More Concerns About AI’s Potential To Destroy Our Civilisation

Written by David Barnhizer on December 30, 2024. Posted in Current News

AI/Robotics is “quietly” overwhelming the fundamental institutions of Western society and we are unprepared for the social impact of the vast changes soon to be upon us

A significant part of the equation is the elimination of extreme numbers of human jobs across a wide swath of activity, but that is only one element in what is unfolding.

McKinsey Global Institute and Oxford University researchers have predicted massive job loss will occur with 47 to 50 percent of US jobs eliminated or significantly affected by 2030 and up to 800 million more jobs destroyed worldwide.

Nor will the AI/robotics transformation produce large numbers of replacement jobs.

The AI/robotics systems are already being designed to do those and the AI and robotics technologies are achieving incredible advances in their capabilities at an accelerating pace with breakthroughs announced in what seems almost monthly.

While many people like to talk about what is taking place as if is were another “Schumpeterian Creative Destruction and Rebirth of job opportunities” in a natural, predictable and controllable process, the reality is that there is little “light” at the end of the “job destruction tunnel” in the AI/Robotics context.

As Elon Musk and others are predicting, AI/Robotics will take over much of human work opportunities, in the process leaving only a few crumbs for most of us.

A very small number of incredibly wealthy recipients will evolve into a new “superclass” with all others being left in a vastly diminished state.

This means that we need to design an intelligent and fair “New Populism” before the emerging stresses tear our political system and community apart.

Elon Musk Warns of the ‘Potential for Civilizational Destruction’. During an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson that aired on April 17–18, Musk said that AI poses potential “risks to society and humanity.”

“AI is more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance, or bad car production in the sense that it has the potential—however small one may regard that probability, but it is non-trivial—it has the potential for civilizational destruction,” Musk [said].

Last month, the industrialist joined more than 1,100 individuals, including experts and industry executives such as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Stability AI founder, and CEO Emad Mostaque, in signing an open letter calling on all AI labs to “immediately pause” training of systems more powerful than Chat GPT-4 for at least six months.

In their letter, experts warned that contemporary AI systems are “now becoming human-competitive at general tasks” and questioned whether or not we should “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? Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders,” the letter stated. The March 22 letter has so far been signed by more than 26,000 individuals.

“In truth, industry experts have not only been stunned but, in many cases, unnerved by recent advancements in the evolution of AI, fearing the ripple effects of such technology on society. AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity, as shown by extensive research and acknowledged by top AI labs,” warns a March 22 letter that has more than 27,500 signatures, with dozens of AI experts among them.

Accusing AI creators of engaging in an “out-of-control race” to develop “ever more powerful digital minds that no one—not even their creators—can understand, predict, or reliably control,” the letter’s signatories called for an immediate six-month pause in the training of more advanced AI systems as society grapples with how to ensure their safety.

One of those signatories was Tesla CEO Elon Musk, another tech tycoon who has been outspoken about his concerns regarding the capabilities of AI.

No area of work is sacrosanct

Work opportunities are being eliminated from the most “intellectual” activities down to the basic areas of services and labor, including a range of professional occupations heretofore thought of as distinctly human.

These include cuts in middle management, finance, banking, insurance, medicine, high-tech, journalism, education, transportation, law, and even the arts.

Nor will the AI/robotics transformation produce large numbers of replacement jobs. The AI/robotics systems are already being designed to do those.

• Birth rates are plummeting below replacement levels in economically developed nations. People are living to ages well beyond historical averages.

• At least fifty percent of Americans have little or nothing saved for retirement.

• Poor and uneducated migrants are coming into Western nations at a time when the agricultural, construction and home care jobs migrants have traditionally filled are being increasingly replaced by robotic workers.

• As of October 2024 the youth unemployment rate for ages 15-24 in the EU was 15.2 percent. The long term average is 19.1 percent. One key reason for the high rate is that there is “a mismatch between the skills the young people have and what employers require.” This is said to be worsened by educational systems that “do not align with the labor market’s needs.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/artificial-intelligence-could-automate-two-thirds-of-all-american-occupations-goldman-sachs_5202670.html. Artificial Intelligence Could Automate Two-Thirds of All American Occupations: Goldman Sachs, Katabella Roberts, April 18, 2023.

Two-thirds of occupations across America could be partially automated by artificial intelligence (AI), Goldman Sachs economists have warned.

In a report published on April 5, economists Joseph Briggs and Devesh Kodnani said that a new wave of AI systems, such as ChatGPT, could have a “major impact” on employment markets across the globe, while advances in such technology could trigger shifts in workflows that could “expose the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs to automation.”

As part of their report, the two economists analyzed databases detailing the type of tasks performed in over 900 different occupations and estimated that about two-thirds of U.S. occupations are exposed to “some degree” of automation by AI.

In addition, they forecast that roughly a quarter to as much as half of the workload in the exposed occupations could be replaced by AI.

“Despite significant uncertainty around the potential for generative AI, its ability to generate content that is indistinguishable from human-created output and to break down communication barriers between humans and machines reflects a major advance with potentially large macroeconomic effect,” the economists wrote.

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