by The “generator” of fear can Artificial intelligence which to others looks like a digital playground and to others a Pandora’s box, to make reality faster than imagined Global Minimum Income; And if so, at what price? THE Theodoros Stamelatos, business analyst at a Wall Street bankexplains to Liberal.gr the social and economic cosmogony that AI can bring through various applications that will eliminate jobs but not affect the essentials of life.
“In the ‘distant’ 2021, I found myself in front of an article titled “Moore’s Law for Everything”. Even though the columnist was unknown to me at the time, the content was of particular concern to me and was to become an increasingly frequent topic of discussion in all quarters in the following period. The rationale for artificial intelligence (AI) and its effects on society, the economy and now on our daily lives.
The not-so-random columnist, named Sam Altman, has been the CEO of Open AI since 2015, which provides the now well-known ChatGPT, the first successful and widespread AI system that, in very simple terms, can answer any what question and if asked. It belongs to a class of systems called large language models (LLMs), which are trained to analyze large amounts of data and generate text that simulates how it would be written by a human. The deep learning algorithms they use detect patterns in human language and then incorporate them into their responses.
So, according to Altman’s article two years ago, the spring of artificial intelligence will lead us to the following:
- Creation of unprecedented wealth and by extension annihilation of the work value of many trades.
- Radical change in the way this wealth should be distributed involving new economic policies.
- Although if these two goals are successfully achieved, a new regime will be created with a standard of living improved to unprecedented levels.
He therefore estimates that by the early 2030s the use of Artificial Intelligence could generate enough work to fund every American citizen with around $13,500 per year.
In practice, this would mean that if the distribution of excess wealth were done equally, an entire nation could be sustained by the work produced by AI systems. As crazy as it sounds and even the experts are divided, the platitude is leaning more and more in that direction. Just two years after the article was published, AI systems entered our daily lives, implementing with speed and clarity a series of tasks that were previously considered impossible. The era of the cognitive revolution has already arrived and all that remains is to accept it and adapt to the new data”.
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But how do you think it will turn out?
The answer to this question lies in the term AGI – Artificial General Intelligence. Right now all the hype around AI has been generated around software that it is original and free version and the most important, he doesn’t even have an internet connection. The answers may be given to us by the Open AI site, but the solutions are made on machines that do not have access to internet data!
Moreover, ChatGPT only processes a single small range of artificial intelligence applications. Imagine what would happen if we had a final form of software that would connect to the internet, have a thick subscription to justify its capabilities, and at the same time be able to deal with problems of a general nature by approaching them like a human being taking THE resolution initiative without even being assigned to it. The last part is exactly what AGI covers.
Such a system would be able to perform any task much faster and more efficiently than us, and could gain perception and transfer its knowledge to another machine. These qualities will replace most technical trades. In practice, anyone using a computer could be replaced.
And what about the established professions? What is the list of what will be most affected?
Legal professions
The speed at which texts are composed in ChatGPT is unparalleled. Even more impressive is the fact that these texts are of high quality and the user can even guide it to simulate the writing style of a real writer. At the same time, a system will be able to quickly read voluminous legal documents, perceive and locate the required information, as well as offer summaries with all the essence of what it “read”. What’s left in the equation? An experienced user who will enter the data in such a way that the result will only need a few touches to touch the perfect in zero time.
bankers
The sector that has undergone drastic changes like no other in recent decades could not be missing from the list. Memories of bank branches full of employees, which in some cases reached triple digits, are still fresh. As a field worker, I can’t imagine that the coming automations won’t cut jobs in all core businesses.
Information systems programmers and engineers
The profession that is not even 100 years old is perhaps more threatened than any other. AI systems’ access to vast amounts of data along with their fearsome perception of pattern and pattern recognition are daily heading towards a future where every system’s programming will be done by other machines.
Marketing
Already, more than 80% of employees in this industry admit to using some form of AI to a small or large extent. It is difficult to imagine how in the near future improved forms of existing systems will not swallow this industry. The above list is only an indicative sample of the influence of new technologies in the professional field. We could go on for hours because there really isn’t an area that isn’t affected.
So, along this evolutionary path, will there also be disappearances of “professional species”?
So, by the time AGI becomes a reality, there is two completely different paths who can follow a profession. Most professions will evolve and absorb the new systems, increasing the efficiency of lawyers, engineers, doctors, etc.
Others will be completely lost in time, like ice cream vendors and call center operators. Any worker in these fields should seek employment elsewhere. As with every major technological breakthrough, the labor market landscape will be radically reshaped. On the one hand, even in the first category of professions which will evolve, the people needed to manage the workload will be considerably reduced. On the other hand, all professions will be concerned, which it has never happened before and especially at such a speed. This alarming difference in this particular case brings us to the brink of an era that humanity has never experienced before. Studies from the University of Oxford claim that by the mid-2030s, 47% of American jobs will have been automated.
But where will all those whose work will no longer be relevant be absorbed, how will they ensure economic survival?
The answer was given to us by the evaluations of experts like Sam Altman. Quite simply, there will be no more room for the majority of people to work. Much of humanity will be disabled and will only be able to work on occasional manual tasks which will continue to decrease, although at a slower rate. With the development of suitable robots to run them, which will obviously be dressed in almighty AI software, day by day more and more tasks requiring physical presence and labor will be eliminated.
It’s a one-way street for governments to adopt horizontal allocation for all citizens. THE very rich, generated by the work of intelligent machines, will be distributed to citizens. And the deeper we delve into this scenario, the more inevitable it is Universal Basic Income (UBI). Although so alien to today’s reality, the concept of UBI may not be far off in time. We would ask ourselves, and what better than everyone to be assured of basic necessities? Someone would go ahead and say that’s exactly why corporations have been fighting for so many years.
But unfortunately for humanity, we are not so close to “heaven”. The framework that describes such an assessment foreshadows a world with practically only two types of people.
Those who have the knowledge, the skills to tame artificial intelligence and the rest. A two-speed society and a widening inequality gap.
Now a multinational will not even need the thousands of workers who produced its wealth under the declining regime. Only a small percentage of experienced and trained personnel will be needed to control a modern slave army with mechanical limbs and digital minds. And the rest will be content with the bare necessities, possibly completely cut off from the top layer. As the social divide widens, ordinary people will settle for a basic income and only look at the goods produced by robot armies from afar. And all this given that the basic income will be fair, universal and sufficient to live on. Otherwise, the scene will turn bleak with the majority forced to live in absolute poverty.
* Theodoros Stamelatos is a Front Office Product Engineer at Wall Street
