Automation doesn't have to be the best to replace humans, just better than the average.
At least in my observations, many people don't fully appreciate or even understand this. They think that an AI for instance that makes mistakes isn't good enough to replace humans who on average, make more mistakes. It is the same with robotics, where it doesn't have to be the best at a particular skill, but if on average it gets a better result than humans, it is good enough to start replacing from the worst up. And even if it is only average, a robot can work 24 hours a day, without sickness, mental problems, or complaining about working conditions.
At some point, it will be illegal for humans to do many tasks.
Take driving for example. While full self-driving has many issues currently and has a long way to close the gap to Max Verstappen or Lewis Hamilton, it is probably already better than many people driving on the roads today at the majority of basic things. And even though they malfunction from time to time, they are unlikely to be as inconsistent in the extremes as humans, meaning they won't be hooning around, street racing, showing-off for for friends, driving drunk or on drugs, excessively speeding and all the other things that will lead to driving failure, injury and death. At some point, it will become illegal for humans to drive on the roads, because they are just too dangerous in comparison. It will likely be the same in the air, especially after events like co-pilots stabbing their pilot and attempting to crash the plane.
It won't only be the professional jobs that disappear, as a lot of the normal things we do, like driving will be removed also. For many, that might not seem like a big loss as many dislike driving anyway, but the less we do, the less we learn. And a lot of the various daily tasks we keep replacing are teaching us vital core skills in how we use our minds, bodies and interact with each other - as well as how we process and react to our experience.
As individuals, we tend to only focus on ourselves, so when something is removed that we as an individual don't use or care about, we don't mind. But it is a bit like the famous poem written after World War Two, "First they came". We don't speak out when it doesn't concern us, but humans are going to lose a lot of capabilities across the board and since we are all connected, it will affect us all eventually. And this will be brutally apparent once skill underdevelopment becomes even more clear, because right now there are so many excuses covering for the reduction in human abilities, like social skills. Just imagine when we have little practical to do and we are socially inept.
But social aptitude will only be one of the many missing elements that will affect us, because we are also going to have across the board degradations in physical skills, mental skills, and our abilities to control our emotions and subsequent reactions. We are already seeing this happen based on the last thirty or forty years where digitalisation has impacted on our core abilities and emotional stability, which is on the back of a massive increase in physical degradation, like our weight and general motor skills. A couple million years of evolutionary improvements, reversing in a few short decades.
Due to the way we have evolved, set up the economy and how we have conditioned ourselves to chase the easiest path at any cost, there is no turning back automation which will continually improve to replace more and more of our skills. At this point, we are almost a lost cause as currently, we are doing very little to change the direction of what we value as a species. We are still focusing on economic growth as the goal, as if it translates into human growth also. It doesn't. At an individual level with money, we can buy more opportunity, but when we look at the macro view, we are in a pool of decreasing opportunity that will work its way up the wealth ranks until everyone is affected. The bottom will feel it first as always, but none will be left untouched.
To course correct, we need to start seeing humans as more valuable than money. Up until relatively recently, we didn't have to do this, because people were needed to make money, which has been a driver for education and healthcare systems, not to mention retirement funding. Increasingly though, generating money and human capital are decoupling and whether consciously or not, it is going to leave humans with no place in the economic supply chain, which means that there is no trickle down at al, not that it has ever worked well.
I don't expect any changes will be made until the pain and suffering is so great that it can't be ignored (another feature of humanity), so we will keep on heading down this path until it gets too painful to continue. By then, we will be even less capable of creating viable solutions, and have less resources to work with. We can then look back at all the little steps taken to keep removing ourselves from the equation, until the formula doesn't need us at all.
Empires take longer to build, than to fall.
Humanity will be no different.
Taraz
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That's been my argument for full self driving for a while now. Everyone always looks at me like I am crazy, but I am pretty sure the mistakes made by the automation are much less severe than humans make. Of course, the numbers are going to be lower now because the ratio is so disproportional, but I still think it will be less. Humans are just unpredictable and that is what makes them so dangerous but so special at the same time.
For sure it will be lower on average, plus the tech will get better and better at an amazingly fast rate. We can't possibly keep up.
I also think that we are becoming more homogenous overall, so what makes us special in diversity, is being narrowed.
Automation is likely going to take over human place as human are prone to mistakes and are lazy when it doesn’t involve ‘money’ not all human though but most of what drive us is monetary value we tend to gain when discharging our duties which AI won’t have problem with. I watch a video recently about a school called Alpha in the USA state where AI is use teaching the learners and I’m sure a lot of humans jobs will be taken over by AI and I’m just worried that human will be redundant and be of no use to humanity itself.
Even when it does involve money, humans are lazy. Humans are lazy to even do the things that will make their own lives better.
Hmm, I think it is all about comfortability. However, human can certainly adjust well in whatever circumstances especially when they don’t have a choice.
People don't realize how fast Artificial Intelligence is evolving, I was doing things six month ago with AI and it has improved several fold since then and I use the cheapest arguably the dumbest most error prone LLM models. The cost of inference is dropping at over 90% each year while quality of AI is growing almost exponentially. All that is needed for self driving is time and more self driving cars on the road and a year from now there will be very few humans more capable as drivers than the latest AI.
AI will be everywhere and the cost will be dropping and quality of robotics is going to be improving at exponential rates. Very soon humans will be inferior at most things... perhaps coordinating and overseeing armies of AI agents will be the only human activity left...
And they can model them on the best, and they will all learn simultaneously. There is no humans capable of keeping up.
Especially once the AIs are designing them. The biggest issue in the past, was human limitation to creatively think - and that is getting worse.
Its just like Matrix, machines designing the machines... and humans are only good to produce energy...
I hate driving plus I have a chronic pain that makes it difficult for anything over an hour so for the longest time I was very much a proponent of self driving cars. Especially if they can be forced to stick to speed limits and can watch out for stupid kids and dogs running out in front of them. Given that we have so many pathetic whiny tantrum throwing brats around now (a lot of which are in positions of power) anything else having control of a vehicle you're in seems about equally hazardous as our current any idiot who can bullshit their way through a driving test can drive if not more so.
That's pretty much the only thing stopping me from seriously considering an EV (the other major factor is that mythical disposable income stuff I keep hearing about).
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I read of a lot of crashes and pedestrians getting run over in Aus recently. The news obviously highlights them, but there seem to be many, everywhere.
Mine got disposed of and isn't coming back.
Huh I have seen the usual handful as I'm skimming my news feeds (I skip/"mark as read" a lot more than I open to read "later", I have way too many tabs open right now x_x) but not what I would classify as "a lot" or even "an unusual amount". I'm assuming our news sources like reporting different things (I have PerthNow, ABC and SBS, and Crikey I guess but I can't remember if I had a login for that and if I did what the password was and it's an extremely low priority to investigate).
I completely agree. Take adding or substracting for instance, since professional cashiers have that solved with machines, sometimes they do not understand you are giving them more money than required to get less coins in your change.
Take regular citizens and ask to add two or three numbers without a calculator and many will fail. There are two problems on that, first we stop using our brain, and this means way more dependency on machines and second we forget to keep our brain training and we end up becoming way less self sufficient. Both things are critical as at some point we loose many of the skills we had.
Ask a teenager how to use a paper map or how to find info without asking google or chatgpt and they have no clue there are libraries with enciclopedias or any other 'old' source of info and the most dangerous part is that they take the digital responses from AI for granted as it that was the real truth
The other is that we never build the skills in the first place, like many kids today. And those brain structures get used for other things, not just the task of adding and subtracting etc.
Was just talking about this the other day. Many, many people struggle to follow something like that.
I think that automation could even be way below average and still be better than certain presidents...In fact in some cases a donkey or a panda could be a better president as well.
All the presidents in the world can be replaced by donkeys, and we'd probably have more peace.
Technology can remove a lot of unnecessary work, and make our life easier. However, it might also remove the experiences and interactions that make our life meaningful.
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Humans have always known how to strive for their own survival and have lived the same way in every era
It might not technically count as full-on automation, but ever since my eyesight got worse, listening to text is just way easier than reading it. The same goes for voice typing.
Granted, not everyone loves that setup, so I try to wear my glasses and type normally. But then that triggers my migraines.
Oh well, there is always something with me. 😀