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“Nearly half of US office workers expressed concern that AI might take their jobs in a February survey by investment banking biz Jefferies.” I struggle to find

“Nearly half of US office workers expressed concern that AI might take their jobs in a February survey by investment banking biz Jefferies.” I struggle to find this to be a meaningful metric because I don’t expect the surveyed workers to be an authority on the subject. All this tells me is that they think they have a bullshit automatable job and that they are scared. Human history is littered with people being afraid of technology while it is actively improving their lives.

falcor84 3y ago
I initially read it as "AI might take their jobs in a February survey" and it got me thinking what exactly the AIs would be surveyed about. If the AIs will be asked about whether they'd like to take on each particular type of job, I can absolutely imagine the AIs rejecting some as not worthy of their time and leaving them to us.
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randomdata 3y ago
AI has taken many of my jobs already, which I've been okay with as I didn't particularly like doing that work in the first place. But, inevitably, there will come a time where AI will start doing work someone likes doing. I can see how that carries concern. Same as the story in manufacturing, really. The changes in manufacturing hit so hard because a lot of people really enjoy manufacturing. To the point that many people have hobby manufacturing facilities at their home just to be able to engage in what they love. It is not like we didn't absorb people into other jobs – there is always new work for humans to do – but those jobs weren't necessarily their cup of tea. But asking how someone feels is never going to give you any kind of ground breaking metric. It is not meant as anything other than a survey of feelings.
ben_w 3y ago
Sure, fear and reality are very different things. Works both ways though: For this specific fear, a lot of people spent most of my life saying "ha ha, this is silly, AI will never be able to ${x}" right before a major news story broke about an AI that could do ${x} now. For automation in general: I recently visited the Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin, which has a Jacquard loom by the café — people at the time reacted to that machine in much the same way people react today to GenAI. Something, something, the memes of production. That said, do be aware that while society did well from automation, many individuals suffered greatly from it, and the way it was handled 200 years ago led to literal Karl Marx writing the literal Communist Manifesto. Furthermore, even though we think of Communism as having lost the Cold War, the Laissez-faire form of Capitalism died with the Great Depression: we may have kept the name "Capitalism", but the way we structure our societies in capitalist nations, even the USA, has been substantially influenced by the Communist Manifesto to the extent we consider these things so foundational they are "common sense" — send all kids to school, women are not property, that kind of thing was novel when Marx wrote about it. I don't know what the future will be, but I bet 2124 going to be at least as surprising to us, as the Russian Revolution and domestic electricity would have been to someone from 1824.

falcor84 3y ago

I initially read it as "AI might take their jobs in a February survey" and it got me thinking what exactly the AIs would be surveyed about. If the AIs will be asked about whether they'd like to take on each particular type of job, I can absolutely imagine the AIs rejecting some as not worthy of their time and leaving them to us.

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randomdata 3y ago

AI has taken many of my jobs already, which I've been okay with as I didn't particularly like doing that work in the first place. But, inevitably, there will come a time where AI will start doing work someone likes doing. I can see how that carries concern. Same as the story in manufacturing, really. The changes in manufacturing hit so hard because a lot of people really enjoy manufacturing. To the point that many people have hobby manufacturing facilities at their home just to be able to engage in what they love. It is not like we didn't absorb people into other jobs – there is always new work for humans to do – but those jobs weren't necessarily their cup of tea. But asking how someone feels is never going to give you any kind of ground breaking metric. It is not meant as anything other than a survey of feelings.

ben_w 3y ago

Sure, fear and reality are very different things. Works both ways though: For this specific fear, a lot of people spent most of my life saying "ha ha, this is silly, AI will never be able to ${x}" right before a major news story broke about an AI that could do ${x} now. For automation in general: I recently visited the Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin, which has a Jacquard loom by the café — people at the time reacted to that machine in much the same way people react today to GenAI. Something, something, the memes of production. That said, do be aware that while society did well from automation, many individuals suffered greatly from it, and the way it was handled 200 years ago led to literal Karl Marx writing the literal Communist Manifesto. Furthermore, even though we think of Communism as having lost the Cold War, the Laissez-faire form of Capitalism died with the Great Depression: we may have kept the name "Capitalism", but the way we structure our societies in capitalist nations, even the USA, has been substantially influenced by the Communist Manifesto to the extent we consider these things so foundational they are "common sense" — send all kids to school, women are not property, that kind of thing was novel when Marx wrote about it. I don't know what the future will be, but I bet 2124 going to be at least as surprising to us, as the Russian Revolution and domestic electricity would have been to someone from 1824.