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The Sharks of AI Will Attack Expensive and Scarce Workers Faster Than They Eat Drivers

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

Phoenix666 writes:

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: 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.

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  • (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.