You know COBOL just turned 60 and is the backbone of our critical banking & govermental systems right?
OT- I just left a meeting hosted by 5 Microsoft employees that discussed AI in the classroom(k12)
- Thread starter mstateglfr
- Start date
I heard Bezos say AI (LLM’s) were a discovery, not an invention. Meaning, we know how invented items behave. We engineered them. We don’t really know how self teaching super intelligence will behave. He says something like “they surprise us everyday”.
I think we’re knocking on the door of a world where human labor is no longer required or replaced something like 100 to 1. We went from using like 30,000,000 horses in American’s industrial base to basically 0 in a decade. Accountants, bank tellers, analyst jobs, truck drivers - you name it. They could all be automated in the coming years.
We could see more progress in the next 5 to 10 years than we did in the previous 5,000. The impact on our social and political systems is terrifying.
I think we’re knocking on the door of a world where human labor is no longer required or replaced something like 100 to 1. We went from using like 30,000,000 horses in American’s industrial base to basically 0 in a decade. Accountants, bank tellers, analyst jobs, truck drivers - you name it. They could all be automated in the coming years.
We could see more progress in the next 5 to 10 years than we did in the previous 5,000. The impact on our social and political systems is terrifying.
Last edited:
I get it there is a lot of fear mongering out there and I'd suggest not to just stop but to dive in head first and learn as much as you can about it now.
Look, as funny as it was in my 20s that people would be buying stuff on the internet it's even funnier now that they don't. I can place an Amazon order in the morning and get it delivered to my front door by the afternoon. As simple as that sounds today that would have blown my mind just 10-15 years ago. I've even bought a newer model used car almost
percent on the internet from another state and had it delivered. That was a nervous wire transfer ****Also, just because a particular company isn't on the cutting edge doesn't mean it's not coming. I work in the Medtech sector and I too laugh sometimes when I hear what AI is going to do and then I look at where we are and it's not even close to reality. My company is rather large and we don't move quick but our hand will be forced one day for sure.
Change is coming it's just how fast and how disruptive will it be. The best thing I can think to do is at least have a basic understanding of it. I am a long way from that.....too much time spent in McCool****
Not likely. In December there were over 9 million job openings in the US. If we can sustain this labor market with today's technology it's not likely AI is going to lead to a world where human labor is not required.
Not sure what industry you're in, but over in mine:
1. I'm now in my 3rd company without really changing IT positions (been acquired twice).
2. The change between software and deployment tools we use internally is accelerating. We barely get one implemented before someone is arguing for a newer, more powerful one, and almost all of them have increased/easier automation as a selling point.
3. Each acquisition brings with it a chance of new morons at high levels that want to make impacts yet are disconnected from the impacts of their changes in different ways.
4. The scariest are the people that immediately want to outsource and/or off-shore key functions.
5. About 2/3 of the off-shore companies we've dealt with have ethics totally unlike traditional American ones. They will sell you a fairytale, start an implementation that can't be rolled back, bald-face lie to your bosses why it's not their fault when it fails, then sleep soundly at night.
I could easily see a combination of that leading to an AI effort coming online that replaces a lot of my coworkers, then dramatically breaks a few months down the road when there's no hope of rolling it back. Suddenly, you'll have a subset of the healthcare industry impacted where providers can't take care of patients at best, and where you have PHI heading to incorrect destinations at worst.
Last edited:
But if many/most of the current openings are for low wage positions, dont pay benefits, etc etc...is that really something that supports your comment above?
The lower wage jobs are supposed to be the ones that are replaced by AI and automation first. I need to look at which type of jobs comprise the bulk of those 9 million job openings but having a robot or an AI software suite do the job of a nurse, a judge, a project supervisor, a plumber or a police officer is a ways away. Certainly they can and will augment those jobs, but as a total replacement where the people themselves become expendable, that doesn't seem likely. Jobs like fast food workers, retail sales clerks/restocking, hoteliers, 1-800 customer service...those are on the chopping block.
Last edited:
So sky net is real, but instead of killing us to steal a line from South Park it is going to take our jobs? I would not go as far out on the limb as our buddy Strat is doing, but there is no question AI is going have huge and long lasting impacts on basically every part of our society.
Low wage jobs without benefits litter my metros local job openings. I am confident it is similar across the country.
These are good service, retail, trade, etc etc that require in person manual work.
I am unsure how retail sales work is on the chopping block. Or hotel front desk workers. Like...are you saying literal robots will take over the checkin and key process at hotels, and robots will sell me AV equipment or trashy selling body soap at retails stores?
Maybe I am not envisioning this how you are.
Hmmm....how has that not been set up like the self-order stations at MickeyD's already?
I check in with my credit card, it spits out a keycard...
This may be one of those things where I don't see it based on how I use hotels.
For the last 5 years at least, there has been only 1 person on duty at the front desk, or really the whole hotel.
This goes for hotels in probably 8 different states and 20 hotel stays.
I just can't imagine having any fewer people than what I see now.
...but I usually stay at places that are $120-$150 per night. Maybe the nicer hotels have spare staff that will be chopped due to AI.
Say you're in room 404 at the Holiday Inn and you need extra towels and some toothpaste. You jump on the hotel app and request those items. A message is relayed to a robot in the stock room of the hotel who can recognize objects on a shelf. It pulls the towels off the shelf and a box of toothpaste and heads to the elevator where it can punch the buttons that take it to your hotel room. You get an app alert that your items are at the door. The bot can sense you removing the items from its tray and then he once again finds the elevator, presses the buttons and heads back down to the stock room. Same thing for retail, a robot can restock shelves, you can ask it questions about where to find items. Maybe it can help you return an item...the possibilities are immediately evident to me in retail and some service jobs. Low wage jobs that are fairly redundant.
I think white collar jobs are more on the chopping block than blue collar ones. Take Microsoft Dynamics for instance. It's not hard for me to see a world where Dynamics is integrated with AI capabilities which will look at a business' historical sales patterns and convert that into a baselevel inventory monitoring service. Honestly, it might do it already. Microsoft Dynamics AI+ would easily be able to understand seasonality and product build-up, slow moving items, gross margin performance, etc. It could be updated with sales forecasts which would make it even more accurate and reliable. It would notify you if an item is below safety stock levels, or if a product is being returned at an unusually high rate. It wouldn't be a stretch for it to be able to place purchase orders with vendors. Or, at least craft them for your approval and submission. That info could be fed into a cash forecast for the business which looks at data from AR or cash collections. It would know that your insurance premiums are due in 6 weeks, but you have the option to switch over to monthly or quarterly installations. It would cost you an extra $832.27 over the course of the year to switch to quarterly and $932.52 to switch to monthly.
That paragraph might be the difference between a local midsized company employing 175 people in their office support roles in 2024 and 9 in 2034. And that would be transferable to every imaginable industry. That paragraph is why Microsoft is currently the most valuable company in the world with NVDA clipping at their heels.
Get unlimited access today.