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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday November 15 2016, @06:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the better-jump-the-shark dept.

Your career is now a game of musical chairs: you need to be ready when the song stops

...

Although sixty years old, artificial intelligence remained mostly a curiosity until half a decade ago, when IBM's Watson trounced the world's best Jeopardy! players in a televised match. At the time, you might have thought nothing of that - what does a game show matter in the scheme of things?

It didn't stop there. IBM sent Watson to train with oncologists and lawyers and financial advisers. Quite suddenly, three very established professions, just the sort of thing you'd tell your kids to pursue as a ticket to prosperity, seemed a lot less certain of their futures in a world where intelligence, like computing before it, becomes pervasive, then commoditised.

These top-of-their-profession projects show that the driver to bring artificial intelligence into any field isn't the amount of labor, but rather the cost of that labor. A lawyer costs fifty times more per hour than a retail worker and so is that many times more likely to find themselves with an AI competitor.


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @06:58PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @06:58PM (#427113)

    IBM sent Watson to train with oncologists and lawyers and financial advisers. Quite suddenly, three very established professions, just the sort of thing you'd tell your kids to pursue as a ticket to prosperity, seemed a lot less certain of their futures in a world where intelligence, like computing before it, becomes pervasive, then commoditised.

    Nothing I'm about to say changes the spirit or the intent of the editorializing, which is entirely true. AI is tackling professions which have historically be thought of complicated and difficult.

    I don't think anybody actually gave this kind of career advice.

    Lawyers have for decades had a glut and most people (including lawyers) would advise against people becoming them. It's like acting. The top 1% become fabulously wealthy, but most of them work long hours for low pay... if they can find work at all. Granted this is getting worse in recent years, but this was well known to those who actually researched careers for at least the past 20 years, and probably for longer. Become a lawyer because you love the work, not to get rich. (Note: Not all lawyers are "evil"... look at the ACLU, EFF, and public defense attorneys, people who prosecute illegal dumping of toxic waste, etc.)

    Financial Advisers have it rough, too. Investment bankers are notorious for working years of 80+ hour work weeks, and have a very strong a "be promoted or fired" culture. This is the kind of career where you burn out in 5 years, and people go into the job with the hope that they'll earn enough in those 5 years to retire at age 35.

    Oncologists I don't know as much about. Doctors have been a historically safe profession (although the doctors I know prevaricate about whether in retrospect they would have chosen this profession, given how long you need to study and how much debt you accumulate in the meantime... but at least it isn't a flat "no" that lawyers say). I'm not sure about Oncologists in particular, though.

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  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday November 15 2016, @07:36PM

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Tuesday November 15 2016, @07:36PM (#427141) Journal

    I've been contemplating the eventual replacement of pretty much every desk job with AI, and manual labor jobs with robots. AI's will win their way with demonstrably fairer and smarter decisions, no more of this hidden agenda bullcrap, pretexts, and unconscious biases that so thoroughly infest human decisions. More corruption will bring it all the faster.

    The big question is, what do we all do when no one has to work any more? When people aren't wanted for most work? It will be a huge social change, with all kinds of implications and consequences that are awfully hard to predict. We better have some kind of basic income in place by then. I feel sure we won't all just sit in front of our TVs or computers and play solitaire all day long. Many of us will still work, but only for fun.

    • (Score: 2) by t-3 on Tuesday November 15 2016, @07:54PM

      by t-3 (4907) on Tuesday November 15 2016, @07:54PM (#427148)

      There will still be work, giving input to the AIs. They will need to be told what is needed and what isn't, they will make mistakes that need correcting, there will be sudden needs for 10 billion iphone 22S's and the next day as many Samsung Supernova 5G All Screen edition because iphones are no longer cool. Music, literature, cooking, and other arts, parenting, teaching, philosophy, and other human duties. Humans will have free time to focus on advancing the sciences, expanding into space, politicking and bickering among ourselves, and a million other things.

      • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday November 15 2016, @10:24PM

        by MostCynical (2589) on Tuesday November 15 2016, @10:24PM (#427243) Journal

        Sorry: Iain M. Banks didn't write documentaries.
        Culture Minds are a long, long way off. Likely we'll destroy ourselves before AI gets anywhere close.

        --
        "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
        • (Score: 2) by t-3 on Wednesday November 16 2016, @02:18AM

          by t-3 (4907) on Wednesday November 16 2016, @02:18AM (#427320)

          Yeah, but what I just described could be in place long long before "strong AI". Weak AI is all that's necessary, it just needs people to tell it what to do.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @08:46PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @08:46PM (#427178)

      AI's will win their way with demonstrably fairer and smarter decisions, no more of this hidden agenda bullcrap, pretexts, and unconscious biases that so thoroughly infest human decisions.

      That's naive. Its garbage in - garbage out and since its still people designing and deploying these systems they will be loaded with the computer equivalent of unconscious bias. Even worse, they will have no capacity for self-reflection, so literally no chance of ever facing their own failings and improving themselves. Tyranny of the machine is going to be pretty damn bad for the people who get caught up in it.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @09:57AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @09:57AM (#427446)

      You have to look at extremely wide picture to understand the change.

      Economy is basically nothing but a multilateral exchange + facility to enable that exchange. Exchange needs two sides, goods need buyers to bring wealth to its peddler.

      Wealth on its own is nothing but a positive imbalance in commanding power (and money is the most common and versatile form of it), either used to stop others from commanding you, or to give you leverage over as many others as your ego needs. So, if someone's position in human hierarchy depends on receiving a steady flow of surplus commanding power, this surplus is existing and means something only as long as it is in the circulation.

      Now, if circulation stops because consumers have nothing to exchange for goods (their work is not needed), then, with energy sources and robotic army of producers and soldiers on one's side, a top-tier megaowner can keep command over other humans using nothing but the threat of violence.

      However, as history shows, fear as a tool for ego-stroking has serious limitations. That's why even if there is no need for that, human societies will probably always have some sort of tiered hierarchical organization and will always have a class of "surrogate friends and family for hire" - entertainers (musicians, actors, comedians, sports, opinionators - philosophers and other intellectuals, including scientists) and touchers (not necessary prostitutes, but also groomers, servants, ... ).

      So, some, even very large, groups of professions will wither out, but stability will be artificially enforced and money will be given on shady pretexts to buy peace at large and to ensure those at the top can assure their own happiness.

      However, all this stands on assumption that the key figure at the top actually has human weakness and yearns company of other humans.
      If the top themselves are replaced by a non-caring AI, the whole human race may be endangered.