This sounds like something a 6-year-old girl would write:
“And AI should be used for good and to help all the nice people and not make any money for the Greedy Few meanie rich people. And nobody should ever get fired for ever and ever. And everyone should be safe and sound and have everything they ever want! And free ice cream for everyone!”
Let me just give a quick example off the top of my head of why you can’t have it both ways, because I am in a hurry to go do something fun instead of bash this commie clown all day:
AI is already getting REALLY good at reading MRI, CTs, x-rays and other images. It is better, faster and cheaper than a human in almost all cases.
SO – taken to its eventual conclusion, the 330 million people in the U.S. could go in and get a scan, have it read in 10 seconds and it might cost $10. Wouldn’t THAT be “helping people”? Costs drop to practically zero, you get results immediately and maybe hundreds or thousands more lives saved if/when AI catches things a human missed.
Of course, the 40,000 radiologists currently making a nice living are going to be put out of business. At least, a huge majority of them will. Is that bad? Is that any different than when cashiers at the grocery store no longer had to hand-enter prices on a keypad when the scanner was invented?? I actually remember those days as a kid. The Publix cashier blew me away with her light-speed key entry. A few years later – she just scanned everything. It was WAY faster and good for everyone. She was FAR more productive and the lines went faster for everyone. Win/win.
Now take it a step further – let’s say AI replaces 90% of the bloated, paper-pushing administration at every hospital in America.
The Trajectory: Since the 1970s, the number of physicians has grown by roughly 200%, while healthcare managers and administrators have grown by over 3,000%.
The Ratio: There are now estimates of up to (10) healthcare administrators for every (1) physician in the United States.
Those stats are absolutely absurd. CLEARLY there is a LOT of fat to cut and AI should be able to do it.
The hospital now has WAY more money to put towards patient care and paying the salaries needed to attract top nurses and doctors. Again, the 330 million people in America should benefit from drastically lower medical costs. BUT to the million paper pushers who just lost their jobs, it is devastating.
You are “helping people” AND “replacing workers” – pretty much every AI case is like this.
So should we do all that? By your definition, this DEFINITELY “helps people” who are sick. What if AI get SO incredible that a trip to the hospital now costs $200 a day instead of $4000?
[That might sound crazy but a 50-inch plasma TV in 2003 cost around $10,000 (probably $35,000 in today’s dollars). Today you can buy a 75″ TV that has a FAR better picture for $450!!!]
AI will be wildly deflationary in almost all areas. It will be highly disruptive in all areas as well – except for probably the trades – so maybe start pushing kids to be plumbers, mechanics, electricians, etc instead of useless paper pushers.
I can see a future where everyone works only three days a week and a LOT of goods and services appear like magic. Maybe the population of the U.S. drops back to 200 million, where it was when I was born. Everyone is bitching about the population drop, but if AI is taking a ton of jobs, it isn’t going to matter. There will be less of us but we will be living like kings and living longer.
I don’t know what will happen in the end, and neither does a moron like Clayton Tucker. But to blabber like a teen girl about Utopias that can never exist is a total waste of time. Lots of people got fucked by the Industrial Revolution, too but the world kept turning. My advice is stay on your toes, pay attention to the news and get skills that can’t be taken by a line of code.
The next 15 years will be a wild ride!