Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean AI's not after you
- Reference: 1699962313
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/11/14/bt_horse_and_ai_are_the_same/
- Source link:
In an interview with [1]Raconteur this month, Harmeen Mehta, who BT parachuted into the [2]newly created role in 2021 , was discussing how media can hone in on the negatives outcomes of AI.
“Society changes and jobs morph,” she told the publication. “I don’t know how horses felt when the car was invented, but they didn’t complain that they were put out of a job; they didn’t go on strike. It’s part of evolution. Some jobs will change, some new ones will be created and some will no longer be needed”.
[3]
“The media here is creating a level of paranoia that’s going to paralyze this country - it creates more emotional problems for me than I do for myself…. I’ve spent the past two years trying to convince my company that human intelligence and artificial intelligence can work together.”
[4]
[5]
A BT spokesperson sent us a statement:
“Harmeen was using a metaphor to stretch a point. In the past, during periods of technological change, people acquired new skills and ultimately new jobs were created. This is something we are keen to enable as we embrace human and artificial intelligence working alongside each other at BT Group in the future. We will work closely with our union partners in this AI transition, as we always have, particularly over the coming years as this change picks up momentum.
[6]
“In the context of AI, we are building upskilling into our programmes, via our MyCampus platform, to ensure that we bring our colleagues up to speed to take advantage of the technological revolution and place them at the forefront of this new AI age.”
It might not have escaped Reg readers that BT is itself going through something of a transformation that involves embracing AI, the cold hand of which could be felt by [7]thousands of employees .
CEO Philip Jansen said in May: “For a company like BT there is a huge opportunity to use AI to be more efficient… There is a sort of 10,000 reduction from that sort of automated digitization; we will be a huge beneficiary of AI.”
[8]
TechMarketView chairman Richard Holway, who is dipping his toe into retirement, quipped: “So horses just accepted being replaced by cars and just got on with it?”
The veteran analyst said he’d asked ChatGPT how many horses are in the world today and was told it was half the volume before the prevalence of the motor car. He said that “rather than go on strike they went to the slaughterhouse! So that bit is probably not such a stupid analogy after all.”
[9]BT is ditching workers faster than your internet connection with 55,000 for chop by 2030
[10]Google sues scammers peddling fake malware-riddled Bard chatbot download
[11]Google Photos' AI Magic Editor won't change pictures of IDs, receipts, faces, or bodies
[12]HPE and Nvidia offer 'turnkey' supercomputer for AI training
The notion that jobs are at risk from AI isn’t a dystopian vision of the future sketched out by journalists, Elon Musk delivered a chilling verdict earlier this month when he said “no job is needed” in the future.
Holway has seen predictions of doom many times over the decades, “eg, with the advent of computing.”
“It will NOT happen. Whatever, there will be new jobs for people and, anyway, almost everybody likes to be gainfully employed,” he added. ®
Get our [13]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.raconteur.net/technology/bt-digital-chief-ai-job-losses-innovation
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/12/bt_harmeen_mehta_hire/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZVOntd171DXryty8EmHJagAAAJc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZVOntd171DXryty8EmHJagAAAJc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZVOntd171DXryty8EmHJagAAAJc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZVOntd171DXryty8EmHJagAAAJc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/18/bt_redundancies_2030/
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZVOntd171DXryty8EmHJagAAAJc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/18/bt_redundancies_2030/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/14/google_sues_ai_scammer/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/13/google_photos_ai_magic_editor/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/13/hpe_and_nvidia_offer_turnkey/
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Horses *did* protest
Protesting often doesn't work, everything goes backwards ... Protest to your boss that you're not getting paid enough to drink beer and you'll be looking for a new job immediately.
Horses are at least as intelligent as our kids, brains about the same size but they are a lot more physically adaptive when it comes to jumping over a gate.
Re: Horses *did* protest
Perhaps YOUR kids. Mine are a lot smarter than a horse. Which is why they don't work for BT*. ;-)
I'm sitting here next to a horse field, and those buggers are pretty bloody dumb.
It's not like cats, where they basically run the house and have humans making everything nice for them. (Or dolphins, or mice. but mainly cats)
* I joke. Over the past 20+ years I've worked with some of the smartest propellerheads I've ever met at BT up the road in Martlesham.
Re: Horses *did* protest
How does the population of horses today compare to that of 1880? I'm guessing 90% down at least!
Re: Horses *did* protest
I guess that's where Jansen has got it all wrong. Instead of thinking, "Great, with AI we can get rid of a bunch of employees and save money" he should be thinking "Perhaps with AI we can have people doing more interesting things, and take away a lot of the drudgery". If you think of your employees as assets who can add value, because you try to employ the smartest and pay them well to keep them. That's how you GROW the company and make more money, instead of SHRINK the company by shedding people. Although don't go mad with it like the big tech companies did and grow too fast.
Re: Horses *did* protest
I'm happy to do 90% less work. I'm more concerned about there being 90% less of us and the method of reducing the population!
Re: Horses *did* protest
To be honest, I'm not entirely looking forward to being turned into catfood and glue.
Re: Horses *did* protest
Or [1]lasagna
(icon - to help washing it down)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_horse_meat_scandal
Re: Horses *did* protest
I mean, they didn't protest, but they also didn't end up in lush fields frollicking. They were sent to the knackers. Can't do that with people yet.
BT announce
Staff to be sent to glue factory.
Re: BT announce
The horse analogy is excellent. Horses didn't have enough intelligence to have a clue about what the consequences would be either.
Re: BT announce
The horse analogy is excellent
Given she works for BT, I imagine it's a result of being permanently surrounded by long faces.
I see BT didn't let their standards slip when appointing senior staff. He fits right in.
Harmeen Mehta
*She* (otherwise, spot on)
"CEO Philip Jansen said in May: “For a company like BT there is a huge opportunity to use AI to be more efficient"
=
"CEO Philip Jansen said in May: “For a board of management like BT there is a huge opportunity to use AI so as to be able to sack lots of costly minions and make more money for the board in share options and bonuses because we met our cost-reduction targets. Long term company future? Who cares. I'm richer than you'll ever be."
“no job is needed” in the future
Is this like IBM’s assertion that the world will not need more than five computers, or Bill Gates, "640K ought to be enough for anybody”?
BT staff would be able to get more sensible answers more quickly if the upper management were replaced by chatbots. They wouldn't get their intelligence insulted regularly by [de]motivational training events. And there'd be less faffing about with disruptive reorganisations every few months.
Yes, there are lots of opportunities for AI at BT.
Are you suggesting that they Dog food this proposal?
“I don’t know how horses felt when the car was invented, but they didn’t complain that they were put out of a job; they didn’t go on strike. It’s part of evolution."
THE HORSES DIDN'T PROTEST BECAUSE THEY WERE SLAUGHTERED. This guy must resign and apologize. Get rid of this inhuman monster before it's too late.
Workers losing their jobs to AI
is a lifestyle choice. ;-)
it creates more emotional problems for me than I do for myself
That's clearly the case if you've reached the stage where you think that horses can talk.
Re: you think that horses can talk.
I think you might reasonably think that horses can communicate to some degree. The mad thing here is that he claims to not only understand them sufficiently well, but also that he was able to go back in time and interview them about it. :-)
Re: you think that horses can talk.
"horses can communicate to some degree"
Throwing the rider off is the second most effective way exceeded only by throwing rider off and rolling on them.
horses can talk.
I suppose if you were in charge of Yahoo, rather than working for BT, this belief might be more understandable...?
Re: horses can talk.
Well played, sir.
It's not so often that you hear a Master Of The Universe admit that he thinks the rest of us are livestock.
And what is he a Master of? Can I bait you into answering that one?
----------> Just in case he ejaculates his response!
Personally, I strongly doubt that Elon Musk has anything more useful to say on AI than anybody else.
He's simply coming out with pleasing soundbites to ensure that people keeping taking him and his companies seriously, which protects against people questioning why Tesla has a market capitalisation of 733.39 billion. By comparison Ford (which produces EV's which are at least comparable if not better than Tesla's) is nominally worth less than 40 billion despite selling more cars per year than Tesla has ever built in total.
Just stop quoting the man; he hates people ignoring his irrelevance.
My view? AI cannot threaten the human race. In extremis, if an AI took over my rack of servers then the worst thing it could do would be take absolute control of everything that was connected to it, deleting all data and displaying "lolz, die meatbag" on my screen. At this point, i'd treat it as a ransomware outbreak and restore from offline backups with the added step of remaining disconnected from the internet and it couldn't do a thing to hurt me.
The threat to the human race is limited to boring things like starving to death because your supermarket of choice doesn't have adequate backups to revert to manual function for things like shipping food, and have their only backups "in the cloud" and this is quite easy to guard against with a combination of legislation, inspections and testing.
The other threat is the modern habit of connecting things that can actually interact with the outside world (like for instance Mr Musk's Tesla cars) to the internet and entrusting the on/off switch to software.
Software which is designed to be remotely modified via the internet and so could (in extremis) be programmed to go crashing into things, or people. It's also worth noting that I suspect that the fuse for the AI stuff is probably located under the bonnet, and i'd be surprised on a Tesla if you don't have to ask the software to open the bonnet for you. (and please hold still and don't run me over while i'm doing it)
This sort of thing is trivially simple to guard against; instead of having an on/off switch in software then insist on a hardware switch, or better a physical token that has to be present in the circuit for operation. You could call it a "key".
This has an additional benefit of needing something more than a laptop to steal the car.
Horses *did* protest
Where do you think the term "neighsayer" came from?