AI and professions doomed to extinction

Factual Questions
1

Although artificial intelligence has been making inroads into some professions for a number of years, the release of ChatGPT only 10 months ago made it all very real and personal for a large number of people, and the consequences of its uncontrolled proliferation a hot discussion topic.

Along with changed patterns of work once people realised during covid that the world did not end when they worked at their kitchen table, the spread of AI seems to present a major permanent disruption to (at least my) familiar world.

I don’t know if there is a factual answer, but there should be a reasonably empirical and fact-based discussion to be had on what professions are best and worst able to survive or adapt to the increasing insertion of artificial intelligence into the ways we work. What will your profession or job look like with AI as the norm? What is the ‘safest’ (least impacted) job?

(I assume this is sufficiently factual to sit here. If not, please move it)

2

I’ve always noted that a computer is like a power tool. You can cut a piece of wood with a handsaw, or use a power saw with a lot less effort to do a lot more at LOT faster. Computers are the same.

But AI is like having an assistant to not only cut the piece of wood, but line it up and handle the tool for you. So think of all the things that humans have to do in the age of computers, because we have the awareness of unusual circumstances, the real-world experience, and the awareness of intemediate goals. Even underatanding random speech is a complex task.

A good example of where AI might(!) replace humans is the Full Self Drive function Elon Musk has Tesla working on. It turns out to be far more complicated than he thought it would be. (I find it impressive, but still - like spellcheck - sometimes very confused); add to that anything similar like piloting boats or even aircraft.

Tasks that AI might take on: taxi driver (Full Self Drive); most telephone interactive help; computer instruction as a substitute or adjunct to regular classes; legal assistant(This is debateable - how likely is AI to understand legal nuances and precedent cases that paralell the current one?); warehouse order arrangement, picking order, loading, route planning. First line public facing - for example, insurance claims processing, order taking (imagine an entire robotic ghost kitchen, including the phone/online order taker), The security guard at the gate of a big facility. For farming, for exaple, I sa an item about a robot that goes up and down the rows of plants and recognizes unwanted intruders (weeds, sick plants) and gets rid of them. But basic jobs - we already have “assemble your own website” for small business; AI could just take it to the next level, and eleminate a lot of routine coders. Add t that reoutine designs for physical things, architect or industrial designer - and producing the detailed plans that result from that process, ready for a 3D printer or whatever.

So basically, anything relatively routine that doesn’t require a set of hands. If you add in robotic control, the sky’s the limit. Perhaps most menial tasks; the ultimate would be a society where everyone has a “personal assistant” who sits in the cloud and on your phone. it’s your reference expert when you need to know something - “Hey Siri II, what professions are at risk due to AI?”; and handles all the menial chores - remembering your schedule to tell you what to do next, paying bills, finding TV/streaming shows to your taste, ordering groceries and dinner, directing the Roomba, scheduling maintenace on assorted household appliances, and eventually - calling your friends’ AIs to arrange get-togethers. If it learns your personality well enough, perhaps it can even swipe left and right for you.

3

Two occupations I did my entire working life: radio personality and copywriter. Radio stations began using voice tracking about 20 years ago to eliminate on-air personalities from all but the drive-time slots. Sometimes with local voice tracking, sometimes with out of towners, and often with none at all. Now, AI has made it possible to eliminate even that. A radio station in Portland is already using an AI-created voice (AI Ashley).

As for copywriting, ChatGPT is the solution for anyone who wants something written and doesn’t want to pay a talented person to write it. As an experiment, I had ChatGPT write a 30 second radio commercial, using the basic facts a copywriter might be given. The result was terrible. It ran close to 45 seconds and used every cliche in the book, but it was free, so there you are.

Creative occupations will be among the first to go. I thought that in retirement I would be able to have side gigs doing both of these things. I may as well have spent 50 years of my life making buggy whips and button shoes.

4

LOL @ FSD

It will work just 2 weeks after we have fusion working.

LLM (large language models) are very impressive and useful to generate blather. They are not about to take the wheel in anyone’s car.

Low rent journalists, writers of commercial texts will be producing more crap than ever.

Also school essays are essentially a thing of the past.

LLM sound very smart but are slightly more stupid than a brick. (How long does it take to dry 1 towel? How long does it take to dry 3 towels?)

5

Trade occupations are the least likely to be disrupted by AI and robotic technology. Plumbers, electricians, carpentry, etc.

These are opinions about future outcomes. Not really factual answers.

6

I was watching one of the other TV stations locally because the national network (CTV) was preempted by some sort of football the other day. I realized something was different, then after watching for a while figured it out - there was no anchor. All they did was string one video news story after another. It occurred to me that news anchor was a redundant position.

Apparently, AI has been used to create simulated video personalities for TV. The same can be said of radio announcers. Even more so, voice tech is easier than video simulation. Imprtant notes, like weather and traffic, can be done by computer-generated voice. AI could even rewrite and “read” news from the wire services.

There’s even a level of bland creativity where AI might help - after learning on millions of photographs, it might be able to design basic interior decor, combing inputs for “look”, budget, general colour scheme, and local/online store catalogs. The insidiousness of this sort of thing would be if, say, AI run by Amazon recommended all Amazon products.

The Hollywood writers’ strike was in part triggered by fear that AI could replace writers. Those of us old enough to have sat through hundreds of episodes of bad sitcoms like Gilligan’s Island or Bewitched realize they were basic and formulaic. (Just reading up on Brady Bunch the “dad” refused to appear in the final episode because he though it was clownish trash).

A more interesting take on this is that a judge recently rules that AI generated material cannot be copyrighted since it did not contain human creativity. This is interesting because even if a writer polishes the turd, the original is - theoretically - still public domain should someone manage to leak a copy. (And if the human writer does not change the script significantly, it is not transformed enough to be copyrighted) Imagine an alternative version of Expendables 5 or Game of Thrones Season 21 or the latest rom-com being available for anyone to apply their own polish themselves and make into a movie, and there’s nothing the studios can do about it.

7

There are parts on my job that could definitely be enhanced by AI, but maybe not all of it.

I work with patent applications. This involves comparing an application to the requirements of the law, to ensure it meets the minimum requirements, and then comparing it to similar previous published information, to determine if the thing to be patented is a new and non-obvious improvement on the prior art.

In so far as it involves analyzing and comparing documents, it’s tailor made for such AI applications as we’re seeing now. But it’s not clear to me that such AI systems could answer the question of, “Is this idea inventive?” So I could see using an AI to automate a lot of my job, but then have it pop up a report for me, saying, “Here is the basic idea to be patented, here is what the closest prior art teaches, here is the difference”, and then I make the final judgement on inventiveness.

If AI gets to the point where it could determine even the question of inventiveness, then I suspect we’ll be close to the point where the AIs will be doing all the inventing in the first place. At that point, it’s a legitimate question to ask, “Do we even need patents anymore?”

8

To disagree, I’ve often thought that Lawyers might be at great risk from computerization.

Most lawyers in actual practice make most of their income from civil document cases: preparing wills, real estate transactions, business contracts, etc.

And those are often cookie-cutter legal documents – assembled from standard chunks of legal text pasted together. I can see an AI computer getting pretty good at questioning clients and preparing such documents. (There are already computer will-writing software available, that seems to do an acceptable job.) So an AI computer that could do this quickly & cheaply will seriously cut into the income of many lawyers – possibly driving many out of business.

So the average lawyer will be left with fewer types of cases: divorce/custody, personal injury/liability, landlord/tenant, employment, etc. And I could see even smarter AI computers cutting into much of that business, too.

Making a living might become much harder for your average lawyer.

9

Agreed - my first real coding job was writing software to prepare real estate conveyancing documents based off form entries. That was … 1998. The people contracting us to do this were conveyancing attorneys. They were the ones intending to drive other lawyers out of business.

10

My brother-in-law described being accosted by a panhandler in downtown Manhattan because he loitered too long in one spot. The guy told him “Get lost! This is my corner!” (He should have worn better clothes, but he was an 'artist" so did not want to get his nice stuff dirty).

So I imagine lawyers eventually reduced to telling each other “Get lost! This is my ambulance!”

But seriously… :smiley: I suppose the point is the AI can cover all the relevant questions and explain the nuances of each legal dcoument (such as a will, or sale of real estate) to ensure all bases are covered and that the client is properly informed.

Reminds me of the Theranos case - the original people expecting to buy the tech would have been the medical labs, but if it was cheap enough, every doctor’s office would buy one and do lab tests themselves instead of handing big bucks to a lab. With the cost of lab tests significantly reduced, turn around times reduced, etc. - everyone benefits. Except the labs. Unfortunately for everyone - except the labs - the tech was DOA.

Similarly for lawyer offices - why pay a lawyer, if the real estate agent fires up their computer and sits down with the clients… why pay a real estate agent when there would be an equivalent of eBay for real estate and you simply had to deal with a web site personally? If there’s a job which simply involves sitting down with a client and producing paperwork for money and giving advice as input to the process - it can be replaced by eJeeves. Same if there’s a job matching client with product or seller - AI to the rescue.

11

Any job that requires diagnosing is ripe for elimination: medicine obviously, from interpreting symptoms, reading x-rays and MRIs, interpreting test results, etc. But also things like car repair shops, placing students in the right level of classes, and grading tests and essays.

12

Here’s one job that will never be replaced by AI: the TSA inspectors at airports.

For, verily it is written, and I say unto thee, the TSA shall be with ye forever, yea, even unto the end of time.

This post is half sarcastic, and half serious. There are some jobs which politics and the immovable bureaucracy of government will never allow to change, even though it can be proven that the job is totally unnecessary. TSA inspections are one sad example.