This whole thing is just stupid.
Did we get angry when computers cut accounting staff by 75% because one person and QuickBooks can do the job of a whole fleet of people? No. AI will change jobs in the same way computerization changed jobs. The same way the combine changed farming and the cotton gin changed textiles.
What we need to ACTUALLY BE WORRIED ABOUT is what we failed to be concerned with last time. The productivity increase and job elimination just went to the fucking top of the ladder. If that happens again we will have massive unemployment.
We need to tax the shit out of companies using AI to replace humans, and start setting up the infrastructure for the inevitable UBI that further automation will require.
Universal basic income, have AI and automated roles taxed as people. Self checkout? Well you still have the pay the tax as if that was an employee.
I disagree. We shouldn’t be disincentivizing innovation. Taxes on business and the wealthy should increase regardless of their use of automation.
A lot of it is only cost-cutting disguised as innovation though. Some jobs, like accounting, doesn’t really suffer from removing the human element, but compare that to the chatbot hellscape that customer service has become. We need to be VERY conscious of what we “innovate” and guide the development with taxation and laws.
I think it’s important that we call out its shortcomings, when common bugs plague the system (think llms with hallucinations) or make it act in unison compounding risk ( think the algo Aladin used by 90% of trading firms on Wall Street, causing similar assets pics and collusion while keeping the firms hands clean as they never communicated with each other, they just used a predicitve algo that chose the same positions, which should still count as collusion but i guess not when congress cant even figure out a web browser). There are certain repetitive acts in which ai will be wildly successful, but when it comes to enforcement we can’t just rely on ai as it can be exploited. Using it to cut down on creative work loads is helpful and allows for creating deeper art. Using ai to write out boiler plate code so a developer can focus on implementing business logic and security will vastly improve productivity. Where as using it for creating test scenarios will be futile as it only builds off its training data and new edge cases may never be caught. We need to define regulations on where AI can be used in commercial applications, and we need to do it ASAP.
Why not? There’s lots of stuff that could be considered innovation that is intentionally stifled due to competition laws or security concerns.
I don’t disagree with you entirely but if Walmart stopped employing 95% of their staff tomorrow due to self checkouts and stocking robots they should have to continue paying taxes for those roles because the newly unemployed will need government support.
The end game is universal basic income and that can only be sustainable with these types of policies.
There’s lots of stuff that could be considered innovation that is intentionally stifled due to competition laws or security concerns.
I agree that some innovation can be harmful. I guess what I meant was “we should avoid disincentivizing innovation unless necessary.” The way I see it, though, job lots from automation is both inevitable and fairly easy to fix (as you said, UBI), so there’s no reason to try to stop it from happening.
Really, I think automation should be encouraged. It frees people from usually-undesirable jobs and allows them time to pursue different careers or other interests. As long as we have ways to deal with the unemployment I think it’s a huge positive for people.
they should have to continue paying taxes for those roles because the newly unemployed will need government support.
I fully agree that there will need to be a tax increase to cover support for the newly-unemployed, but why not make that a general increase on businesses and wealthy individuals? If anything, this would be and incentive for automation as a way to decrease rising business costs.
Innovation has removed jobs before, and we dealt with it. I don’t see businesses being taxed for using computers instead of human calculators. I don’t see why this innovation is different.
Well I think we are both headed in the same direction and close to agreeing with one another, but with that said I don’t see it as a disincentive more so just a way to get the necessary costs from a company that is adapting. As for why not just increase taxes, yes do but you can do both. If a company is turning over millions and millions with only a few staff because everything is automated we should look at getting the value toward the exchequer that the automation replaced. Certain taxes go to certain funds, and employment taxes are different to corporate taxes. The costs associated with employment generally directly feed into social insurances etc. So it is important to keep that revenue stream active or social insurances would need more money from the general tax pool instead of getting it from employers.
As for why now and not before, we kissed out before and we are very much suffering as a result. Production has increased in orders of magnitude and wages have stagnated, we need to think differently and the sooner we evaluate these roles the sooner we can put a value on the automated service. It is a nebulous and difficult areasl to draw a line but that doesn’t mean a line isn’t required. And I get that not being able to perfectly explain why a cashier being replaced should be taxed but someone replaced by a calculator shouldn’t but the fact is regulations and laws have arbitrary basis, like minimum age to run for president and height to become an officer. The line had to be drawn so it was and we adapt to that.
I’m also no saying close the discussion forever, the President should be whoever gets the most votes full stop…provided they’re legitimate votes and the candidate isn’t actively standing trial for crimes committed in office.
Well, yeah, people did get angry. Just like when conveyor belts, weaving machines, and steam engines were introduced.
except that translation are not that good. I was going to post a rant about it but this article is more relevant.
chatbot, automated translation are plague and they allow companies to isolate themselves from the customers and cut the cost.
Capitalism is in a permanent prisoners dilemma.
Overall they need to treat their employees well so that there’s growth in the economy, since no one to buy things means no market to sell things. However, they can also choose to screw over their employees with bad pay, terrible conditions, or in this case, automating their workforce and firing people.
If no one screws their employees, the economy expands with modest growth.
If one or few corporations screw their workers while everyone else doesn’t, they become fabulously rich and the rest get outcompeted.
If everyone screws their workers, then the economy collapses because there’s no growth, and everyone eventually goes out of business.
It reminds me of the analysis of the recent tech layoffs, earlier this year. They made no sense from a rational, financial point of view. And most psychologists and anthropologists looked into it and theorize that most tech companies where probably doing layoffs because all the others were doing layoffs. Essentially trying desperately to not be undercut by competition who were shedding costs, despite they themselves having no reason to let employees go. Some insiders actually pointed out how many companies were simultaneously eliminating hundreds of roles, but also creating several other hundreds. Taking the opportunity of the overall employment market to restructure their workforce guilt free and hire without having to offer pay increases.
this is why I believe capitalism is unsustainable.
when I talk about automation and labor, no one seems to get it. Hey, if your job gets automated, you get fired. Have you even considered that you could do less labor for the same pay because your work got automated? they just look at me like my head’s been cut off.
Good news! Your workload has halved so you don’t have to work in to the evening!
Bad news… that means I only need half my current workforce now to work in to the evening and so you’re fired.
It makes sense for AI to do this kind of work.
But companies should hire editors to verify the results, including someone with local cultural knowledge.
Instead of 10 people you’ll need 1 person instead. Those 9 people will need to find a new gig.
Stop. Fighting. AI.
It’s a lost battle. Nobody at a country scale use going to put themselves at an economic disadvantage when the tech is already easily reproducible with little barrier to entry.
Headline should read:
“Software took my job, literally”
10 years ago I replaced an entire department with custom software that automated their jobs. The department did manual data entry into an ERP system, feeding it the manufacturing data from the previous day. We did not automate it to be evil, we did it because humans make lots of mistakes. If you ask the human, they definitely typed it correctly and it there is a problem it’s a computer “bug”.
Miraculously the automated system has made exactly 0 typing errors in 10 years.
This is exactly what I was thinking. People need to start understanding this and evolve to stay ahead of what jobs AI can now take. And also Spanish is a really easy language to learn, so I’m not surprised that a machine could perform the same task easily
While it is true that AI can replace a lot of personnel in certain jobs, it also makes it possible for the average person to use that same AI to start small businesses and compete with large corporations, various AI technology products are open to everyone it’s not like they only benefit large corporations.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Former Gizmodo writer Matías S. Zavia publicly mentioned the layoffs, which took place via video call on August 29, in a social media post.
Earlier this summer, Gizmodo began publishing AI-generated articles in English without informing or involving its editorial staff.
The stories were found to contain multiple factual inaccuracies, leading the Gizmodo union to criticize the practice as unethical.
For Spanish-speaking audiences seeking news about science, technology, and Internet culture, the loss of original reporting from Gizmodo en Español is potentially a major blow.
Subtle errors, mistranslations, and lack of cultural knowledge can impair the quality of automatically translated content.
But with so many media companies chasing revenue through SEO manipulations and AI-written filler, it’s unlikely that we’ll see the end of this apparently cost-cutting AI trend soon.
The original article contains 523 words, the summary contains 129 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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If your mother’s employer switched from employing your mother to using a machine which accomplished the same task in an objectively worse, less-dependable way than your mother it would not have been progress.
Yeah they used to have people whose whole job was to put documents in the file system, literally open a draw and put in a typed document. Computer was once a job title, literally just doing basic math all day like adding up columns of numbers. Factories used to be full of machinists who turned dials to set numbers in a sequence and repeated it all day…
The job market has done nothing but change and evolve, I don’t see why people suddenly want it to stop
AI was a mistake
Capitalism was a mistake. All of this is just its flaws being taken to its logical extreme.
AI being used to translate stuff isn’t a bad thing on its own, it’s not severely damaging the careers and in many cases the lives of educated people just because it exists. It does so in the context of this system which hasn’t really been working for a while and continues to fail. AI has its dangers regardless, for sure but it doesn’t necessarily have to spelll doom in all the ways it has been.
