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Comment by RivieraKid | Hacker News Reader

> Governments will have to ponder about what to do with a world of people who became inferior to machines at almost everything. Universal Basic Income?

Inferior to machines at almost everything? Most jobs are safe, look at the 25 most common jobs in the US - cashier, food preparation worker, stocking associate, laborer, janitor, construction worker, bookkeeper, server, medical assistant, bartender, administrative assistant, marketing specialist, police officer, electrician, mechanic, etc.

In theory, if all developers are replaced, they should be able to find a different job. The problem is that the different job may have lower pay and status.

There's really no need for UBI.

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Do you genuinely believe machines can't handle most of those jobs with ease?

The only reason why they haven't already been replaced is because humans can be exceptionally cheap. Much easier to hire somebody to sit at a desk for $10/hour doing repetitive tasks than spend millions implementing systems across the board to do what they do (for now).

While we have seem some huge leaps in AI, robotics is still far behind human capability. Things like food preparation are not anywhere close to being feasible right now.

So perhaps in the medium future humans will be "stuck" doing only physical tasks, while AIs take over everything that can be done virtually.

There is a display at Meow Wolf (absurdist immersive art experience) which paraphrased is "Thinking is for machines, labor is for humans". May turn to be true...

I'll reply to this once GPT4 provides a thought for me to borrow.

It should only cost you a few credits

Just classify these images to help the algorithm and it will reward you with 1 token per dozen classifications!

That is one of the common outcomes talked about. Certainly nothing more stable right now than being an Electrician or Machinist!

I will say though, that for a lot of those jobs human-replicating robotics isn't even necessary. We exaggerate the difficulty required because we're still assuming that the exact current system should stay in place. However, sticking within food preparation example, look at those elaborate cake vending machines found primarily in asian countries. There really isn't a reason why McDonalds can't do the same for some of their offerings, after all most of their stuff is frozen anyways.

Yes, I believe machines can't handle most of the jobs I listed with ease.

Cashiers, already replaced by self scanners, fewer and fewer of them are found in stores, even if you do get hired as a cashier you usually make horrible hours now. Food preparation is another one hit huge by automation, where it's become normal now for companies to announce automated locations (like McDonalds and Taco Bell did last year). Server, bartender, same thing applies. There have already been police officer bots being tested. I mean truly the list goes on, out of the ones you listed really only electrician, construction worker, and mechanic would be hardest to automate.

Cashiers - yes, the others no. Police office bots? Lol... Maybe you can replace some very specific case.

If there is no more demand for developers for the kind of projects that most work on today, what do you think will be the next area that they'll all try to get into?

Automating all the other stuff that's left on the table.

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