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There are many, many jobs that you could eliminate without inventing sentient AI. Anything that requires implementing a plan, rather than coming up with the kno

by mshron 13y ago

There are many, many jobs that you could eliminate without inventing sentient AI. Anything that requires implementing a plan, rather than coming up with the knowledge, should be fair game. Doctors, most of contract law, teaching, lots of logistical jobs. I imagine we're going to get there awhile before we get to strong AI.

seiji 13y ago
Let's break it down: Medical — Diagnosticians (Gregory House, M.D.) should absolutely be replaced by non-sentient decision/aggregation/clustering systems. Most medical things don't require talented surgeons. We can have PAs do almost all of the hands-on stuff. For the foreseeable future, we'll need actual doctors, nurses, and surgeons for emergency procedures. For routine medical procedures, general purpose robots with enough dexterity to do autonomous medical operations don't exist yet. What we could have is a cluster of talented medical robot operators (in india? somewhere cheap) doing a dozen operations a day by telepresence with hospitals outfitted with standard medical robot equipment. Law — Yes, they can be gone. Teaching — Tricky. We don't have ractives or illustrated primers yet. Teaching is everything from helping a 5 year old write the letter S to yelling at undergrads who almost blow up a chemistry lab due to inattention. Logistical jobs — automated cars, automated busses, automated truck driving. Yes, let's do that. I trust your 500 sensors evaluated 100 times per second are safer and more accurate than any human.
- mshron 13y ago
  Right. My larger point though is that there are lots and lots and lots of jobs that can be eliminated without strong AI. We may succeed in destroying the demand side of the economy long before we solve the problem of making the supply side pointless.
- jonnathanson 13y ago
  "For routine medical procedures, general purpose robots with enough dexterity to do autonomous medical operations don't exist yet. What we could have is a cluster of talented medical robot operators (in india? somewhere cheap) doing a dozen operations a day by telepresence with hospitals outfitted with standard medical robot equipment." Not per se, but we're coming damned close in this area. Surgical robots are becoming quite dexterous, and even though most of them require remote operation, it's not because of limitations in the dexterity or precision of the machines -- it's because of limitations in the AI. Also, as with most things in medicine, the elephant in the room is liability. Who's liable if a fully autonomous machine malfunctions in a surgery, or is improperly maintained, etc? The hospital? The manufacturer? The machinist/programmer? The doctors who were present in the same room as the machine? Nobody wants to be stuck holding the bag on that one.
- dinkumthinkum 13y ago
  There is something about our community that makes for a population of presumably smart people at programming but very impractically minded about many, many other things. Law requires much more creativity and gray area sort of thinking than you suggest with replacing it with some "non-sentient" AI. Medicine? Are you serious? I'm a great fan of science fiction but it's almost like when you combine a little bit of technical knowledge with an over indulgent diet of science fiction, you get a, in my view, very naive, strange sort of thinking.
- sopooneo 13y ago
  A great deal of being a good teacher is being able to excite and motivate students. This goes from kindergarten through at least undergrad. And it applies across the socioeconomic spectrum.

by mshron 13y ago

seiji 13y ago

Let's break it down: Medical — Diagnosticians (Gregory House, M.D.) should absolutely be replaced by non-sentient decision/aggregation/clustering systems. Most medical things don't require talented surgeons. We can have PAs do almost all of the hands-on stuff. For the foreseeable future, we'll need actual doctors, nurses, and surgeons for emergency procedures. For routine medical procedures, general purpose robots with enough dexterity to do autonomous medical operations don't exist yet. What we could have is a cluster of talented medical robot operators (in india? somewhere cheap) doing a dozen operations a day by telepresence with hospitals outfitted with standard medical robot equipment. Law — Yes, they can be gone. Teaching — Tricky. We don't have ractives or illustrated primers yet. Teaching is everything from helping a 5 year old write the letter S to yelling at undergrads who almost blow up a chemistry lab due to inattention. Logistical jobs — automated cars, automated busses, automated truck driving. Yes, let's do that. I trust your 500 sensors evaluated 100 times per second are safer and more accurate than any human.

mshron 13y ago
Right. My larger point though is that there are lots and lots and lots of jobs that can be eliminated without strong AI. We may succeed in destroying the demand side of the economy long before we solve the problem of making the supply side pointless.
jonnathanson 13y ago
"For routine medical procedures, general purpose robots with enough dexterity to do autonomous medical operations don't exist yet. What we could have is a cluster of talented medical robot operators (in india? somewhere cheap) doing a dozen operations a day by telepresence with hospitals outfitted with standard medical robot equipment." Not per se, but we're coming damned close in this area. Surgical robots are becoming quite dexterous, and even though most of them require remote operation, it's not because of limitations in the dexterity or precision of the machines -- it's because of limitations in the AI. Also, as with most things in medicine, the elephant in the room is liability. Who's liable if a fully autonomous machine malfunctions in a surgery, or is improperly maintained, etc? The hospital? The manufacturer? The machinist/programmer? The doctors who were present in the same room as the machine? Nobody wants to be stuck holding the bag on that one.
dinkumthinkum 13y ago
There is something about our community that makes for a population of presumably smart people at programming but very impractically minded about many, many other things. Law requires much more creativity and gray area sort of thinking than you suggest with replacing it with some "non-sentient" AI. Medicine? Are you serious? I'm a great fan of science fiction but it's almost like when you combine a little bit of technical knowledge with an over indulgent diet of science fiction, you get a, in my view, very naive, strange sort of thinking.
sopooneo 13y ago
A great deal of being a good teacher is being able to excite and motivate students. This goes from kindergarten through at least undergrad. And it applies across the socioeconomic spectrum.