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Jobs That AI Will Replace. Very Soon!

The Atheist

The Grammar Tyrant
Joined
Jul 3, 2006
Messages
36,189
Now that the propellor-heads have got AI to the point where it "thinks" sufficiently like a human to be useful, it's going to have an impact on the workforce much greater than robotics.

The fun thing is, instead of forcing the layoff of millions of blue-collar workers, AI is going to take square aim at white-collar workers.

Two of the biggest white-collar sectors who should be studying for their barista qualifications right now are those at banks and insurance companies. Engineering, too, will be changed out of all recognition. Who needs 20 traffic engineers, when you have one computer doing the same job much fast and better than the team of professionals costing $200k each?

Given our slavish devotion to the Friedman Doctrine, companies will be falling over themselves to get rid of people and invest in machines.

Advertising agencies? Who needs 'em? A single AI computer will devise a campaign that works without human input. We know how easy it is to persuade people, thanks to my pal Robert Mercer and Cambridge Analytica.

The next ten years are going to see a complete change in employment dynamics, and white-collar workers are going to be a dying breed.
 
Now that the propellor-heads have got AI to the point where it "thinks" sufficiently like a human to be useful, it's going to have an impact on the workforce much greater than robotics.

The fun thing is, instead of forcing the layoff of millions of blue-collar workers, AI is going to take square aim at white-collar workers.

Two of the biggest white-collar sectors who should be studying for their barista qualifications right now are those at banks and insurance companies. Engineering, too, will be changed out of all recognition. Who needs 20 traffic engineers, when you have one computer doing the same job much fast and better than the team of professionals costing $200k each?

Given our slavish devotion to the Friedman Doctrine, companies will be falling over themselves to get rid of people and invest in machines.

Advertising agencies? Who needs 'em? A single AI computer will devise a campaign that works without human input. We know how easy it is to persuade people, thanks to my pal Robert Mercer and Cambridge Analytica.

The next ten years are going to see a complete change in employment dynamics, and white-collar workers are going to be a dying breed.

They said that about machines, computers, robots ...

Sure, things have changed, but not in the way predicted. What has happened is that we get more production (AND, more disastrous crashes :rolleyes:).
 
Surely these are safer than the 'alternatives'?

In the UK the GPs have a wide but not very deep education (not that it isn't hard) they could almost be replaced with a rule based checklist as it is.

Medical consultants, already AI systems have been proved to be at least as good as trained, experienced consultants at detecting disease from the likes of CT scans, MRIs and so on.
 
Translation. In fact, I'm getting sick of playing a machine's proofreader, so I'm ready for the end times.
 
I wonder if there is going to be a significant difference between expert systems and AI with relation to medicine. Current AI examples seem to be feeding on the bulk of available information, and coming up with convincing output based on that. But in the world of the internet, a large part of the information is junk.

A medical expert system is focused on some specific thing, which seems like a good idea. I heard about a recent study in which an AI expert is assigned to sort through the enormous bulk of possible effects of various possible medicines for specific ailments, and save the doctor the job of trying them out, of knowing them all, etc. It apparently succeeded in suggesting relatively unusual treatments for difficult patients, that worked. That sounds like a pretty good idea.

And it does seem as if AI experts are better at detecting diseases and sorting complicated data.

But is there some way a more generally educated AI can distinguish between good and bad ideas, other than being told? Maybe there is, but I have a feeling there will always be a need for some real people to check results.
 
In the UK the GPs have a wide but not very deep education (not that it isn't hard) they could almost be replaced with a rule based checklist as it is.

Medical consultants, already AI systems have been proved to be at least as good as trained, experienced consultants at detecting disease from the likes of CT scans, MRIs and so on.
"Do no harm"
"What's harm?"
 
I wish somebody would replace the ruling party in my country with AI. The AI would doe a much better job, and at lower cost. It doesn't even have to be particularly intelligent AI to be effective. A first-generation "dumb" AI will be more than adequate.
 
Lawyers
General Practitioners
Medical Consultants

I agree entirely. GP seems to be the almost-perfect case of something a machine will do better than a human.

I doubt it'll be popular, however.

They said that about machines, computers, robots ...

Sure, things have changed, but not in the way predicted. What has happened is that we get more production (AND, more disastrous crashes :rolleyes:).

Except that's exactly what did happen. Take a look at a production plant now vs 1970 - the number of people is vastly lower, and production vastly higher, because machines work faster.

I don't know who it was, but some bloke once calculated that 50% of the entire workforce would need to be employed as telephone operators to cope with today's call volume if we still used 1950s technology for connecting calls.

How many telephone operators exist in 2023?
 
I agree entirely. GP seems to be the almost-perfect case of something a machine will do better than a human.

I doubt it'll be popular, however.



Except that's exactly what did happen. Take a look at a production plant now vs 1970 - the number of people is vastly lower, and production vastly higher, because machines work faster.

I don't know who it was, but some bloke once calculated that 50% of the entire workforce would need to be employed as telephone operators to cope with today's call volume if we still used 1950s technology for connecting calls.

How many telephone operators exist in 2023?

That is the point: Production went up. To be sure, some jobs went away. The phone operators are now online salespeople, or such. Employment rates are roughly the same

Hans
 
I agree entirely. GP seems to be the almost-perfect case of something a machine will do better than a human.

I doubt it'll be popular, however.

As my local GP does minor surgery (removing skin-tags and so on), innoculations, takes blood for blood-tests, does (necessary) hands-on examinations, I don't see GPs being replaced in the near future.
 
As my local GP does minor surgery (removing skin-tags and so on), innoculations, takes blood for blood-tests, does (necessary) hands-on examinations, I don't see GPs being replaced in the near future.

Indeed, it would take longer to equip a robot for each patient than it would take a GP to perform the examination. (And you'd have to know in advance what examinations are being done). Unless you're imagining an AI running some sort of Swiss Army device that somehow loads, uses, sterilises (or discards) every necessary instrument.

Some parts, sure. For example I have my own blood-pressure machine, info from that could be fed into an AI. But far simpler for a machine like that to just report results to the existing medical software that the Doctors use (this is already happening).
 
As my local GP does minor surgery (removing skin-tags and so on), innoculations, takes blood for blood-tests, does (necessary) hands-on examinations, I don't see GPs being replaced in the near future.

Plus, half the time, GPs are simply talking to people. Meeting a human is important for most patients. However, an AI system could chew over symptoms and test results and spot cases of diseases that the ordinary seldom meets and thus may not think of.

Hans
 
That is the point: Production went up. To be sure, some jobs went away. The phone operators are now online salespeople, or such. Employment rates are roughly the same

Hans

The services industry has grown as manufacturing declined. No question a lot of people replaced will find jobs in the enormous worldwide worker shortage, but I think this wave will be a lot different to the manufacturing layoffs.

As my local GP does minor surgery (removing skin-tags and so on), innoculations, takes blood for blood-tests, does (necessary) hands-on examinations, I don't see GPs being replaced in the near future.

You're very lucky. In NZ, doctors doing surgery is almost unknown, and blood tests are all done by off-site laboratories.

We already have a GP triage system that works for AI GPs where you discuss symptoms over the phone and only get to see a Dr if they deem it necessary.

I think the use of AI in medicine will be positive, so don't be thinking I'm against it. If it frees up GP time to do physical examinations, everyone would benefit. We have an acute shortage of doctors in NZ and if AI can help that, I'm in favour.
 
I keep reading the title as Jobs that AL will replace, like some guy named Albert is going to work us all under the table.
 
I keep reading the title as Jobs that AL will replace, like some guy named Albert is going to work us all under the table.

That's what most people call me, and I'm not cleaning TM's toilet no matter how much you pay me.

Another side to the AI in white-collar jobs is that removing the humans from them may well turn out to be racist and bigoted.

I would expect the algorithm to take into account people buying in areas of high default rates and weigh loan decisions accordingly. That's going to hit non-whites harder than whites.

Won't affect the bottom line, though, so it's not like it matters.
 
The futher technology advances, the greater the need for people who are experts in the technology to serve as the middlemen between the technology and the actual end users. Technology gets more sophisticated but the users don't. I make a pretty good living serving as a translator between non-technical people and the increasingly sophisticated and mind-bogglingly expensive technology they bought but don't know how to talk to. It can do all sorts of things...if you know how to ask it to. And most people don't, because it's a skill.

Oracles always had interpreters. Even God had to have prophets. Widespread AI means a host of new careers -- which will undoubtedly pay better than the ones they replace.

(And FYI I am a superb housekeeper and my bathroom and its fixtures are immaculate. I bet most of you don't even scrub your baseboards weekly, or use Q-tips to clean between the slots of your heating grills!)
 
The futher technology advances, the greater the need for people who are experts in the technology to serve as the middlemen between the technology and the actual end users.

Or:

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology

Except Sagan went a step further to add:

This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

Widespread AI means a host of new careers -- which will undoubtedly pay better than the ones they replace.

Yeah, nah.

I doubt the ability of office johnnies to re-train to be of value, and I'm not sure what those new careers would be.

(And FYI I am a superb housekeeper and my bathroom and its fixtures are immaculate. I bet most of you don't even scrub your baseboards weekly, or use Q-tips to clean between the slots of your heating grills!)

Not taking that bet.
 
These types of threads are evergreens. Remember the good old days when all the driving jobs were going to be replaced by AI?
 
These types of threads are evergreens. Remember the good old days when all the driving jobs were going to be replaced by AI?

That may still happen, but automated driving is still some way off.

AI replacing office workers looks a slam dunk.
 
One area that I think someone should get into now is personal chat companions for those housebound or otherwise with limited social interaction. ChatGPT even before version 4 was good enough to provide a chat conversation. Bung it on one of the home assistance devices, and I think folk would really like it and it would improve the lives of many. Even simple things like reminders no longer being a sterile "You have a reminder to take your tablets" it becomes "Marjorie don't forget in half an hour you'll need to take your heart tablets" and "That TV programme you liked about the chimpanzee, there's a new episode on tomorrow, should we watch that?"
 
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That may still happen, but automated driving is still some way off.

AI replacing office workers looks a slam dunk.

Depends on what the worker actually does. Do you think "office worker" is a single job? What do you think people do in offices? I've held several different jobs in offices, doing very different things. Some of those things could be automated, perhaps, but not all of them.

I feel like some are thinking "AI = Data from Star Trek" which may be true one day in the future, but right now AI doesn't even match the ship's computer on Star Trek and that computer was quite stupid. Couldn't even figure out what temperature to serve drinking water or memorize Picard's normal tea order!
 
There is an air of people who watched other people get automated, safe in the assumption that their special, unique jobs could never get automated, freaking out at the possibility of getting automated subtext hanging over a lot of this.
 
There is an air of people who watched other people get automated, safe in the assumption that their special, unique jobs could never get automated, freaking out at the possibility of getting automated subtext hanging over a lot of this.

Is there, though? What jobs have "been automated" to date? And were there actually a net loss of jobs as a result, or were there actual gains? Ford's assembly line introduction didn't reduce jobs -- it increased output. He had to hire more people to run the things and deal with that increased output--and pay them better. Toll booth operators can be replaced by those pass devices...but did the DoT actually reduce overall employment as a result, or did the workers get routed to other tasks like standing around watching other people fix a pothole?

AI is a thing, sure, but we've been hearing "machines are replacing our jobs! Panic!" since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Yet I'm pretty sure that if you adjusted for inflation and population growth and all the other variables that most nations today are doing rather better economically than they were two hundred years ago when all these steam engines and crap started showing up.
 
Okay fair point. Fear of being replaced by new tech hasn't exactly born out historically speaking.

I'll amend that to people who mocked the fears (justified or not) of being replaced by machines when it was blue collar factory workers and truckers now having a different reaction when it's ARTISTS! (Flourish) and actors and writers possibly being replaced is, again not universal but a subtext in a lot of this.

There is, in the discourse, this idea that Picasso or Hemingway getting replaced with an algorithm is "worse" then the guy on the Chrysler Assembly Line who attaches the rear view mirrors being replaced with a robot arm and I don't know if I agree with that, at least not to the degree or in the way other people do. That's the point I was trying to make and flubbed it badly in my first wording.
 
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Okay fair point. Fear of being replaced by new tech hasn't exactly born out historically speaking.

I'll amend that to people who mocked the fears (justified or not) of being replaced by machines when it was blue collar factory workers and truckers now having a different reaction when it's ARTISTS! (Flourish) and actors and writers possibly being replaced is, again not universal but a subtext in a lot of this.

There is, in the discourse, this idea that Picasso or Hemingway getting replaced with an algorithm is "worse" then the guy on the Chrysler Assembly Line who attaches the rear view mirrors being replaced with a robot arm and I don't know if I agree with that, at least not to the degree or in the way other people do. That's the point I was trying to make and flubbed it badly in my first wording.

I don't see AI as replacing creative work, but being a tool people can use creatively when they lack the actual skills to implement their vision. I suck at drawing, despite decades of trying. I'd love an AI tool that I could order "draw a picture of a happy marmot flipping burgers on a grill perched on the back of an elephant while atop another elephant's back a party of storks dressed like businessmen are drinking too many margaritas" and have it do so.

And way down the line, imagine this: fiction, where you can change the story! "Computer, I don't like where this is going. Change the story so the stolen necklace is emeralds rather than sapphires, make the duchess a vampire, change the setting to ancient Greece, and change Colonel Mustard to a brooding bad boy with fantastic abs". You could customize existing fiction -- "show me Twin Peaks, but remove all the executive interference in Season Two" or just add more "hey, computer, I really think there should have been more seasons of The Golden Girls. Create eight more episodes. And add Danny DeVito's character from It's Always Sunny as Rose's new boyfriend! And for god's sake replace the rattan furniture, it's horrible. Delete rattan from the database entirely."
 
I suck at drawing, despite decades of trying. I'd love an AI tool that I could order "draw a picture of a happy marmot flipping burgers on a grill perched on the back of an elephant while atop another elephant's back a party of storks dressed like businessmen are drinking too many margaritas" and have it do so.



https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/FhiAjB6R2xsww3QxDIf0

(Sadly I hit the character limit and could only get about 1/4th of the prompt actually in there.)

ETA: I assumed it was obvious but just to check all the marks in accordance with the new rules, the link is to an AI created image from the NightCafe AI.
 
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Interesting point about art and technology: When photography was introduced, some people predicted it would be the end of painting art. Not only was it not the end of painting art, it wasn't even the end of figurative art, AND photography turned into an artform of its own.

Hans
 

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