It sure seems like the kids who passed on college and learned a trade are going to be the well-off ones. AI and automation can't fix broken plumbing, build infrastructure, or restore services after an outage. My brother just complained to me last night about Expedia's piss-poor AI after they charged him one extra night when he didn't stay. Customer service and conflict resolution is an art, and that's one of the first places companies have put a big "screw you" to their customers. I get that it's not a fun job, but upset customers usually want to be heard as much as they want their problem to be resolved. We should proceed with caution when dehumanizing our world. It eventually will become too sterile to live in.

That said, we have implimented an automated service that handles a mindless, mundane task, but it didn't replace any people. Instead, we repurposed them to more valuable work in our department.

Darmok N JaladIt sure seems like the kids who passed on college and learned a trade are going to be the well-off ones. AI and automation can't fix broken plumbing, build infrastructure, or restore services after an outage. My brother just complained to me last night about Expedia's piss-poor AI after they charged him one extra night when he didn't stay. Customer service and conflict resolution is an art, and that's one of the first places companies have put a big "screw you" to their customers. I get that it's not a fun job, but upset customers usually want to be heard as much as they want their problem to be resolved. We should proceed with caution when dehumanizing our world. It eventually will become too sterile to live in.

That said, we have implimented an automated service that handles a mindless, mundane task, but it didn't replace any people. Instead, we repurposed them to more valuable work in our department.

yep, I always tell young people to major in something in-demand, like nursing, or go to a local community college and become an electrician, welder, etc. in USA our community colleges typically work with local businesses to offer what is in demand majors for their specific local areas. it's pretty smart, if USA was really smart we would offer free community college to everyone from age 18-23 or something. but the USA is not smart sadly. oh well. give people economic mobility = more tax revenue for your nation state, etc. foundation is already there, just not being used well.

Darmok N JaladThat said, we have implimented an automated service that handles a mindless, mundane task, but it didn't replace any people. Instead, we repurposed them to more valuable work in our department.

I think that is a shared sentiment with a lot of engineers that are behind AI, and the mathmaticians and research scientists and behavioralists. There are a lot more teams behind it then "people that can code" and even they shouldnt be chastised for what ends up being a marketing or in some cases even the purpose of the company. AI isnt inherently bad and can even be applied for good, but misery loves company and its easier to bitch about it.

I love the arguments for trades, but in this century I would consider being able to program one of them, if not soon. Not to mention its just two sides of the same coin. What if they are just inherently good at understanding the systems and logic behind making LLMs? Its ok if they lose there jobs and cant pay their mortgage because they dont know how to drive a bulldozer? Who gets to make that decision? Most of these engineers are grads and more than likely in there mid 20s, not the young entrepreneurs on news outlets. The adoption and usage of AI for good or bad was more than likely decided at a company level years ago, before they were even old enough to enter the field.

I choose to see the good it can bring as someone that also lives to automate things. I am my own worst enemy because the things I commit to the corp github CAN replace me. Also for the record, pretty handy with an arc welder. Even if my battle ground is VScode.

Space Lynxyep, I always tell young people to major in something in-demand, like nursing, or go to a local community college and become an electrician, welder, etc. in USA our community colleges typically work with local businesses to offer what is in demand majors for their specific local areas. it's pretty smart, if USA was really smart we would offer free community college to everyone from age 18-23 or something. but the USA is not smart sadly. oh well. give people economic mobility = more tax revenue for your nation state, etc. foundation is already there, just not being used well.

I look forward to the day when we have no scientists and engineers, just tradespeople and lawyers and we rely on them for all our scientific, medial and engineering discoveries. Parents please make sure your kids only want to become skilled labourers.

Minus InfinityI look forward to the day when we have no scientists and engineers, just tradespeople and lawyers and we rely on them for all our scientific, medial and engineering discoveries. Parents please make sure your kids only want to become skilled labourers.

umm in-demand also includes scientists and engineers... lol I'm not typing out the entire list. also, depends on the sub-fields, not all scientists are in-demand, etc.

Space Lynxumm in-demand also includes scientists and engineers... lol I'm not typing out the entire list. also, depends on the sub-fields, not all scientists are in-demand, etc.

Well it didn't come across as that at all. And I know plenty of people that couldn't care less if Universities ceased to exist and the scientists they churn out.

I think everyone is quite surprised by quick developments, but certain jobs are already taking heavy hit, even with this very imperfect early generative results.

But yeah, it looks we'll be doing menial manual labor and leave the art, creative stuff to AI very, veey soon. Not just because it is cheaper, but because it is controversial, it generates views - even if outrage etc.

here ya go, all updated & ready to go with the latest & greatest stuff...

'nuff said :roll:

Anecdotally, my ex-wife is up there on a corporate finance ladder, only slightly below a CFO of a corporation near the top of Fortune 500 list. She is a very empathetic, open and reasonable person who freely admits that in a few years they will be able to cut most of entry level and a good portion of mid-level jobs in finance, management and such, which genuinely excites her. For context, this means tens of thousands of positions permanently cut worldwide within a few years, with more every year as technology and processes mature. In fact, she is cutting jobs and replacing them with automation for quite a few years now, because let's be honest, most office jobs can be easily replaced with an Excel macro.
Personally, I lean towards a vision of a future in which people live on universal basic income and corporations create a fully B2B economy. Huxley hit the nail on the head with his vision, although in practice I'm sure there will be a lot of Orwellian style mass surveillance and control - both of which we can see starting now, with the state of perpetual war and tightening censorship the world seems to embrace more and more. Fun trivia, Orwell was Huxley's student in Eaton College.
GPT and other generative models are just baby steps. With all my love for science fiction, I am glad I won't see this future as humanity seems to be dead set on going towards a "comprehensive defeat" style of dystopia.

On topic, something tells me that if you install this particular piece of software everything you say near your computer will be used as training data and sold to advertisers - as an anonymized database which, as it was shown numerous times, can easily be de-anonymized and personally identified.
Learn prompt engineering. In a few years "doing something" will likely mean "telling a computer what you need and waiting for it to create it".

Space LynxIt's more irony than karma... but I hope we can turn AI into positive... its going to be one hell of a turbulence ride though when it comes to well how does the middle class pay their bills...

see this video here:

www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/how-can-we-utilize-artificial-intelligence-to-help-us-be-more-prescient-about-quality-of-life-and-environment.320713/post-5252673

You forget the element of human ingenuity.

We will kill AI one way or another. We already are. The most frequently used features are porn pics with celebrity faces, deepfakes outside of porn, and overall usage by intelligence agencies to influence you. Read: Putin and Xi to destabilize our societies. Or salesman A-Z trying to sell you a shitty POS you don't need.

Much like crypto this has every single element in it to die from its own success. AI also has paradoxical elements that nobody has even begun trying to solve. Such as the problem that input = output. In a more layman explanation that means AI equals stagnation: of knowledge, of creativity, of ideas. AI isn't adding anything new. We just pray it might if we throw all the things we have in it. Perhaps it will come up with some result we like and opens doors. Most likely though it won't, and if it did, we could probably figure it out ourselves too, given more time, but much less capital and energy.

AI when stripped to its core is really not much other than an advanced problem solver that might do things faster but offers no guarantees for success. So you need lots of iterations + actual knowledge on a subject to get anywhere with it. Its use case is tremendously limited that way, and it doesn't compare in any way to the usefulness for it to be malicious.