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"We should not be afraid of AI. Instead, we should hope for the amazing amount of good it will do in the world. It will saves lives by diagnosing diseases and d

"We should not be afraid of AI. Instead, we should hope for the amazing amount of good it will do in the world. It will saves lives by diagnosing diseases and driving us around more safely. It will enable breakthroughs by helping us find new planets and understand Earth's climate. It will help in areas we haven't even thought of today." Zuckerberg isn't afraid of AI because he already has more money than he will never need (or thousands of other people would need) in a lifetime. However, when AI gets good enough, it will make many jobs obsolete and they will not be replaced at a fast enough rate. I use simple forms of automation at my own company. Instead of hiring 3 or 4 workers, I write software. I can't imagine how many jobs will be replaced when AI gets to the point of near-human levels of learning.

rqebmm 11y ago
Technology has always obsoleted jobs[0]. However, humans are unceasingly creative and find new things to do once tedious tasks are automated. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment#His...
- cryoshon 11y ago
  What about the people who aren't so creative? Sure, the best of us will be fine, but that's always been the case. What about the ones who are struggling to remain relevant today? They'll get left behind unless something's done-- I'm not sure that retraining will be enough, not that there's any political movement in that direction.
  - 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
    Any bureaucracy seems like a move in that direction.
  - rqebmm 11y ago
    Those who are more creative will create ways for the less creative to contribute. It's not like the tech sector is made up entirely of creative geniuses, or even entirely of engineers, there's plenty of other jobs built around those creative endeavors that require varying skillsets.
- binarymax 11y ago
  Its not just about finding new things to do. Huge areas of jobs are about to be obsoleted and there won't immediately be vacancies that offer pay for those left out. For example: when self driving auto technology replaces delivery trucks, what will the truck drivers be doing?
  - rqebmm 11y ago
    I agree that in the short term there are things society will have to do to help people who's skills are being obsoleted, but in the long run I'm not afraid of humanity running out of stuff to do.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      It's exactly this short term that's the problem. Long-term we'll all be merry and living in cloud cities on Venus. If we get there. If enough people suddenly find themselves obsolete, our civilization may not survive short-term.
  - criddell 11y ago
    We can sell insurance to each other.
  - rhino369 11y ago
    You are probably overestimating the speed at which these new technologies destroy jobs. It's not like today someone invents a self driving rig, tomorrow every single truck driver is out of business. Adoption won't be so fast. It'll be a while before anyone is going to trust a load of valuable goods with an AI. There are security/theft issues, edgecase AI failure issues, loading unloading, etc. We've seen entire industries leave the USA. Probably within your lifetime. That said this can have devastating effects on economies. A lot of cities in the rust belt have felt this impact. But the opposite can happen. One of the huge reasons US companies offshore production is because of labor costs. If you reduce the man-hours / product, it makes sense to open back up domestically.
- karlheinz 11y ago
  Can you please point to the section where this evidence is provided? Last paragraph in the wikipedia section: "Research by the Oxford Martin School showed that employees engaged in "tasks following well-defined procedures that can easily be performed by sophisticated algorithms" are at risk of displacement. The study, published in 2013, shows that automation can affect both skilled and unskilled work and both high and low-paying occupations; however, low-paid physical occupations are most at risk.[7] However, according to a study published in McKinsey Quarterly[63] in 2015 the impact of computerization in most cases is not replacement of employees but automation of portions of the tasks they perform" Oxford or McKinsey Quarterly, which source do you prefer?
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- ibejoeb 11y ago
  We also invent imaginary problems to solve, which is rather frustrating. For example, the supremely complicated tax code in the USA would be infeasible without modern computer automation.
dave_sullivan 11y ago
Yeah, I'd like to hear more AI people (or anyone really) talk about practical solutions. AI will not enslave us or give us utopia; we will have enslaved ourselves with cameras and phone lines long before an AI has a chance to. Or utopia. Large swaths of the population unemployable though... That's a real issue. A living wage is the only good solution I can think of. Alternatively, pay people to dig and fill holes, but it's expensive and kind of pointless to make up unskilled jobs for people to do. I do wonder how much a living wage would cost in the US though. Shift some money from defense? There's a good job for AI: balance a budget based on pre-defined policy goals.
- random_upvoter 11y ago
  > Large swaths of the population unemployable though... That's a real issue. IMO the one job that is most threatened by future progress in AI is the job of software developer. As for the menial jobs, of course nobody cares whether a human or a machine mows your grass. But I do think that most people would rather be nursed by human being than a robot. I think there will be a big increase in care-giving jobs, which would be wonderful because the world is in dire need of care-givers.
avian 11y ago
More likely he is referring to the idea that AI is on the verge of destroying humanity itself. For instance: http://observer.com/2015/08/stephen-hawking-elon-musk-and-bill-gates-warn-about-artificial-intelligence/ http://observer.com/2015/08/stephen-hawking-elon-musk-and-bi... Which makes sense. The opinion of everyone I know that has actually worked with machine learning and state-of-the-art AI (as in, written code, ran experiments, etc.) is that the idea of today's AI suddenly waking up and taking over the world is utterly ridiculous, or at least not something we should be afraid of for the foreseeable future.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  People who worry about dangers of AI understand that too. However, figuring out how to make a safe AI may be much harder than building a powerful enough AI in the first place, therefore they argue it's worth to start working on AI safety now.
- kra34 11y ago
  Frankly the use of the word "intelligence" to describe advanced pattern recognition algorithms is pretty laughable. Nobody is even close to anything the involves actual thinking / learning. I think your day jobs are safe.
kylemathews 11y ago
Yeah, the last 100 years have sucked since the tractor was invented and I've been unable to find farm jobs. You just beautifully summarized the "Lump of Work fallacy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy Yes, technology changes/improvements causes transitions in the job market but as it turns out, human needs are endless and new jobs are created for displaced workers.
- damon_c 11y ago
  It will be different this time. (I know they probably said that all the other times...)
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  - _yosefk 11y ago
    Actually, Marx was saying the exact same thing about machinery unemploying people that HN is saying every now and then(I don't have a firm opinion on the matter, I just found it amusing to read the same argument made 150 years ago; Marx actually credited a whole slew of other economists with making this argument.) The quote (from https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/ch03.htm#c14 https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price...): "...one might infer, as Adam Smith, in whose days modern industry was still in its infancy, did infer, that the accelerated accumulation of capital must turn the balance in favour of the working man, by securing a growing demand for his labour. From this same standpoint many contemporary writers have wondered that English capital having grown in that last twenty years so much quicker than English population, wages should not have been more enhanced. But simultaneously with the progress of accumulation there takes place a progressive change in the composition of capital. That part of the aggregate capital which consists of fixed capital, machinery, raw materials, means of production in all possible forms, progressively increases as compared with the other part of capital, which is laid out in wages or in the purchase of labour. This law has been stated in a more or less accurate manner by Mr. Barton, Ricardo, Sismondi, Professor Richard Jones, Professor Ramsey, Cherbuilliez, and others." (I personally am not a huge fan of Marx's writings, mainly because of the strong contempt for humanity that I feel emanating from them... incidentally I've recently stumbled upon this one, though.) A scary analogy in favor of this argument is, a horse cannot economically perform almost any job today, hence most were slaughtered though few were kept for amusement. That happened after horses had a very good run where every improvement in technology increased "horse employment." If a machine exist to outperform a human in any conceivable job, it's not very different (and then you get to the discussion of the political options.) A counterargument is that up until now this argument was wrong many times, and that we're very far from an AGI, or even from machines beating humans at every possible task.
deegles 11y ago
Good. Then we can focus on creating jobs that are fulfilling and creative instead of repetitive and replaceable.
marknutter 11y ago
> it will make many jobs obsolete and they will not be replaced at a fast enough rate. Why won't they?
withdavidli 11y ago
Hopefully to the point where work is optional and everyone has a great standard of living because machines will do most things for us. I have hopes for a more utopian future versus one where most are homeless because their jobs get replaced. The transition will be painful. There's also the mentality of clinging to jobs because it's needed for livelihood. Wanting to keep jobs that will bring 0 value to society. Think about all the crappy toys we make that's thrown out after a month or two. Who would want to work these jobs except if it's needed to sustain a decent quality of life outside of work?
usaphp 11y ago
I don't get statements like yours. If we were following this path and not moving forward being afraid of obsolete jobs that new tech brings us - we wouLed be stuck in the past. Lots of people said the same when the assembly lines were introduced, lots of people lost their jobs because now it required less people to build the same thing, however assembly lines created lots of other higher skilled positions and now most of the assembly line process is done by robots (which were also dramatized by people with similar to yours opinion) and it also created a lot of higher skilled jobs to build those robots and maintain them. The same will happen with AI, it will create a higher skilled job market which will benefit a community in a long term. Being afraid of changes will always get us stuck in the past.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Changes are good. But as the skill requirement keeps rising, more and more people will find themselves unemployable in principle. Sure, it may be a transitional period, but what are you going to do if suddenly half of your extended family will depend on your income?
  - user8341116 11y ago
    Well, let me lay out the plan for you that Zuckerberg et al have in mind. 1. Create AI 2. Purge 80 - 90% of humanity in a WW 3. Live as kings of the planet indefinitely (since AI will have figured out a way to stop aging in humans by then). Personally, I have no problem with this plan even if it means my death, and that feeling is confirmed every time I turn I read the news.
joshkpeterson 11y ago
Eventually we will get to post-scarcity and have universal basic income. We just need to make sure we take care of people who have a rough time in the interim.
return0 11y ago
What will the AI be doing at that time? Won't it it be cooking food and taking care of the health of people? The rise of technology does lead to increased concentration of wealth, but that doesn't mean the rest of us will be starving.
equalarrow 11y ago
The same could be said about money as well. If AI could impact us in ways we cannot see right now, money is definitely one of them.
sixothree 11y ago
AI doesn't need to be good to replace billions of jobs. All it needs to know is how to navigate around and manipulate objects in the real world.
bko 11y ago
Do you suggest that current forms of technology be limited to create more jobs artificially or should only future advances in technology be limited? I don't see the difference really.
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tlrobinson 11y ago
I'm less concerned about AI "taking our jobs" (see the other comments on lump of labor fallacy, etc) than what happens if we cure all disease, which is the only thing keeping population in check. How many humans can Earth support? What happens when we run out of resources? Will the ability for humans to live much longer help us colonize space? I hope so. That said, it would be really nice to cure diseases that are particularly painful or kill young people (cancer, etc).
- user8341116 11y ago
  "What happens" is, the only reason 99% of humans are allowed to exist in the first place is because they were a good source of labor/taxes for the ruling class. Guess what happens the 99% no longer have anything worthwhile to offer?
gedrap 11y ago
>>> the point of near-human levels of learning Argh, these days, AI is like NoSQL a few years ago. The magical buzzword taken to an extreme level. When do you think it will happen, the point at which AI will overtake most of the jobs done by humans? By the time it happens, the society will change significantly. Significantly enough so that it's probably pointless to guess. Will the society adapt to the change? Well, it has adapted more or less successfully to the changes so far. Even when it happens, there will always be human factor. Humans are social, they need interaction with other humans. We should probably slow down with all the 'AI will take everything away!' drama (which makes nice headlines which contributed significantly to this buzz, thanks a lot). We should remind ourselves, that we don't even have self-driving cars in mainstream (or, in software terms, 'production'). We are talking about a massive leap here, required in both society to accept the change and the technology to make it feasible beyond cool demos. By the time this happens, who knows. Maybe half of the humanity will go extinct because of WW3? I get the hacker mentality, that we should try to change the world and everything. But sometimes, it's good to stop for a moment and do a reality check.
user8341116 11y ago
>However, when AI gets good enough, it will make capitalism obsolete ftfy
bsbechtel 11y ago
In other words, that frees up thousands and thousands of man hours that can now be devoted to figuring out how to teach a machine common sense.
kamaal 11y ago
>>I can't imagine how many jobs will be replaced when AI gets to the point of near-human levels of learning. Let me tell you there is no point in resisting the inevitable. In fact if anything preparing for it makes it easier when it actually happens.

rqebmm 11y ago

Technology has always obsoleted jobs[0]. However, humans are unceasingly creative and find new things to do once tedious tasks are automated. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment#His...

cryoshon 11y ago
What about the people who aren't so creative? Sure, the best of us will be fine, but that's always been the case. What about the ones who are struggling to remain relevant today? They'll get left behind unless something's done-- I'm not sure that retraining will be enough, not that there's any political movement in that direction.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
  Any bureaucracy seems like a move in that direction.
- rqebmm 11y ago
  Those who are more creative will create ways for the less creative to contribute. It's not like the tech sector is made up entirely of creative geniuses, or even entirely of engineers, there's plenty of other jobs built around those creative endeavors that require varying skillsets.
binarymax 11y ago
Its not just about finding new things to do. Huge areas of jobs are about to be obsoleted and there won't immediately be vacancies that offer pay for those left out. For example: when self driving auto technology replaces delivery trucks, what will the truck drivers be doing?
- rqebmm 11y ago
  I agree that in the short term there are things society will have to do to help people who's skills are being obsoleted, but in the long run I'm not afraid of humanity running out of stuff to do.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    It's exactly this short term that's the problem. Long-term we'll all be merry and living in cloud cities on Venus. If we get there. If enough people suddenly find themselves obsolete, our civilization may not survive short-term.
- criddell 11y ago
  We can sell insurance to each other.
- rhino369 11y ago
  You are probably overestimating the speed at which these new technologies destroy jobs. It's not like today someone invents a self driving rig, tomorrow every single truck driver is out of business. Adoption won't be so fast. It'll be a while before anyone is going to trust a load of valuable goods with an AI. There are security/theft issues, edgecase AI failure issues, loading unloading, etc. We've seen entire industries leave the USA. Probably within your lifetime. That said this can have devastating effects on economies. A lot of cities in the rust belt have felt this impact. But the opposite can happen. One of the huge reasons US companies offshore production is because of labor costs. If you reduce the man-hours / product, it makes sense to open back up domestically.
karlheinz 11y ago
Can you please point to the section where this evidence is provided? Last paragraph in the wikipedia section: "Research by the Oxford Martin School showed that employees engaged in "tasks following well-defined procedures that can easily be performed by sophisticated algorithms" are at risk of displacement. The study, published in 2013, shows that automation can affect both skilled and unskilled work and both high and low-paying occupations; however, low-paid physical occupations are most at risk.[7] However, according to a study published in McKinsey Quarterly[63] in 2015 the impact of computerization in most cases is not replacement of employees but automation of portions of the tasks they perform" Oxford or McKinsey Quarterly, which source do you prefer?
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ibejoeb 11y ago
We also invent imaginary problems to solve, which is rather frustrating. For example, the supremely complicated tax code in the USA would be infeasible without modern computer automation.

dave_sullivan 11y ago

Yeah, I'd like to hear more AI people (or anyone really) talk about practical solutions. AI will not enslave us or give us utopia; we will have enslaved ourselves with cameras and phone lines long before an AI has a chance to. Or utopia. Large swaths of the population unemployable though... That's a real issue. A living wage is the only good solution I can think of. Alternatively, pay people to dig and fill holes, but it's expensive and kind of pointless to make up unskilled jobs for people to do. I do wonder how much a living wage would cost in the US though. Shift some money from defense? There's a good job for AI: balance a budget based on pre-defined policy goals.

random_upvoter 11y ago
> Large swaths of the population unemployable though... That's a real issue. IMO the one job that is most threatened by future progress in AI is the job of software developer. As for the menial jobs, of course nobody cares whether a human or a machine mows your grass. But I do think that most people would rather be nursed by human being than a robot. I think there will be a big increase in care-giving jobs, which would be wonderful because the world is in dire need of care-givers.

avian 11y ago

More likely he is referring to the idea that AI is on the verge of destroying humanity itself. For instance: http://observer.com/2015/08/stephen-hawking-elon-musk-and-bill-gates-warn-about-artificial-intelligence/ http://observer.com/2015/08/stephen-hawking-elon-musk-and-bi... Which makes sense. The opinion of everyone I know that has actually worked with machine learning and state-of-the-art AI (as in, written code, ran experiments, etc.) is that the idea of today's AI suddenly waking up and taking over the world is utterly ridiculous, or at least not something we should be afraid of for the foreseeable future.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
People who worry about dangers of AI understand that too. However, figuring out how to make a safe AI may be much harder than building a powerful enough AI in the first place, therefore they argue it's worth to start working on AI safety now.
kra34 11y ago
Frankly the use of the word "intelligence" to describe advanced pattern recognition algorithms is pretty laughable. Nobody is even close to anything the involves actual thinking / learning. I think your day jobs are safe.

kylemathews 11y ago

Yeah, the last 100 years have sucked since the tractor was invented and I've been unable to find farm jobs. You just beautifully summarized the "Lump of Work fallacy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy Yes, technology changes/improvements causes transitions in the job market but as it turns out, human needs are endless and new jobs are created for displaced workers.

damon_c 11y ago
It will be different this time. (I know they probably said that all the other times...)
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- _yosefk 11y ago
  Actually, Marx was saying the exact same thing about machinery unemploying people that HN is saying every now and then(I don't have a firm opinion on the matter, I just found it amusing to read the same argument made 150 years ago; Marx actually credited a whole slew of other economists with making this argument.) The quote (from https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/ch03.htm#c14 https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price...): "...one might infer, as Adam Smith, in whose days modern industry was still in its infancy, did infer, that the accelerated accumulation of capital must turn the balance in favour of the working man, by securing a growing demand for his labour. From this same standpoint many contemporary writers have wondered that English capital having grown in that last twenty years so much quicker than English population, wages should not have been more enhanced. But simultaneously with the progress of accumulation there takes place a progressive change in the composition of capital. That part of the aggregate capital which consists of fixed capital, machinery, raw materials, means of production in all possible forms, progressively increases as compared with the other part of capital, which is laid out in wages or in the purchase of labour. This law has been stated in a more or less accurate manner by Mr. Barton, Ricardo, Sismondi, Professor Richard Jones, Professor Ramsey, Cherbuilliez, and others." (I personally am not a huge fan of Marx's writings, mainly because of the strong contempt for humanity that I feel emanating from them... incidentally I've recently stumbled upon this one, though.) A scary analogy in favor of this argument is, a horse cannot economically perform almost any job today, hence most were slaughtered though few were kept for amusement. That happened after horses had a very good run where every improvement in technology increased "horse employment." If a machine exist to outperform a human in any conceivable job, it's not very different (and then you get to the discussion of the political options.) A counterargument is that up until now this argument was wrong many times, and that we're very far from an AGI, or even from machines beating humans at every possible task.

deegles 11y ago

Good. Then we can focus on creating jobs that are fulfilling and creative instead of repetitive and replaceable.

marknutter 11y ago

> it will make many jobs obsolete and they will not be replaced at a fast enough rate. Why won't they?

withdavidli 11y ago

Hopefully to the point where work is optional and everyone has a great standard of living because machines will do most things for us. I have hopes for a more utopian future versus one where most are homeless because their jobs get replaced. The transition will be painful. There's also the mentality of clinging to jobs because it's needed for livelihood. Wanting to keep jobs that will bring 0 value to society. Think about all the crappy toys we make that's thrown out after a month or two. Who would want to work these jobs except if it's needed to sustain a decent quality of life outside of work?

usaphp 11y ago

I don't get statements like yours. If we were following this path and not moving forward being afraid of obsolete jobs that new tech brings us - we wouLed be stuck in the past. Lots of people said the same when the assembly lines were introduced, lots of people lost their jobs because now it required less people to build the same thing, however assembly lines created lots of other higher skilled positions and now most of the assembly line process is done by robots (which were also dramatized by people with similar to yours opinion) and it also created a lot of higher skilled jobs to build those robots and maintain them. The same will happen with AI, it will create a higher skilled job market which will benefit a community in a long term. Being afraid of changes will always get us stuck in the past.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Changes are good. But as the skill requirement keeps rising, more and more people will find themselves unemployable in principle. Sure, it may be a transitional period, but what are you going to do if suddenly half of your extended family will depend on your income?
- user8341116 11y ago
  Well, let me lay out the plan for you that Zuckerberg et al have in mind. 1. Create AI 2. Purge 80 - 90% of humanity in a WW 3. Live as kings of the planet indefinitely (since AI will have figured out a way to stop aging in humans by then). Personally, I have no problem with this plan even if it means my death, and that feeling is confirmed every time I turn I read the news.

joshkpeterson 11y ago

Eventually we will get to post-scarcity and have universal basic income. We just need to make sure we take care of people who have a rough time in the interim.

return0 11y ago

What will the AI be doing at that time? Won't it it be cooking food and taking care of the health of people? The rise of technology does lead to increased concentration of wealth, but that doesn't mean the rest of us will be starving.

equalarrow 11y ago

The same could be said about money as well. If AI could impact us in ways we cannot see right now, money is definitely one of them.

sixothree 11y ago

AI doesn't need to be good to replace billions of jobs. All it needs to know is how to navigate around and manipulate objects in the real world.

bko 11y ago

Do you suggest that current forms of technology be limited to create more jobs artificially or should only future advances in technology be limited? I don't see the difference really.

deleted 11y ago

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tlrobinson 11y ago

I'm less concerned about AI "taking our jobs" (see the other comments on lump of labor fallacy, etc) than what happens if we cure all disease, which is the only thing keeping population in check. How many humans can Earth support? What happens when we run out of resources? Will the ability for humans to live much longer help us colonize space? I hope so. That said, it would be really nice to cure diseases that are particularly painful or kill young people (cancer, etc).

user8341116 11y ago
"What happens" is, the only reason 99% of humans are allowed to exist in the first place is because they were a good source of labor/taxes for the ruling class. Guess what happens the 99% no longer have anything worthwhile to offer?

gedrap 11y ago

>>> the point of near-human levels of learning Argh, these days, AI is like NoSQL a few years ago. The magical buzzword taken to an extreme level. When do you think it will happen, the point at which AI will overtake most of the jobs done by humans? By the time it happens, the society will change significantly. Significantly enough so that it's probably pointless to guess. Will the society adapt to the change? Well, it has adapted more or less successfully to the changes so far. Even when it happens, there will always be human factor. Humans are social, they need interaction with other humans. We should probably slow down with all the 'AI will take everything away!' drama (which makes nice headlines which contributed significantly to this buzz, thanks a lot). We should remind ourselves, that we don't even have self-driving cars in mainstream (or, in software terms, 'production'). We are talking about a massive leap here, required in both society to accept the change and the technology to make it feasible beyond cool demos. By the time this happens, who knows. Maybe half of the humanity will go extinct because of WW3? I get the hacker mentality, that we should try to change the world and everything. But sometimes, it's good to stop for a moment and do a reality check.

user8341116 11y ago

>However, when AI gets good enough, it will make capitalism obsolete ftfy

bsbechtel 11y ago

In other words, that frees up thousands and thousands of man hours that can now be devoted to figuring out how to teach a machine common sense.

kamaal 11y ago

>>I can't imagine how many jobs will be replaced when AI gets to the point of near-human levels of learning. Let me tell you there is no point in resisting the inevitable. In fact if anything preparing for it makes it easier when it actually happens.