What Happened to Horses Is Happening to Us

Ilya Sutskever said in 2017, whilst building OpenAI: > Within the next three years, robotics should be completely solved, AI should solve a long-standing unproven theorem, programming competitions should be won consistently by AIs, and there should be convincing chatbots. There was a viral YouTube video from 2014 called Humans Need Not Apply [1], which made a very strong argument that mass unemployment was right around the corner. I actually think people from the past would be surprised at how slow AI has progressed in the end. Although the domains where it's turned out to be most effective - code, images, videos, music, etc. - would probably surprise them. [1] ▶ this video

The AI doomsday folk had an even worse track record over the past decade. There was supposed to be mass unemployment of truck drivers years ago. According to CCP Grey's Human's Need Not Apply[1] from 10 years ago, the robot Baxter was supposed to take over many low skilled jobs (Baxter was continued in 2018 after it failed to achieve commercial success). [1] ▶ this video

Not only that, but go back a decade ago and look at what the singularity people (which the AI alignment crowd comes out of) were saying that. When employment was struggling to recover after the great recession, the singularity folks said that it wasn't going to recovers, because tech was replacing humans, and that this was just the beginning of mass unemployment (one of the reasons why UBI got so popular). CGP Grey's popular "Human's Need Not Apply" video is a good example of this kind of thought: ▶ this video Claims that self-driving cars are already here and already better than human drivers, and that the only question is how quickly they replace humans. He argued that Baxter, the general purpose robot, could already copy the tasks of a human worker and do the work for much cheaper. Baxter was discontinued in 2018 because of low interest. These people have a horrible track record when it comes to technology predictions, and it's unnerving that, instead of reflecting on how wrong they've been, they're doubling down and trying to slow technological advancement.

Reminds me of this video about automation of mental labor (and this was made back in 2014, way before any of of the LLM stuff of the modern era): ▶ this video While not all the example predictions in the video were accurate, I think the point about automation as a displacement of mental labor is real. At the end of the day, a lot of white collar work is really not that "valuable" from a production standpoint. And while the easy way is to blame either technology or those it replaces, the crux of the problem is really in society and how individuals make a living. Society needs to be ready for a future where most people will not be able to do meaningfully differentiated work ---where even if you're thrown into higher education, most of the jobs available are still what would be considered as "entry level" ones. Also, this is also somewhat an attestation to Moravec's paradox ( link ), where "intellectual" tasks like writing are easier to automate compared to "actuation" tasks like fetching food, driving it around, and placing it in the right place (re: Doordash).

Indeed not only fluid, but also open to criticism. I've been always quite unsure of how to quantify AI risk. My conclusion at the moment is that it's a complex risk. I don't think singularity is plausible in any way or FOOM. Still, the changes to society are absolutely hard to grasp. Humans may face (economical) obsolescence in a few decades[1] (humans need not apply[2]). That puts us in a delicate situation: if humans are economically obsolete, a society that only values economic value (and not consciousness per se ) will have all reasons to slowly but surely get rid of humans (and animals). We need a revolution of meaning and ethical understanding: the understanding of the fundamental value of consciousness, and to structure our lives and all institutions around it (each individual needs to have a good understanding of such ethics and meaning so that society as a whole is robust). I think formalization of ethics (which I'm a proponent of) and progress in metaphysics is going to contribute as well to this end. I think EA is simply part of this new understanding of ourselves and the Universe, a sort of coming out of a dark age -- and there's the opportunity to create a lasting society amazing for everyone. [1] My personal guess-estimate is about 50(-20/+40) years to complete obsolescence, although various researchers have wildly different estimates. [2] ▶ this video

Tech makes jobs obsolete, but the new jobs introduced in the last few hundred years only add up to a small part of the overall workforce (programmers excluded). CGP Grey went in depth on human replacement automation, and almost a decade later it still holds up: ▶ this video The bottom line is that automating a job is obviously a net positive because it frees up a human to do something else elsewhere, while still providing the same added value as before. There will always be something for that human to do, even if not a traditional style job. The gap, as you point out, is making sure that newly created value gets taxed and provided to that freed up person as UBI, so that they can continue to live and consume those products that the machine makes in the first place, otherwise there is no demand for them and capitalism doesn't work. There is no point in having an army of robots making hats if there's nobody to wear them.

> We will discover new jobs–we always do after a technological revolution CGP grey put this well > Imagine a pair of horses in the early 1900s talking about technology. One worries all these new mechanical muscles (cars etc) will make horses unnecessary. The other horse reminds him that everything so far has made their lives easier - remember all that farm work? Remember running coast-to-coast delivering mail? Remember riding into battle? All terrible! These new city jobs are pretty cushy, and with so many humans in the cities there will be more jobs for horses than ever. Even if this car thingy takes off, he might say, there will be new jobs for horses we can't imagine. > But you know what happened. There are still working horses, but nothing like before. The horse population peaked in 1915 - from that point on it was nothing but down. > There's no law of economics that says that better technology makes more better jobs for horses. It sounds shockingly dumb to even say that out loud. But swap horses for humans and suddenly people think it sounds about right. "Humans need not apply" - ▶ this video

I was hoping for a bit more in-depth material - allowing the experts to explore their topics a bit more and potentially talking about potential solutions? Where is the call to action for the viewer? What now? It's good for non-technical folks to watch, but nothing really new since the 'Humans need not apply' 15 min documentary [0] [0] ▶ this video (2014) Edit: added link to humans need not apply

This article just leans on the same historic analogies that don't hold up to scrutiny. These answers fall way short of the effect of automation and AI will have. You are not replacing the job with another, you are replacing the human brain! I always refer people to this video to explain what it will be like, and it debases almost all the points made in this FAQ: ▶ this video All these historical analogies fall flat on their face when it comes to an AI being trained to do your exact job. This is not another case of farmers moving to different higher skilled jobs. We are the employed horses of the 1800s about to be made unemployable by the advent of cars.

The relevant quote from the CGP Grey video linked above: "Better technology makes more better jobs for horses" ▶ this video

Many of the folks here like CGP Grey's video on this topic, "Humans Need Not Apply" ▶ this video But you should watch that in contrast with one of his newest videos, "The Rules for Rulers" link > The more the wealth of a nation comes from the productive citizens of the nation, the more the power gets spread out, and the more the ruler must maintain the quality of life for those citizens. The less, the less. > Now if a stable democracy becomes very poor, or if a resource that dwarfs the productivity of the citizens is found, the odds of this gamble change, and make it more possible for a small group to seize power.

Which skills, for example, are harder to automate? You may have already seen this YouTube video as its a couple years old, but its premise is that we need to start thinking about what to do when large swaths of the population find themselves unemployable through no fault of their own (since over 45% of the workforce holds jobs that are easy targets for automation in the near future). ▶ this video

This reminded me of the "Humans need not apply" video, which I strongly recommend, if you haven't already seen it: ▶ this video Discussion: link

And people who refuse to see it are usually blind... The supermarkets I go to have greatly reduced their cashiers. In most cases by at least half, especially in small shops (3 cashiers has become 2-3 machines and one human). As for bakers, they don't just make bread and cake. Excellent video on the subject: CGPGrey - Humans Need Not Apply: ▶ this video

I highly recommend CGP Greys video ( ▶ this video ) for a good overview of the issue. See link for similar discussion.

CGP Grey covered a few of your points in his video 'humans need not apply'[1]. The main argument against new jobs filling the void as it were, was the prevalence of the kinds of jobs that most people currently perform and the lack of any industry requiring millions of people in the future. [1] ▶ this video

You seem to be coming from the opposing view of that of the article, that coding 'is' the new literacy. I was more challenging the article's claim that modeling is the new literacy, which I think isn't. As to whether coding is the new literacy or not, I'd say we really need to ask what is the purpose of education. If the purpose of education is enlightenment, then yes, a child should learn how to code, but also how to paint, how to play a musical instrument, and so on and so forth. But then some children have the aptitude for one thing, some for another thing. But I think the purpose of education as a means of making the individual economically viable is becoming more and more futile with increased automation. (In this regard I strongly adhere to the views expressed in the video 'Humans Need Not Apply' by CGPGrey[1], and TED talks by Jeremy Howard[2], Erik Brynjolfsson[3], Andrew McAfee[4]). As to the need for coding so that humans could interact with machines, I think in the long run, this is also going to progress to the point where the machine would be aware of the abilities of the human it's dealing with and make it easy for the human to interact with itself. (EDIT 1: I should also add that interacting with machines is already happening at a massive scale when everyone has a smartphone in their back pocket. And yet when the software goes wrong, the inability of an average user to fix it is not the result of that user not being coding literate, but rather the insurmountabl

Easier said than done. What are they going to retrain to? As AI continues to advance, more and more jobs will necome redundant. CGP Grey did a great video on this[1]. Even if you can't completely replace humans, often times, obe person will be able to do the job that used to take several. Where do those others go? What will we as a society do if for example AI-based Expert Systems make 90% of accountants and office clerks redundant? We can't retrain all of them to become doctors and scientists, can we? [1] ▶ this video

Human obsolescence wasn't on Huxley's mind. Instead of Deltas, Gammas, and Epsilons doing awful labour, they will do none. While CGP Grey has a very consumer-oriented view, it's quite compelling. ▶ this video

A huge portion of the workforce will be unemployable in our lifetimes: ▶ this video By the time the technology comes around the revive the cryopreserved, the rest of technological advancement will change the dynamic of human interaction so much we cannot estimate what the world will be like, but we can assume that with technology advanced enough to repair the damage from the freezing process, you would probably be entering a world of almost any possibility.