AI? If you're a Brain Worker, Don't Worry!

 I talked with Chat GPT4o

Me:

Can you estimate the quantitative impact of AI on the US GDP over the next decade?

Chat GPT4o:

Predicting the exact quantitative impact of AI on the US GDP over the next decade is highly speculative due to the complex interplay of various factors such as technological advancements, adoption rates, regulatory policies, and economic conditions. However, several studies and forecasts have attempted to estimate the potential impact of AI on economic growth.

For instance, blah, blah, blah...

Or to summarize more summarily:

 AI has the potential to significantly impact US GDP over the next decade, period.

LOL

But ChatGPT4o can chat, and that is scarey, for what many of us do for a living is little more than chat.

For example, how long before your call to the doctor's office when little Jimmy has a rash on his chest or Grandpa is complaining of a buzzing in the ears to find yourself speaking with ChatGPT5o, 6o or whatever.

Doctor's telephone receptionist:

Hellow, this is Doctor Seus's office. How can I help you.

Me:

My son, Jimmy, has come out with a rash on his chest and has a temperature of 101. What should I do?

Doctor's telephone receptionist:

I'm not the doctor, but it sounds like Jimmy might be experiencing symptoms of an illness or allergic reaction. Here's what you can do:

1. Monitor his symptoms: Keep an eye on Jimmy's temperature and the rash. If his temperature rises further or if the rash spreads or worsens, call back to speak with the doctor.

2. Give him fluids: Make sure Jimmy stays hydrated by offering him plenty of fluids like water or electrolyte solutions.

3. Keep him comfortable: Dress him in lightweight clothing and keep the room temperature comfortable. You can also give him acetaminophen or ibuprofen to help reduce his fever and ease any discomfort, but make sure to follow the dosage instructions appropriate for his age.

If Jimmy's symptoms worsen or if you're unsure about what to do, it's always best to err on the side of caution and call back promptly.

Actually, those are slightly abbreviated comments from Chat GPT4o, which have radical implications.

First, your doctor can eliminate the expense of employing a telephone receptionist. He needs merely to subscribe to an AI phone answering service, at a cost that will be a small fraction of what it cost to employ that pleasant young woman who used to answer the phone.

But, second, your healthcare provider can dispense with your doctor since the doctor's AI receptionist can tell you as much, and indeed much more, than the doctor knows relating to your particular condition.

The same trashing of jobs will occur across vast swaths of the economy.

Restaurant waiters? Forget it.

At a restaurant, approach a vacant table and, from a microphone concealed in a vase of plastic flowers, a synthetic voice will inform you whether the table is vacant or if it is reserved for patrons presently enjoying a cocktail in the bar. In the latter case, it will direct you to Table 23 or 17 or any other table that happens to be vacant. Unless, that is, it does not like the look of you. In that case it will simply express in tones of more or less sincere regret that there will be no table for lunch available today.

However, if you have the appearance of a desirable patron, it will be happy to seat you wherever you wish before announcing:

Today we have lentil and oyster soup garnished with chives, etc.

Likewise, AI will displace countless millions of store clerks, civil servants, and others who now earn a living by exchanging information by word of mouth.

What that means is that AI, widely implemented, has the potential to create unemployment worse than that of the Great Depression of the 1930's. Governments will attempt to combat the worst of this effect, which they can do in many ways. For example, allowing public servants to work from home, which will reduce bureaucratic productivity (is that even possible) and hence justify massive expansion in the number of people employed (sort of) in the public sector, matched by a massive increase in taxation to pay public sector wages.

Meantime, the private sector will shed workers at a great pace, driving profits sharply higher in those industries best able to replace people with AI.

But one thing is clear. AI, at it's current stage of development, cannot, except in the most rudimentary way, think. So, if you are a brain worker, your job may be secure for a few years, anyhow. But if ChatGPT eight "o" or nine "o" starts to give specific answers to questions such as how will AI affect US GDP over the next decade, then it will be time to think about early retirement.

Google AI Helping Israel to Identify Palestinians for Arrest "With Little or No Evidence"

Google’s unofficial motto, “don’t be evil,” was removed from Google documents sometime in late April or early May, 2018. Consistent with the change, a group of Google employees recently claimed that the company is providing Israel with AI-based information “to identify thousands of Palestinians for arrest, imprisonment, and torture with little to no evidence.” This, the group claims, amounts to enabling an Israeli policy of Palestinian genocide.

Further this group of Google employees has stated:

It’s clear that the Israeli military will use any technology available to them for genocidal means." At issue: Google's Project Nimbus -- a $1.2 billion cloud and AI contract with Israel -- and the Israeli Defense Forces' use of Google Photos in Gaza, "which has led to the arrest, imprisonment, and torture of thousands of Palestinians with little to no evidence," the group said. "It’s clear that the Israeli military will use any technology available to them for genocidal means."

Google is enabling and profiting from Israel’s AI-powered genocide through Project Nimbus, their $1B cloud contract with Israel. The Israeli military is also using Google Photos as part of a facial recognition dragnet across Gaza, which has led to the arrest, imprisonment, and torture of thousands of Palestinians with little to no evidence. It’s clear that the Israeli military will use any technology available to them for genocidal means.

Google workers do not want their labor to power Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. **That’s why on April 16, Google workers with No Tech For Apartheid are leading a coast-to-coast day of action to demand that Google stop doing business with Israel and providing tech to this genocide.

And Google's response? To fire 28 of the protesting employees.

BRAVO! -- to the fired employees.

When AI Gets To Work, What Will People Do?

Today, most work involves shuffling paper, moving pixels on a computer screen, or talking  with clients or colleagues. In the near future, most of that work can, and surely will, be handled by Chat GPT or more nearly omniscient AI systems to emerge. 

For example, you have a high fever and are coming out in spots. You call the doctor's office. Having identified yourself, you will be answered in your preferred language and even your preferred dialect and accent. You explain the reason for your call. The AI receptionist will ask for some particulars concerning your condition, then give you the best relevant advice, e.g., take an aspirin, keep well hydrated and stay warm etc. So AI will eliminate not only the doctor's receptionist but, except for special purposes such as setting a broken bone, the doctor himself.

The same kind of elimination of work will occur throughout the economy. Need a bank teller? No need, just speak to the microphone at the counter and state the service required. Cash will be dispensed via a slot at the front of the counter. 

The only jobs that will be secure are those that involve wealding a spanner, driving a lawn mower, or some other task that has not yet been automated. But AI will vastly accelerate the process of automation. Bus drivers, truck drivers, farm tractor drivers, backhoe operators, nuclear power plant operators, professors and prime ministers? All better replaced by AI.

So what, then, will people do? Simple. They will just do more of what they have enormous amounts of time to do now. One hundred and fifty years ago, men in England worked an average of about 60 hours a week. Since then the average working week in England has decreased around 40%, while real wages have risen about seven-fold. A similar reduction in working hours is likely in the age of AI, but occuring not over 150 years but in perhaps only ten or fifteen years. Whether incomes will increase in the same seven-fold ratio as seen in England over the last 150 years seems less likely, if only because the world economy appears already to be pushing environmental limits to sustainability. Pretty certainly, however, in ways that are environmentally benign, the standard of living worldwide will massively increase. 

How Artificial Intelligence Will Eliminate Most of Humanity

There is currently much talk about how artificial intelligence will develop a will of its own, destroy humanity, and take command of the Earth. This is rubbish based on no plausible scenario. However, the danger of artificial intelligence to the continued existence of the mass of mankind is both real and imminent. It will happen as the result of developments, each appearing to be harmless and actually rather cool. 

Thus for example, if you call your doctor's office for an appointment, you will be answered by a synthetic  voice that will negotiate an appointment date and time. In addition, it will ask for information on the reason for your visit with the doctor, and will then provide the doctor with a report not only stating your problem, but advising on the current best practise in treating it. In fact, This talented receptionist might very well provide all the medical assistance you need over the phone, in which case, it will not only eliminate the need for human medical receptionists, but for most if not all human doctors too. 

Likewise, when you need a retail store assistant, your only option will be to address an intelligent machine that speaks Swedish or Swahili, or any other language you care to use as well or better than you do -- and with exactly the accent you happen to use, Ottawa Valley, New York, or that hideous, fake upper-class, cut-glass English accent spoken by the likes of Ghislaine Maxwell and Christiane Amanpour. What's more, this machine will be able to tell you pretty much anything you want to know about the product you seek as well as whether it is available in the color and size you require, and if not, whether and when it will be available. 

The same substitution of machine intelligence for human service will occur throughout the economy reducing the majority of the population to unemployment. If you are not an AI techie, among the safest jobs will be those involving manual labor, lawn mowing, for example, window cleaning, or prostitution. Birthrates will plummet, the incidence of medically assisted death will grow exponentially as dispair and despondency give rise to a pandemic of chronic depression. Thus, within just a few short years, the plutocratic elite will have what they want:  a world largely free of useless eaters cluttering the best beaches, poisoning the planet with their carbon emissions and spreading ugly suburbs across the landscape. 

Related: 

Goldman Sachs Predicts 300 Million Jobs Will Be Lost Or Degraded By Artificial Intelligence

A Man's a Man for a' That

Since Edmund Cartwright invented the power loom in 1784, mechanisation and automation have destroyed jobs at an ever increasing pace. That these processes would have a huge impact on working people and the distribution of wealth was already evident two hundred years ago. Thus, in the Edinburgh Review of 1829, Thomas Carlyle wrote:

... Nothing is now done directly, or by hand; all is by rule and calculated contrivance. For the simplest operation, some helps and accompaniments, some cunning abbreviating process is in readiness. Our old modes of exertion are all discredited, and thrown aside. On every hand, the living artisan is driven from his workshop, to make room for a speedier, inanimate one. The shuttle drops from the fingers of the weaver, and falls into iron fingers that ply it faster. The sailor furls his sail, and lays down his oar; and bids a strong, unwearied servant, on vaporous wings, bear him through the waters. Men have crossed oceans by steam; ... There is no end to machinery. Even the horse is stripped of his harness, and finds a fleet fire-horse invoked in his stead. Nay, we have an artist that hatches chickens by steam; the very brood-hen is to be superseded! For all earthly, and for some unearthly purposes, we have machines and mechanic furtherances; for mincing our cabbages; for casting us into magnetic sleep.  ...

Yet despite the ongoing destruction of jobs, prosperity as Carlyle noted, had never been greater or more widely spread:

What wonderful accessions have thus been made, and are still making, to the physical power of mankind; how much better fed, clothed, lodged and, in all outward respects, accommodated men now are, or might be, by a given quantity of labour, is a grateful reflection which forces itself on every one. 

Yet, Carlyle asked:

What changes, too, this addition of power is introducing into the Social System ...increasing the distance between the rich and the poor, will be a question for Political Economists...

And today, the answer to Carlyle's question for the Political Economists is at last becoming evident. Not only is machinery replacing human labor, but automation, robotization, and control by artificial intelligence is altogether eliminating the economic value of human intelligence except for that of a tiny elite of highly trained specialists. Increasingly, the objective of the business corporation is not to increase the productivity of human labor but to eliminate it from the productive process.

Thus the telephone company has no human to answer the phone, but seeks to meet their customer's need with a synthetic voice driven by artificial intelligence. Though, currently, the response such systems provide to any inquiry is generally inane, confidence must exist that with incremental improvement, the system will become a fully effective replacement for human intelligence at a great saving in expense. 

The auto industry, likewise, seeks to eliminate the need for for human intelligence as well as muscle, not only in the production of motor vehicles, as evident with the introduction of lights-out robot factories, but in the operation of both cars and freight vehicles. The result: not increased labor productivity, but labor elimination, indicating that we are fast approaching a period of massive and irreducible unemployment. What then for the mass of mankind? 

As we noted several days ago, Yuval Harari, a futurist much admired by Klaus Schwab, founder and Chair of the World Economic Forum, considers that other than the class of high IQ and highly trained techies, the plutocrats who seek control of the globe will have no desire to perpetuate the existence of what Harari calls the "useless people," which is to say most of humanity. 

The implication is clear: the human surplus should off themselves, in the way that the Government of Schwabb-acolyte, Justin Trudeau intends with its Medical Assistance In Death legislation for the old, the depressed, and the terminally ill, to which list will surely be added the permanently unemployable. 

Though shocking to those not familiar with it, this is a solution long endorsed, not only in Nazi Germany but by many in the enlightened West, as these comments by the famous Anglo-Irish playwright,George Bernard Shaw make clear:

In the face of this prospect, I am grateful to Yusef for his response to a question I raised in an earlier post. Namely:

"what are the alternative futures, if any, for the mass of humanity when a pair of hands is no longer worth its keep."

 Yusef provides two quotes:

(1)

Mark 2: 23: And it came to pass, that he went through the corn fields on the sabbath day; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn.

24 And the Pharisees said unto him, Behold, why do they on the sabbath day that which is not lawful?

25 And he said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him?

26 How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him?

27 And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:

28 Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath."

King James Bible

(2)

Immanuel Kant: "An end-in-itself"

An explanation of Kant's concept of "an end-in-itself", often put more informally as the idea that we should not "use" other people.

The word "end" in this phrase has the same meaning as in the phrase "means to an end".

The philosopher Immanuel Kant said that rational human beings should be treated as an end in themselves and not as a means to something else. The fact that we are human has value in itself.

If a person is an end-in-themself it means their inherent value doesn't depend on anything else - it doesn't depend on whether the person is enjoying their life, or making other people's lives better. We exist, so we have value.

Most of us agree with that - though we don't put it so formally. We say that we don't think that we should use other people, which is a plain English way of saying that we shouldn't treat other people as a means to our own ends.

This idea applies to us too. We shouldn't treat ourselves as a means to our own ends; instead we should respect our inherent worth. This can be used as an argument against euthanasia, suicide and other behaviours that damage ourselves.

The idea also shows up in discussions of animal rights, with the idea that if they have rights, animals must be treated as ends in themselves."  (Source)

To which I would add Robbie Burns' fine poem: A Man’s a Man for a’ That

Robot submarine able to kill without human control

Source: New Scientist.

Uh uh! Look out World! See who's building this thing.
Related:
CanSpeccy: Boeing: Building Planes Designed by Clowns Supervised By Monkeys
Daily Mail: NASA's uncertainty over Starliner astronaut capsule made clear as Boeing is told to take 61 'corrective actions' after failed mission sent craft into the wrong orbit

Artificial Intelligence: It Will Kill Us