

Is AI really pushing people into the unemployment lines? - atrilla

I was reading the comments of this MIT Tech Review (http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.technologyreview.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;533686&#x2F;2014-in-computing-breakthroughs-in-artificial-intelligence&#x2F;) and I came across this opinion (see title), which gave me the shivers. Two points:<p>1) AI taking manual workforce-based jobs. I can&#x27;t help seeing how beneficial the industrialisation of processes has been for humanity. Instead of relying on inaccurate human judgement for manufacturing jobs, we let machines produce perfectly similar assets much better than we can do. This has increased the reliability of the outputs, in addition to lowering the prices of the products, which has made them affordable to many more people. Jobs get more specialised, so like the tools human beings have developed throughout history. Once more, survival entails adaptation. And this is again a matter of  supply and demand. In Spain, where the economic crisis is still hitting the markets and unemployment, having a proper specialised education no longer guarantees landing a job (and it&#x27;s not because evil robots are doing the tasks of leaving scientists).<p>2) AI taking over engineers, lawyers, etc. AI is difficult per se. Nobody comes up with a human replica made of metal by chance. Things take their time, and improvements are gradual. That&#x27;s a matter of fact. At present, AI (plus Machine Learning, Pattern Recognition...) delivers a set of tools that allow us to see father, from the shoulders of giants. We had never been able to digest the amount of data we are capable of doing nowadays. Isn&#x27;t this progress? We haven&#x27;t yet created a creative machine and I don&#x27;t see it coming any time soon.<p>I am so firmly convinced that AI has so much good to do that I just created a blog (http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ai-maker.com&#x2F;) solely dedicated to AI and its applications, and I&#x27;m going to dedicate my spare time for the following years to grow this side project into something awesome, because that&#x27;s where AI is leading us.
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liquidexil
Yes. AI (and computing in general) is removing jobs from the market by making
work more efficient. For a long time, this has been compensated for by making
additional work necessary for modern life, but that can't continue for ever.

Interestingly, in the 1900s this was the goal of industrialization. The idea
was that everyone would benefit from this improved machinery, and we would all
be living lives of luxury and working 10 hours a week by now. Our focus on
everybody wanting/needing a job is a relatively modern philosophy. (circa 1940
WW2, AFAIR)

As far as future AI developments go, I can't see the future. But just to
comment on lawyers in specifics, a lawyer these days can handle more than
triple the cases now than they could even 15 years ago thanks to existing
tools and we don't have 3x the number of lawsuits. These jobs are already
disappearing.

I don't have any answers, so I'd encourage you to explore this space now that
you've identified this dissonance in yourself. And if you figure out any
solutions, let me know!

