With AI coming, there is some general advice to go into skilled manual labor like the trades since a lot of knowledge work will be automated in the years ahead and worker productivity will go up to the point where white collar jobs can get the same amount of work done with less employees.
But I don’t feel the skilled trades are safe either.
The end goal is bipedal robots powered by AI, which will have the manual dexterity to perform skilled manual labor.
But another factor will be the widespread adoption of augmented reality. A situation where a person wears transparent glasses that overlays information about their environment onto the glasses. Companies like boeing already use augmented reality to help in their manufacturing and its improved speed and quality. Its common for people to go on youtube and look up info to fix things around their homes, which is like a rudimentary version of augmented reality.
I feel like thats just the start. In a few years we will probably be able to take someone with 1 year experience in a skilled trade and by giving them augmented reality glasses, have them perform at the same skill level as a 10+ year veteran. They could open a car hood and have step by step instructions given to them which they would be able to understand because they have the basic knowledge.
I just don’t see how the trades are a bastion of job security in the age of AI. In between augmented reality in the medium term and bipedal robots in the long term, those jobs will disappear too.
The only jobs I could see staying human are ones that are human due to regulation, or jobs that require in person human to human contact due to the fact that we are evolved as social creatures. Some forms of therapy will always require a human being, but even in those situation, the therapist will probably have feedback from AI about the emotional needs of their patient so the patient and therapist can communicate better.
Which to me is one of the underrated aspects of AI. I think it’ll bring people closer because it’ll help people improve their social skills. People will be more able to understand and express themselves, and better able to understand others, and better able to find effective social and emotional outlets due to AI.
Or most of the people will be emotionally stunted droids raised by machines.
ISTM a lot of what’s plaguing the COVID generation is too little live human contact and too much machine-mediated contact. Turning the entity at the other end of the wire from a real human to a fake human is IMO unlikely to improve the outcomes.
I feel like AI will give us guidance and advice for in person interaction. If you’re talking to a girl, AI can tell you if they like you or find you annoying based on things like her body language, tone of voice, etc. If you’re in therapy, AI could tell the therapist what kinds of traumas could be behind your dysfunctional behaviors. Stuff that the patient may not feel able to verbalize but the therapist can help coax it out of them. AI can help people write emotionally complex letters to people discussing emotionally complex situations so they can communicate their feelings.
Also AI could help us understand dysfunctional people to steer clear of them. People with untreated cluster B personality disorders can be very destructive. AI could give real world feedback that someone is giving subtle signs of something like ASPD or NPD, and let the person know to keep their guard up around them. For someone with an abusive childhood who is oblivious to red flags, AI could point out the red flags that they miss because they are unconsciously repeating childhood abuse.
Also if something traumatic happens, AI will be more likely to pick up on subtle signs of it. So hopefully things like rampant sexual abuse will become less common as AI helps the people around the victim understand something bad may have happened.
In real world usage, I’ve already met people who do things like put someone else’s text messages into AI programs and ask it if it sees signs of manipulation. Or people will write letters, then put it in AI and say ‘take out all of my anger and passive aggressiveness’ and the AI program will do that. So its already happening.
The only “safe” jobs will be CEOs and political leaders, since those are the people whose interests the AI will be designed to serve.
Unlikely. Any such AI will be carefully designed to turn people into submissive servants of the wealthy and powerful, not to help them. It’ll sabotage interpersonal relationships by design, since people who work together are a danger to the system. It’ll be designed to spread racial hatred, hatred between the genders, and hatred of anyone who isn’t wealthy for that purpose, as well as to suit the prejudices of the elite.
The result will be a populace who interacts almost entirely with their circle of machines and their boss, and who is taught to hate and fear everyone outside that circle.
And once the technology gets good enough that they are no longer needed, they won’t be able to provide meaningful resistance when the elite has the rest of the population exterminated.