Automation and job replacement is a good thing. The reason it feels bad is because we’ve tied the ability to satisfy our basic needs to employment. In an economic model that actually isn’t a dystopian hellscape, robots replacing jobs is something to celebrate.
And to switch our economic model to one in which a person can thrive without pissing the vast majority of our lives away on the grind; we just need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps!
This is so important.
An aspect of post scarcity is that people shouldn’t have to work. AGI might allow that; LLM is starting to fill some niches.
The problem is how it’s being done. Rather than benefiting society as a whole, it’s enriching a few. In an ideal world, people whose jobs are replaced should get a stipend. We should all be eagerly awaiting that time when our jobs are replaced and we get a paycheck - maybe a little reduced - but now we’re free to pursue our interests. If that means doing your old job, only now it’s bespoke, artisan work, great.
The other missing factors are free energy and limitless resources; but we’re making progress on energy, but resources are an issue with no solution on the horizon. Plus, we’re killing the planet by just existing, so there’s that.
We have a lot of problems to solve but AI is part of the solution, except that it’s being done wrong. And expensively.
but resources are an issue with no solution on the horizon.
We’ve got tons of resources, and the means the produce more. The problem is that’s not going to make some people lots and lots of money, so they don’t do it.
Scarcity is not a problem of “can’t” right now, it’s a problem of “won’t”.
We’re going to run out of oil in the next 30 years, and it’s not just cars that will affect. The mass produced factory farmed food that feeds 90% of the world’s population is utterly dependent on fossils fuels. There are almost no “Tesla” giant combines. And the trains that transport food to the cities run on fossil fuels. Cities will collapse. Air transport and ocean shipping will cease, destroying the global economy.
Many of the remaining oil reserves are in deep water, which are each and every one a man made environmental catastrophe waiting to happen, and as the easy reserves dry up, offshore drilling will become more common.
Meanwhile, we’re running out of precious metals needed to make cheap consumer electronics. And while we’re finding new reserves and the finite limit may not be a close, as computers and phone components become more expensive, and only the well-off will be able to afford them. The income disparity we see within our countries will become global, with entire countries falling behind.
And then there’s fresh water. This will become a bigger problem as time goes on, and water wars will become large scale events.
We’re living on a finite planet of finite resources. Our only hope for space exploration is a couple of commercial companies run by the 21st century equivalent of robber barons. If we do start mining asteroids for materials, those resources still be utterly monopolized by a single handful of individuals.
I don’t understand your belief that we still have plenty of resources, when the scientific community has been warning that we’re running through our reserves ever faster, for years.
Right you got me thinking so here’s my thoughts. Not looking to argue just discuss the points you’ve made.
1st paragraph:
Global economy crashing is a good thing. Like you have pointed out it is completely dependent on a non-renewable resource on top of that it is one of the biggest contributors to worldwide exploitation. It also a contributes to cultural colonialism.
more info: youtube.com/watch?v=4UJSf_oyVAo.When it comes to farming. People will come up with solutions. I believe that farmers are competent enough that when we run out of oil they aren’t just going to go. “welp guess I starve now”. They are going to innovate and do what they can to keep going. Also swapping out an ICE motor for an electric one doesn’t seem that complicated.
Also Interesting that you didn’t mention plastics. The most used oil product in the world. I’ll be so glad when they’re finally gone.
2nd paragraph is just a continuation of the first.
3rd paragraph
The key word in this paragraph is make. We don’t really need to make any more electronics. We’ve already made enough. How many processors do you think are just sitting in some warehouse never to be used because a newer model came out. How much of those precious metals are inside cars that are going to be useless once oil runs out. We need to focus on recycling and reusing existing things and devices instead of making new ones.
4th paragraph
Water is a cycle. It doesn’t just disappear. We already recycle most of our water. Although I’m not that knowledgable on the topic so I can’t say much about it.
5th paragraph
skip.
6th paragraph
The scientific community has made those assertions with the assumption that we are going to keep doing what we’re doing. Mindless consumerism, buying and making new things, and abusing our planet. And they are right. What I and the commenter you’re replying to are (probably) saying is that the problems with resources are caused my how we live our lives and the problem disappears without capitalism, consumerism and the constant resource abuse they create. A more sustainable shift in society and economics will solve these problems
Also
I sidestepped you’re points about money, because I am an anarchist. I see capitalism and money as the precise reason for this artificial scarcity and natural abuse. Like you even said in you’re comment even if we get infinite resources in the form of asteroid mining it still won’t be distributed properly due to monopolies. Having more resources won’t fix anything because the problem is the market that distributes them being inefficient due to running entirely on profit motive. The solution is to end capitalism and when we do we are going to find that we have more than enough without needing to do asteroid mining. Where would we even get the fuel? doesn’t that require oil?
Global economy crashing is a good thing.
Takes like this are why I think it should be illegal for anyone under the age of 25 to express any opinions about anything whatsoever
I can get everything I need to comfortably live from a 20km radius, or I could If my country hadn’t outsourced clothes production to china. why does my life need to rely on a regime that’s half the planet away while destroying the said planet in the process?
The fucking gall to post that on whatever device you are currently using to access the internet.
We have a lot of problems to solve but AI is part of the solution, except that it’s being done wrong. And expensively.
There’s also a conversation to be had about which jobs shouldn’t be automated, either because current technology isn’t suitable, or because it might never be suitable. And I’d say that pretty much everything that we are calling ‘AI’ right now falls under that - I’ll say that robots are part of the solution, but I don’t think ‘AI’ is.
Even if AI is, what we have now is mostly A with only the semblance of I. “Real” “AI” is not yet “real.”
What’s a personal?
Came here to say this… Personal?
This strip was made by AI, wasn’t it? WASN’T IT??!?!?!
It 100% is the new 4o image generation which appears very good in producing crisp panel comics with readable text exactly like this.
The most scary thing is all the people responding with denial, oblivious to this not being human made.
It might be. The doctor ear has different colors. And each robot has a slight difference in shading and shape. An human artist will just simply copy paste all the robots.
brown teeth lady
I disagreed until you pointed that out.
I think those are lips.
It’s very human.
Maybe they meant personnel
Personnel for what?
Nothing personnel
My bet is personal assistant / personal trainer
there a whole Black Mirror episode dedicated to the idea of an AI personal assistant. We may not be that far yet, but we’re more than halfway there. We’ve come a long way from Clippy.
Personal trainers are called simply personal in Brazil, and the original comic is in Brazilian Portuguese. This is an AI translated version.
Credit to the original artist.This… Almost looks like the op of this post used AI to translate and change the art style of this comic.
Replaced by AI:
traductorAlso modified the art style to make it less violent and subversive, so cross “artist” of that list as well.
With the original, we clearly understand that it should all have been filled with humans, but there was a progression in the center line where AI (killed and) replaced professions that were always thought to be irreplaceable by AI.
Artist is the second the robot killed
Seems the translated variant misses a big point of the original artist too, notice how the gun slowly comes into view? It’s trying to make a point that the replacement isn’t quite organic, but rather forced on us. Probably would have been better to just translate the text in place and include the rightful credit.
Ironic. The translator and artist were the first ones to be killed, and now we got this bastardized AI “translation” that’s actually an entirely different image, but worse.
This is why so many were confused about “personal,” I believe it’s a borrowed term in Brazil that popularly means personal trainer.
Not personnel, not HR, not personal assistant, nor an AI hallucination, even as some confidently claimed them, all because the original work was discarded for a shitty alternative, much like workers themselves.
I’m deeply moved
Thank you for finding it. I will leave his IG here and in description, since my original post was just a copy, unfortunately.
Any personals here?
As an automechanic, my job will never replace by AI, but instead we’re fucked by low wages and the black box automobile has slowly become.
Cooking is something that requires advanced robotics or some kind of heavily modular factory-like automated meal production line, not AI. Though AI certainly could assist in the development of such.
Drivers are being actively replaced right before our eyes.
A lot of Lawyer work is already being heavily automated, even without AI. Outside of that its “technically” replaceable with AI but on a literal legal level not likely currently possible. I think automating some aspects of being a lawyer might be beneficial but certain elements would be down right dystopian if fully automated.
Doctor work being automated is also already being done, but this is arguably a very good thing, as it maybe holds the key to a lot of medical breakthroughs and might unlock the potential to sort all that personal medical data people collect ever since that became a thing. And largely might help significantly reduce the cost of highly effective personal healthcare, given sufficient time.
Teacher work probably could be partially automated but getting kids to pay attention to a lesson, discipline, safety, etc would likely require a human to be around if only for liability.
modular factory-like automated meal production line, not AI.
Define AI… LLMs are just a part of that.
Yeah, Artificial Intelligence is pretty broad category of technologies, even so, robotics and automation is not AI. You could pair a robot or an automated factory with an AI of some kind, or use an AI to design them, and they’re related to each other in that they involve computer technology. Still, not the same thing.
A robotic arm in an car factory is a robot, but it doesn’t have AI in it, they’re usually given a set of commands to repeat.
A rube goldberg machine is technically automated once initialized. Its not AI.
I assume you, teaching as the profession that we have today is not at all safe.
Meanwhile my (college btw) teacher suggests us to use ChatGPT if we need help. Bro wants to replace himself.
I still think that all jobs are, in general, safe for the foreseeable future. But we will be expected to use AI tools and just produce more and more, so that a few people will gain more and more resources and power.
E.g. as engineers we will do less and less actual planning, but we will run AIs like it were a team of engineer slaves.
And I think this will be similar for other branches. A music composer will run AIs to compose parts of a song, adjust it, readjust other parts, till the song is good. I mean, afaik this is already how much of it works.
I believe that a few jobs will be hard hit. Things like first level phone customer support or service are probably going to be decimated, keeping humans for 2nd or 3rd level.
A similar thing happened with the irruption of the PC. In a few short years, the majority of professional typist jobs disappeared.
Entry level at most jobs will be hit. If you basically exist to do grunt work that somebody else assigns and will “approve” before going out, AI may replace you. I would not want to be a junior marketing communications person.
AI has sucked for years and that didn’t stop companies from trying to replace customer service with AI.
Why is lemmy filling up with AI posts? Its worse that this is on c/comicstrips
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But you’re living in capitalism. Unless government forces billionaires to fund social programs, they will just keep getting richer, just like it’s happening right now (if we ignore the crashing markets, but you get the idea)
That’s why we used to tax the morbidly rich at a 90% rate in the 50s
Everyone thinks their own line of work is safe because everyone knows the nuances of their own job. But the thing that gets you is that the easier a job gets the fewer people are needed and the more replaceable they are. You might not be able to make a robot cashier, but with the scan and go mobile app you only need an employee to wave a scanner (to check that some random items in your cart are included in the barcode on your receipt) and the time per customer to do that is fast enough that you only need one person, and since anyone can wave a scanner you don’t have much leverage to negotiate a raise.
This is the lump of labor fallacy. The error you are making is assuming that there is a fixed quantity of work that needs to be performed. When you multiply the productivity of every practitioner of a trade, they can lower their prices. This enables more people to afford those services. There’s a reason people don’t own just 2 or 3 sets of clothes anymore.
When you multiply the productivity of every practitioner of a trade, they can lower their prices.
I’m sorry, but that’s some hilarious Ayn Rand thinking. Prices didn’t go down in grocery stores that added self-checkout, they just made more profit. Companies these days are perfectly comfortable keeping the price the same (or raising them) and just cutting their overhead.
Don’t get me wrong, if there are things they could get more profit by selling more, then they likely would. But I think those items are few and far between. Everything else they just make more money with less workers.
Are you sure self checkout is actually a labor-saving device? Does it actually save costs on net, once you factor in increased theft and shrinkage? Remember, just because companies adopt something, doesn’t mean it’s actually rational to do so. Executives are prone to fads and groupthink like anyone else. And moreover, this is a bit of an inappropriate example for two reasons. First, the demand for groceries is relatively fixed. Even if the price of groceries was cut in half, you probably wouldn’t suddenly double the calories you consume. Second, self checkout is a small marginal cost to the cost of goods in grocery and retail stores. Self checkout doesn’t improve the actual production process of the goods being sold in a store.
But I’m sorry, yes, you can cherry pick a few examples. But the general rule is and always has been that increased automation leads to lower prices. This is the entire story of the Industrial Revolution. People used to own only two or three outfits, as that’s all they could afford. A “walk in closet” was an absurdity 200 years ago. The clothing industry industrialized, and the cost of clothing was driven to the floor, completely contradicting what your model predicts. The 19th century textile barons didn’t mechanize production and then simply pocket the savings.
Hell, the only reason you can afford any kind of consumer electronics is because of automation. The computer, phone, or tablet you’re using now? It would cost 100x as much without automation. This is why niche electronics like specialized lab instruments cost so much money. If you’re only building a few of something for a tiny market, you can’t invest in large scale automation to bring the cost down.
Look at how quickly and dramatically the price of LiDAR has declined. LiDAR was once the purview of specialized engineering and scientific instruments. But because of driver assistance technologies, the demand for LiDAR has exploded. This allowed LiDAR manufacturers to invest in more automated production chains. They didn’t automate and keep charging the same price, as you would assume.
For an example of this in a white collar field, consider something like architecture. How many people actually hire an architect to custom design them a home? Very few. Most people buy mass produced tract homes. Tract homes benefit from a lot of automation and economies of scale, so they’re cheaper than one-off custom-built homes designed by architects. Yet if an architect could rely on specialized AI systems to vastly lower the number of hours required to design a set of home plans, they could charge less. Many more people would then be able to afford the services of an architect.
Yes, you can cherry pick a few examples of industries that have little competition or fixed demand, where they automate without substantially lowering prices. But even those big box stores with their automated checkouts are examples of automation lowering prices. There’s a reason the giant chains can charge less for products than small mom-and-pop shops. A giant grocery chain is big enough to invest in a lot of automation and other economies of scale that a small co-op can’t afford.
And that’s a good thing, if and only if you provide pathways to other jobs or phase workers out slowly i.e. by retirement.
Or provide UBI to share the wealth generated by increased societal productivity
Am I supposed to read this as simultaneous (those jobs are currently safe… for now, the others are not) or progressive (all these jobs are human/skilled and halfway they get replaced by robots)…?
I suppose either way it’s commenting that you can’t take your position for granted. AI isn’t coming to replace you, but it is going to evolve your field, and workers that don’t adapt will be supplanted by those that do.
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The original meme this was copied from is Brazilian:
Probably a hallucination of the AI that generated this
“Personal?” Personal what?
We will never know, because this comic was produced by AI.
The link you posted supports that it’s AI
The original comic wasn’t produced by AI, though.
Yeah, and this one was.
Okay, but the word “personal” still presumably had some meaning in the original Portugese. An AI did not come up with that word. Google Translate isn’t sure what it could translate to in English apart from “personal”, but presumably, there’s some meaning there that the artist intended.
You’re one of several people saying this is from AI. I’m more familiar with the AI giveaways in text or fake photos, but not so much with comics. What makes this comic look so obviously AI generated to you?
