OT: Until AI Kills Us All

Yep, its equally as amazing as it is scary.

I have intentionally not used it. Our devs and others are utilizing it within a very structured framework. But I chose to keep doing my job as I always have, learning what I need to know for the job.

It is powerful, but it can also quickly reduce us to idiots if we aren't careful.

greediron wrote:

I have intentionally not used it. Our devs and others are utilizing it within a very structured framework. But I chose to keep doing my job as I always have, learning what I need to know for the job.
It is powerful, but it can also quickly reduce us to idiots if we aren't careful.

For me, coming into an area of the business that I’ve got no experience in, it’s been a godsend.

JustInTime wrote:

For me, coming into an area of the business that I’ve got no experience in, it’s been a godsend.

Its going to replace 50% or more of the workforce in the next 2 decades. My son has asked me what professions to get into going to be a teenager this fall. 1. Robot and computer engineer 2. Trade school Thats it. There is literally zero incentive to getting a 4 year degree right now. I know someone who got the 2 year degree in computer science and repair - making $100k plus a year 3 years out of school.

JustInTime wrote:

For me, coming into an area of the business that I’ve got no experience in, it’s been a godsend.

My current job is has needed me to learn in areas I haven't been experienced in. I am intentionally using this as a learning experience even at my age.

Not judging anyone, but I want to know this, not just let 'someone' else do it for me.

I work in a very niche area that's programming adjacent and it can't really replace my job yet (or help me put my feet up while it does the work). I just don't think there's enough information online for it to really steal from. It kind of gets some stuff right, but there's a lot of mistakes that are only really solvable by someone knowing what they're doing.

I think it's really useful for replacing google though, especially after search engines got shittier. I think you can see the promise, but I'm not sure you'll ever be able to set it down and have it sort out something new from scratch, but for things that are already sorted out, it seems like it's on point.

One thing I do find hilarious is the whole copying adobe aspect of things. It really puts into question how people will make money via software when everyone can just copy it and have their AI make their own version of it rather than paying you for the software you created.

Our managers try to use it, and it gives them a lot of reports that they love, but that aren't really applicable to anything if you actually tried to implement it.

Kmerry82 wrote:

Its going to replace 50% or more of the workforce in the next 2 decades.

You're optimistic. Most experts are saying by 2030. 3 years and 2 months from now. And with the intelligence these kids are coming out of college with..... Bodes poorly.

IMO I thinks its super naive to think a human brain is going to be able to compute faster than a supercomputer and god forbid when they start implementing quantum computing into AI and Robotics. Humans will go obsolete in a short amount of time. They already have robots making robots. People VASTLY overestimate the security of blue collared jobs also. Guess what? When all the other jobs are gone everyone and their mother is going to try to do blue collar work that will create too much competition driving down the prices you can charge for jobs. Further eroding possible ways to support a family.

And they are already creating robot maids, welders, package packers etc...

I think 2030 is being optimistic. Elon says UBI will take care of everyone! I've always heard the super rich narcisists really give a flying F**K about the general populous as they buy their 4th super mega yacht vs helping homeless, vets, single mothers, dogs and cats yadda yadda...

We're cooked.

I'll just cut to the chase...

As much as I could recite benefits to innovation, efficiencies, reduced time lines, medicine etc..This is the new frontier of an international arms race.

I don’t see an off-ramp and I dont believe most avg Joes/Janes (like me) fully understand the whole datacenter impact either.

Just that there is another issue to take a position on.

purplefaithful wrote:

I'll just cut to the chase...
As much as I could recite benefits to innovation, efficiencies, reduced time lines, medicine etc..This is the new frontier of an international arms race.
I don’t see an off-ramp and I dont believe most avg Joes/Janes (like me) fully understand the whole datacenter impact either.
Just that there is another issue to take a position on.

This was a good write up about AI that has a positive look on things. As you can tell I don't have that rosey of a perception but its always good to read both sides.

Every time something scarce became abundant, the world changed so fast that the people living through it mistook the beginning for the end.

Food was scarce for a hundred thousand years. Agriculture made it abundant, and people who had spent every waking hour chasing their next meal suddenly had something they had never owned before.

Time.

That time became villages. The villages became cities. The cities became language carved into clay, and then law.

Nobody standing in a wheat field understood they were building Rome.

Information was scarce for millennia. The printing press made it abundant. The church lost its monopoly on knowledge, and within two centuries every throne in Europe was shaking.

Nobody pulling letters from a press understood they were ending the divine right of kings.

Energy was scarce until we learned to crack the earth open. Coal and oil made it abundant, and a single person could suddenly command the force of a thousand. Within one generation the entire structure of work turned inside out.

Nobody shoveling coal understood they were building the middle class.

The pattern never changes. A resource that was hoarded becomes available. The people who held it resist. The structures built on that scarcity fall. And whatever rises in their place is invisible from where everyone is standing.

Here is the part almost everyone misses.

Information stopped being scarce a long time ago. The library, the search engine, the endless feed. We have been drowning in information for decades, and it never set anyone free, because information just sits there. It answers only the question you already knew how to ask.

Intelligence was the thing still locked away.

A mind on the other side. Something that explains, argues back, catches your mistake, and meets you exactly where you are standing. The part that bends toward you instead of forcing you to bend toward it.

That is what broke open.

For the first time, a person with nothing but curiosity and a connection can reach an intelligence that teaches, challenges, and builds alongside them in real time. No tuition. No admissions office. No permission.

The distance between what a person can imagine and what they can actually make is collapsing in front of us.

And the people most threatened by that are not the ones without talent. They are the ones whose entire standing depends on talent staying rare.

Every credential, every hierarchy, every quiet system that decided who was allowed to build and who was told to watch, is resting on a foundation dissolving underneath it.

They will fight it. They always do.

The church fought the press. The aristocracy fought the vote. The owners fought the union. Every single time a scarce thing became abundant, the ones who controlled it warned everyone else that the sky was falling.

The sky was never falling. The ceiling was lifting.

And the people underneath it, the ones who had been told their whole lives that the ceiling was the sky, finally looked up and saw nothing there to stop them.

That is what is happening right now.

Intelligence was never rare. Access to it was.

Access just became free.

Whatever gets built in the next ten years will not come from the rooms we are all watching. It will come from someone who was never supposed to have the tools, who right now has no idea that the thing they are doing has a name, or a scale, or a future.

Same as the wheat field. Same as the press. Same as the coal. 

We never recognize Rome while we are still building it.

SurfnRide wrote:

You're optimistic. Most experts are saying by 2030. 3 years and 2 months from now. And with the intelligence these kids are coming out of college with..... Bodes poorly.
IMO I thinks its super naive to think a human brain is going to be able to compute faster than a supercomputer and god forbid when they start implementing quantum computing into AI and Robotics. Humans will go obsolete in a short amount of time. They already have robots making robots. People VASTLY overestimate the security of blue collared jobs also. Guess what? When all the other jobs are gone everyone and their mother is going to try to do blue collar work that will create too much competition driving down the prices you can charge for jobs. Further eroding possible ways to support a family.

And they are already creating robot maids, welders, package packers etc...

I think 2030 is being optimistic. Elon says UBI will take care of everyone! I've always heard the super rich narcisists really give a flying F**K about the general populous as they buy their 4th super mega yacht vs helping homeless, vets, single mothers, dogs and cats yadda yadda...

We're cooked.

The data shows withing the next 2-3 years 50% of employees will have an AI resource not that they will be replace. AI or robots will not be replacing manufacture jobs at a significant rate. I anticipate, the areas where AI will really start to dig into are the following areas - 1. Accounting 2. Legal 3. Medical - physician and diagnosis. The actual robots to perform functions is likely 10 years out then will be gradual.

The rule of thumb is generally we overestimate the immediate impact and underestimate the long term impact. At some point there is going to be a major pushback on AI and curbs. Whether taking too many jobs, security issues ect.

I went to a manufacturing symposium on Tuesday morning this week. Two of the sessions were AI-related.

The first was "is it time to Automate your Manufacturing Process"

The second was "The Future of AI is already here"

Both were eye opening. Followed by a panel including two other large local manufacturers using AI. Several concepts that I had never heard before:

1) Javon's Paradox...the conventional wisdom is that AI is going to take many hands-on human jobs away. The paradox is that the opposite is true. He gave an example of a law firm. Because the tedious research work typically done by a lower-level staffer (who is still expensive) that can be offloaded to AI, this particular law firm has had to increase head count, hire more high-priced attorneys, because they have been able to increase their case load. In short, it makes humans more productive to the point that you need more people, which in turn generates more revenue.

2) The "K" Curve...he used machine shops as an example, and quoted the owner of multiple machine shops (all w/fewer than 20 employees) saying he could not afford AI. He also cited machine shops of the same size that adopted AI in a variety of applications (not necessarily universally). The non-AI-adopting businesses did not grow, and in fact declined...while the AI-adopting businesses grew exponentially, hence the "K"

3) AI lies...one of the manufacturing reps (they are a very large manufacturer of the machines that make the chips...a huge presence here in NW Montana...I had heard the GM speak previously, and he explained that the reason that the company founder established this company here over 30 years ago, is that while normally found in Silicon Valley here in NW Montana, was to be as far away from Chinese spies! He was dead serious). Anyway, his use case was very different than the wood products mfr. He said that any AI text that is produced CANNOT be taken for face value and needs to be fact-checked. He said "I had AI write a bio about me...and it lied."

4) All presenters said that too many people are too eager to simply adapting AI because "it's the next big thing", without understanding the why. Cited were situations that were solved by fixing other bottlenecks (a big wood-products mfr said that they had a problem with inconsistent weights of sheets of MDF, which caused issues elsewhere in the plant. While they do use AI in other areas of the operation, they did a deep-dive business analysis of replacing the scale. The existing scale used large springs. The new half-million dollar scale used sensors...no springs. They found that the old scale springs were affected by the temperature, showing differences in weight, when in fact there was none. By fixing that one bottleneck, it solved all the others...without needing AI to fix them.

5) At the end of the panel, it really became apparent to me that while many AI products are a "What"...this is what you use for this application. What the panel stressed was to first examine the "Why". AI can point you in the wrong (and expensive) direction if you haven't really addressed the WHY first.

Bottom line: this symposium changed my attitude about AI, and I am signed up for an AI work session next Tuesday evening hosted by the second presenter.

This thread is a good topic of discussion...AI is what you think it is, and AI is also not what you think it is.

Kmerry82 wrote:

Its going to replace 50% or more of the workforce in the next 2 decades. My son has asked me what professions to get into going to be a teenager this fall. 1. Robot and computer engineer 2. Trade school Thats it. There is literally zero incentive to getting a 4 year degree right now. I know someone who got the 2 year degree in computer science and repair - making $100k plus a year 3 years out of school.

The Manufacturing Symposium I attended on Tuesday does not support that reduction in the workforce.

However, it was held on campus at our local community college, which is the third largest educational institution in this state (led by football archrivals Montana State University and University of Montana). One of the presentations was on the trade/industry educational programs that they are expanding, along with a Dept of Commerce presentation on a wide array of paid internships.

Tours of the existing trades program were offered (I took the tour), and they were explaining how they are currently doubling the footprint, adding an additional 23,000 square feet. This supports the notion that you don't need a four year liberal arts degree to make a six-figure income without college debt.

They are linked.

I was pretty resistant to use, but as stated, it can do things for me with work in seconds that would take me hours and it does an amazing job on it.

In addition, it is great to use for remodeling projects, landscaping ideas and a daily counselor! Just did some upgrades to a guest room and was amazing for seeing how some different options would look even for seeing how the new bed would like in there. I use it daily for so many things and find it can be an incredible resource.

It sure seems like no one’s planning for what happens after AI takes over all the jobs we haven’t shipped off to China.  Or at the very least, no ones really telling me how everyone sitting at home is going to be able to afford anything made by the company that is using AI to replace it’s workers.  That and how are our children going to be able to afford a house?  Things politicians don’t want to talk about.

greediron wrote:

My current job is has needed me to learn in areas I haven't been experienced in. I am intentionally using this as a learning experience even at my age.

Not judging anyone, but I want to know this, not just let 'someone' else do it for me.

Well, I’ve got 20 process flows for just two of seven subsystems I need to analyze. Each process flow has a minimum of 4 departments impacted. Each with 5 discrete deliverables for a comprehensive front to back review.

Due the end of October.

This ain’t getting done without Copilot.

Montana Tom wrote:

The Manufacturing Symposium I attended on Tuesday does not support that reduction in the workforce.
However, it was held on campus at our local community college, which is the third largest educational institution in this state (led by football archrivals Montana State University and University of Montana). One of the presentations was on the trade/industry educational programs that they are expanding, along with a Dept of Commerce presentation on a wide array of paid internships.
Tours of the existing trades program were offered (I took the tour), and they were explaining how they are currently doubling the footprint, adding an additional 23,000 square feet. This supports the notion that you don't need a four year liberal arts degree to make a six-figure income without college debt.
They are linked.

Pretty sure manufacturing symposiums are not going to go onto college campuses and say "you're screwed and are wasting money trying to get an education or skillset that AI can do better".

Dont think they would be invited back to the college again.

I have been working in the manufacturing world dealing with Avionics, aerospace, military, automotive, medical, consumer electronics and industrial fields for 30 years (pre outsourcing!) dealing with the biggest companies you know of. I visit these plants regularly and are having meetings with executives and plant managers and commodity/program/project managers and they are all very worried. They all see the writing on the wall.