Are there any employees of OpenAI around? I had a question:
Does anyone in the office stop to contemplate the ramifications of developing technology that will likely put most people out of a job, which will have a whole host of knock-on effects?
Does anyone in the office stop to contemplate the ramifications of developing technology that will likely put most people out of a job, which will have a whole host of knock-on effects?
Cars put stable boys out of jobs.
Light bulbs put candlemakers out of jobs.
Are the people who made them also morally culpable?
Let’s just make no progress ever in the name of employment I guess. /s
Have they, though? Is there good data on this? I haven’t seen anyone lose any jobs over this in my area. They either get reassigned to different departments or get better jobs doing the same thing in companies that refuse to use self-checkouts. And I read here just a month or so ago that Amazon closed many of their "no cashier" stores in NY and Trader Joe’s vowed to never use them.
> Light bulbs put candlemakers out of jobs
I would guess that such artisans moved on to other niche products. Where I live, candlemakers today make a lot of money, and I had a chance to watch them do their thing in their small commercial space. This was a one person operation, no employees and no mechanization, and judging by the amount of product they were creating and their wholesale prices, they were pulling in about about 300k a year or more, after taking into account supplies.
Then your second point is a wild anecdote with zero data. (Side note: With zero additional data I can tell you that your “judging” of their profit is wildly inaccurate.)
Oh OK, so if you work yourself to death you can make slightly above average income.
Cool, I guess.
I'm not seeing how it's relevant to GP's point though. Candle makers still exist yes.
But are you really arguing the light bulb did not cause that specific job to become less common?
I also thought it was fun how, you asked for a citation, then when you were asked for to provide one yourself, you respond with "gOoGlE iS yOuR fRiEnD".
These people are working for themselves with no boss, and doing what they love. They don’t believe they are working themselves to death.
Again, Google: "The national average U.S. income in 2021 was $97,962. The median U.S. income in 2021 was $69,717. Highest paying jobs: Chief executives and nurse anesthetists earned over $200,000 a year on average in 2021, making them the highest paid occupations."
So really, what are you talking about? Nothing slightly above average income here. Maybe step out of your bubble. People work 12 hours a day all over the country. I did it for ten years. Doesn’t mean it’s good, right, or acceptable, but it’s considered normal in the US.
> But are you really arguing the light bulb did not cause that specific job to become less common?
Artisans like candlemakers were needed at that time and today. The job is still very much in demand. Is the job less common due to electric lights? Possibly, but do you think craftspeople in that industry couldn’t make something else? They could and they did. The painter Renoir is often cited as an example of a craftsman who lost his job due to the industrialization of porcelain manufacturing, and was forced to work as a portrait artist for rich patrons who wanted portraits made of their family.
> I also thought it was fun how, you asked for a citation, then when you were asked for to provide one yourself, you respond with "gOoGlE iS yOuR fRiEnD".
A citation for what? Candlemaking is a huge industry with people starting new businesses all the time. I gave an example of one in my community. It’s really common. A quick search will show you what I’m talking about, and as it turns out 300k is expected for a medium operation run out of a commercial garage space.
Only speaking about what I’ve experienced and been told by people in that industry. Can you point me to the massive layoffs?
At the big box stores near me, nobody has lost their jobs due to self-checkout. If you think otherwise, please show me.
At that point, it won’t be “what kinds of jobs can AI perform?” It’ll be “what use are humans in the workplace?”
For at least a while, humans will have some usefulness in the trades, since producing functional robots who will come over and fix your plumbing or take down a wall is probably a ways off, but who knows how long it’ll take for AI to figure out ways to produce cheap and efficient robots?
> "The other most popular scenarios would be A.I. that attacks us and nations fighting with nukes over scarce resources.” The Shypmates looked grave. “I try not to think about it too much,” Altman said. “But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.”
This doesn't explicitly talk about him being worried about AI putting a lot of people out of jobs but he is prepping for AI going awry.
[0]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-ma...
But... genie, bottle; prisoner's dilemma. If they object to what they're building, or how it's implemented, too strenuously, they will be out of a job. Then not only do they have more immediate concerns about sustaining themselves, they have no weight in how things play out.