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The Human Reservation Plan
Bill doesn't want to be left behind by Zuckerberg so he decided to share his own thoughts on AI. Different from his previous shared ideas about how great it was. Now there is a bit more doom and gloom. Crime. Unemployment. Healthcare. Horrible things. What the world needs is a plan. Guess who has a plan ... It's the pope, and Bill and "the government".
Set aside some jobs for humans.
A human reservation. For the human to human interactions. So you don't get the bad news from the machine. That it's the machine that tells one human to tell another human the bad news is apparently softening the blow of the bad news.
http://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=26/08/13/2028222
Gates Warns Society Faces An AI-Pocalypse Unless We Get More Socialist
Bill Gates thinks that experts underestimate the potential havoc AI will wreak on society and says preparations to ease the transition are inadequate.
The Microsoft founder and former CEO is usually a cheerful proponent of AI tech, talking up its potential to transform healthcare, education, and business productivity.
Yet in a missive posted to his personal website, the billionaire philanthropist says the AI era is likely to be one of the most turbulent times in human history, and how we allow it to play out will determine whether the world becomes a fairer place or if the divide between rich and poor becomes greater than ever.
This kind of talk will sound dangerously close to socialism for many Americans. There are always winners and losers in a market-led economy, so why should things be any different with AI? Those wealthy enough to invest in it and control it will prosper, as others will find themselves on skid row.
But, Gates says, this time it will be different. Previous technology transitions happened over several generations and created new jobs where human cognition was required, whereas AI is starting to replace human cognition. The winners are likely to be a small group of people, and the losers will be everyone else.
It will not affect just one or two sectors, according to the AI fab club: AI will replace human roles in fields as diverse as law, customer services, medicine, software, and manufacturing. And it will hit these industries rapidly, over the course of a decade or less, rather than taking a few generations.
Gates wrote:
When a community has high unemployment, the ripple effects can be pervasive. Research suggests that in some parts of the United States, factory closures contribute to a rise in deaths from opioid overdoses. Now imagine similar pressures on both white-collar and blue-collar workers nationwide.
There will be some new jobs created, Gates says, but without the right policies in place there will be far fewer than today, and entry-level jobs are among those most likely to vanish (as we're already seeing in the tech industry).
Blue-collar jobs will also be affected, as AI-powered robots are advancing faster than people realize - much of the progress is happening in China. These may begin to compete with people on some physical tasks, such as in the construction and hospitality industries, within a few years.
Gates says there are several big risks from AI adoption, foremost of which is that many work roles are set to disappear forever. He notes that during the Great Depression of the 1930s, unemployment in the US hit 25 percent and remained in double digits for much of that decade, but ultimately recovered as demand, investment, and growth returned. He fails to mention, however, that it took a global war for that to happen.
The biggest shift comes when AI operates error-free operation, without humans prepping its work or checking its output. Gates says we need to think now about reducing job losses, or risk much of society ending up unemployed.
Another danger, Gates says, is that AI empowers people to do harm: AI-driven malware already lets low-skilled attackers launch cyberattacks, while generative AI makes fraud, disinformation, and deepfakes easier to produce.
The third big threat is that AI systems could stunt the mental development of children, and crowd out human relationships.
So how is society meant to avoid this apocalyptic vision and ensure AI becomes the force for good that Microsoft's progenitor believes it to be?
Gates says AI needs both a domestic and international framework. Nationally, that means bodies that can set priorities across government agencies to ensure every risk is accounted for. Yet even a nation with its own house in order remains exposed to cross-border risks, so an international body must be built in parallel.
If that sounds like wishful thinking, get in the queue. Gates notes it would require US-China cooperation, and under the current Washington administration, that's about as likely as pigs flying..
Beyond that, some jobs - social care for instance - should stay human. Gates also thinks the tax system will need rebalancing, as more people out of work means less income tax to fund government itself.
A starting point, he suggests, is taxing AI tokens and robots to reduce corporations' incentives to swap meatbags for machines. This could fund retraining and a stronger safety net, but would need careful targeting so it doesn't hinder beneficial uses of AI, like drug discovery and better education
Again, critics will likely dismiss this as socialism and point out that Microsoft was ruthless in pursuing profits under Gates' leadership.
In a final message to world leaders, Gates urges them to act now, "before unemployment rises sharply, communities are hurting, and public trust has eroded."
This marks a shift for the Microsoft founder, who two years ago told people not to worry about AI, in particular energy use and increased greenhouse gas emissions, arguing AI would eventually solve the problems it creates.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday August 30, @04:20AM
> If the majority of the population is imprisoned in these hovels and given basic meals and an existence, who is going to buy all the products the robots make?
The ultra wealthy are gonna have some super-cool yachts, island complexes, space ships, etc.
Just the other day I sat down and asked an LLM about creation of a new framework like Qt, the LLM told me it would take 35 developer years of effort, etc. etc. etc. then proceeded to deliver the first 80% of the job that afternoon. That's just an informational thought experiment example, not using "real" resources like refined metals, fibers, fuels, etc. The ultra wealthy can keep their robot fleets occupied making buildings, vehicles, realistic sex slaves - of course when pesky "world opinion" isn't annoyingly weighing in anymore real sex slavery will be more openly practiced in "private places."
Nobody has to buy products to "make money" - money isn't real, resources are real. Once the economy is imploded, it will all be about resource control, who owns what and what they're willing to trade it for. If the Oligarchs can avoid too much open warfare on each other, once they've got self-servicing self-replicating obedient robot armies they won't need the poor anymore - they'll have the robots to do what the poor used to do for them.
> the manna-robot restaurants, supermarkets, and all the other services?
Those services become un-necessary when the population is all retired into end of life care institutions, at age birth. My mother and uncle checked into one of those not far from here last year, as they turned 77 and 79. It's a nice place, and they're free to leave anytime they like, but it's not a big stretch to picture campuses like theirs where people aren't allowed out, and in practice the majority of residents don't often leave due to health issues associated with age. The campus provides housing, recreation, food - mostly food, the whole damn place revolves around food actually - when you buy in you pre-pay for your meals in-perpetuity. It's not bad food, actually really fancy stuff every night if that's what you want. And it's not a stretch at all to picture robots providing the necessary services instead of University students working for tuition vouchers.
> if so many humans are unemployed, they will become cheaper than robots
That is an interesting question: it's not about money, it's about resources. Are horses cheaper than cars? Not even a question of capabilities, horses just use more resources than cars, so we have a lot of cars and very few horses these days.
> the humans sitting in these brown prisons are actually a drain on the economy
That's the 'murican way. Put 'em in prison, pay $100K+ per year to keep 'em locked up. We can afford it.
> putting them to work, even for lower wages than robots would make sense
This is the US we're talking about - saying something makes sense is a good argument for why it's unlikely to happen.
> the actual cost of tokens started to bite
I suspect tokens are going to follow the price-curve of a byte of RAM from 1965 through 2024...
> having more than 50% of the population imprisoned, desperate to get out of the hell they are in
The story is pretty solid about this, the brown boxes aren't unheated concentration camp barracks with inadequate food and brutal forced labor. They boil the frogs, not making them too uncomfortable, otherwise they will try to jump out of the pot. Kind of implied in the story is that eventually, when they've rounded up all the poor they want to round up, when the people outside have sufficiently cut ties with the people inside, there will likely come an "unfortunate incident" day when the resources expended on keeping the camp inhabitants happy and docile can be re-purposed...
To be continued... maybe.
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