2024 UPDATE!! Altman: prepare for AI to be "uncomfortable" 33% US jobs gone..SKYNET, AI medical advances? BASIC INCOME? 1st AI MOVIE! AI MAYOR!!
- Thread starter GnauzBookOfRhymes
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GnauzBookOfRhymes
Superstar
Highlights from the RAeS Future Combat Air & Space Capabilities Summit - Royal Aeronautical Society
What is the future of combat air and space capabilities? TIM ROBINSON FRAeS and STEPHEN BRIDGEWATER report from two days of high-level debate and discussion at the RAeS FCAS23 Summit.
www.aerosociety.com
voltronblack
Superstar
It petty wild how they look past the A.I goingHighlights from the RAeS Future Combat Air & Space Capabilities Summit - Royal Aeronautical Society
What is the future of combat air and space capabilities? TIM ROBINSON FRAeS and STEPHEN BRIDGEWATER report from two days of high-level debate and discussion at the RAeS FCAS23 Summit.
at the human operator in it way
GnauzBookOfRhymes
Superstar
It petty wild how they look past the A.I going
Think about the possibilities if neural links become viable. Controlling a human is much better than destroying it.
Highlights from the RAeS Future Combat Air & Space Capabilities Summit - Royal Aeronautical Society
What is the future of combat air and space capabilities? TIM ROBINSON FRAeS and STEPHEN BRIDGEWATER report from two days of high-level debate and discussion at the RAeS FCAS23 Summit.
GnauzBookOfRhymes
Superstar
At New Chicago Walgreens, You Can Only Browse Two Aisles — The Rest Of The Store Is Locked Away
Walgreens claims the South Loop store, which forces customers to order items digitally, is about "convenience" and not theft prevention.
blockclubchicago.org
Pretty soon will be robotic full service.
AI eliminated nearly 4,000 jobs in May, report says
A report of U.S. job cuts showed roughly 5% of job losses in May were due to AI technology.
www.cbsnews.com
AI eliminated nearly 4,000 jobs in May, report says
BY ELIZABETH NAPOLITANO
JUNE 2, 2023 / 5:59 PM / MONEYWATCH
For those wondering when AI will start replacing human jobs, the answer is it already has.
Artificial intelligence contributed to nearly 4,000 job losses last month, according to data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, as interest in the rapidly evolving technology's ability to perform advanced organizational tasks and lighten workloads has intensified.
The report released Thursday by the outplacement firm shows that layoff announcements from U.S.-based employers reached more than 80,000 in May — a 20% jump from the prior month and nearly four times the level for the same month last year. Of those cuts, AI was responsible for 3,900, or roughly 5% of all jobs lost, making it the seventh-highest contributor to employment losses in May cited by employers.
The job cuts come as businesses waste no time adopting advanced AI technology to automate a range of tasks — including creative work, such as writing, as well as administrative and clerical work. The AI industry is expected to grow to more than $1 trillion fueled by major technological advancements that became apparent last fall with the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT bot, a report by Bloomberg Intelligence analysts shows.
- These jobs are most likely to be replaced by chatbots like ChatGPT
- ChatGPT bot passes law school exam
ChatGPT enters the newsroom
The Washington Post reported this week on two copywriters who lost their livelihoods because employers (or clients) decided that ChatGPT could perform the job at a cheaper price. Media companies such as CNET have already laid off reporters while using AI to write articles, which later had to be corrected for plagiarism. Earlier this year, an eating disorder helpline used a chatbot to replace human staff members who had unionized. It recently had to pull the plug on the bot after it gave people problematic dieting advice.In March, investment bank Goldman Sachs predicted in a report that AI could eventually replace 300 million full-time jobs globally and affect nearly one-fifth of employment — with a particular hit to white-collar jobs often considered automation-proof, such as administrative and legal professions.
AI is also a concern in the TV and entertainment writers' strike that began in May, with writers demanding better pay and job security in addition to a near-total ban on the use of AI to produce written entertainment content.
But analysts note that as with previous technology that has replaced human workers, generative AI is already creating new jobs, and the burgeoning industry is just getting started.
"Generative AI is expected to become a monster employment generator because ofestimates of a mushrooming $1.3 trillion AI market that will boost sales and ad spending for the Tech industry," Ben Emons, a principal at NewEdge Wealth, said Friday in a note.
at some point it might be made to do instant replay, sound the buzzers and control the scoreboard too.
GnauzBookOfRhymes
Superstar
FYI that 4,000 number is probably off by at least two orders of magnitude. Why do I say that?
Because chances are there are many many jobs listen as open for which companies are now utilizing AI systems, eliminating the need to hire someone.
Because chances are there are many many jobs listen as open for which companies are now utilizing AI systems, eliminating the need to hire someone.
Also, I think a lot of the big tech's "layoffs due to overhiring" were just a cover and that those prior roles are now in the process of being outsourced to AI
ChatGPT took their jobs. Now they walk dogs and fix air conditioners.
Technology used to automate dirty and repetitive jobs. Now, artificial intelligence chatbots are coming after high-paid ones.
By Pranshu Verma and Gerrit De Vynck
June 2, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
Eric Fein at his home in Bloomingdale, Ill. Fein lost many of his writing jobs to ChatGPT and plans to attend the College of DuPage technical school in the fall to study heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. (Taylor Glascock for The Washington Post)
When ChatGPT came out last November, Olivia Lipkin, a 25-year-old copywriter in San Francisco, didn’t think too much about it. Then, articles about how to use the chatbot on the job began appearing on internal Slack groups at the tech start-up where she worked as the company’s only writer.
Over the next few months, Lipkin’s assignments dwindled. Managers began referring to her as “Olivia/ChatGPT” on Slack. In April, she was let go without explanation, but when she found managers writing about how using ChatGPT was cheaper than paying a writer, the reason for her layoff seemed clear.
“Whenever people brought up ChatGPT, I felt insecure and anxious that it would replace me,” she said. “Now I actually had proof that it was true, that those anxieties were warranted and now I was actually out of a job because of AI.”
Some economists predict artificial intelligence technology like ChatGPT could replace hundreds of millions of jobs, in a cataclysmic reorganization of the workforce mirroring the industrial revolution.
For some workers, this impact is already here. Those that write marketing and social media content are in the first wave of people being replaced with tools like chatbots, which are seemingly able to produce plausible alternatives to their work.
Experts say that even advanced AI doesn’t match the writing skills of a human: It lacks personal voice and style, and it often churns out wrong, nonsensical or biased answers. But for many companies, the cost-cutting is worth a drop in quality.
Olivia Lipkin, a 25-year-old copywriter in San Francisco. (Olivia Morfit)
“We’re really in a crisis point,” said Sarah T. Roberts, an associate professor at University of California in Los Angeles specializing in digital labor. “[AI] is coming for the jobs that were supposed to be automation-proof.”
Artificial intelligence has rapidly increased in quality over the past year, giving rise to chatbots that can hold fluid conversations, write songs and produce computer code. In a rush to mainstream the technology, Silicon Valley companies are pushing these products to millions of users and — for now — often offering them free.
AI and algorithms have been a part of the working world for decades. For years, consumer-product companies, grocery stores and warehouse logistics firms have used predictive algorithms and robots with AI-fueled vision systems to help make business decisions, automate some rote tasks and manage inventory. Industrial plants and factories have been dominated by robots for much of the 20th century, and countless office tasks have been replaced by software.
But the recent wave of generative artificial intelligence — which uses complex algorithms trained on billions of words and images from the open internet to produce text, images and audio — has the potential for a new stage of disruption. The technology’s ability to churn out human-sounding prose puts highly paid knowledge workers in the crosshairs for replacement, experts said.
“In every previous automation threat, the automation was about automating the hard, dirty, repetitive jobs,” said Ethan Mollick, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. “This time, the automation threat is aimed squarely at the highest-earning, most creative jobs that … require the most educational background.”
In March, Goldman Sachs predicted that 18 percent of work worldwide could be automated by AI, with white-collar workers such as lawyers at more risk than those in trades such as construction or maintenance. “Occupations for which a significant share of workers’ time is spent outdoors or performing physical labor cannot be automated by AI,” the report said.
The White House also sounded the alarm, saying in a December report that “AI has the potential to automate ‘nonroutine’ tasks, exposing large new swaths of the workforce to potential disruption.”
But Mollick said it’s too early to gauge how disruptive AI will be to the workforce. He noted that jobs such as copywriting, document translation and transcription, and paralegal work are particularly at risk, since they have tasks that are easily done by chatbots. High-level legal analysis, creative writing or art may not be as easily replaceable, he said, because humans still outperform AI in those areas.
“Think of AI as generally acting as a high-end intern,” he said. “Jobs that are mostly designed as entry-level jobs to break you into a field where you do something kind of useful, but it’s also sort of a steppingstone to the next level — those are the kinds of jobs under threat.”
Eric Fein ran his content-writing business for 10 years, charging $60 an hour to write everything from 150-word descriptions of bath mats to website copy for cannabis companies. The 34-year-old from Bloomingdale, Ill., built a steady business with 10 ongoing contracts, which made up half of his annual income and provided a comfortable life for his wife and 2-year-old son.
But in March, Fein received a note from his largest client: His services would no longer be needed because the company would be transitioning to ChatGPT. One by one, Fein’s nine other contracts were canceled for the same reason. His entire copywriting business was gone nearly overnight.
“It wiped me out,” Fein said. He urged his clients to reconsider, warning that ChatGPT couldn’t write content with his level of creativity, technical precision and originality. He said his clients understood that, but they told him it was far cheaper to use ChatGPT than to pay him his hourly wage.
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{continued}
Fein wrote in the subreddit r/ChatGPT, “It’s an uphill battle against a creature that has already replaced me and continues to improve and adapt faster than any human could ever keep up.” (Taylor Glascock for The Washington Post)
Fein was rehired by one of his clients, who wasn’t pleased with ChatGPT’s work. But it isn’t enough to sustain him and his family, who have a little over six months of financial runway before they run out of money.
Now, Fein has decided to pursue a job that AI can’t do, and he has enrolled in courses to become an HVAC technician. Next year, he plans to train to become a plumber.
“A trade is more future-proof,” he said.
Companies that replaced workers with chatbots have faced high-profile stumbles. When the technology news site CNET used artificial intelligence to write articles, the results were riddled with errors and resulted in lengthy corrections. A lawyer who relied on ChatGPT for a legal brief cited numerous fictitious cases. And the National Eating Disorders Association, which laid off people staffing its helpline and reportedly replaced them with a chatbot, suspended its use of the technology after it doled out insensitive and harmful advice.
Roberts said that chatbots can produce costly errors and that companies rushing to incorporate ChatGPT into operations are “jumping the gun.” Since they work by predicting the most statistically likely word in a sentence, they churn out average content by design. That provides companies with a tough decision, she said: quality vs. cost.
“We have to ask: Is a facsimile good enough? Is imitation good enough? Is that all we care about?” she said. “We’re going to lower the measure of quality, and to what end? So the company owners and shareholders can take a bigger piece of the pie?”
Lipkin, the copywriter who discovered she’d been replaced by ChatGPT, is reconsidering office work altogether. She initially got into content marketing so that she could support herself while she pursued her own creative writing. But she found the job burned her out and made it hard to write for herself. Now, she’s starting a job as a dog walker.
“I’m totally taking a break from the office world,” Lipkin said. “People are looking for the cheapest solution, and that’s not a person — that’s a robot.”
Fein wrote in the subreddit r/ChatGPT, “It’s an uphill battle against a creature that has already replaced me and continues to improve and adapt faster than any human could ever keep up.” (Taylor Glascock for The Washington Post)
Fein was rehired by one of his clients, who wasn’t pleased with ChatGPT’s work. But it isn’t enough to sustain him and his family, who have a little over six months of financial runway before they run out of money.
Now, Fein has decided to pursue a job that AI can’t do, and he has enrolled in courses to become an HVAC technician. Next year, he plans to train to become a plumber.
“A trade is more future-proof,” he said.
Companies that replaced workers with chatbots have faced high-profile stumbles. When the technology news site CNET used artificial intelligence to write articles, the results were riddled with errors and resulted in lengthy corrections. A lawyer who relied on ChatGPT for a legal brief cited numerous fictitious cases. And the National Eating Disorders Association, which laid off people staffing its helpline and reportedly replaced them with a chatbot, suspended its use of the technology after it doled out insensitive and harmful advice.
Roberts said that chatbots can produce costly errors and that companies rushing to incorporate ChatGPT into operations are “jumping the gun.” Since they work by predicting the most statistically likely word in a sentence, they churn out average content by design. That provides companies with a tough decision, she said: quality vs. cost.
“We have to ask: Is a facsimile good enough? Is imitation good enough? Is that all we care about?” she said. “We’re going to lower the measure of quality, and to what end? So the company owners and shareholders can take a bigger piece of the pie?”
Lipkin, the copywriter who discovered she’d been replaced by ChatGPT, is reconsidering office work altogether. She initially got into content marketing so that she could support herself while she pursued her own creative writing. But she found the job burned her out and made it hard to write for herself. Now, she’s starting a job as a dog walker.
“I’m totally taking a break from the office world,” Lipkin said. “People are looking for the cheapest solution, and that’s not a person — that’s a robot.”
GnauzBookOfRhymes
Superstar
The next revolution will be white collar. That should scare people more than anything.
Universal basic income: Plans drawn up for £1,600 a month trial in England
Thirty people would get a monthly lump sum for two years, under a think tank's scheme in England.
www.bbc.com
Universal basic income: Plans drawn up for £1,600 a month trial in England
- Published
4 days ago
- Published
By Michael Sheils McNamee
BBC News
Thirty people could be paid £1,600 a month without any obligation under proposals for the first trial of a universal basic income in England.
Researchers from think tank Autonomy are seeking financial backing for a two-year pilot programme to see how it would change the lives of the group.
Supporters say schemes can simplify the welfare system and tackle poverty.
Participants will be drawn from central Jarrow, in north-east England, and East Finchley, in north London.
The concept of a universal basic income sees government pays all individuals a set salary regardless of their means.
Critics of universal basic income say it would be extremely costly, would divert funding away from public services, and not necessarily help to alleviate poverty.
Autonomy said it hopes its proposed pilot will "make the case for a national basic income and more comprehensive trials to fully understand the potential of a basic income in the UK".
"No one should ever be facing poverty, having to choose between heating and eating, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world," said Cleo Goodman, co-founder of Basic Income Conversation, a programme run by the work-focused think tank.
Will Stronge, director of research at Autonomy, said: "All the evidence shows that [a UBI] would directly alleviate poverty and boost millions of people's wellbeing: the potential benefits are just too large to ignore."
Autonomy's trial is being supported by charity Big Local and Northumbria University.
Two years of community consultation has taken place in central Jarrow and East Finchley.
Anyone from the areas is able to put themselves forward to take part and can remain anonymous. While participants will be drawn randomly, the organisers plan for it to be a representative group and to be made up of 20% of people with disabilities.
On top of the £1.15m budget for the basic income payments over two years, there would be further costs of about £500,000 for the project's evaluation activities, admin, and community support teams.
Autonomy says if funding for income payments was secured, it would most likely come from private philanthropic sources, or local or combined authorities.
There have been previous calls for a universal basic income to be used to alleviate financial hardships experienced in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
And last year, the Welsh Labour government announced a £20m experiment offering a universal basic income to young people leaving care.
The plan would give £1,600 a month before tax to 500 care leavers, a sum roughly in line with the living wage. The scheme is ongoing, and the Welsh government said the results would be "thoroughly evaluated".