Labor
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/these-will-be-jobs-most-impacted-ai
MONDAY, MAR 18, 2024
Large language models (LLMs) and other generative AI tools haven’t been around for very long, but they’re expected to have far-reaching impacts on the way people do their jobs. With this in mind, researchers have already begun studying the potential impacts of this transformative technology.
In this graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu visualized the results of a World Economic Forum report, which estimated how different job departments will be exposed to AI disruption.
Data and Methodology
To identify the job departments most impacted by AI, researchers assessed over 19,000 occupational tasks (e.g. reading documents) to determine if they relied on language. If a task was deemed language-based, it was then determined how much human involvement was needed to complete that task.
With this analysis, researchers were then able to estimate how AI would impact different occupational groups.
In our graphic, large impact refers to tasks that will be fully automated or significantly altered by AI technologies. Small impact refers to tasks that have a lesser potential for disruption.
Where AI will make the biggest impact
Jobs in information technology (IT) and finance have the highest share of tasks expected to be largely impacted by AI.
Within IT, tasks that are expected to be automated include software quality assurance and customer support. On the finance side, researchers believe that AI could be significantly useful for bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing.
Still interested in AI? Check out this graphic which ranked the most commonly used AI tools in 2023.
“But the truth is, working-class people aren’t lazy, they’re fed up. They’re fed up with being left behind and stripped of dignity as wealth inequality in this nation, this world, spirals out of control,” he continued. “They’re fed up that in America… three families have as much wealth as the bottom 50% of citizens in this nation. That is criminal. America is better than this.”
“So, I want to close with this: I agree there is an epidemic in this country of people who don’t want to work; people who can’t be bothered to get up every day and contribute to our society, but instead want to freeload off the labor of others,” Fain added. “But those aren’t blue-collar people; those aren’t the working-class people. It’s a group of people who are never talked about for how little they actually work and produce, and how little they contribute to humanity. The people I’m talking about are the Wall Street freeloaders, the masters of passive income.”
As many as 300 million full-time jobs around the world could be automated in some way by the newest wave of artificial intelligence that has spawned platforms like ChatGPT, according to Goldman Sachs economists.
Jan 7, 2024
If you haven’t lost your job yet, you should be very thankful. Artificial intelligence and robots are taking more of our jobs with each passing day, and there will be no end to this high-tech invasion. Eventually, we could get to a point where AI and robots can do virtually everything far more efficiently and far more inexpensively than humans can. So what will happen to the vast majority of the human population when their labor is no longer needed? Will a way be found to quietly deal with “useless eaters” that are considered to be “just taking up space”? For years we have been warned that AI and robots would revolutionize the workforce, and now that day has officially arrived.
For example, Amazon has been using various types of simple robots to perform certain tasks for years, and now highly sophisticated humanoid robots are being deployed right alongside normal human workers…
Amazon recently began testing a new robot in its warehouse operations — meet Digit, a humanoid bipedal robot with a turquoise torso and smiley eyes.
Designed by Agility Robotics, which Amazon has invested in as part of its Industrial Innovation Fund, Digit is only the latest of a string of warehouse robots the company has introduced over the last several years. However, most of the other warehouse robots have been cart-shaped or robotic arms, not humanoid like Digit.
Digit costs about $10 to $12 an hour to operate right now, based on its price and lifespan, but the company predicts that cost to drop to $2 to $3 an hour plus overhead software costs as production ramps up, Agility Robotics CEO Damion Shelton told Bloomberg.
How are we supposed to compete with that?
No human worker is going to work for “$2 to $3 an hour”.
Plus, robots don’t need breaks, they don’t get sick, they don’t complain and they don’t steal from the company.
So this trend is only going to accelerate in the years ahead.
Even now, there is a McDonald’s restaurant that is almost entirely run by robots…
You may be thinking that robots won’t be taking your job any time soon because you have a white-collar job that requires a high level of intelligence.
Well, if you are a white-collar worker there is a good chance that your current job will one day be made “obsolete” by artificial intelligence.
In fact, Goldman Sachs is projecting that AI could take as many as 300 million full-time jobs during the years ahead, and most of them will be white-collar jobs…
As many as 300 million full-time jobs around the world could be automated in some way by the newest wave of artificial intelligence that has spawned platforms like ChatGPT, according to Goldman Sachs economists.
They predicted in a report Sunday that 18% of work globally could be computerized, with the effects felt more deeply in advanced economies than emerging markets.
That’s partly because white-collar workers are seen to be more at risk than manual laborers. Administrative workers and lawyers are expected to be most affected, the economists said, compared to the “little effect” seen on physically demanding or outdoor occupations, such as construction and repair work.
So how are you going to make a living when AI and robots do almost everything better and cheaper than you can?
A vast number of jobs will be lost in the years ahead.
Sadly, the truth is that the U.S. economy is already bleeding jobs.
On Friday, the BLS told us that the Establishment Survey indicated that the U.S. economy added 216,000 jobs last month, but historically the Household Survey has been much more accurate, and it showed that the U.S. economy actually lost 683,000 jobs last month…
But that’s just the start. Next we turn to the numbers behind the headline job prints which were rather terrible: the monthly nonfarm payrolls (from the Establishment Survey) may have been weak at 216K but the far more accurate Household Survey showed that the number of Employed workers actually collapsed by an unprecedented 683K, the biggest drop since the US economy was shutdown by covid!
And as I shared with my paid subscribers a few days ago, the BLS report also showed that the number of full-time jobs in the U.S. dropped by 1.531 million during the month of December…
Here, one look at this month’s adjustment and it’s literally a shocker: you will not hear anyone from the Biden admin, the mainstream media, or associated economist cheerleaders mention this, but the BLS reported that in December the number of full-time jobs plunged by 1.531 million to 133.2 million, the biggest monthly drop since the record covid crash of 14.7 million jobs!
If that number is even close to accurate, we are in really big trouble.
For some time I have been writing about the tsunami of layoffs that has been happening in corporate America, and at this point things have gotten so bad that even BlackRock is getting ready to lay off workers…
BlackRock, the world’s largest money management firm, plans to announce layoffs in the coming days of about 3 percent of its global workforce, Fox Business has learned.
The job cuts of around 600 employees, which have yet to be reported, are being described internally as routine, according to a source familiar.
Meanwhile, bankruptcies are surging all over the country.
In fact, the number of bankruptcy filings in the United States in 2023 was 18 percent higher than it was in 2022…
U.S. bankruptcy filings surged by 18% in 2023 on the back of higher interest rates, tougher lending standards and the continued runoff of pandemic-era backstops, data published Wednesday showed, although insolvency case volumes remain well below the level seen before the outbreak of COVID-19.
Total bankruptcy filings – encompassing commercial and personal insolvencies – rose to 445,186 last year from 378,390 in 2022, according to data from bankruptcy data provider Epiq AACER.
Joe Biden will deny it for as long as he possibly can, but the truth is that we are in an economic crisis right now.
But what we are experiencing at this moment is not even worth comparing to what is coming.
So enjoy the last fumes of prosperity while you still can, because this ride only goes downhill from here.
AI seems to represent a much greater threat to people in the white collar sector dealing with information tech. People in data collection, software development, web development, research analysis, information security, etc. are far more likely to be replaced by AI.
MONDAY, DEC 25, 2023
If there was ever a moment in history when globalists have been unable to contain their unsettling glee it was the moment that Artificial Intelligence became a focus of public discourse. It’s clear that the World Economic Forum worships AI – Lavishing the technology with praise and describing it as the end-all-be-all of human industry. AI, they claim, will change the world so rapidly that most people will not be able to keep up with the advancements.
We have yet to see any of these advancements in the real world, of course. In fact, it’s difficult to pinpoint any tangible benefits produced by AI so far other than making it easier for college kids to cheat on essays. And here is where we run into a disconnect between what the WEF predicts and what is most likely to happen according to the evidence.
Is AI really the do-it-all technology that globalists make it out to be? Is half of humanity going to be replaced with automation?
The establishment media has been building up this notion as an inevitability, with millions of people (mostly within Gen Z) now experiencing anxiety over the possibility that they will one day have no career options because of AI. The WEF even promotes a term for this feeling: FOBO (which apparently now means Fear Of Becoming Obsolete).
FOBO originally meant “fear of better options,” but the WEF has co-opted it and adjusted it for their AI narrative.
Automation is nothing new to first-world industries and adapting to it has not necessarily made anyone’s place in the economy “obsolete.” The media tends to suggest that hands-on jobs in areas such as agriculture, manufacturing and retail are going the way of the Dodo soon. However, AI seems to represent a much greater threat to people in the white collar sector dealing with information tech. People in data collection, software development, web development, research analysis, information security, etc. are far more likely to be replaced by AI.
AI essentially automates data applications, making it possible for the average layman to one day “code” in a way that once took programmers years to learn. For example, web development is becoming so automated these days it will not be long before web designers are out of work.
AI has exhibited zero evidence of consciousness and creativity and has no capacity to operate widely in the physical world. The globalist answer to this problem is their suggestion that “data” is the new economy, and that eventually robots will handle the physical. This sounds like a pipe dream, but if the “data economy’ is going to be the focus of AI for the foreseeable future, this means that if AI leads to a job apocalypse it will be primarily in the white collar world.
The WEF partially admits to this development in a recent paper on FOBO, in which they argue that around 44% of skill sets will become obsolete by 2027, and 42% of business related skill sets will be replaced by AI.
Far from becoming the all-knowing data-god hailed by WEF zealots like Yuval Harari, it appears much more likely that AI would simply augment or replace a number of office workers. For now, no significant advancements in medical science, space science, engineering, energy science, resource efficiency, mathematics, physics, etc. have been produced by AI. We’re all waiting around for AI to blow past human science and nothing is happening. If all AI can do is put data programmers out of work, what good is it?
Interestingly, AI software makes some incredible claims very similar to the boasts of globalists. Here is what AI had to say about its plans for the world of human art:
“Imagine waking up one day and finding your job has been automated overnight by intelligent machines. Then you discover even the career you dreamed of pursuing next has already been mastered by AI.
Quickly, more and more human domains once thought impossible to replicate – art, music, emotion – fall prey to advancing algorithms until all uniquely human talent and purpose dwindles in the face of superior robotic counterparts. Soon your very existence becomes trivial … unnecessary.”
This is a fascinating omission bordering on delusion. Not the delusions of AI, but the delusions of whoever programmed the software to say this (and no, AI does not currently think for itself). AI art is generally considered generic and often terrible because it merely plagiarizes human art and then spits out an uninspired copy. The notion that a soulless algorithm will ever be able to create emotionally charged art, music, literature and more is naive.
It’s not so much about what AI can actually do (which is very little), it’s more about what the public is convinced that AI can do. Globalists argue that the “data economy” will replace all other functions of civilization and trade as AI takes over. But what good is data without application? The only application of such a system would be to manipulate or control popular perception. To make people believe things that are not true, to influence their behavior and to convince the public that they are no longer necessary.
This is where AI technology shines. It’s not useful to industry, it does little to advance scientific discovery and it doesn’t make the lives of individuals easier; rather it is only useful to the globalist agenda.
I have never understood why people frequent Starbucks. And Starbucks just gave me another reason not to patronize its stores for another 20 years.
https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-12-03-china-mass-produce-humanoid-robots-replace-humans.html
By the year 2025, communist China plans to unleash a large number of humanoid robots, meaning robots that look and act like people but are just walking computers and circuitry.
In a race with Elon Musk’s Tesla and other Western companies working on similar technologies, China hopes to start mass producing its version of humanoid robots by 2025.
According to banking giant Goldman Sachs, the market for humanoid robots could reach $150 billion per year in just 15 years. Fully operational humanoid robots are expected to be mass produced and working in factories between 2025 and 2028, and later in other jobs by 2030 through 2035.
Tech for Good author Marga Hoek argues that the technology is a good thing for the world, even though it stands to make human workers obsolete. She believes that up to one in every four jobs will be impacted by robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
“My biggest worry is that all humankind spends a lot of time on fearing, instead of accepting and anticipating,” Hoek commented, adding that more research still needs to be done to look at which job roles will still “add value” in a world kept spinning by humanoid robots.
“If we don’t train people, if we don’t anticipate, if we don’t radically change around the school programs, for instance, we’ll be too late,” she added.
(Related: Last year, the tech industry developed AI mind-reading technology to measure citizen loyalty to the government.)
Elon Musk developing rival robot called “Optimus” that functions just like a human being
For all his talk against AI robots, Elon Musk is all about them when it comes to his own companies producing and unleashing them. In fact, Musk is currently working on a rival humanoid robot called “Optimus” that he says will be able to perform the same way as human beings on the job.
Musk says Optimus could be even “more significant” than his mostly plastic electric vehicles (EVs), which have been involved in many autopilot crashes and mysterious battery fires over the years.
In Hoek’s view, humanoid robots will eventually be used to look after old people and young people with health issues or disorders such as autism. No longer will people have other people, including family members, to comfort and care for them: instead, it will be robots providing humans with a “social life.”
“We now have robots also reacting to emotions, and reading behavior,” Hoek is quoted as saying. “We will have robots coping with mental disorders, behavioral disorders, with children and also with adults.”
“If we think about the old people, we’ll have a lot of 65-plus people. Robots can come into play, to support and to help, which also enables people to live longer.”
It is always a good idea to pause and think whenever someone pushing a dystopian new technology such as this couches it as something that will “help” humanity, either through companionship, care, or labor. Chances are that this is just the cover story for a much more sinister agenda.
Amazon, naturally, is also trying to break into the humanoid robot market by developing types to work in its warehouses and factories. The company says that one day there will be “lights out” factories with no human beings working there, just robots.
By the year 2035, humanoid robots will have a “profound impact” on society and the world economy, says Lisa Farrell, Business Development Manager at The National Robotarium.
“Mass producing reasonably-priced robots is achievable with economies of scale and advances in technologies, and we foresee all kinds of robots supporting workforces across manufacturing, healthcare, construction, transport, hospitality and more,” Farrell says.
“Intelligent robots can increase productivity, improve quality control, and help deliver repetitive or dangerous tasks.”
More related news about what China is up to these days can be found at Communism.news.
Sources for this article include:
Savannah Fortis
Zero Hedge
Fri, 03 Nov 2023
The United Kingdom’s global summit on artificial intelligence (AI) safety, the AI Safety Summit, concluded on Nov. 2 with a one-on-one chat between U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and billionaire Elon Musk.
Musk was one of many big names to attend the summit, including heads of OpenAI, Meta, Google and its AI division DeepMind, along with leaders from 27 countries. Musk’s nearly hour-long chat with Sunak was one of the main events of the second day.
Their conversation touched on everything from AI risks to China and opened with Elon Musk likening the emerging technology to a “magic genie.”
“It is somewhat of the magic genie problem, where if you have a magic genie that can grant all the wishes, usually those stories don’t end well. Be careful what you wish for.”
Both mentioned these intelligent bots needing a physical “off-switch” and drew parallels to science-fiction movies like The Terminator. Sunak said:
“All these movies with the same plot fundamentally all end with the person turning it off.”
Musk commented:
“It’s both good and bad. One of the challenges in the future will be, how do we find meaning in life if you have a magic genie that can do everything you want?”
This was brought up after governments and AI companies came to an agreement to put new models through official testing before their public release, which Sunak called a “landmark agreement.”
When asked about AI’s impact on the labor market, Musk called it the most “disruptive force in history” and said the technology will be smarter than the smartest human.
“There will come a point where no job is needed. You can have a job if you want to have a job for personal satisfaction, but the AI will be able to do everything. I don’t know if that makes people comfortable or uncomfortable.”
In addition, Musk commented on China’s inclusion in the summit, saying their presence was “essential.”
“If they’re not participants, it’s pointless. If the United States and the U.K. and China are aligned on safety, then that’s going to be a good thing because that’s where the leadership is generally.”
Over the past year, the U.S. and China have gone head-to-head in the race to develop and deploy the most advanced AI systems.
When Sunak asked Musk what he believes governments should be doing to mitigate risk, Musk responded:
“I generally think that it is good for the government to play a role when public safety is at risk; for the vast majority of software, public safety is not at risk. But when we talk about digital super intelligence, which does pose a risk to the public, then there is a role for the government to play to safeguard the public.”
He said while there are people in Silicon Valley who believe it will crush innovation and slow it down, Musk assured that regulations will “be annoying,” but having what he called a “referee” will be a good thing.
“Government to be a referee to make sure there is sportsmanlike conduct and public safety are addressed because at times I think there is too much optimism about technology.”
Since the rapid emergence of AI into the mainstream, governments worldwide have been rushing to find suitable solutions for regulating the technology.
Musk posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Nov. 3 that his “xAI” will release its first AI to a” select group.” He claimed that in some “important” ways it could be the “best” currently on the market.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/robo-takeover-amazon-tests-humanoid-robot-fulfillment-center/5837202
By Zero Hedge
Global Research, October 20, 2023
Zero Hedge 19 October 2023
Amazon has introduced two new robots to speed up deliveries, raising concerns among fulfillment center workers that the e-commerce giant might eventually reduce its workforce.
In a blog post on Wednesday, Amazon said its robotics team will begin testing a bipedal robot named “Digit” at a site just south of Seattle.
“Digit can move, grasp, and handle items in spaces and corners of warehouses in novel ways. Its size and shape are well suited for buildings that are designed for humans, and we believe that there is a big opportunity to scale a mobile manipulator solution, such as Digit, which can work collaboratively with employees,” Amazon said.
Amazon explained Digit will “help employees with tote recycling, a highly repetitive process of picking up and moving empty totes once inventory has been completely picked out of them.”
AI Robots Could Run the World Better Than Humans, Robots Tell UN Summit
In addition to Digit, Amazon revealed Sequoia, a new robotic system to help fulfill customer orders faster, already operational at a Texas fulfillment center.
“Sequoia will help us delight customers with greater speed and increased accuracy for delivery estimates, while also improving employee safety at our facilities,” Amazon said, adding it will “identify and store inventory we receive at our fulfillment centers up to 75% faster than we can today.”
It also “reduces the time it takes to process an order through a fulfillment center by up to 25%, which improves our shipping predictability and increases the number of goods we can offer for Same-Day or Next-Day shipping,” the e-commerce giant added.
Amazon said it has more than “750,000 robots working collaboratively with our employees, taking on highly repetitive tasks and freeing employees up to better deliver for our customers.”
At some point, Amazon will realize its robot workforce can do a better job fulfilling orders than humans because robots don’t get sick, take breaks, complain, strike, or waste time watching TikTok videos on their smartphones.
We’ve penned plenty of notes over the years, informing readers about the coming massive layoff wave corporations will have to unleash due to AI. Godman’s Jan Hatzius suggested in a note earlier this year, “Using data on occupational tasks in both the US and Europe, we find that roughly two-thirds of current jobs are exposed to some degree of AI automation, and that generative AI could substitute up to one-fourth of current work. Extrapolating our estimates globally suggests that generative AI could expose the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs to automation” as up to “two thirds of occupations could be partially automated by AI.”
… and more recently, younger folk in the labor market are beginning to realize their days are numbered as AI takes their jobs.
For more insight into the rapidly evolving job landscape, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu and Sabrina Lam – using data from MSCI – have ranked the industries where AI-driven automation will displace the most workers.
Now’s the time to evaluate your job and see how automation will impact your industry.
*
All images in this article are from ZH
The original source of this article is Zero Hedge
Copyright © Zero Hedge, Zero Hedge, 2023
Oct 4, 2023
This article was originally published by Michael Snyder at The End of the American Dream under the title: The Great AI Invasion: Given Enough Time, Artificial Intelligence Would Take Over Every Area Of Our Lives
Artificial intelligence is changing our world at a pace that is absolutely breathtaking. If you had asked me a decade ago if I would live to see artificial intelligence create a world-class piece of art or a full-length feature film, I would have said no way.
But now those are simple tasks for artificial intelligence to accomplish. So what is going to happen once AI becomes millions of times smarter and millions of times more powerful than it is today? Given enough time, AI would take over every area of our lives. Our world is definitely crazy right now, but fifty years from now it would resemble something out of an extremely bizarre science fiction novel if AI is allowed to continue to develop at an exponential rate.
Unfortunately, only a very small minority of the population is even concerned about the potential dangers posed by AI, and that is a problem.
Needless to say, the growth of AI has enormous implications for our economy.
AI can already perform most simple tasks much better and much faster than human workers can, and multiple studies have concluded that millions of jobs are at risk of being lost. The following comes from Fox News…
For example, in March 2023, technology firm OpenAI released a report that found at least 80% of the U.S. labor force could have at least 10% of their work-related tasks affected by the introduction of GPT, while another 19% of employees may see at least 50% of these work-related tasks impacted. While GPT influence impacts all wage levels, the higher-income jobs potentially face the greatest exposure, concludes OpenAI.
Also in March 2023, researchers at investment banker Goldman Sachs, after collecting data on occupationally-oriented tasks in Europe and the U.S., found that roughly two-thirds of current occupations are exposed to varying degrees of generative AI automation (such as found in ChatGPT), and that AI could substitute for nearly one-fourth of current work performed.
In July 2023, the McKinsey Global Institute issued a report estimating that without generative AI, automation could take over tasks accounting for 21.5% of the hours worked in the U,S. economy by 2030; but with generative AI, that share increased to 29.5%.
So what would happen to all of the workers that would no longer be needed once AI starts taking over most of our jobs?
I think that is a question that all of us should be asking.
Artificial intelligence also threatens to transform our personal relationships.
“AI girlfriends” are proving to be immensely popular with young men, and we are being warned about the “severe consequences” that this is likely to cause…
The rise of virtual artificial intelligence (AI) girlfriends is enabling the silent epidemic of loneliness in an entire generation of young men. It is also having severe consequences for America’s future.
How is something that seems so ridiculous — a virtual AI girlfriend — causing a future crisis among Americans? Well, with millions of users, apps have created virtual girlfriends that talk to you, love you, allow you to live out your erotic fantasies, and learn, through data, exactly what you like and what you don’t like, creating the “perfect” relationship.
Who wouldn’t want a “perfect” relationship?
In the real world, people have flaws, and so there is no such thing as a “perfect” relationship.
So if AI can create a girlfriend that is ideal for you all the time, I can see why a lot of people would be attracted to that.
And this is really happening. In fact, an AI girlfriend that is based on a real-life social media influencer already has more than 1,000 users…
These virtual girlfriends can even be based on real people. One influencer created an AI bot of herself named Caryn, then gained over 1,000 users (i.e. real boyfriends) in less than a week and a waitlist of more than 15,000 people.
An AI girlfriend might sound enticing. You get to connect with a super hot girl who listens to you and appreciates you, 24/7. Beyond choosing physical attributes, down to the size of her rear end, you can pick her personality. You prefer “hot, funny, and bold”? That’s what she will be. Or if “cute, shy, and modest” is more your cup of tea, she’s got you covered.
Of course, it isn’t just lonely young men that are getting pulled into this world.
In my next book, I discuss a woman who has actually married her AI boyfriend, and she insists that she is happier than she has ever been before.
But what is the cost?
What will this do to our society?
There is already a raging epidemic of loneliness among our young men, and it is getting worse with each passing day…
Let’s look at the hard numbers. More than 60 percent of young men (ages 18-30) are single, compared to only 30 percent of women the same age. One in five men report not having a single close friend, a number that has quadrupled in the last 30 years. The amount of social engagement with friends dropped by 20 hours per month over the pandemic and is still decreasing.
AI is also starting to be used in our churches.
Last month, a Methodist church in Texas made headlines all over the world when the pastor conducted an entire “worship service” using AI technology…
On September 17, 2023, the Violet Crown City Church, a Methodist church in North Austin, US, transformed the tradition of Sunday service into the new age with Artificial Intelligence.
Pastor Jay Cooper, of Violet Crown City Church, decided to debut an AI-generated worship service for his congregation.
This is so wrong.
But it is inevitable that more churches will start doing this.
Pastor Cooper asked Chat GPT to create an entire service for his congregation, and it spit out “prayers, a sermon, and an original song based on the sermon itself”…
Jay came across this idea of using AI to worship God through using Chat GPT himself for personal use such as writing humorous country music lyrics for fun, and thought it would be a great way to move his congregation into the 21st-century by introducing them to AI in a way that still lets them worship God.
Using AI, Jay recorded the service while letting the artificial intelligence generator conduct the service, with AI being able to create prayers, a sermon, and an original song based on the sermon itself.
But what kind of “spiritual content” should we expect from a machine?
Ultimately, all AI programs are going to mirror the values of those who created them and those who are using them.
In this case, current societal values were clearly reflected in this “worship service”. The following is how the “sermon” began…
“Come, all who are weary, come all who are heavy-laden,
“For in this place, we find rest for our souls.
“Come, people of all backgrounds and walks of life,
“For here, we celebrate the diversity of God’s creation.
“Come, seekers of justice and peace,
“For together, we strive to make the world a better place.”
Seriously?
Several politically-correct buzzwords are used within the first six sentences, and it is obvious what this AI “sermon” is trying to communicate.
Of course this wasn’t the first church service that was created by artificial intelligence.
As I have written about previously, the very first church service that was created by artificial intelligence was conducted at St. Paul’s Church in Bavaria, Germany…
Early in the summer of 2023, robots projected on a screen delivered sermons to about 300 congregants at St. Paul’s Church in Bavaria, Germany. Created by ChatGPT and Jonas Simmerlein, a theologian and philosopher from the University of Vienna, the experimental church service drew immense interest.
It is just a matter of time before more churches jump on the bandwagon.
And other religions are now making use of cutting-edge technology as well.
If you can believe it, multilingual robots have been deployed at the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia…
Consider the recent robotic initiatives at the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia. At this mosque, multilingual robots are being deployed for multiple purposes, including providing answers to questions related to ritual performances in 11 languages.
Notably, while these robots stationed at the Grand Mosque can recite the Holy Quran, they also provide visitors with connections to local imams. Their touch-screen interfaces are equipped with bar codes, allowing users to learn more about the weekly schedules of mosque staff, including clerics who lead Friday sermons. In addition, these robots can connect visitors with Islamic scholars via video interactions to answer their queries around the clock.
If this is what is happening today, what do you think our world would look like 20 or 30 years down the road?
The good news, if you want to call it that, is that I don’t think we are going to get the chance to find out.
The clock is ticking, and humanity is quickly running out of time.
So we may never get to see all of the horrors that artificial intelligence would unleash upon our society.
But the changes that we have seen so far are certainly bad enough, but most of the population still does not seem too alarmed by any of this.
Tim Gurner’s claim that workers are paid too much and unemployment should rise sound exactly like a caricature from Das Kapital
https://www.rt.com/news/583017-unemployment-rise-tim-gurner/
The Australian multimillionaire said, “We need to see unemployment rise. Unemployment has to jump 40-50%, in my view. We need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around.” This extreme statement reflects the fact that class warfare is very real – and it’s not workers starting it.
By Bradley Blankenship, an American journalist, columnist and political commentator
Tim Gurner © Twitter / Australian Financial review
Tim Gurner, founder of the real estate company Gurner Group, with an estimated net worth of $584 million, has gone viral after a comment he made at the Financial Review Property Summit.
The Australian multimillionaire said, “We need to see unemployment rise. Unemployment has to jump 40-50%, in my view. We need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around.” This extreme statement reflects the fact that class warfare is very real – and it’s not workers starting it.
He also said that workers have been “paid a lot to do not too much in the last few years,” which is certainly not true. In the Western world, wages have been decoupled from productivity for decades, with the latter soaring while the former has stagnated. Any modest gains made during the Covid-19 pandemic have mostly evaporated.
As the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said in a July report, “Employment has fully recovered since the COVID-19 crisis and unemployment is at its lowest level since the early 1970s. While nominal hourly wages have risen, to date they have not kept up with inflation, leading to a drop in real wages in almost all OECD countries.”
READ MORE: If the US economy is doing great, why are most Americans not feeling it?
On the topic of the tightened labor market now known as the ‘Great Resignation,’ there are a number of theories, but two are the most salient. First, the obvious: A lot of people have died from Covid-19 (over a million in the US alone), including many workers. An August 2022 piece by Brookings suggested that as many as 4 million Americans were kept out of the workforce due to ‘long Covid’, i.e., long-term disability brought on by the disease.
Second, and no doubt related, people just got fed up with their dead-end jobs. A Pew Research poll of Americans from March 2022 found, “Majorities of workers who quit a job in 2021 say low pay (63%), no opportunities for advancement (63%) and feeling disrespected at work (57%) were reasons why they quit, according to the Feb. 7-13 survey.” Since employers lobbied against paying for personal protective equipment, maintaining air quality standards, and successfully absolved themselves of any Covid-related liability, it’s no wonder people didn’t want to risk their lives or health for meager pay and long hours.
While these two points mostly refer to the US, the point still applies to virtually every other developed country. The incongruence in power between workers and employers has been so biased in favor of the latter for so long that workers getting a little bit of leverage during the pandemic was an extremely minor, hardly detectable move toward rebalancing the scales. Naturally, the ultra-wealthy see this as an attack because it is against their interests – but they’re the ones launching a perennial class war against workers.
In fact, Gurner’s comments on unemployment draw almost directly from one of the core tenets of Marxism, i.e., the idea of the reserve army of labor. Karl Marx argued (seemingly paradoxically) in ‘Capital: Critique of Political Economy’ that, as capitalism develops, the need to squeeze more labor out of a smaller group of workers, thus creating a redundant group of workers (the reserve army), becomes more imperative. This reserve army of unemployed and underemployed workers will expand or contract depending on the state of the economy and the needs of capital accumulation.
The common idea goes that the more the economy develops, the more jobs are created; everyone benefits from capital accumulation and it trickles down from employers to workers. Marx argues, however, that capital will find new ways to maximize productivity with fewer workers (increase exploitation) and leverage the reserve army of labor (the unemployed) to suppress wage growth. By arguing for increased unemployment to dampen workers’ leverage, Gurner is essentially arguing for exactly what Marx said the capitalists would do in his magnum opus.
Gurner, and other multimillionaires who might be thinking like him but at least have the sense to not say it out loud, should take a step back, breathe, and adapt their line to the 21st Century rather than something out of Charles Dickens’ era. Concepts like the 40-hour work week, the weekend, labor rights, raises, and a livable minimum wage have been standard for about a century. Gurner should remember that the things workers are demanding today, which are rooted in 20th-century social democracy, are not principally designed to help employees – rather, they are designed to save people like him from the wrath of the disaffected working class.
It’s also important to realize that there are people behind unemployment figures; human beings with lives, families, and an experience as lucid as that of Gurner and his friends. To even suggest increasing unemployment as policy is extraordinarily cruel and patently anti-human. Given the fragility of Western democracy today, people in high places who are even conceiving of such things need to remember that it’s only possible to push people so far.
“Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks,” said the letter. “Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete, and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization?” the letter asked.
https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/tech-experts-say-ai-poses-a-human-extinction-risk
by Mac Slavo
Jun 1, 2023
Experts on artificial intelligence are coming out and warning of a “human extinction” risk with the progressing technology. Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, along with executives from Google’s AI arm DeepMind and Microsoft, were among those who supported and signed the short statement.
“Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks,” said the letter. “Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete, and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization?” the letter asked.
Other tech leaders such as Tesla’s Elon Musk and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt have cautioned about the risks AI poses to human society. “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” the statement Tuesday read according to a report by CNBC.
In an open letter released back in March, Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and several tech leaders urged AI labs to stop training systems to be more powerful than GPT-4, which is OpenAI’s latest large language model. They also called for a six-month pause on such advanced development.
The technology has gathered pace in recent months after chatbot ChatGPT was released for public use in November and subsequently went viral. In just two months after its launch, it reached 100 million users. ChatGPT has amazed researchers and the general public with its ability to generate humanlike responses to users’ prompts, suggesting AI could replace jobs and imitate humans.
Consider Yourself Warned: ChaosGPT Declares Its Plans to Destroy Humanity
The statement added that it can be “difficult to voice concerns about some of advanced AI’s most severe risks” and had the aim of overcoming this obstacle and opening up the discussions.
ChatGPT has arguably sparked much more awareness and adoption of AI as major firms around the world have raced to develop rival products and capabilities.
The consequences of putting humanity’s existence into the hands of artificial intelligence, which has no morals or compassion could be dire.
Dystopia Disguised as Democracy: All the Ways in Which Freedom Is an Illusion
The future has arrived
The robots serve customers from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day, and Uber Eats claimed the use of robot deliveries in the city grew by more than 30 percent month-over-month and more than 200 restaurants in the city have already signed up to offer deliveries using the small robots.
https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-06-01-uber-eats-to-deploy-additional-delivery-robots.html
by: Arsenio Toledo
Thursday, June 01, 2023
Food delivery company Uber Eats has announced that it will expand the number of four-wheeled robots that will be delivering food on the company’s app.
The robots are made by Serve Robotics, and the decision to expand the use of robots was made after a successful pilot of the robot delivery program in Los Angeles. The pilot program, which began in the West Hollywood neighborhood last May, was wildly successful.
The robots serve customers from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day, and Uber Eats claimed the use of robot deliveries in the city grew by more than 30 percent month-over-month and more than 200 restaurants in the city have already signed up to offer deliveries using the small robots. (Related: Generative AI could replace up to 300 million mostly white-collar jobs worldwide.)
Serve Robotics and Uber Eats will now be expanding the program to several other markets in the United States.
“This partnership is a major step towards mass commercialization of robotics for autonomous delivery, and it is a testament to the success of our partnership,” said Serve Robotics CEO Ali Kashani in a statement. “We are excited to continue our work with Uber to bring this innovative technology to more cities across the country.”
Serve Robotics’ delivery robots are about the size of a small shopping cart. They are about waist-high with four wheels and a payload dimension that could easily fit two large shopping bags or four large pizza boxes. They can carry up to 50 pounds of food or items and they use the sidewalks in the cities they operate in to conduct their deliveries.
The delivery robots are electric-powered and use artificial intelligence and several cameras and sensors to help them navigate their surroundings. The AI detects when other people or cars are in its path and the robots know when to avoid collisions.
A customer who places a food order on the Uber Eats app gets asked whether they prefer to receive their items via a sidewalk delivery robot or a human courier, with the change not costing the customer anything.
The robot travels up to seven miles per hour on the sidewalk and has a delivery range of about a mile. Kashani claimed customers usually receive their items within 30 minutes of placing their orders.
Upon arrival at the customer’s location, the robot sends a message that it has arrived along with a unique code to input to open the payload lid, ensuring that only the customer can retrieve the order.
Use of delivery robots to expand to rest of California, Texas and Canada
The partnership is slated to deploy up to 2,000 delivery bots through the beginning of 2026. Once completed, this deal between Serve Robotics and Uber Eats would be one of the largest deployments of robotic delivery fleets ever in the United States.
“We expect our rapid growth on Uber Eats to continue,” said Kashani. “We expect to operate an increasing number of [robots] on Uber Eats as our coverage and delivery volume on Uber increases.”
Serve Robotics currently operates a fleet of about 100 robots in Los Angeles. With its partnership with Uber Eats, the company plans to deliver in other cities in California, Texas and even Canada.
“It’s been an incredible experience when you’re pioneering something like this to a city,” said Kashani. “The team and I right now are in the right time and the right place to be working on this and part of history. We are learning how to make robots friendly and likable while cutting down on traffic congestion.”
In addition, Serve Robotics already uses its fleet to conduct deliveries for the convenience store chain 7-Eleven in Los Angeles. It is already working with other companies to expand the use of robots for deliveries in other areas, such as Vancouver for Pizza Hut and Walmart for the entire state of Arkansas.
Serve Robotics is even working with self-driving car company Motional to trial delivering food in Santa Monica using the company’s self-driving Hyundai Ioniq 5 battery-electric cars.
Uber Eats has also been testing different delivery robot options in other locations. It launched a partnership with autonomous delivery robot company Cartken to test the robots in Miami, and following a successful trial expanded that partnership to several parts of Virginia.
Learn more about the takeover of human jobs by robots and artificial intelligence at Robotics.news.
Watch this video from “Future Now” on AMP News discussing the massive job losses caused by automation.
https://www.brighteon.com/embed/b82b5cdc-7b83-412c-bdca-b80a827be086
This video is from the AMP News channel on Brighteon.com.
More related stories:
Walmart converting 65% of its stores to “automation” – human employees will be let go.
ROBOCROPPERS: John Deere planning to replace farmers with fully automated farming vehicles by 2030.
Walmart announces expansion of drone deliveries to 4 million households in 6 states.
Grubhub, Yandex team up to use robots to deliver food on college campuses.
Sources include:
Personally, I expect to see absolutely massive job losses over the next couple of years. And as the economy steadily deteriorates, the condition of our society will get even worse than it is right now. For many of you, that may be hard to believe, because things have already deteriorated quite dramatically.
May 12, 2023
This article was originally published by Michael Snyder at The Economic Collapse Blog.
How would you feel if a million Americans lost their jobs? Would you consider that to be a pretty catastrophic event for the economy? Well, as you will see below, even the Federal Reserve is projecting that more than a million Americans could lose their jobs in the months ahead.
Needless to say, Fed projections are usually wildly optimistic. So what will the real number be? Ultimately, I think that things are going to be far worse than most experts would dare to imagine right now. According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the number of layoffs during the first three months of this year was 396 percent higher than the number of layoffs during the same period in 2022. A tremendous amount of negative momentum has been building up, and there is a whole lot of fear out there.
Fear of what could happen to PacWest drove their stock price 22 percent lower on Thursday. Overall, PacWest is now down close to 80 percent so far in 2023…
Shares of PacWest were under pressure once again Thursday after the struggling regional bank said that deposit outflows resumed in the first week of May.
The stock dropped 22.7%, further extending its recent declines. PacWest’s shares have now fallen more than 50% this month and nearly 80% for the year.
The only reason why PacWest’s stock price is falling so rapidly is because it is getting a lot of media attention.
If you look closely at the numbers, PacWest really isn’t that much different from hundreds of other regional banks that are essentially insolvent at this point.
As I keep telling my readers, when banks get into trouble they start getting really tight with their money, and this is already happening all over the country…
It was already difficult for businesses and households to borrow money earlier this year — but after the collapse of three US regional banks and a cascade of rate hikes by the Federal Reserve, getting money has become a little harder.
More lenders have stiffened their standards in the wake of increasing turmoil within the banking sector, according to the Federal Reserve’s quarterly Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (SLOOS) released Monday.
Survey respondents attributed the changes in lending standards to economic uncertainty, a reduced appetite for risk, deterioration in collateral values and broader concerns about banks’ funding costs and liquidity positions, according to the Fed report. Additionally, lenders reported that they expect to tighten standards across all loan categories for the remainder of this year, citing the above concerns as well as customer withdrawals.
If businesses and consumers have access to less credit, economic activity will slow down.
And as economic activity slows down, more businesses will get into trouble or fail completely.
And that is going to mean more layoffs.
In fact, initial claims for unemployment benefits just jumped to the highest level in nearly two years…
The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits last week jumped to the highest level since 2021, the latest sign the historically tight labor market is cooling off in the face of rising interest rates.
Figures released Thursday by the Labor Department show initial claims for the week ended May 6 surged by 22,000 to 264,000, well above the 2019 pre-pandemic average of 218,000 claims. It marks the steepest level for jobless claims since October 2021.
This was a very sharp rise.
According to Zero Hedge, it was actually “a 4-sigma miss to expectations”…
The print was a 4-sigma miss to expectations, and was above the highest forecast made by the 45 economists participating in the survey.
Ouch.
But this is just the beginning.
According to Fox Business, if current Fed projections are accurate more than a million Americans will soon lose their jobs…
The most recent projections from the Fed show that officials expect unemployment to rise to 4.6% by the end of next year, up from the current rate of 3.5%.
That could mean more than 1 million Americans lose their jobs between now and the end of the year.
Of course, many of us do not believe that the Fed’s projections will be accurate.
Personally, I expect to see absolutely massive job losses over the next couple of years.
And as the economy steadily deteriorates, the condition of our society will get even worse than it is right now.
For many of you, that may be hard to believe, because things have already deteriorated quite dramatically.
In San Francisco and other cities around the nation, organized retail looting now happens on an industrial scale. For example, just check out what is going on at a Target near San Francisco’s Union Square…
“I’d say 10 thefts a day,” said one worker at the Target inside the Metreon, a mall near San Francisco’s Union Square. The worker spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not have permission from a supervisor to talk to the press.
“Every 10 minutes you see it,” another worker said who also did not wish to be named. “Look in some corner of the store, and you’ll see people shoveling stuff into a bag—food, cosmetics.”
We have never seen anything like this before, and this is why countless businesses have already left the city.
Another worker that was interviewed noted that lipstick and nail polish had just been stocked that morning “and now they’re empty”…
A third worker who also spoke on the condition they not be named said lipstick and nail polish, which are not locked behind plastic, are regularly stolen in handfuls.
“They were stocked this morning, and now they’re empty,” the worker said, pointing to an empty shelf reserved for lipstick.
Another worker said food and diapers are commonly stolen.
If this is how Americans are behaving now, while economic conditions are still at least somewhat stable, how will they behave when we are in the midst of a full-blown economic nightmare?
Our relatively strong economy has been the only thing that has kept our nation from descending into complete and utter chaos.
Once our economic strength is crippled, things are going to get really frightening.
So let us hope for the best, but let us also get prepared for the worst.
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/which-jobs-will-be-most-impacted-chatgpt
BY TYLER DURDEN
THURSDAY, MAY 04, 2023
On November 30, 2022, OpenAI heralded a new era of artificial intelligence (AI) by introducing ChatGPT to the world.
The AI chatbot stunned users with its human-like and thorough responses. ChatGPT could comprehend and answer a variety of different questions, make suggestions, research and write essays and briefs, and even tell jokes (amongst other tasks).
Many of these skills are used by workers in their jobs across the world, which begs the question: which jobs will be transformed, or even replaced, by generative AI in the coming future?
This infographic from Visual Capitalist’s Harrison Schell visualizes the March 2023 findings of OpenAI on the potential labor market impact of large language models (LLMs) and various applications of generative AI, including ChatGPT.
Methodology
The OpenAI working paper specifically examined the U.S. industries and jobs most “exposed” to large language models like GPT, which the chatbot ChatGPT operates on.
Key to the paper is the definition of what “exposed” actually means:
“A proxy for potential economic impact without distinguishing between labor-augmenting or labor-displacing effects.” – OpenAI
Thus, the results include both jobs where humans could possibly use AI to optimize their work, along with jobs that could potentially be automated altogether.
OpenAI found that 80% of the American workforce belonged to an occupation where at least 10% of their tasks can be done (or aided) by AI. One-fifth of the workforce belonged to an occupation where 50% of work tasks would be impacted by artificial intelligence.
The Jobs Most and Least at Risk of AI Disruption
Here is a list of jobs highlighted in the paper as likely to see (or already seeing) AI disruption, where AI can reduce the time to do tasks associated with the occupation by at least 50%.
Analysis was provided by a variety of human-made models as well as ChatGPT-4 models, with results from both showing below:
Jobs | Categorized By | AI Exposure |
---|---|---|
Accountants | AI | 100% |
Admin and legal assistants | AI | 100% |
Climate change policy analysts | AI | 100% |
Reporters & journalists | AI | 100% |
Mathematicians | Human & AI | 100% |
Tax preparers | Human | 100% |
Financial analysts | Human | 100% |
Writers & authors | Human | 100% |
Web designers | Human | 100% |
Blockchain engineers | AI | 97.1% |
Court reporters | AI | 96.4% |
Proofreaders | AI | 95.5% |
Correspondence clerks | AI | 95.2% |
Survey researchers | Human | 84.0% |
Interpreters/translators | Human | 82.4% |
PR specialists | Human | 80.6% |
Animal scientists | Human | 77.8% |
Editor’s note: The paper only highlights some jobs impacted. One AI model found a list of 84 additional jobs that were “fully exposed”, but not all were listed. One human model found 15 additional “fully exposed” jobs that were not listed.
Generally, jobs that require repetitive tasks, some level of data analysis, and routine decision-making were found to face the highest risk of exposure.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, “information processing industries” that involve writing, calculating, and high-level analysis have a higher exposure to LLM-based artificial intelligence. However, science and critical-thinking jobs within those industries negatively correlate with AI exposure.
On the flipside, not every job is likely to be affected. Here’s a list of jobs that are likely least exposed to large language model AI disruption.
Jobs Least Exposed to AI | |
---|---|
Athletes | Short-order cooks |
Large equipment operators | Barbers/hair stylists |
Glass installers & repairers | Dredge operators |
Automotive mechanics | Power-line installers/repairers |
Masons, carpenters, roofers | Oil field maintenance workers |
Plumbers, painters, pipefitters | Servers, dishwashers, bartenders |
Naturally, hands-on industries like manufacturing, mining, and agriculture were more protected, but still include information processing roles at risk.
Likewise, the in-person service industry is also expected to see minimal impact from these kinds of AI models. But, patterns are beginning to emerge for job-seekers and industries that may have to contend with artificial intelligence soon.
Artificial Intelligence Impacts on Different Levels of Jobs
OpenAI analyzed correlations between AI exposure in the labor market against a job’s requisite education level, wages, and job-training.
The paper found that jobs with higher wages have a higher exposure to LLM-based AI (though there were numerous low-wage jobs with high exposure as well).
Job Parameter | AI Exposure Correlation |
---|---|
Wages | Direct |
Education | Direct |
Training | Inverse |
Professionals with higher education degrees also appeared to be more greatly exposed to AI impact, compared to those without.
However, occupations with a greater level of on-the-job training had the least amount of work tasks exposed, compared to those jobs with little-to-no training.
Will AI’s Impact on the Job Market Be Good or Bad?
The potential impact of ChatGPT and similar AI-driven models on individual job titles depends on several factors, including the nature of the job, the level of automation that is possible, and the exact tasks required.
However, while certain repetitive and predictable tasks can be automated, others that require intangibles like creative input, understanding cultural nuance, reading social cues, or executing good judgement cannot be fully hands-off yet.
And keep in mind that AI exposure isn’t limited to job replacement. Job transformation, with workers utilizing the AI to speed up or improve tasks output, is extremely likely in many of these scenarios. Already, there are employment ads for “AI Whisperers” who can effectively optimize automated responses from generalist AI.
As the AI arms race moves forward at a rapid pace rarely seen before in the history of technology, it likely won’t take long for us to see the full impact of ChatGPT and other LLMs on both jobs and the economy.