build your own AI then
I want AI (well, a robotic helper) for laundry and housework. Technically I’ve already got a dishwasher which is close enough there.
I’d love to have AI help me with making art just like other tools, but not take over it
Anyone who believes AI is being used for art/writing and not for other things like doing the dishes, has a myopic understanding and a strong confirmation bias. This strawman argument is defeated by a simple Google search to see the multitude of other places where this technology is benefiting humanity.
AI is helping physicists speed up experiments into supernovae to better understand the universe.
Alright then, here’s what I think about your sources. A lot of these seem like technologies that won’t really help the plain folk. I’m sorry if this is a bit long, but I made sure to put time into this because I find it very important.
Source 1: I’m not sure if this type of tech, that being neural networks “trained” on previous data, is actually going to help scientists find out what supernovae explosions are like. This is simply a composition of all the explosions the data is trained on. A better process is this designing of an airplane wing. This uses algorithms with vars that actually represent physical variables, like lift and friction, to find the best airplane wing design, instead of feeding a neural network airplane wing designs that work. It ended up performing a bit better than expected because of real-world variables.
Source 2: The problem this AI is trying to solve is brought on by hospitals purposefully laying off staff. However, I really like this quote.
The AI, dubbed MyEleanor, isn’t designed to replace human navigators, Moadel-Robblee explained. “She” calls patients who didn’t show up or canceled their colonoscopy appointments. If they pick up, she has two primary directives: transfer them over to a human navigator and, if the patient consents, guide them through a brief survey on why they missed their appointment. “Our virtual navigator, she doesn’t sleep. So she can call earlier, later, or on different days. The navigators that are human are invaluable. They have the human touch. We can’t replace them, but we can supplement,” Moadel-Robblee said.
I think that this is technically a good thing, but it’s very small compared to the jobs lost from AI.
Source 3: First off, three people already beat this robot to the punch.
The first dishwasher to be granted a patent was invented in 1850 by Joel Houghton. It was a wooden box that used a hand-turned wheel to splash water on dirty dishes, and it had scrubbers. Ten years later, inventor L.A. Alexander improved on Houghton’s machine by adding a “geared mechanism that allowed the user to spin racked dishes through a tub of water,” according to an entry on reference website ThoughtCo. But the person we have to thank for the modern-day dishwasher is Josephine Cochran (sometimes spelled Cochrane). Her machine was the first to use water pressure instead of scrubbers to clean dishes—which made it more efficient than Houghton’s or Alexander’s versions.
After that, the article is almost nothing like you described. The reporter is going off from a promotional video by people clearly trying to bedazzle investors. Then, the article itself states that “[i]t’s unlikely that Figure 01 is using ChatGPT itself”, and ruminates on advancements that would only happen “[s]hould everything in the video work as claimed”. It’s just AI hype.
Overall, this technology is not “benefiting humanity”. I like how open you are about things, tho.
Edit: I made sure that my statements were not in accidentally in a quote.
Anyone who believes that anyone here is trying to suggest that art/writing is the only thing AI is used for, has a myopic understanding of how nuanced conversation works.
I don’t think artists/writers care about what else AI is being used for when they are losing their livelihood to a kid with a computer.
but it is true that big tech companies are pouring disproportionately large sums of money into AI that seems like it is doing creative stuff so that they can ride the AI hype wave.
Oh no big companies are spending money instead of using it to buy back their own stock, giving bonuses to the c-suite, or just hoarding it. And they are spending it on projects that are total moon shots that might take a decade or more to pay off.
This is terrible. And not at all what people have been yelling at tech companies for doing since about 2002.
I expect my tech companies to only invest in proven technology and engage in the shortest possible shortterm thinking.
AI doesn’t make you art, it makes art for other people, based on yours
TL;DR:
The misuse of technology in capitalism threatens jobs and financial stability. Affordable robots and AI could either enhance our lives or lead to unemployment and misery. Proposals like an automation tax could fund education or basic income. We need good legislation to ensure technology benefits everyone, not just profits. Recent steps like Europe’s AI act offer a little hope, but a lot more political action is urgently needed.
Long Version:
From my perspective, the core of the problem is not the technology, but the reckless way we use it in our capitalistic system. Or let’s say, let it be used.
For example, a light load robotic industrial arm costs merely 1k to 5k € nowadays. The software for it is cheap as well.
What the business owners and managers see, is not an awesome new invention which could help to propel humanity into the future of a robotic utopia, but cheap labour force, aiding them to cut jobs in order to maximize their profit margin as human labour is expensive.
I am sure AI and robots are our future, one way or another, whether we want it or not.
But I would like to see a future where AI and robots help us to increase our quality of life, instead of making us unemployed and endagering our financial survival.
There are various ideas how this could be achieved. I don’t intend to go way too in-depth here, so just as an example:
an automation tax: estimate to which amount a business can be automated and then demand a tax proportional to how much the business was automated. Such a tax could then be used to finance higher education for people or a universal basic income. Maybe at first just an income for those who can’t get a decent job due to automation.
We had similar developments as those we see now with virtually all technological advances, where human labour was replaced by more and more clever machines. Jobs where lost due to that but it could still be seen as a good thing in general.
An important difference is the level of required skills though. Someone who’s job it was to go around a street and light gas lanterns every day, extinguishing them some time afterwards, was replaced by electric light grids. A switchboard operator at a telephone company, who connected people manually, got replaced by clever hardware. And so on. Those people didn’t require high skills for their job though. They had it a bit easier to find another one.
This becomes increasingly difficult as AI and technology in general advances. Recently we see how robots and AI are capabable of tasks where higher skills are necessary. And it’s probable that this trend will incresingly continue. At some point, we will have AI developing new and better AI. An explosion of artificial intelligence can then be expected.
It’s less a problem as long as people have job prospects in higher skilled work levels. But that will, for a while at least, not be the case. This has different reasons:
As I see it, we have a “work pyramid”, where the levels of the pyramid represent the required skills and the width of the pyramid levels represent the amount of available jobs. In other words, there is a way higher demand for low skilled work than for high skilled work. (BTW, what I mean by work skill is the level of specialisation and proficiency, often connected to more intense and long training and education.)
As recent developments in AI now slowly creep into higher and higher levels, people may start investing in their own education in order to even get a job. But higher skilled work is less available making it increasingly tight and problematic to get one.
There may of course also be an effect observable where new jobs are created by enabling more even higher skilled jobs due to the aid of AI, but I think this has limitations. On the one hand, the amount of jobs created that way might be insufficient. On the other hand, people might not want to or can’t get an education for that.
The latter needs to be emphasized from my perspective. There are a lot of people who simply don’t want to study for a decade in order to get a PhD in something so that they can get some highly specialised job. Some people like the more simple jobs, those requiring more manual than cognitive labour. And that’s totally fine. People should be happy and like the work they do.
Currently, not all people even have access to that kind of education. Be it due to limitations in available places at universities / colleges, or due to financial reasons or even due to physical or mental health reasons.
You may now understand, why I see that we are going to create more misery if we don’t change the way we handle such things.
I would like to see humanity in that robotic utopia. No one needs to work, as most work is done by AI and robots. But everyone can get a fair share and live a happy life however they would like to live it. They can work, take up some interest and pursue it, but no one needs to.
But currently, this is probably not going to happen. We need good legislation, need to create a system where advancements in AI and robotics can be made without driving people into financial ruin. We need to set those guarding rails which help to guide us towards such a robotic utopia.
That’s why I am advocating for putting this topic higher on political priority lists. Politics worldwide don’t have it even set on their agenda. They are missing crucial time frames. And I really hope they’ll wake up from that slumber and start working on it. I’ve got some hope. Europe recently passed their first AI act.
It’s a start.
Sincerely,
A roboticist working in AI and robot research.
