FGL wrote: β29 Jan 2024
First and foremost, robots or AI are taking jobs away from educated people and artists. On the contrary, craftsmen are almost irreplaceable.
A book on how to build a bridge costs less than the bridge. The information in the book on how to build a bridge can be changed, updated, rethought, rewritten dozens of times at a tiny fraction of the cost of the bridge, and the bridge accepts minimal improvements without having to be torn down and rebuilt at enormous cost.
But when bridge 'theory' has reached such a level of precision and reliability that there is no longer any doubt as to how to build the best possible bridge for every occasion, then construction can be automated.
A bridge gives work to one archer and fifty workers.
When the machines build the bridge 50 families go without dinner.
I want to say that it is now the intellectual and 'creative' trades that are under siege by AI, but it is because these trades are immaterial and therefore inexpensive and we always start, for lack of funds and confidence, with the cheap stuff.
But now AI is a certainty: it is there, it is electrifying, and it will never go away.
The marriage of AI and robotics is already underway and it won't be long before autonomous buses, robot plumbers, AI carpenters, etc. will be a reality.
And as soon as the prototypes hit the market, they will lower the 'production' costs of even the craft trades, so ALL jobs will be compromised and we will be forced to rethink the working (and economic) world from the ground up.
Many tears will be shed but a powerful tool is better than a less powerful tool, and I am confident for our medium- to long-term future with AI.