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#automation#artificialintelligence#unemployment
What Happened to Horses Is Happening to Us
CGP Grey
7M subscribers • 3 videos on Hallway
- Recommended by 12 people: 11 on Hacker News and 1 in engineering communities.
- A classic. People kept recommending it from 2014 to 2023.
- Presented by CGP Grey
- May be out of date. Uploaded 12 years ago, in an area where tools change fast.
- An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.
Beginner. No background in the topic needed.
19M views12 years ago12 recommendations
AI and machine learningCareers and interviewsAI safety and impactThe tech industry
CGP Grey explains how advancing automation and artificial intelligence will make a large portion of the human workforce economically obsolete.
Support Grey making videos: patreon.com/cgpgrey ## Robots, Etc: Terex Port automation: terex.com/port-solutions/en/products/new-equipment/automated… Command | Cat MieStar System.: catminestarsystem.com/capability_sets/command Bosch Automotive Technology: bosch-automotivetechnology.com/en/de/specials/specials_for_m… Atlas Update: youtube.com/watch?v=SD6Okylclb8&list=UU7vVhkEfw4nOGp8TyDk7Rc… Kiva Systems: kivasystems.com PhantomX running Phoenix code: youtube.com/watch?v=rAeQn5QnyXo iRobot, Do You: youtube.com/watch?v=da-5Uw8GBks&list=UUB6E-44uKOyRW9hX378XEy… New pharmacy robot at QEHB: youtube.com/watch?v=_Ql1ZHSkUPk Briggo Coffee Experience: vimeo.com/77993254 John Deere Autosteer ITEC Pro 2010. In use while cultivating: youtube.com/watch?v=VAPfImWdkDw&t=19s The Duel: Timo Boll vs. KUKA Robot: youtube.com/watch?v=tIIJME8-au8 Baxter with the Power of Intera 3: youtube.com/watch?v=DKR_pje7X2A&list=UUpSQ-euTEYaq5VtmEWukyi… Baxter Research Robot SDK 1.0: youtube.com/watch?v=wgQLzin4I9M&list=UUpSQ-euTEYaq5VtmEWukyi… Baxter the Bartender: youtube.com/watch?v=AeTs9tLsUmc&list=UUpSQ-euTEYaq5VtmEWukyi… Online Cash Registers Touch-Screen EPOS System Demonstration: youtube.com/watch?v=3yA22B0rC4o Self-Service Check in: youtube.com/watch?v=OafuIBDzxxU Robot to play Flappy Bird: youtube.com/watch?v=kHkMaWZFePI e-david from University of Konstanz, Germany: vimeo.com/68859229 Sedasys: sedasys.com/ Empty Car Convoy: youtube.com/watch?v=EPTIXldrq3Q Clever robots for crops: crops-robots.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id… Autonomously folding a pile of 5 previously-unseen towels: youtube.com/watch?v=gy5g33S0Gzo#t=94 LS3 Follow Tight: youtube.com/watch?v=hNUeSUXOc-w Robotic Handling material: youtube.com/watch?v=pT3XoqJ7lIY Caterpillar automation project: catminestarsystem.com/articles/autonomous-haulage-improves-m… Universal Robots has reinvented industrial robotics: youtube.com/watch?v=UQj-1yZFEZI Introducing WildCat: youtube.com/watch?v=wE3fmFTtP9g The Human Brain Project - Video Overview: youtube.com/watch?v=JqMpGrM5ECo This Robot Is Changing How We Cure Diseases: youtube.com/watch?v=ra0e97Wiqds Jeopardy! - Watson Game 2: youtube.com/watch?v=kDA-7O1q4oo What Will You Do With Watson?: youtube.com/watch?v=Y_cqBP08yuA ## Other Credits Mandelbrot set: youtube.com/watch?v=NGMRB4O922I&list=UUoxcjq-8xIDTYp3uz647V5… Moore's law graph: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PPTMooresLawai.jpg Apple II 1977: youtube.coWhy it's here
12 people recommend this, 3 dispute itWhat people say. Recommended as a compelling overview of how automation and AI will impact employment and make human labor redundant.
Moments people linked to
zyx321on Hacker News • Recommends
On “Artificial Intelligence Isn’t a Threat – Yet”
Easier said than done. What are they going to retrain to? As AI continues to advance, more and more jobs will necome redundant. CGP Grey did a great video on this1. Even if you can't completely replace humans, often times, obe person will be able to do the job that used to take several. Where do those others go? What will we as a society do if for example AI-based Expert Systems make 90% of accountants and office clerks redundant? We can't retrain all of them to become doctors and scientists, can we? 1 link to this video
polymatteron Hacker News • Recommends
On “The Machines Are Coming”
I highly recommend CGP Greys video ( link to this video ) for a good overview of the issue. See link for similar discussion.
scrollawayon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Amazon Flex”
And people who refuse to see it are usually blind... The supermarkets I go to have greatly reduced their cashiers. In most cases by at least half, especially in small shops (3 cashiers has become 2-3 machines and one human). As for bakers, they don't just make bread and cake. Excellent video on the subject: CGPGrey - Humans Need Not Apply: link to this video
cslon Hacker News • Recommends
On “The Most Common Job in Each State 1978-2014”
This reminded me of the "Humans need not apply" video, which I strongly recommend, if you haven't already seen it: link to this video Discussion: link
noetic_techyon Hacker News • Recommends
On “The AI Unemployment Anti-FAQ (2013)”
This article just leans on the same historic analogies that don't hold up to scrutiny. These answers fall way short of the effect of automation and AI will have. You are not replacing the job with another, you are replacing the human brain! I always refer people to this video to explain what it will be like, and it debases almost all the points made in this FAQ: link to this video All these historical analogies fall flat on their face when it comes to an AI being trained to do your exact job. This is not another case of farmers moving to different higher skilled jobs. We are the employed horses of the 1800s about to be made unemployable by the advent of cars.
zannyon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Hal Finney being cryopreserved now”
A huge portion of the workforce will be unemployable in our lifetimes: link to this video By the time the technology comes around the revive the cryopreserved, the rest of technological advancement will change the dynamic of human interaction so much we cannot estimate what the world will be like, but we can assume that with technology advanced enough to repair the damage from the freezing process, you would probably be entering a world of almost any possibility.
abandonlibertyon Hacker News • Recommends
On “1984 v. Brave New World”
Human obsolescence wasn't on Huxley's mind. Instead of Deltas, Gammas, and Epsilons doing awful labour, they will do none. While CGP Grey has a very consumer-oriented view, it's quite compelling. link to this video
fizixeron Hacker News • Recommends
On “Coding is not the new literacy”
You seem to be coming from the opposing view of that of the article, that coding 'is' the new literacy. I was more challenging the article's claim that modeling is the new literacy, which I think isn't. As to whether coding is the new literacy or not, I'd say we really need to ask what is the purpose of education. If the purpose of education is enlightenment, then yes, a child should learn how to code, but also how to paint, how to play a musical instrument, and so on and so forth. But then some children have the aptitude for one thing, some for another thing. But I think the purpose of education as a means of making the individual economically viable is becoming more and more futile with in…
dscalision Hacker News • Recommends
On “What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?”
Which skills, for example, are harder to automate? You may have already seen this YouTube video as its a couple years old, but its premise is that we need to start thinking about what to do when large swaths of the population find themselves unemployable through no fault of their own (since over 45% of the workforce holds jobs that are easy targets for automation in the near future). link to this video
moffkalaston Hacker News • Recommends
On “The Poor ROI of Autonomy (2020)”
Tech makes jobs obsolete, but the new jobs introduced in the last few hundred years only add up to a small part of the overall workforce (programmers excluded). CGP Grey went in depth on human replacement automation, and almost a decade later it still holds up: link to this video The bottom line is that automating a job is obviously a net positive because it frees up a human to do something else elsewhere, while still providing the same added value as before. There will always be something for that human to do, even if not a traditional style job. The gap, as you point out, is making sure that newly created value gets taxed and provided to that freed up person as UBI, so that they can continue to live…
jabbanyon Hacker News • Recommends
On “It happened to me today: $80/hr writer replaced with ChatGPT”
Reminds me of this video about automation of mental labor (and this was made back in 2014, way before any of of the LLM stuff of the modern era): link to this video While not all the example predictions in the video were accurate, I think the point about automation as a displacement of mental labor is real. At the end of the day, a lot of white collar work is really not that "valuable" from a production standpoint. And while the easy way is to blame either technology or those it replaces, the crux of the problem is really in society and how individuals make a living. Society needs to be ready for a future where most people will not be able to do meaningfully differentiated work ---where even if you're…
bnralton Hacker News • Disputes
On “Rogue superintelligence: Inside the mind of OpenAI's chief scientist”
…ment was struggling to recover after the great recession, the singularity folks said that it wasn't going to recovers, because tech was replacing humans, and that this was just the beginning of mass unemployment (one of the reasons why UBI got so popular). CGP Grey's popular "Human's Need Not Apply" video is a good example of this kind of thought: link to this video Claims that self-driving cars are already here and already better than human drivers, and that the only question is how quickly they replace humans. He argued that Baxter, the general purpose robot, could already copy the tasks of a human worker and do the work for much cheaper. Baxter was discontinued in 2018 because of low interest. These…
Chathamizationon Hacker News • Disputes
On “Gavin Newsom vetoes SB 1047”
The AI doomsday folk had an even worse track record over the past decade. There was supposed to be mass unemployment of truck drivers years ago. According to CCP Grey's Human's Need Not Apply1 from 10 years ago, the robot Baxter was supposed to take over many low skilled jobs (Baxter was continued in 2018 after it failed to achieve commercial success). 1 link to this video
lexandstuffon Hacker News • Disputes
On “No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass”
Ilya Sutskever said in 2017, whilst building OpenAI: > Within the next three years, robotics should be completely solved, AI should solve a long-standing unproven theorem, programming competitions should be won consistently by AIs, and there should be convincing chatbots. There was a viral YouTube video from 2014 called Humans Need Not Apply 1, which made a very strong argument that mass unemployment was right around the corner. I actually think people from the past would be surprised at how slow AI has progressed in the end. Although the domains where it's turned out to be most effective - code, images, videos, music, etc. - would probably surprise them. 1 link to this video
u/oditogrein r/compsci • Mentions
On “Mark Cuban on Trump: people are going to be replaced by AI, ML and NN”
This is, seemingly, my dad's position. I can't yet find a way to get him to understand the problem in a rational way. He just says that we need more people going to college, learning to use computers. I've got 'Automation' in my job title; I'm seeing as first-hand as anybody possibly can how we are more and more looking to software and advanced machines to increase productivity instead of hiring more people.
Most people who are being replaced by software or robots can't readily transition to a job that can't be done by software or a robot. Even if they all could, there aren't enough jobs of that sort to go around. Not nearly.
Similarly disruptive technological advancements have screwed up…