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AI and robots threaten to unleash mass unemployment, scientists warn

thesolar65

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Scientists have warned that rapid strides in the development of artificial intelligence and robotics threatens the prospect of mass unemployment, affecting everyone from drivers to sex workers.

Intelligent machines will soon replace human workers in all sectors of the economy, senior computer scientists told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington at the weekend.

“We are approaching the time when machines will be able to outperform humans at almost any task,” said Moshe Vardi, computer science professor at Rice University in Texas. “Society needs to confront this question before it is upon us: if machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do?

“A typical answer is that we will be free to pursue leisure activities,” Prof Vardi said. “[But] I do not find the prospect of leisure-only life appealing. I believe that work is essential to human wellbeing.”

“AI is moving rapidly from academic research into the real world,” said Bart Selman, professor of computer science at Cornell University. “Computers are starting to ‘hear’ and ‘see’ as humans do . . . Systems can start to move and operate among us autonomously.” He said companies such as Google, Facebook, IBM and Microsoft were scaling up investments in AI systems to billions of dollars a year.

Professors Vardi and Selman said governments — and society as a whole — were not facing up to the acceleration of AI and robotics research. Prof Selman helped draft an open letter issued last year by the Future of Life Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, urging policymakers to explore the risks associated with increasingly intelligent machines.

Among the 10,000 or so signatories to the letter is Elon Musk, the tech entrepreneur whose company Tesla Motors has a large AI research programme aimed at developing self-driving cars.

Mr Musk will fund research at Cornell University “on keeping AI beneficial to humans”, said Prof Selman. The project will predict whether and, if so when, “super-intelligence” — all-round superiority of machine to human intelligence — might be achieved.

According to Prof Selman, one of the fastest advancing areas of AI is machine vision, and particularly facial recognition. “Facebook can recognise faces better than any of us,” he said. Machine vision is key to the self-driving vehicles that scientists predict will take over our roads in the next 25 years. Prof Vardi said automated driving would cut accidents by 90 per cent or more, compared with vehicles driven by error-prone people.

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“With so many lives saved and injuries prevented, it would be hard morally for anyone to argue against it,” he said. Yet around 10 per cent of all US jobs involve driving a vehicle, he added, “and most of those will disappear”.

Prof Vardi said it would be hard to think of any jobs that would not be vulnerable to robotics and AI — even sex workers. “Are you going to bet against sex robots?” he asked. “I’m not.”

@Skull and Bones @Levina @Providence @anant_s @scorpionx @jbgt90

These scary scenarios are out of my reach, may be I will just a glimpse of this, but you all are prone to it and it may hurt you because most of you may have passed that age where you will be benefited by this
 
what we have is a overpopulation problem. too many low skilled workers and that's what robots are going to replace.


I can see something happening something big where a few billion die.

be it some super plague or war.
 
I have some specific question

@jamahir

How would this development fit into your socialistic thought?

@Zarvan @Kashmiri Pandit @JonAsad @dadeechi

How would region would be affected? What kind of change will regions will have to have in order to survive?
Terminator :lol:

We are getting too lazy .
When machines realize that there are treated as slaves and they are superior to humans in many ways , Judgement day will arrive that will decide the fate of Humanity and Natural creation .
 
These scary scenarios are out of my reach, may be I will just a glimpse of this, but you all are prone to it and it may hurt you because most of you may have passed that age where you will be benefited by this
Yeah the same thing was said about industrial revolution and woman workers too :p:.
But the fact is there are lot many hard problems to solve for every solution that comes up. Its not that we have attained technological nirvana we are simply advancing further by creating more problems. Well lets say self driving cars become reality, then jobs will be created where infra for self driving cars is required. That will require more investment.

More than jobs I would say do we have enough money & resources go to around for everyone?After self driving cars it will be levitation then space portals...etc

By the way animals in jungle are far better, they neither build cars nor the roads. They live ,die to remember and pass few memories of the past. But man has started the marathon of passing info from one generation to another (past is never forgotten) and this marathon has no finish line in sight.
 
On one hand, mass unemployment, on the other, sex-bots.

...I support advancement in robotics and AI.
 
On one hand, mass unemployment, on the other, sex-bots.

...I support advancement in robotics and AI.

Well Agree, But how different religions will view this? I mean, Vedas, Quran or Bible or anything when written never had any idea that this is going to come. So how will these religions react to say sex as you pointed out, then comes marriage between AI and humans. And suppose Hindu Robots and Muslim Robots wish to have a good time, then what?:D

Seriously, these robots will not care for Human rights or religious dictate in battle field or anywhere!!
 
Humans will only do sports and entertainment and innovation/research?
 
Well Agree, But how different religions will view this? I mean, Vedas, Quran or Bible or anything when written never had any idea that this is going to come. So how will these religions react to say sex as you pointed out, then comes marriage between AI and humans. And suppose Hindu Robots and Muslim Robots wish to have a good time, then what?:D

Seriously, these robots will not care for Human rights or religious dictate in battle field or anywhere!!
We're still a long way away from self aware Ai, if that is even possible. I'll just leave that to the scholars.
 
what we have is a overpopulation problem. too many low skilled workers and that's what robots are going to replace.


I can see something happening something big where a few billion die.

be it some super plague or war.
Overpopulation is one thing but the threat of mass un-employment is real. one cannot deny it.

Also, as per article, the suggestion is humans are for leisure activities then how will they support their activities?

We're still a long way away from self aware Ai, if that is even possible. I'll just leave that to the scholars.
10-15 years ago no one thought that landline will be things of past. Every day we are getting new and sophisticated mobile technology. Couple of new scientific advancements or inventions will shorten that long way to few years and things will be out of hands in no time.
 
10-15 years ago no one thought that landline will be things of past. Every day we are getting new and sophisticated mobile technology. Couple of new scientific advancements or inventions will shorten that long way to few years and things will be out of hands in no time.
Yeah, I work in IT, so I have some limited knowledge on this. I've met many people working in Ai, and they've all pretty much said that even if we replicate the entire human mind, we are still not guaranteed to be able to create a fully self aware Ai. (leaving aside religion) Unless we know why humanity is selfaware (biologically), which we scientifically don't, self aware Ai may just be a pipedream. The closest we may get are advanced Ai that pretend to be selfaware, enough to pass the Turing test;Ai that can make autonomous decision, by taking in certain situations, and coming up with the most logical "human-like" solutions, but nothing more.

Tl;dr Even if self aware Ai is possible, it probably wont be achieved in our lifetime.
 
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I have always maintained, earth is too small to maintain a human population beyond 1 billion.
 
It won't be much fun when normal folks like you & me start to loose their jobs
So it time for you to upgrade ur job. I am not kidding. In 20 years time. The road and airplane will be filling with totally autonomous AI guided by GPS. Taxi driven by robots will be safer. They have no emotion so no road rage and they don't need thrill to need to speed. No drunk driver that killed innocent bypasser crossing roads.
 
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