Technological Unemployment News & Discussions

[erowind]

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[wjfox]

[Tadasuke]

I think the key to happiness on the Internet in the modern day is to avoid social media like plague and spend time in niche communities or actually doing something like playing a game, looking at/creating art, watching anime, manga, etc. Don't let yourself get caught in the algorithmic dopamine loop that throws outrage at us at every turn. The internet is still magical in the right places.

I get it though, it always makes me sad when I see some community online I love get ruined in some way or when I let myself get too caught up in the dopamine loop of endless content scrolling.

Yeah, there are distractions literally everywhere and if we aren't cautious, we get so distracted, that we can neither be productive or focused nor happy, comfortable or fulfilled. We have to always keep in mind, that WWW is basically a distraction-generating machine (especially when you can "engage" with a content somehow, for example by commenting). And algorithms on WWW websites are often designed to keep us distracted. Even more and more in some cases (depending on how much prone to that a person is).

Focusing is not about saying yes, focusing is about saying no, to all that is better to not focus on at a moment or during an entire week. Many people don't understand this well enough. Rich people have people under them to filter what is unnecessary for them and would be a waste of their precious time. So they feel better, usually.

[wjfox]

Half Of All Skills Will Be Outdated Within Two Years, Study Suggests

Oct 14, 2023,11:20am EDT

Executives believe nearly half of the skills that exist in today’s workforce won’t be relevant just two years from now, thanks to artificial intelligence. And a lot of that includes their own skills. This startling proclamation came out of a recent survey of 800 executives and 800 employees released by edX, an online education platform.

The executives estimate that nearly half (49%) of the skills that exist in their workforce today won’t be relevant in 2025. The same number, 47%, believe their workforces are unprepared for the future workplace. Identifying skills shortages is not a surprising result to come out of an educational platform provider, but the short timespan is an eye-opener.

Executives in the survey estimate that within the next five years, their organizations will eliminate over half (56%) of entry-level knowledge worker roles because of AI. What’s more, 79% of executives predict that entry-level knowledge worker jobs will no longer exist as AI creates an entirely new suite of roles for employees entering the workforce. On top of that, 56% say their own roles will be “completely” or “partially” replaced by AI.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendr ... 897d912dc2

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[Powers]

I like how these wojak memes are templarized like rage comics.

[funkervogt]

What if we extend the meme down another row to see what happens in 2036?

"Robots took my welding job!"

"LMAO Something something."

[Powers]

2116:

"Remember when we used to breathe?"

"Yes."

[raklian]

2116:

"Remember when we used to breathe?"

"Yes."

2176:

"Remember when you used to say you remember you used to breathe?"

"Did I? I don't remember. Let me check my Life Record."

[Tadasuke]

It would be optimal, if AIs/robots first took the worst jobs that are out there, and then proceeded to take jobs in a sequence: from the worst out there, trough the mid-level ones, to the best out there at the very end in the distant future (if ever).

[Tadasuke]

1982 documentary about work and industry in Japan, they show rising automation and how worrying is that for near future unemployment:



Turned out, nowadays there is more worry about aging society, childlessness, loneliness, ill mental health and not enough and not good enough automation to fill all needs (which are growing). Worrying about the future is mostly useless and pointless. It doesn't go as planned, prophesied or predicted anyway.

[wjfox]

The Self-Checkout Nightmare May Finally Be Ending

By Thomas Germain
Published Yesterday

Don’t ring the funeral bells just yet, but the self-checkout kiosk horror show could be nearing its end. So far, the grand experiment in robot cashiers is an abject failure. Stores across the country are reversing course on the machines, and consensus is growing among analysts and insiders that self-checkout has been a disaster for consumers and retailers alike, according to a new report in the BBC. The machines aren’t disappearing anytime soon, but if nothing else, you can expect fewer stores to force them on you in the near future.

In 2023, Target restricted self-checkout kiosks in some stores to ten items or less. Walmart pulled the machines out of a number of locations altogether. Booths, a British grocery chain, abandoned self-checkout entirely. Dollar General made enormous bets on self checkout tech in 2022, but it recently announced the project flopped. On a December earnings call, Dollar General CEO Todd Vasos said the retailer is planning to increase the number of employees in stores, particularly in the checkout area, in a major reversal of its checkout strategy.

[...]

The biggest problem is theft. Not only is it easy to steal from self-checkout machines, it can be hard not to steal from them. Shoppers are reportedly 21 times more likely to sneak items past machines than human cashiers, but consumers also constantly steal unintentionally because the self-checkout process can be so cumbersome. One in five shoppers reported that they’ve accidentally stolen items during self-checkout in a survey from Lending Tree. One in seven said they’ve stolen from self-checkout on purpose.

Not only do self-checkout machines double theft rates, they actually increase labor costs thanks to employees who get taken away from their other duties to help customers deal with the confusing and error prone kiosks. Overall, some analysts say the machines increase costs overall, which is especially painful news for the industry because they’re so expensive to install. A system of four machines can cost upwards of six figures.

Still, 60% of consumers said they prefer self-checkout as of 2021, presumably because they’ve never seen Terminator (wake up sheeple). That’s true even though 67% said they’ve had self-checkout machines fail. But a growing number of consumers are souring on self-checkout, thanks to endless frustrations, accusations of theft, and wasted time.

https://gizmodo.com/the-self-checkout-n ... 1851169879

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman warns AI is a ‘fundamentally labor replacing’ tool over the long term

January 17, 2024 at 10:27 PM GMT

DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman is a heavyweight in the AI space. The Oxford dropout worked as a negotiator for the United Nations and the Dutch government early in his career, but then pivoted to AI and founded DeepMind in 2010 alongside Demis Hassabis and Shane Legg.

The machine learning lab grew like a weed under Suleyman, with the backing of Peter Thiel’s Founders’ Fund, before selling to Google parent company Alphabet for £400 million in 2014. Suleyman then took on several roles at DeepMind before stepping down five years later.

Now, the veteran AI founder is working on a new company called Inflection AI, which offers personalized AI assistants. And while Suleyman remains an avid supporter of AI, he expressed concerns about the industry’s possible negative effects—in particular on workers.

“In the long term…we have to think very hard about how we integrate these tools, because left completely to the market and to their own devices, these are fundamentally labor replacing tools,” Suleyman told CNBC on Wednesday at the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland.

[...]

“Everything that is of value in our world has been created by our intelligence, our ability to reason over information and make predictions. These tools do exactly that, so it’s going to be very fundamental,” he explained Wednesday.

https://fortune.com/2024/01/17/mustafa- ... long-term/

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

How AI Could Help Curb Global Labor Shortages
by Neil Irwin
January 29, 2024

Introduction:

(Axios) In conversations with a slew of business leaders this month about the economic implications of generative AI, a recurring theme cropped up: that AI-driven productivity gains are the world's best hope to limit the pain of a demographic squeeze.

Why it matters: As computers get better at doing jobs humans have traditionally done, it creates the risk of mass displacement of workers.

• But the flip side is an emerging shortage of working-age humans in most advanced economies and a murky future for globalization, which effectively expands the global pool of workers.

• The big macroeconomic question for the coming decade is which force proves more powerful — the undersupply of workers or the displacement of jobs caused by AI.

State of play: The Baby Boom generation is entering retirement years and comparatively smaller generations are entering their prime working years.
There is no equivalent of China's massive population poised to join the global economy, as happened in the early years of this century.

Read more here: https://www.axios.com/2024/01/29/ai-jo ... -shortage

[wjfox]

New Report Confirms Worst Fears: AI Will Disrupt Countless Animation Jobs Over Next 3 Years

By Amid Amidi | 01/31/2024 1:47 pm

There is little doubt that the emergence of generative artificial intelligence models will massively disrupt the future of the entertainment industry. This week, a new report outlined just how devastating the impact of Generative AI (GenAI) could be to artists over the next three years.

The report (downloadable here as a PDF) warns that GenAI “signifies a large-scale transition from existing techniques into new processes” and it will “likely rebalance the demand for labor and capital across the entertainment industries.”

For creative workers, this means they will be “facing an era of disruption, defined by the consolidation of some job roles, the replacement of existing job roles with new ones, and the elimination of many jobs entirely.”

The survey was conducted by consulting firm CVL Economics and co-commissioned by The Animation Guild IATSE Local 839, the Concept Art Association, the Human Artistry Campaign, and the National Cartoonists Society Foundation. It polled 300 bosses from six entertainment industries, including C-suite executives, senior executives, and mid-level managers. It was conducted between November 17 and December 22, 2023.

Easily the most alarming takeaway from the study: GenAI is not a hypothetical technology that could impact film, gaming, and vfx artists at some distant date in the future. It is available right now and it is upending the entertainment industry today. In fact, two-thirds of the 300 business leaders who were surveyed expect GenAI to play a role in consolidating or replacing existing job titles in the coming three years (2024-2026).

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/artist-righ ... 37495.html

[funkervogt]

Nobel prizewinning economist Christopher Pissarides predicts narrow AI will destroy countless STEM-dependent jobs.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nobel-pr ... 17209.html

And respected economist Tyler Cowen predicts narrow AI will destroy countless “wordcel” jobs.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginal ... ed-ai.html

In other words, there's room for everyone to get a kick in the nuts.

[wjfox]