Not true agents, I was speaking metaphorically. Instead, the productivity of key personnel has doubled or tripled. Mostly through the time saved having the AI do the laborious work.
More evidence here for this here
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.15071
A great example of how technology might not displace as many jobs as we think. Here in the Philippines most elevators have a girl inside them to push the buttons for you. They are normal elevators, nothing complicated about them and yet for some reason there is an operator sitting in there all day long.
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These are what David Graeber calls
They donāt have any meaning. Now this example (lift girl) is like a very simple waitress and there is only one reason to have this job, as a service from one human to another. And that does have some value, but itās not she pushes a physical button for youā¦
Totally, but my point here is that AI isnāt coming for bullshit jobs and i think a significant amount of the economy would fall into this category. Itāll be interesting to see what the economy looks like if all that is left are bullshit jobs.
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Any job Gen AI can do now is a BS job of the future. When AGI and Robotics merge all jobs will be BS. Almost like humans will need to find another reason to value their lives than their ājobāā¦ I for one welcome this utopia.
Related:
I am 25. These next three years might be the last few years that I work. I am not ill, nor am I becoming a stay-at-home mom, nor have I been so financially fortunate to be on the brink of voluntary retirement. I stand at the edge of a technological development that seems likely, should it arrive, to end employment as I know it.
A very good read.
Comprehensive to be sure.
I think the quality of the data in the articles she cites is at best, noisy. She does a good job in her commentary on this point.
I suspect it is very hard to predict the impact of AI induced job displacement on the psychology of people independently of the cultural and historical precedents against which such judgements must be made, at this point.
For me the key is how we navigate to a society that decouples oneās share of the wealth of production from ones ācontributionā to it, via a job. Very poorly mediated today and without radical transformation not at all when AI and robotics are responsible for it all.
UBI is one proposal to address this. Iām not convinced. No one has explained to me adequately how it would actually work in the context of neoliberal capitalism or how this system could be replaced of it canāt, without major social dislocation.
There are some other powerful roadblocks, such as the protestant work ethic. It is deeply ingrained in western society.
At the end of the day, for me, I canāt wait for this decoupling to occur and for human beings to reach their full potential without being chained to activities they do not willingly choose to do.
PS: I love her ācake analogyā to describing the development of generative AI as it stands today.
We have been here beforeā¦
Regarding the āno good explanation of how to do UBIā hereās a link to a senate proposal that I posted a while back that is the best proposal of this kind that Iāve seen thus far:
The quote in this paper I like is āwe should remember that work is a means to an end, not an end in itselfā but the paper still raises more questions than it answers about how we might transition to a world where the means of production is fully automated from a world where incomes, via labour, are the means by which the fruits of production are shared for those not belonging to the capital ownership class (ie most human beings). Seems pretty disruptive to me. Bring it on, but it wonāt be easy.
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@bruce I suspect you may appreciate digging into the weeds regarding the āhow workā that he has done:
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Another important factor in all of this discussion is how leverage people are at the moment. At the height of the Great Depression the unemployment rate got to 25%.
To estimate the modern equivalent of that peak we need to consider: current unemployment (3.5%), personal savings rate (7%), and household debt-to-income ratio (120%). Adjustments account for the 4x higher debt burden today, reducing the peak rate to 6.25%, and a 1.5% mitigation from higher savings, bringing it to 4.75%. Government interventions, unemployment benefits, and welfare programs further reduce the impact by approximately 7.5%. Factoring in these elements, the modern equivalent unemployment rate would be around 8-10%.
All this to say AI/Robotics donāt need to replace many jobs before things get really bad economically and it will certainly need to get very bad before things like the UBI are seriously considered by governments.
https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2024/05/15/cf-an-ai-powered-boost-to-anguillas-revenues
20% of Anguillaās revenue now comes from .ai registered domains. 