First AI came for journalists, then investors then programmers | Hacker News Reader

First AI came for journalists, then investors then programmers

1 pointbernardlunn2 comments

First AI came for journalists, then investors then programmers

If you run an AI business you want to replace expensive humans who are not protected by regulators.

Journalists are both expensive and not protected by regulators. So this human was not surprised to have LinkedIn suggest I upgrade to premium so I can have AI rewrite my post. I am retired so not interested, but imagine a big media business making this decision.

Investors are better protected by regulators, so grab your popcorn for this one.

Many programmers are in denial about AI replacing them. Visions of making a fortune writing AI are part of this denial. First programmers will be commodified by AI, as the few humans still making decisions will not be motivated to learn how to instruct AI.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

First: It will probably take a while... like many, many years... until AI and robotics will be able to replace human workforce. We have "digital tools" on our hands since 30 years, still governments suffer from manual processes. Most of the noise currently coming from this scene is hot air and buzzword bingo. Although the technology is improving very fast, this does not mean that we can adapt our work processes to this new technology in the same pace.

Second: If AI and robotics finally take over, this isn't a bad thing. Of course we need to adapt our rules and lives, like introducing a "robot tax" or the "basic income", to keep the economy flowing. But why is this bad? Sure, the transition will be hard, but this inevitable.

Why is everyone so mad about AI generating art or providing entertainment? You can still create art, if you like to be an artist. You can still entertain, if you want to be an entertainer. Let AI do the work to keep the world rolling and do what you want - in your free time, 24 hours a day.

News agency-style journalism is an easy target, as its primary role is to aggregate and convey information from multiple sources to the reader in a nominally unbiased, dispassionate fashion. Learned language models are ideal for this; it's a style manual wrought large.

As for developers–we've had automated code generation for decades. And machine learning has been a part of investment data analysis for a long time.

Why the fear, uncertainty, and doubt? Are you creeping closer to death?

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