The AI prediction thread

[aociswundumho]

So this is a thread where you can toss out your AI predictions in writing. They can be positive predictions or negative predictions.

Here's my first prediction: AI is not going to cause mass unemployment. AI is a productivity tool and more productivity doesn't mean you need fewer people, it only means each person can do more. I predict that like every major technological leap before it, AI will create entirely new industries, new jobs, and new opportunities that we haven’t even imagined yet.

 

[SNOWFLAKE]

AI Overview


While individual snowflakes don't directly cause avalanches, the new snow from a snowfall (including snowflakes) can contribute to the formation of weak layers within the snowpack that can then lead to an avalanche if triggered by other factors, says The New York Times and Wikipedia. New snow often doesn't bond well with the existing snowpack, creating a potential weak layer. Additionally, the weight of new snow can overload the snowpack, making it more susceptible to failure.

Here's a more detailed explanation:

• Snowpack Structure:
  Avalanches occur when a weak layer in the snowpack fails and a slab of snow slides down a slope.
  
  
• New Snow as a Weak Layer:
  New snow, including individual snowflakes, often doesn't bond strongly with the underlying snowpack, creating a weak layer that can be prone to failure.
  
  
• Snowfall as a Trigger:
  Heavy snowfall can overload the snowpack, increasing the stress on these weak layers and making them more likely to fail.
  
  
• Other Factors:
  While new snow is a key factor, other elements like wind, temperature changes, and the existing snowpack structure also play a crucial role in avalanche formation.
  
  
• Human Triggering:
  Avalanches can be triggered by humans, often by skiers or snowmobilers, especially if they are traveling on or near slopes with existing weak layers.
  
  
• Natural Triggers:
  Natural triggers can include a rapid increase in temperature, strong solar radiation, or even earthquakes.

 

[SkyChief]

. . . Here's my first prediction: AI is not going to cause mass unemployment.

Agreed.

. . . AI will create entirely new industries, new jobs, and new opportunities that we haven’t even imagined yet.

Agreed.

I think hope someday we will have flying cars. I won't live long enough to ever see this happen, but maybe hopefully my grandchildren might.

It would require LOTS and LOTS of AI. I mean, can you imagine thousands of drunks and pissed off moms piloting their own flying cars? Not good. It would require that each car have a sophisticated AI pilot which could handle terabytes of real-time traffic status, and be in harmonious contact with hundreds or maybe thousands of other air vehicles buzzing around.

The passenger(s) would simply input the desired destination, and the AI pilot would take them there safely.

The future is bright for AI.

 

[Mr Person]

1. We won't make a true self-conscious consciousness in our lifteimes.

2. If humanity has not changed in ways I don't see it changing, the probability that it decides humanity must be controlled or destroyed is tremendous (we are horrible violent beasts, even if we sometimes pump out a Mozart).

3. Non-conscious AI in bad hands is a tremendous, near-catastrophic threat. Terrorists, rogue states, even maybe a super-billionaire who goes fully loops with dreams of power.... they are going to use them to design biological and other weapons. Game theory just about forces us to use our own "AI" to predict what other AI will come up with, and guess what we will seek to learn in the course of that. "AI" will be a weapon-building weapon.

4. Another tremendous risk: AI will help people severely reduce their own cretivity and intelligence. It already is. I think it was in the NYT, but an article covered a study of about 330 something people. Point was essay writing. By all measures, the people who wrote a series of papers without assistance were much better able to remember, defend, and further argue from what they wrote. The AI people....ehhhh... which is no surprise. *They* didn't write the paper, they just thought of things that should be in it and prompted AI.

5. AI weapons: a sci-fi dystopia. Philip K. Dick was right... a true visionary. He saw the ever-increasing obscene crassness and banality of the future. Somewhere between him and Black Mirror.



[possible edits]

 

[gdgyva]

It will cause issues for some....just as the advent of the computer and spreadsheets completely changed the landscape of all accounting businesses and offices everywhere

Managers and owners learned they could do more with less

Now there were other industries created....software companies popped up everyhere
Computer sales, and repairs

So there will be a lot of crosstraining into what ever new industries are created....
And hopefully like it did with the computer age, salaries will also rise with the new age

 

[Mr Person]

6. Discovery of new drugs, materials, engineering feats, solutions to equaitions, equations themselves, etc etc etc. A vast sea of potential.

7. INCELs can buy a super sex doll robot programmed with AI, and stop killing women because their vagina was not available on demand.

 

[dmpi]

AI will see the same growth path as the Internet, Huge boom then bust (i.e. dot-com) then re-insurgence as more pragmatic practical applications augmenting, not replacing what we have today. If you're into AI stocks watch out!! Things are going good but a washout is just over the horizon.

 

[aociswundumho]

AI porn should wipe out the entire human porn industry, so that's a positive thing.

 

[craig]

AI is a huge bubble. More than a trillion dollars has been spent already. The only companies making money are those selling technology and infrastructure. There are few if any profits being generated from actual use of AI and no reasonable expectation to recoup that investment in the next five to ten years.

 

[CaughtInThe]

Y'all's grandkids/great-grandkids are screwed.

No jobs will be left. AI and robots will do everything including program and maintain themselves.

 

[NJBob]

Here's my first prediction: AI is not going to cause mass unemployment.

AI is just one side of the coming tech revolution.

AI on its own will not cause mass unemployment but when combined with advances in robotics it’s going to happen.

Just like modern factories, with specialized robots, fewer people will be needed. Once generalized robots are available they will begin to replace people.

Imagine a workforce that doesn’t take days off, needs no benefits and will not go strike.

 

[Stealers Wheel]

AI is a huge bubble. More than a trillion dollars has been spent already. The only companies making money are those selling technology and infrastructure. There are few if any profits being generated from actual use of AI and no reasonable expectation to recoup that investment in the next five to ten years.

I disagree. AI is increasing productivity across several industries as we speak. What took human teams hours or days to complete AI does in mere minutes. That productivity translates to increased profits.

 

[Gatsby]

So this is a thread where you can toss out your AI predictions in writing. They can be positive predictions or negative predictions.

Here's my first prediction: AI is not going to cause mass unemployment. AI is a productivity tool and more productivity doesn't mean you need fewer people, it only means each person can do more. I predict that like every major technological leap before it, AI will create entirely new industries, new jobs, and new opportunities that we haven’t even imagined yet.

In the short-term, I agree that that's likely. But in the medium to long term, there are going to be fewer and fewer jobs that humans can do better and cheaper than AI.

 

[Gatsby]

By 2030 - AI is eating big sectors of the economy. LLMs will regularly pass the Turing Test, and if they fail it will be because they were accidentally too smart. Robots are getting quite good at jobs that require spatial awareness (e.g. transportation, farming, housekeeping, landscaping, mining, disaster assistance), but they still aren't great at jobs that require very fine motor skills and precise movements (e.g. surgery, dentistry, auto mechanics).

By 2035 - AI is better and cheaper than humans at most jobs. Establishing a UBI and rethinking our economic systems will probably become a major political issue, as unemployment rises even amidst a booming economy. Computer-brain interfaces (the successors of Neuralink) will be getting better, allowing us to become cyborgs and telepaths if we want to.

By 2040 - AI is better and cheaper than humans at nearly everything. There will be little reason for humans to "work" a "job" anymore (by which I mean exchange one's labor for money) because there will almost always be an AI/robot that can do it better. Most of us are cyborgs, so the line between human and machine is blurring anyway. AI-driven biotech and cybernetics mean that people no longer regularly grow old or sick, unless they want to.

 

[Econ4every1]

So this is a thread where you can toss out your AI predictions in writing. They can be positive predictions or negative predictions.

Here's my first prediction: AI is not going to cause mass unemployment. AI is a productivity tool

and more productivity doesn't mean you need fewer people, it only means each person can do more. I predict that like every major technological leap before it, AI will create entirely new industries, new jobs, and new opportunities that we haven’t even imagined yet.

I agree with your prediction at least in part. Right now AI has what is known as the "last mile" problem. When you tell an AI to complete a complex task, usually it can get pretty close to what you want. In successive iterations it can get closer and closer, but at some point, there is a rate of diminishing return. This is where a human will step in and take over the task.

Won't AI just get better and better?

I don't think so. There is a problem of the rate of diminishing returns. AI has, quite literally reached the end if the internet. AI models are running out of training data. It doesn't mean the end of learning, it means that AI has gone as far as it can with the "low hanging fruit". For AI models to improve processes will have to be improved, or we can build powerplants to support larger and larger models (more brute force). That is slower work, and while I think it will progress, it will be slow compared to the last 10 years. Of course AI itself will assist and will make the process faster. I don't think we'll see quantum leaps in the 5-7 years like we have in the last 5-7 years.

The rest of my answer will be a thread in the Government Debt forum as it is more relevant there.

The short shot is that AI will create a paradigm shift in our lives and economy, but the question of creating new opportunities and businesses depends on how the nation proceeds economically.

 

[aociswundumho]

By 2030 - AI is eating big sectors of the economy.

It still can't even get voice to text right. Google maps still has me driving in circles sometimes.

By 2040 - AI is better and cheaper than humans at nearly everything.

You think AI will be able to remodel a kitchen 15 years from now? Will it be able to fix and bleed the brakes on my truck? Will it be able to trim the trees in my backyard? How about just being able to clean my bathroom properly?

 

[Gatsby]

It still can't even get voice to text right. Google maps still has me driving in circles sometimes.

I haven't had any problems whatsoever with voice-to-text in several years, or with Google Maps in many many years.

You think AI will be able to remodel a kitchen 15 years from now?

Yes.

Will it be able to fix and bleed the brakes on my truck?

Yes.

Will it be able to trim the trees in my backyard?

Yes.

How about just being able to clean my bathroom properly?

Yes. All of these things will be easily doable in 15 years. The last one is on the verge of being doable right now, although it's still expensive / not very good.

 

[ASHES]

It's going to solve all our problems. Maybe.

It's going to lead to our destruction. Maybe.

 

[ASHES]

Imagine a workforce that doesn’t take days off, needs no benefits and will not go strike.

Yet. I'm sure they thought the same of the serfs and the peasants.

 

[aociswundumho]

Yes. All of these things will be easily doable in 15 years.

Without any human intervention? Because if it still needs people, then all it's doing it making people more productive.

 

[Lord Tammerlain]

AI is likely to cause large job losses

AI can create videos based on prompts into the AI program

Limiting the need for actors, animators, stage staff costumers etc. Sure it opens up the potential for more people to create more content, but people can only watch so much content. Out of the millions of people on YouTube only a small % make money creating content

There are automobile factories in China that are 90% automated without the assist of AI humanoid robots. With China's large scale manufacturing and overproduction they still have an unemployment problem, heck many local governments have make work type jobs paying people to clean parks, where there are more cleaners during the day than people visiting the park. That is in a country with a retirement age of 60 for men and 55 for women.

If there was a market for the goods they could easily increase production to higher levels.

So in reality governments will need to create make work jobs for people, or just provide a basic income.

 

[Gatsby]

Without any human intervention? Because if it still needs people,

I think there might be a handful of people still employed in 2040: People who have jobs that can't be automated for legal reasons (e.g. congresspeople), people who have jobs that haven't been eliminated yet due to inertia (e.g. office jobs at stodgy risk-averse corporations), or people who have very niche skills that AI can't yet do better/cheaper (e.g. a handful of AI researchers). But I think these jobs will probably be a very small fraction of the number of people employed now...maybe 5-10% of the current workforce.

The number of jobs where AI actually *needs* people will likely be very small.

then all it's doing it making people more productive.

If you mean more productive in the sense of higher GDP per capita, I agree. I assume GDP per capita will be much higher in 2040 than it is now, barring a civilizational collapse.

 

[Slartibartfast]

At this point, I think its likely that AI will result in either a post capitalistic economic model (I have no idea what this might look like) or the deaths of tens of millions as the number of humans is pruned to fit the remaining amount of available work. In either case, we are likely to be in a post-democratic society as well. I think its unlikely we will have AGI. Instead we will have people who have the power to tune and orient the models as needed to control the masses.

Its likely a nightmare scenario.

 

[Gatsby]

In either case, we are likely to be in a post-democratic society as well.

I agree with this. I don't see any way that democracy can be a viable political system in a world with AI. Reading "Nexus" by Yuval Noah Harari made me think it's probably impossible.

 

[reinaert]

I used to do compliance on my own. Now, I can open doors a drone can't open, but the compliance is done at HQ, using "ai".

I'm still being paid, but once drones can open doors, or as soon as retailers add drone bays to their site infrastructure, that's it for me.

I spend a bit of my day in big box retailers, and as I watch the giant vendors' salesmen go about placing orders and schmoozing mid-level managers, I know I'm watching guys shortly out of work. Several of the big grocery behemoths have on-shelf and algorithm assisted ordering in testing. The merchandisers will be next, as soon as drones can pop and tile a chip gondola, or load a rear facing cooler.

From what I've heard, Albertsons has some locations in testing that don't require POS, cashiers or CS because the exit scanners have a higher scan accuracy rate than humans. You just push a carriage through and your whole cart is billed to your account.

It's coming.