Part of Musk’s worry stems from social destabilization and job loss. “When I say everything, the robots will do everything, bar nothing,” he said.
That's still a ways off. Robot manipulation in unstructured environments is still terrible. See the DARPA Humanoid Challenge. People have been underestimating that problem for at least 40 years.
But that doesn't help with the job situation. Only 14% of the US workforce is in manufacturing, mining, construction, and agriculture, the jobs where robot manipulation in unstructured environments matters. Those aren't the jobs at risk.
I've been saying for a while that the near future is "Machines should think, people should work". An Amazon warehouse is an expression of that concept. So are some fast-food restaurants. So is Uber. The computers handle the planning and organization of work; the humans are just hands for the computers. (Yes, "Manna", by Marshall Brain.) That's going to become more common. Computers are just better at organization and communication than humans.
Computers have already made a big dent in middle-class jobs, and that's going to continue.
If everything you do goes in and out over a wire, you're very vulnerable to automation. If 20% of what you do can't be done by a computer, that means five of you will be replaced by one person. This is already hitting low-level lawyers; it hit paralegals years ago.
The end state of this trend is a modest number of well-paid people in control, a huge number of people taking orders from computers, and many people without jobs. That's not far away; one or two decades. It's mostly deploying technology that already exists.
If you compare factory lines from 100-150 years ago, we've cut out around 90% of the workers.
If you look at office spaces pre and post computers they have roughly the same amount of people.
AI is going to do to the office space what robots did to factories.
It'll be a slow unnoticeable process for the most part. Automation of a single process may save as little as 5 minutes a day per workflow, but eventually it adds up to a position not getting rehired as it usually would have.
Sure the AI business will create jobs, but not as many as it replaces and try telling a lawyer to go back to school to get a relevant education.
That's still a ways off. Robot manipulation in unstructured environments is still terrible. See the DARPA Humanoid Challenge. People have been underestimating that problem for at least 40 years.
But that doesn't help with the job situation. Only 14% of the US workforce is in manufacturing, mining, construction, and agriculture, the jobs where robot manipulation in unstructured environments matters. Those aren't the jobs at risk.
I've been saying for a while that the near future is "Machines should think, people should work". An Amazon warehouse is an expression of that concept. So are some fast-food restaurants. So is Uber. The computers handle the planning and organization of work; the humans are just hands for the computers. (Yes, "Manna", by Marshall Brain.) That's going to become more common. Computers are just better at organization and communication than humans.
Computers have already made a big dent in middle-class jobs, and that's going to continue. If everything you do goes in and out over a wire, you're very vulnerable to automation. If 20% of what you do can't be done by a computer, that means five of you will be replaced by one person. This is already hitting low-level lawyers; it hit paralegals years ago.
The end state of this trend is a modest number of well-paid people in control, a huge number of people taking orders from computers, and many people without jobs. That's not far away; one or two decades. It's mostly deploying technology that already exists.