What Will Remain for People to Do?
knightcolumbia.org

What paid work might remain for human beings to do if we approach a world where AI is able to perform all economically useful tasks more productively than human beings? In this paper, I argue that the answer is not ‘none at all.’ In fact, there are good reasons to believe that tasks will still remain for people to do, due to three limits: ‘general equilibrium limits,’ involving tasks in which labor has the comparative advantage over machines (even if it does not have the absolute advantage); ‘preference limits,’ involving tasks where human beings might have a taste or preference for an un-automated process; and ‘moral limits,’ involving tasks with a normative character, where human beings believe they require a ‘human in the loop’ to exercise their moral judgment. In closing, I consider the limits to these limits as AI gradually, but relentlessly, becomes ever-more capable.

  • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    7 days ago

    Bruh, I get how you feel, but your complaints are with capitalism, not algorithms that are wildly better than previous ones at fuzzy pattern matching.

    Here is an example of how AI has already literally revolutionized science through one targeted project:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P_fHJIYENdI

    This work won the Nobel prize in chemistry.

    And my best friend literally did his PhD in protein crystallography, is at MIT doing a protein structural analysis Post Doc, and the work of the new AI based protein structural predictions has literally completely changed the direction of their lab’s research, basically overnight.

    Because, yes AI algorithms literally are able to solve a new class of problems. It’s literally what this old pre-LLM xkcd is talking about: https://xkcd.com/1425/ and while it’s asking for confirmation of a ‘bird’, identifying photos of say, cancer, is the literal exact same problem from an algorithm standpoint, and is a huge amount of other fuzzy pattern matching problems.

    Yeah there’s a lot of dumb tech bros over hyping AI, and a lot of giant corporations that care about using it for literally nothing but getting personally richer, but you’re going to be misinformed the other direction about its genuine usefulness if you just read nothing but AI doomer blogs from people who don’t actually bother trying to use or understand the technology.

    • VerticaGGEnglish
      1·
      4 days ago

      Capitalism is merely a child of heirarchal domination. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1ZK2-viyAo

      Real shit im glad you’re able to find a few diamonds in the rough – BUT from the fashy techbros you mentioned to Corpo wide mainstream forcefeeding it, absolutely a net negative.

      Truly, I love new tech. Always have. I wanna love AI…but as things stand I come to the inevitable conclusion that it is tossing gas on the fires that are the climate crisis, on social and economic inequity and so, sweet summer child soooo much more. I’m far from a doomer. Pull your head out your ass.

      “bruh”

      • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        4 days ago

        Real shit im glad you’re able to find a few diamonds in the rough – BUT from the fashy techbros you mentioned to Corpo wide mainstream forcefeeding it, absolutely a net negative.

        In what way are they causing more harm than they were with crypto, or with gamification, or with social media, or with whatever tech fad came before that?

        The point is that tech bros and conman have always existed and have always been shilling overhyped shit. That’s a reality of the world we live in, not a new invention of AI.

        And by “few diamonds in the rough”, I assume you mean a literal entirely new class of problems that computers were unable to solve for before?

        Truly, I love new tech. Always have. I wanna love AI…but as things stand I come to the inevitable conclusion that it is tossing gas on the fires that are the climate crisis, on social and economic inequity and so, sweet summer child soooo much more. I’m far from a doomer.

        Just because you bookend your doomer statement with ‘i love tech’ and ‘im far from a doomer’, doesn’t make it not a doomer’ statement. You literally start it by saying that your pessimistic conclusion is inevitable.