, for what kind of pay?
|
| Logically, employment may increase while people's standard of
| living may get worse at the same time?
|
| Is there somewhere more specific data?
|
| Other than that, I think I remember an article claiming that
| the introduction of thr personnal computers led companies to be
| able to generate the same revenue with less people. Like it
| used to be 8 employee per million USD and it got to 5. Then
| again, depends of the size of the average enterprise and the
| market size (which increases with population increase)
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Logically, employment may increase while people's standard
| of living may get worde at the same time?_
|
| Yes it can and yes it is. I'm also baffled by people keep
| pointing out low unemployment like it's the be all end all of
| all arguments for economic prosperity.
|
| Obviously sky high unemployment like in the great depression
| isn't great either but just because people are forced to
| accept any one of the abundant gig economy jobs, no matter
| how shitty, or even more than one job, due to the high CoL
| and low welfare, it definitely reduces unemployment numbers
| on paper, but is that ideal?
|
| Maybe some jobs are so shit that people would rather bum
| around on minimum welfare than get dirty, tired and aching
| bodies just to only to make peanuts over welfare.
|
| Maybe the median inflation adjusted take home wage of the
| employed person after subtracting essentials like rent
| utilities, bills and food, would be a better metric to
| measure economic prosperity of the working class than record
| low unemployment numbers.
| alexwhb wrote:
| So true. And unemployment doesn't take into account
| disenfranchised workers, which is significantly higher than
| it has been in recent history.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Here are a few jobs that I'm aware of, which are already well
| on their way out:
|
| - Language translators.
|
| - Video annotation, summary, transcription.
|
| - Voiceover artists.
|
| - Graphic designers.
|
| - Warehouse inventory work.
|
| - Personal tutors.
|
| - Junior software engineers.
|
| There will still be openings for these roles in the future,
| just as there are still openings for Personal Assistants
| (secretaries, which were once as abundant as teachers and truck
| drivers), and maybe even the occasional Draftsman.
| alexwhb wrote:
| So true. And when autonomous driving finally get to the
| safety levels where society accepts it... that will be a
| shocking number of jobs taken. Also Amazon is going to start
| selling their self checkout technology to stores... so most
| cashiers will definitely be out of work in the next decade if
| not sooner.
| ls612 wrote:
| Tractor company CEO: Tractors are fundamentally a "labor
| replacing tool
| malux85 wrote:
| Which tool isn't?
| schneems wrote:
| A union signup sheet.
| surfingdino wrote:
| I consulted for three different large organisations over the last
| 14 months. All of them chose to let their workforce know that the
| management are "looking into using AI". In all three cases one of
| the first questions during all-hands town halls was "are we
| getting replaced by AI?" People are freaking out and managers are
| loving it, because they have shifted people's attention from how
| little they are getting paid to fearing being replaced by a
| hallucinating algorithm. So, based on my limited experience, I
| would argue that AI is a wage rise suppression tool, not a labour
| replacing tool.
| janice1999 wrote:
| My townhalls have been very different. My company introduced a
| harsh policy against AI, even local LLMs. The main fears were
| leaking IP & confidential information and contamination of code
| bases with poor or copyrighted code. That policy may loosen in
| future but I think it was the right move.
| alexwhb wrote:
| I think in the short term that definitely makes sense, but long
| term... I think we'll see more and more jobs be automated away.
| Look at what Amazon is doing with their new wheelhouse robots.
| In 2 to 5 years that's going to become mainstream. Maybe
| sooner.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Let me guess which co-founder. Yep.
| oth001 wrote:
| What's your point? Is he wrong?
| danpalmer wrote:
| My point is that he has a history of making strong, public
| declarations, that happen to align well with what he's
| working on at the time.
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(page generated 2024-01-21 23:01 UTC)