Comment by rogerrogerr
20 hours ago
This argument is the one that shook me, I’m curious if you think there’s any merit to it:
Humans have essentially three traits we can use to create value: we can do stuff in the physical world through strength and dexterity, and we can use our brains to do creative, knowledge, or otherwise “intelligent” work.
(Note by “dexterity” I mean “things that humans are better at than physical robots because of our shape and nervous system, like walking around complex surfaces and squeezing into tight spaces and assembling things”)
The Industrial Revolution, the one of coal and steam and eventually hydraulics, destroyed the jobs where humans were creating value through their strength. Approximately no one is hired today because they can swing a hammer harder than the next guy. Every job you can get in the first world today is fundamentally you creating value with your dexterity or intelligence.
I think AI is coming for the intelligence jobs. It’s just getting too good too quickly.
Indirectly, I think it’s also coming for dexterity jobs through the very rapid advances in robotics that appear to be partly fueled by AI models.
So… what’s left?
I think you are right, but here’s a fun counter-example. I recently bought a new robot* to do some of my housework and yet, at around 200lbs, it required two people to deliver it (strength) get it set up (dexterity) and explain to me how to use it (intelligence).
* https://www.mieleusa.com/product/11614070/w1-front-loading-w...
Most of the “delivery” (getting it from the factory to its final installed location) was done by machine: forklifts, cranes, ships, trucks, and (I'm guessing) a motorized lift on the back of the delivery truck.
You don't need a lot of imagination to predict those jobs can be done by other robots in the not so far future.
Yeah and I think that extends to even trades we see as protected because they often work in novel and unknown setting, like whatever a drunk tradesman rigged up in the decades previous.
Eventually it will be more economical to just destroy all those old world structures entirely, clear the site out, and replace it with the new modular world able to be repaired with robots that no longer have to look like humans and fit into human centric ux paradigms. They can be entirely purpose built to task unlike a human, who will still be average height and mass with all the usual pieces parts no matter how they are trained.
This overlooks that there aren't enough 'intelligence jobs' in an economy for it to be impacted by this.
Intelligence jobs are sort of the apex of the economy where everything coalesces around to serve those positions ultimately. E.g. any low skilled area even devoid of any resources that basically insists upon its own existence at this point (e.g. walmart workers need gas station, gas station workers need walmart, there is a sort of economy but these are straight up consumption black holes with nothing actually being invented or produced, maybe agricultural products but not by a large fraction of the labor force any longer).
So where does that leave our world without actual creation, production, ideas? I work at the gas station and sell you zyns? You work at the walmart and sell me rotisserie chickens? We both work doubles and eat and sleep in the time remaining? Remain in this holding pattern until World Leader AI realizes we are just waste heat and culls us? I mean, that is sort of the path we are on. Disempowering people. Downskilling them. Passifying them. Removing their abilities to organize themselves. Removing access to technology and tooling. Making the inevitable as easy at it can be when it comes time for it.
We are in a death cult called business efficiency. Fire them, it's more efficient. Lean up the company. Don't invest in research, cheaper not to and buy back stock instead. These are death spirals no different than what happens with ants. We are justifying not giving our own species a seat at the table out of pragmatism. Why create a job for someone? It is inefficient, do more with less and don't worry about the unemployed it is their fault. Why pay them well and let them live comfortably? That is profit you could be making. Eventually it is going to be why feed the human species, because that is the line of logic here with business efficiency. We don't optimize to uplift our species. Quite the opposite, we optimize to hold it down and squeeze and extract.
You said there are three traits, but seems like you only listed two - unless you're counting strength and dexterity as separate and just worded it weirdly.
I think they’re separate. You don’t need to be strong or intelligent to put circuit boards in printers, but there are factories full of people doing that. Purely because it’s currently cheaper to pay (low) wages to humans than to develop, deploy, and maintain automation to do that task. Yet.
AI will improve people’s understanding of the Oxford comma.
> think AI is coming for the intelligence jobs
What you call "AI" is coming for the "search and report" jobs. That is it.
The problem with that argument as I see it is that a lot of jobs can be described that way if you want.
And it's not just these; i.e. video generation is getting better every other week too. It's not yet good enough to produce full length movies but it's getting there and the main component that seems to be missing is just more control over the generated output, but that'll come too.
You might say these movies will be AI slop and you'd be right, but then that'll be enough for most people who just want to see a lot of shit blow up on screen and superhereos fighting other superhereos.
You will still have a niche for 'real actor' films, but it will become a niche.
Same for music, art etc.
No one is hired to swing a hammer? What world do you live in?
They're not hired to swing a hammer hard, they're hired to swing it at the right thing, and if they can't swing it hard enough they pick a different tool.
Harder than someone else. A bodybuilder and a normal person ham swing a hammer just as efficiently as each other.
Dexterity is more important - after all you may have the stamina to bang in 1000 nails in an hour. I have a nail gun. What’s important is we can control where the nails go.
Physical labor, especially jobs requiring dexterity, will be left for a long time yet. Largely because robotics hardware production cannot scale to meet the demand anytime soon. Like, for many decades.
I actually asked Gemini Deep Research to generate a report about the feasibility of automation replacing all physical labor. The main blockers are primarily critical supply chain constraints (specifically Rare Earth Elements; now you know why those have been in the news recently) and CapEx in the quadrillions.
> Like, for many decades.
Didnt people say that AI is 50 years away in 2010s?
Yeah and until ChatGPT I thought even 50 years was optimistic, which is why current days feel like SciFi! However, at its essence, the current AI revolution has been driven primarily by a few key algorithmic breakthroughs (cf the Bitter Lesson), which are relatively easy to scale up through compute.
On the other hand, the constraints on robotics are largely supply chain-related. The current SOTA for dexterity in robots requires motors, which require powerful magnets, which require Rare Earth Elements, which are critically supply-constrained.
To be precise, the elements are actually abundant in the Earth's crust, just that extracting them is very expensive and extremely toxic to the environment, and so far only China has been willing to sacrifice its environment (and certain citizens' health), which is why it has cornered the market. Scaling that up to the required demand is a humongous logistical, political and regulatory hurdle (which, BTW, is why I suspect the current US adminstration is busy gutting environmental regulations.)
Now there may be a research prototype somewhere in some lab that is the "Attention Is All You Need" equivalent of actuators, but I'm personally not aware of anything with that kinda potential.
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Uh, out of all the things that are the bottleneck, you think it's robotics hardware that is the bottleneck?
In an age where seemingly every single robot company has a humanoid prototype whose legs are actively supported through high powered actuators that are strong enough to kick your ribs in?
In an age where the recent advancements in machine learning have given bipedal walking a solution that is 80% of the way to perfection with the last 20% remaining the hardest to solve?
Honestly, from a kinematics/hardware perspective the robots are already good enough. Heck, even the robot hands are pretty good these days. Go back 10 years ago and the average humanoid robot hand was pretty bad. They might still not be perfect today, but they are a non-issue in terms of constructing them.
The only real bottleneck on the hardware side is that robot skin is still in its infancy. There needs to be some sort of textile with electronics weaved into it that gives robots the ability to sense touch and pressure.
What has remained hard is the software side of things and it is stuck in the mud of lack of data. Everyone is recording their own dataset that is unique to their specific robot.
Note I didn't say the bottleneck is the hardware itself, it's the supply chain for production of the hardware. Specifically the Rare Earth Elements, as I explained here: https://www.adamasintel.com/humanoid-robots-and-the-future-o...
The key mistake you make is to believe that "first world" is sustainable by it's own. A lot of people are hired today because they are good at a physical tasks, globalized capitalism just decided that it's cheaper to manufacture it overseas (with all the environmental and societal downsides that hit us back in the face).
So don't worry if we lure ourlselves that it's ok to stop caring for "intelligence job" globalization will provide for every aspect where AI is lacking. And that's not just a figure of speech they are already plenty of "fake it until you make it" stories about AI actually run by overseas cheap laborers.
> So… what’s left?
Barbarism or revolution.
Life, uuuuh, finds a way.
This ignores that the forces of capitalism, the labor market, value, etc are all made up. They work because people (are made to) believe in them. As soon as people stop believing in them, everything will fall apart. The whole point of an economy is to care for people. It will adapt to continue doing that. Yes, the changeover period might be extremely painful for a lot of people.
The whole point of an economy is to generate value. Very, very different than caring for people
Feudalism was the dominant economic system for millennia. The point is to extract value for the upper class. Peasants only matter as a source of labor, and they only get 'cared for' to the extent of keeping them alive and working.
Now think about what feudalism might look like if the peasants' labor could be automated
Well, yeah, "keeping alive" sounds like caring to me. Not to a great standard, that's how we got numerous revolutions, and feudalism did end eventually. People stopped believing it, and some kings lost their heads.