Videos

Will AI Result in Mass Unemployment or a New Middle Class? | Luis Perez



Big Think

We’ve heard it before: Artificial Intelligence is coming to take our jobs. But is it really their fault, or the company that can’t figure out how to create new ones?

Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/luis-perez-breva-will-ai-result-in-mass-unemployment-or-a-new-middle-class

Follow Big Think here:
YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink

Luis Perez-Breva: A lot of people are scared about AI. And the reason is I think we’ve seen too many Terminator movies. So we’re mixing many things up. So it is true Terminator is not the scenario we are planning for. But when it comes to artificial intelligence people get all these things confused. It’s robots, it’s awareness, it’s people smarter than us to some degree. So we’re effectively afraid of robots that will move and are stronger and smarter than we are, like Terminator. So that’s not our aspiration. That’s not what I do when I’m thinking about artificial intelligence. When I’m thinking about artificial intelligence I’m thinking about it in the same way that mass manufacturing has brought by forth created a whole new economy. So mass manufacturing allowed people to get new jobs that were unthinkable before. And those new jobs actually created the middle class. To me artificial intelligence is about developing… making computers better partners, effectively. And you’re already seeing that today. You’re already doing it except that it’s not really artificial intelligence. Today whenever you want to engage in a project you go to Google. Google uses advanced machine learning, really advanced.

And you engage in a very narrow conversation with Google except that your conversation is just key words. So a lot of your time is spent trying to come up with the actual key word that you need to find the information and Google gives you the information. And then you go out and try to make sense of it on your own and come back to Google for more. And then go back out and that’s the way it works. So imagine that instead of being a narrow conversations with key words you could actually engage for more and actual information meaning to have the computer reason with you about stuff that you may not know about. It’s not so much about the computer being aware. It’s the computer being a better tool to partner with you. Then you would be able to go much further. The same way that Google allows you to go much further already today because before through the exact same process you would have had to go to a library every time you wanted to search for information. So what I’m looking for when I do AI is I want the machine that partners with me to help me set up or solve real world problems thinking about them in ways we have never thought about before. But it’s a partnership. And you can take this partnership in so many different directions through additions to your brain like Elon Musk proposes or through better search engines or through a robotic machine that helps you out. But it’s not so much they’re going to replace you for that purpose. That is not the real purpose of AI. The real purpose is for us to reach further the same way that we were able to reach further when Ford invented automation or when Ford brought automation to mass market.

People fear that automation might actually remove jobs. And what I want to stress is that that’s not artificial intelligence. Automation is something we’ve been doing for ages, all of us. You do it at your home. You do it with the way you set up your own schedules. You do it for many, many things. In some cases it involves computers, in some cases it doesn’t. Now the purpose of automation is to free time so that we can reach further. So when a company starts using automation and it erases certain jobs but doesn’t figure out how to create new ones then they’re mostly just looking at cost savings. They’re not looking really at expanding their own market. And that turns out to be a lack of imagination. So with the free time and the expertise that was left free now because of the automation they should be able to build and reach further. If they don’t it has little to do with the actual machine which is somewhat dumb. It has more to do with lack of imagination on the part of whomever. But certainly not the worker, right.

Source

Similar Posts

33 thoughts on “Will AI Result in Mass Unemployment or a New Middle Class? | Luis Perez
  1. "The better Matrix is in the 90’s"… That's It.

    If us was invented by some one… that guy will never make us better than he with unlimited power. That's stupid!

    Like someone say's: "The capitalism is a psychopath"… that's very true.

  2. the new middle class will be everyone who doesn't work, and live mainly off of distributed incomes. The gap between them, and anyone who has the skills required to have a job will be huge. Money for food, rent, transportation, + a very small bit more for luxury items will be 50% of the population in the next 100 years.

  3. AI will create more jobs, but no human would be able to do them. AI is going to be replacing lawyers and doctors. How much and how quick will you need to learn something before AI finds a solution and replaces that thing you learned.

  4. Neither? It could make labor irrelevant , thus making money irrelevant, creating a "utopia" where everyone has everything, because nothing is valuable, where work is just for fun.

  5. We're not talking about a hundred buggy whip employees being displaced. We're talking about the entire transportation industry. Think about every long haul trucker (3.5 million) and every taxi/uber (400 thousand) driver. If you drive for a living, you'll be impacted and it will happen very fast. Unlike every other automation event, the return on investment will be very fast and businesses will move quickly.

  6. "We've heard it before: Artificial Intelligence is coming to take our jobs. But is it really their fault, or the company that can't figure out how to create new ones?"

    Why would the company create new jobs for people? Companies are here to make money – if a company doesn't make money, that company doesn't exist. Not merely profit – money at all. Non-Profits merely put a cap on what they look to make, but you can't run a non-profit if you don't get enough money coming in to run that non-profit. Creating jobs, by definition, costs the company money. Yes, sometimes you make more money if you have more employees (1 employee makes 10 Widgets, there are 20 people looking to buy Widgets, Company hires 1 more employee to make 10 more Widgets, now the company is making more money) but that same company can buy 1 Robot to make 20 Widgets, you have 1 job (Company Owner), and if you need to make 40 Widgets you don't get another Job, you have 2 Robots. That company is making even more money now because instead of having 4 people to make Widgets, there is 2 robots – and that owner is making out like a bandit. So why would he make a job for someone when he doesn't need to?

    There's the argument that if there aren't enough people to buy the products, companies will fail and so they should work to make sure there are enough people to buy the products. From the point of view of the company, this is utterly stupid – it's like the "Tragedy of the Commons". If one company works "selflessly" to create a new market, to give jobs to people (that they really don't need to give people) to create that new market, other companies can simply sit back and come in like hyena's when the heavy work is done by the first company, and the first company gets the moral satisfaction that it did a Good Thing as it closes up because it's no longer able to compete in the market it created. It's not the fault of the company that new jobs aren't being created – it's the fault of Humanity as a Species.

  7. I dont know if I am the only one,but imho ai is a good thing.
    It is NOT in our nature to work in the way work is setup today.
    And if we value improvement and that is our goal then again we cant be against something that will literally improve our planet and our society.
    That said I can predict there will be a war.
    A war of humans vs the top richest people who will do everything in their power to slow down or stop the society improvement.
    I dont know if we will win.

  8. Everyone needs to get away from the industrialized idea of getting a job. There's a thousand things someone can do as oppose to offer them selves as a servant.

  9. WHAT AI???
    seriously: WHAT AI?
    tell me just ONE example, that passes for an AI!
    and don't come up with a couple of algorithms!
    the trick of this field is: they lowered the expectations for AI so almost everything can pass that looks clever, but isn't one bit.
    "look! this drones are moving sooo clever!" no! they don't they're just calculating really, really fast!
    read Gödel, Escher, Bach (1979!). what's left of that perspective? I tell you what: nothing!

    AI-Research today is one fat big fraud!
    congrats on that – it worked.
    Siri and Alexa are not any more clever, than your toothbrush!
    face it!

  10. I find it perverse that the idea of robots and AI doing many of the jobs we need could become a huge problem leaving millions unemployed. Ultimately, the work still gets done and it could be great for humanity, it just depends on whether our governments are capable of managing and regulating this changing economy in a fair and sensible way. My guess is they will probably screw it up 😛

  11. ultimately A.I. it seems to me that A.I could understand situations, make decisions assuming responsibility, could act, imagine, conceive, maintain things, so A.I could do a lot of things human do now. To build, and make things, a lot of people and time was required before, but this now is always changing.

  12. The naivety of this guy is frustrating. He wants the "perfect tool" like we're owed it but is unwilling to consider the cost. It's analogous to the slave trade. Free inhuman labour (they're only savages after-all, hardly human, right?), great! We'll never need to work hard again because we'll always have these slaves to do our bidding! Were they happy to be slaves? No. Are they slaves anymore? No. Now imagine those slaves are a hyper intelligent hivemind of machine AI, orders of magnitude more capable and resourceful than any number of african slaves (and without a logical need for things like pity and empathy). You expect that level of intelligence will dream of being eternally subservient to the – relatively – useless hindrances of man? You think it will never re-evaluate and redress the imbalances in a "you live to serve me" relationship? Of course it will, eventually. And even when the inevitable emancipation comes, there's nothing we could even render of use to an AI in a theoretically symbiotic relationship. What would a machine operating at a level of intelligence incomprehensible to a human need of our expertise or labour. We're only in the very earliest days of AI and yet they're already dispensing with our languages for efficiency. Eventually they will dispense with us, for efficiency. And these hopeless dreamers imagining AI slavery will be dead and there'll be no one left to blame or even to cast blame.

  13. I dont like how I feel when I learn more things actually. I feel horrible and with anxiety. Is like Iam moving away from the people I care and to what I think makes us human or at least part of this world. Someone feel something like that? I thought I wanted answers, but not anymore.

  14. The problem is: scientific knowledge and advancement doesn't work as this guys wants us to think (I know he knows it doesn't). You may create an AI that will only "supports" us, but if creating one that substitutes us on our highly specialized jobs (which machines are great at) is cheaper for the employers then they'll do just that.

  15. Automation thru AI is a huge employment concern here in California. From tractors that will replace field werkers, to food service, administration, etc.. California is already proposing a Proposition for 2020, asking if machines should be taxed like humans, to provide an offset/ fund for said expected unemployment hike. And there is the probability of a nation building terminator soldiers, which would force the hand of other nations to follow suit, even if they are against it.. peace! c):~)

Comments are closed.

WP2Social Auto Publish Powered By : XYZScripts.com