It’s funny that I never considered it, but why would they replace the low wage workers? Capitalism would care most about replacing the high wage workers (except for the CEO and other board members. They obviously are worth every penny and are irreplaceable with ai. ~signed CEO)
The high earners’ jobs are already mostly replaced by technology, but companies keep employing them and paying them anyway. They mostly schedule meetings.
A good AI is the ultimate CEO: tireless, ruthless, informed, fully capable of generating bullshit yet completely immune to others’ bullshit. It has no friends, no family, no property, no conflicts of interest, no ego, no drama, no childhood dreams to fulfill, no lovers to impress, and only one ambition: to maximize profit for the company it manages, by any means necessary.
I look forward to finding out whether Wall Street’s first loyalty is to aristocracy or to money, because they will soon be forced to choose.
The nature of capitalism implies cost reduction and profit maximization. High paid jobs are high paid because they are hard, few can do it, and they bring in large profits. Obviously reducing this cost to near 0 is the ideal (highest profit for lowest cost), however the nature of these jobs often makes that hard.
Low wage workers are often much easier to replace, and most min wage work can be automated today. The reason they haven’t is because the tech to replace them ends up being more expensive than hiring a human. However, this is soon changing. We see companies like mcdonalds experiment with fully automated restaurants. And this idea has worked in practice (fully automated, with maybe 1 person to ensure it doesn’t fuck up and break/go down). Humans are still cheaper for now, but costs keep creeping down.
Retail is fully automatic now, but to do 100% replacement requires proprietary tech only amazon has currently. Self checkout has long been a thing and slowly taking over.
Janitors can be replaced, but are cheaper than robots.
Well, at least sex robots will service the undesirables.
The sex robots will be crazy expensive for a while there. Only the rich will afford them.
not a problem really. the main domain for sex bots will be rich clientele (who already buy them), and sex industry who will reuse bots to service many customers (similar to how uber/taxis work). Individual sex robots don’t need to happen for most people.
Oh don’t worry the robots are coming for almost every minimum wage manual labor job as well. Those were actually automated first, and simply haven’t rolled out yet due to humans being cheaper than machines right now.
Jobs able to be automated include:
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shipping dock workers
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any driving job
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any job in a restaurant (chef, waiter, cashier, etc)
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retail checkout
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any janitorial job (cleaning floors, restrooms, etc)
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any job related to scheduling times or managing paperwork (receptionists)
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anything done in a factory (manufacturing)
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any job done in an airport
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security (soon)
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construction of homes buildings (soon/wip)
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most work done in farms (animal or produce): planting, watering, harvesting, slaughtering, animal cycle, etc.
And presumably more. The technology is currently available to completely automate nearly 99% of jobs you interact with on a daily basis.
With this new wave of AI, as the tweet mentions, the following jobs will soon be automated:
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anything involving writing (journalism, fictional books, information guides, walkthroughs, tutorials, etc.)
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anything involving the creation of static images (stock photography, logo design, 2d game art, manga/comics)
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many things involving amateur or quick code (basic websites, simple scripts)
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Q&A/consultants (any human you’d ask a question to), think consultants, a lot of doctor work, therapy, etc.
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Product/electronics design (already partially automated, will improve more, but not be completely replaced)
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Many nsfw jobs (porn photos, hentai manga, sex therapist)
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Finance stuff (already automated to a degree, but will be completely so)
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Planning/organizing business deals
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marketing, call centers
Things that will be automated once the existing tech improves:
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more complex software/code development (hard to say whether it’ll reach professional level or not soon, as there’s more than just code involved there, and large architectures hard to automate)
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anything dealing with videos (ads, movies, tv shows, cartoons, anime, informative videos, cute animal videos, many tiktoks, commentaries, talk shows, tutorial videos)
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legal work (technically can be automated now with new wave, but there’s a lot of hurdles preventing this from truly being automated, due to fabrication, lack of specifications, legal restrictions around tech, etc. mostly just needs improved reliability+specific model, along with legal change)
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simple video game creation (think atari, pong, simple nes games)
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almost every non-irl/non-physical nsfw job (photos, videos, many games, product design)
Things that are safe for now, but will be automated in the future:
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full code/software development of any type (web, tools, etc.)
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game development in all fields, even for AAA
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complete design/development/production of electronics and computers (singularity point, once this is hit, everything will be automated)
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complex tasks involving non-deterministic situations involving multiple fields (assistants, general knowledge workers, handling new fields, dealing with format conversion)
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nsfw game development
Jobs currently safe until we reach proper AGI:
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any task involving entering unmapped territory, navigating, doing a particular nondeterministic action (plumbing, repair, etc.)
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any task involving a human to confirm/commit (governmental jobs, final ceo/manager jobs, controlling militaristic weapons, legal jobs/courts)
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any job requiring novel task acquisition (reverse engineering, data format analysis, cyber security)
I notably left out one domain from this list: dynamic physical tasks. For deterministic physical tasks, we can build specific machines, and have ai working for them already in most domains, and soon in all domains. However, dynamic physical tasks we still struggle with. This is being worked on, but it’s slow and expensive. This is why tasks like plumbing or repair won’t be automated for a long while: not because the task itself is hard (we’re almost at the point where ai can do this for deterministic scenarios). The issue is being able to dynamically traverse the city, interact with people, enter a home, navigate the home to the issue, navigate to the specific area of the problem, problem solve to figure out problem area if customer doesn’t know, and then actually do the task. The “do the task” part is more or less solved. It’s the novel navigation that’s hard. In practice: a robot to do the task will be created, and the plumber/repairman just sets it up and hits “start”.
The other tasks that won’t be automated involve novel task acquisition, or final human confirmation. The former is a “hard problem” in ai, and requires full AGI to work. Once AGI is achieved, all tasks will be automated. So these are the last to go. Not many jobs require this, but things like reverse engineering, analysis, or cyber security tend to require such.
Jobs that require a “human touch” also will never be automated, as a demand for humans remain. This includes things like performing arts or sex work. These can be automated once the physical ai/robotics are there (see theme parks for the former, and sex dolls for the latter). However, there will likely always be demand for a real human, simply due to their nature.
Lastly, things that demand a human act as the final confirmation will remain right up until we get agi, and we have ai/robots acting as agents in society. So this would be giving okay on business deals/decisions, government work, military initiations/orders, likely legal stuff (lawyers, judges), I imagine policing as well will still retain a human element until full agi/robotics.
Almost every deterministic physical labor job could already be automated. And with this new wave AI every deterministic physical job can be automated. Likewise we’re on track to automate most information/media related jobs, the simpler/easier ones first. The more complex/difficult ones are still out of reach with today’s tech, but we’re on track to automate them within the next decade or two. Mostly what’s unable is large scale software, video game development, videos (proof of concept is now), and certain jobs that require novel ideas (encryption, new file formats, reverse engineering, security). Things like comics/manga are theoretically able to automated with today’s tech, but need some more work before they hit.
My eta? In 20 years, nearly every job will be able to be automated if there’s demand to do so. In 50 years I would be surprised if automation hasn’t rolled out to almost every single job. I expect this current wave AI to start impacting jobs within 5 years. People will likely start to feel it around 2026 or 2027, right in time for 2028 political campaigns. The president we elect for 2024 will determine how “hard” AI hits people and the economy. Will we elect a president prepped for the automation crisis? Or elect one that has no idea what’s coming?
If your job is not high-tier comp sci, or a job requiring you to go to new places and do a physical task, or a job that is legally required to be a human (pharmacy, psychiatrist, lawyer, etc), your job is at risk of being automated within the next decade or two; depending on how cheap it becomes to automate and how much you are paid. Currently, min wage jobs are about to be automated: fast food, retail, call centers, possibly driving (legal hurdles, but the tech is mostly there).
Worried? We have a solution: Universal Basic Income. This is the idea of giving every single person $1000 or $2000 per month, no strings attached, no requirements, just guaranteed. The amount is flexible (some say less, some say more). It’s been proven, it works. Implementation does not harm people’s incentive to work. It doesn’t make people lazy. Just provides a safety net. We just need to implement it; and ideally before mass unemployment starts.
TL;DR: the robots are coming for your job. This shouldn’t make you afraid. Humans are being liberated from required labor, and if we handle it right, we will be free to do as we please in society. Automated art doesn’t mean you can’t do art. It just means that art will not be profitable for humans to manually make. You can still do every automated task for fun or for your own reasons.
Not everyone can do the vanishingly small amount of jobs, as jobs are killed by automation. Don’t expect to cram everyone into plumbing, for instance. Many of these fields are already overcrowded. Just do the right thing: stop requiring people to perform labor, when that labor can be automated.
This happens when capitalists own both labor and the robots.
