Artificial intelligence (AI) is defined as:
"the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making and translation between languages."
AI is broken down into four types—from most basic to most advanced:
- Reactive machines
- Limited memory
- Theory of mind
- Self-awareness
The first two—reactive machines and limited memory—currently exist.
Reactive machines AI have no memory—it responds directly to current information. An example is a recommendation based on your streaming activity.
Limited memory looks into the past and monitors specific objects or situations over time, and adds the information to adapt responses. Self-driving cars are a good example of limited memory AI.
The other types—theory of mind and self-awareness—don't exist yet.
Theory of mind AI would be able to understand intentions and predict behavior while adjusting its own responses, simulating human interpersonal relationships.
The final step in AI is self-awareness. These would be systems that have a sense of self, a conscious understanding of their existence.
As AI advances, some human work functions will be done cheaper or more efficiently by AI.
Reddit user othersimon asked:
"Those who actually had their jobs replaced by AI, what was the job? What replaced it? What do you do now?"
Not Me!
Redditors definitely had feelings about businesses implementing AI.
"To everyone who argues that AI isn't capable of doing their job yet I say, so what? All that matters is your boss thinks it can do the job."
"Laughing at their failure is small solace when you're unemployed."
~ obscureferences
"I mean how many people were fired because they had been working for 10 or 20 years and earned high pay, to be replaced by some minimum wage worker who completely botched the job and took twice as long?"
"Lots."
~ Black_Moons
WUT U MEEN IZ RONG SPELD?
"My entire editing team was replaced by a robot that was supposed to write and edit text like a human can."
"They didn't test the robot first—it was terrible, and their entire project failed."
"No tears were shed."
~ IllustriousNight4
"My wife was a copywriter/wrote blogs for internet optimization online primarily for legal and medical fields."
"AI took over and her company either fired everyone or severely reduced the amount of pay that was offered per job—wife is still unemployed."
"But we heard just last week that it sounds like the company is now going under."
~ The_SchnitzelMan
"AI-written articles are obvious from a mile away and they’re terrible."
"I think Google should penalize search rankings for AI generated content as it’s often not valuable to the reader who is looking for useful information."
"And these articles bastardize Google’s own value in a sense as the info showing up in search results is materially less valuable than genuine content."
~ mokikithesloppy
1, 2, 3...
"Worked at Amazon for a few years. Did inventory basically all night."
"Then they installed cameras, scanners, AI, etc..."
"Still need a human, but yup, a lot of us were no longer needed."
"SBC (simple bin count, just count everything in the bin, easy) is redundant."
~ somecow
Unexpected Development
"I was on a very small software development team at a relatively large company."
"We were often tasked with not only working on our project, but utilizing new cutting-edge technologies to test whether they would be viable before rolling them out to the rest of the dev teams."
"We were asked to start leveraging AI to help us with our development and we gave it pretty high praise."
"Apparently we talked it up too much though and they decided to see if they could simply bypass needing software developers and have the business analysts generate code from their requirements and then send that code straight to QA."
"They didn't really test if that would work before laying off our entire dev team, and a couple of months later they laid off the remaining members of the team because it wasn't working out."
"It was just one of many bad decisions they made around that time and they're currently struggling and losing market share because of it."
"I'm still working as a software engineer and use AI as a useful tool, but I'm sure to always let my supervisors and managers know what its pitfalls are and how its just supplementing my work, and not completely doing my job for me."
~ karma_aversion
"Software dev here, new exec came in and replaced me (only dev) with 'no-code' software."
"From what I hear from my friends still there, they shot themselves in the foot."
~ tanMud
"In order to get AI to work well for you, you’d have to spell out your specs in great detail and spoon feed it. Of course, in order to do that one would need to know exactly what they want first."
"Unless they have a helluva business analysis team, that is a fantasy."
"Oh, and how are they going to update the AI generated code down the line? There is a guy on my team who is sharp as a tack but his code is actual mental gymnastics. I make him spell it out to me because it simply makes no sense."
"Turns out he was writing code that was assisted by ChatGPT. AI writes code that computers can read, devs need to write code that other devs can maintain/expand."
"AI can create stuff from scratch, sure, but I don’t think it’s prepared as of yet to digest complex code, interpret it, and then add to it with more complexity. They could try to run everything we do with AI but will hit some dense walls quickly."
~ skyphoenyx
No Injuries If There's No People
"Some warehouses have some self driving high reach forklifts."
"Someone said that their warehouse has only 2 human high reach drivers & 9 self driving high reaches."
"Crazy stuff."
~ wistteria_
"Lights off manufacturing is getting closer by the day."
"I work in a facility that’s about 800k sqft. It has 20 employees in it and hundreds of not thousands of robots. We make millions of widgets a week."
"Single use medical devices. All plastic. Huge boom in business during Covid, back down to earth now! But still very profitable."
"All the lights are on sensors because there are areas people don’t go into for weeks at a time. It’s eerily quiet and creepy. If there’s an issue we fly someone in from another location."
"Trucks unload raw material into large totes. Robots collect the totes and deliver to the material storage area. A human inspects quality and quantity."
"Machines mold the widgets, a robot pulls them out, cameras inspect the parts. Data is sent to a central quality facility in Mexico."
"When the lot is approved, robots pick up the totes and delivers to packaging lines where it gets boxed up, weighed, labeled, and taped shut—all by robots."
"Then the completed pallets get delivered back to the warehouse where a truck picks it up and delivers to the customer."
"We have a few engineers (I am one) that maintains, inspects, and reports out on the systems. We have three security guards—one whose job is a ‘buddy’ to escort people to dangerous areas."
"If you had an accident we wouldn’t know about it until your shift ended."
"There’s a plant manager, a pair of quality techs, a couple material handlers. And two maintenance folks."
"That’s the entire operation."
~ bondsman333
Digital Age
"I used to be a projectionist."
"Now a movie is on a hard drive and it's programmed to run remotely."
~ FlintWaterFilter
Facing the Future
"I'm about to lose my job to a layoff, but I will be replaced by 2025."
"Working in semiconductor manufacturing, most of production is fully automated already with plans to automate more. My job is basically to babysit idle machines right now."
"The maintenance crew will always be necessary but as soon as AI can do the rest of my job, I am not necessary at all."
"I can be replaced by code, the company would love to get all the product made without paying people for their time. I know I am expendable to them but it's the best paycheck in the county."
"Sad but it's the truth. Gonna have to try and stick it out while I apply to new jobs."
~ DERtheBEAST
It Is What It Is, But Isn't What It Isn't
"I feel like this is going to happen a lot in the next few years."
"Don't get me wrong, AI is an incredible technology, and depending on the specific implementation, it's capable of great things."
"But the unveiling of ChatGPT and AI art bots started a bubble of sorts, which we're currently still in."
"People seem to be over-conflating and misunderstanding how AI works, what AI is, and what AI is capable of, and for that reason, I think we're going to see a lot of misguided layoffs coming."
~ AbyssalRedemption
Technological advancements have eliminated human labor forever.
This isn’t a new dilemma created in the computer age.
All we can do is pay attention and adapt.
