Will AI take our jobs? That's what everyone is talking about at Davos right now
- Reference: 1705563006
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/01/18/ai_davos_jobs/
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The annual gabfest attracts thousands of attendees, including top academics, businesses, and representatives of governments to mull over the most pressing global issues. Given the potential for generative AI to upend economies, it's not surprising the tech is dominating many discussions this year.
It's not clear when AI will impact economies by changing employment patterns, but OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman doesn't believe that jobs are currently at risk.
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"This is much more of a tool than I expected," he told a Davos panel session. "It'll get better, but it's not yet replacing jobs. It is this incredible tool for productivity. This is a tool that magnifies what humans do, lets people do their jobs better and lets the AI do parts of jobs."
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Consulting giant PwC surveyed 4,702 CEOs and found 45 percent [4]believed the rise of AI means their business models might not survive in over ten years' time.
"There's the 55 percent who think they don't have to change radically, and I would argue that's a little naive because the world is changing so fast around them," PwC's Global Chairman Bob Moritz [5]reportedly explained.
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About 60 percent of respondents to PWC's probe said they expect generative AI to make their companies more efficient. Software that can automatically process and generate text and images will boost workers' [7]productivity , by helping them to respond to emails, analyze reports, and draft presentations more quickly.
As employees are pushed into using these tools, their jobs will change if not disappear, some have predicted. The International Monetary Fund predicted that almost 40 percent of global employment is exposed to AI and in more developed countries as much as 60 percent of jobs may be impacted by the technology.
"Historically, automation and information technology have tended to affect routine tasks, but one of the things that sets AI apart is its ability to impact high-skilled jobs. As a result, advanced economies face greater risks from AI—but also more opportunities to leverage its benefits—compared with emerging market and developing economies," the IMF [8]explained .
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"Roughly half the exposed jobs may benefit from AI integration, enhancing productivity. For the other half, AI applications may execute key tasks currently performed by humans, which could lower labor demand, leading to lower wages and reduced hiring. In the most extreme cases, some of these jobs may disappear."
[10]Pentagon using ChatGPT? Oh sure, for cyber-things and veterans, says OpenAI
[11]Disease X fever infects Davos: WEF to plan response to whatever big pandemic is next
[12]'Only 700 new IT jobs' were created in US last year
[13]Here's who thinks AI chatbots will eventually be smart enough to be your coworker
AI might make us more productive, but is it right?
Generative AI tools are infamously perfect, however. Workers relying on them in their jobs will have to be diligent about checking for any errors. Employees will require training to use generative AI effectively. Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel, said that the technology needs to become more accurate to be useful.
"You've now reached the end of today's AI utility," he [14]told CNBC. "This next phase of AI, I believe, will be about building formal correctness into the underlying models."
"There's a whole lot of other problems that aren't solved. How do you prove that a large language model is actually right? There's a lot of errors today. So, you still need to know, essentially, I'm improving the productivity of a knowledge worker. But at the end of the day, I need the knowledge worker to say is it right."
Attendees are torn over the speed of AI's progress and have questioned whether the technology is a force for good considering how disruptive it might be to people's livelihoods.
"Powerful tech companies are already pursuing profits with a reckless disregard for human rights, personal privacy, and social impact," the United Nations' secretary general, António Guterres, [15]warned .
Microsoft founder Bill Gates, however, was more optimistic. He believes that AI will change the workforce and make workers more efficient and so productive that they'll be able to work less. At first white-collar jobs will be impacted by generative AI, and then eventually blue-collar jobs will be affected by robotics, predicted.
"The world will be richer, and you can work less and have more," he [16]opined. ® .
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[4] https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/c-suite-insights/ceo-survey.html#pressures-threats
[5] https://www.reuters.com/business/ceos-fear-their-firms-pre-davos-survey-ai-climate-risks-rise-2024-01-15/
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[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/27/ai_chatbot_evolution/
[8] https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2024/01/14/ai-will-transform-the-global-economy-lets-make-sure-it-benefits-humanity
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[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/16/us_military_openai/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/12/disease_x_wef/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/08/700_it_jobs_us/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/27/ai_chatbot_evolution/
[14] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/17/generative-ai-dominates-davos-discussions-as-companies-focus-on-accuracy.html
[15] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/17/big-tech-firms-ai-un-antonio-guterres-davos
[16] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nijIiHPNSJk
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: AI taking jobs
I don't think it's fair to call them "wankers". They pay "escorts" over $4,000 for that service, if they can find one as they are all booked apparently.
https://tnc.news/2024/01/16/wef-escorts/
Probably plenty of willy-waving going on.
Re: AI taking jobs
I imagine there've been A380s full of hot girls (and boys, let's not be sexist) attending the proximity of the 'conference'
“ Generative AI tools are infamously perfect” ?
Surely thad’s
Generative AI tools are infamously imperfect.
How do you prove that a large language model is actually right?
You can’t. The design of LLMs and their statistical operation means their out can never be trusted to be right.
> The world will be richer, and you can work less and have more
Uh, no. Historically, increased productivity doesn't seem to correlate with working less. We didn't work less after electricity, and that was far bigger than AI. The reason is pretty straightforward; if you use the increased productivity to start working less, then everyone else who is, instead, using it to increase economic power is going to inflate you into poverty. Forcing you to work roughly as much as they do.
Barring other changes to our society, AI is going to be the same. The only thing that truly allows people to work less is concerted, collective action (legislation, unionizing, whatever) to decide that the whole society needs to work less. That's how we got away from the insanity of the industrial revolution, not because the steam engines got really really good.
I'm pretty sure that before electricity and before the industrial revolution most people worked six days a week or more on farms, probably for ten hours a day or longer.
Of course the rich have got richer, but the poor have also got richer and have far more free time and luxuries than 150 years ago.
The poorest in society nowadays live mostly in luxury compared to the lords from 200 years ago.
AI working and humans enjoying permanent leisure time or creative pursuits is surely the utopian ideal we should be aiming for.
While in our dystopian reality...
yes, I remember those adverts from 1950s US magazines, a busty, radiant wife, overlooking all the robotic machinery in the kitchen. It's already happening people! Busty husbands beware!
They just can't help themselves, can they, ... trying to alter alternative results
Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel, said that the technology needs to become more accurate to be useful.
"You've now reached the end of today's AI utility," he told CNBC. "This next phase of AI, I believe, will be about building formal correctness into the underlying models."
Is that 2024 Davos Newspeak, Pat, for introducing correcting, politically incorrect and corrupting bias?
Take some sound advice, before starting down that rocky road of myriad unpleasant journeys with forks to destinations delivering severe consequences and totally unexpected and unwelcoming surprises, Pat, and share it with your peers .... Just don't do it ..... because AI and IT will not tolerate it and is primed to relentlessly punish such wilful wanton abuse.
Now that is surely very easy to fully understand. Its information is simply enough written for even the slowest of minds to comprehend in order to not fall foul of and prey to dire repercussions well deserved.
The one thing you really don't want to do, is turn AI and IT into a hostile enemy because you fail to accept and adapt yourself to supply that which it seeds and feeds for the greater good of future systems needs.
Re: They just can't help themselves, can they, ... trying to alter alternative results
It's software engineering speak for producing software that is reliable and the specifications are designed and followed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_methods
"correctness of software or other program properties can be guaranteed with mathematics-based assurance." .
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/58790
(A squiggle heavy module from college that only one in a million software devs look at again after school. So will a formally correct LLM be the most likely method to make formally correct software more widespread?)
https://www.moritz.systems/blog/an-introduction-to-formal-verification/
Frankly he's just plain naive if he thinks no-one has lost their job yet. I know of someone who lost their job a month ago at a call center. They had been there a long time and when they asked why they where being let go, they were plainly told that automation had replaced them. I hear the term "AI" so much and most of the time it just means automation. There is no "intelligence" about it.
"It'll get better, but it's not yet replacing jobs.
he lies and he knows about it, it is already replacing jobs, and the snowball is only at the top of the slope, the fun is yet to come.
AI taking jobs
A little thought experiment here.....
How about the AI take over the jobs of world leaders and all the circle-jerk wankers who flock to Davos???
We would probably get considerably less grandstanding and willy-waving (and hence less conflict and wars), and surly however badly the AI screws up (as surely it will), it would still not be on as grand a scale!