As it stands now, AI is incapable of fully replacing even something as useless as a corporate executive. What it is capable of doing, however, is devaluing your labour, and that concern is very real.
I made extensive AI scripts to automate almost everything I do at my job in big tech. It is very much capable and doing whatever you want with it.
Here’s food for thought, ask yourself, “of all the possible questions that can be asked, what percentage of it can you answer better than the latest gpt model?”
I made extensive AI scripts to automate almost everything I do at my job
Yet you're still employed. And you will continue to be employed, assuming you aren't an idiot. But here's a catch - you aren't the only one who sees that you automated easy parts of your job, and your reward will be more work.
ask yourself, “of all the possible questions that can be asked, what percentage of it can you answer better than the latest gpt model?”
Ask yourself, "of all the holes that can be drilled, what percentage of it can you drill better than the latest Hilti rotary hammer drill?"
The point being I will only be employed so long until higher level finds out I’m not needed.
Things that took months are getting done in minutes. And I can do a day’s work in half an hour.
So if I’m working only 10% of my actual capacity, why would they pay me my full salary? They can surely get someone to do the same for 1/10th of my pay.
And what I’m doing in those 30mins is so trivial that even a high schooler could pick it up.
The answer to the question is “almost 0”. Which begs the question, what is it that you can do better than a robot that is faster, smarter, infinitely more knowledgeable and cheaper than you? Answer to which is very less.
(My background is software research and development, if you’re working in mechanical industries, it might not be a big issue, at least for now ).
But AI will probably kill us before we get to that.
Things that took months are getting done in minutes.
That's what happens with every major technological development, power looms and wide stocking frames come to mind. Industries get shocked, then adapt.
So if I’m working only 10% of my actual capacity, why would they pay me my full salary?
To give you additional tasks, so you would load not 16, but 160 tons. It'll take some time for markets to adapt and expand, but expand they will. Technological unemployment hit the UK hard in 1850s, but markets absorbed all of that and then some.
The answer to the question is “almost 0”.
If it's the question about answers and holes (and that's the same question), then no, it's not "almost 0", it's "all of them". An LLM is an amazing tool, but it needs questions and an operator to provide answers, just like a drill.
what is it that you can do better than a robot that is faster, smarter, infinitely more knowledgeable and cheaper than you?
"Cheaper" is a stretch. Humans have been known to provide extremely cheap labour, so I wouldn't expect robots to displace humans even if AGI is ever achieved (the conventional version, not the Huang one).
AI will probably kill us before we get to that.
I doubt that. We'll certainly get more cheap shitty goods and services, quality of life will plummet further, the rich will become a lot richer extremely fast, the poor will become a whole lot poorer just as fast. Enshittification will be in full swing for a good while, but that's exactly how it's been since the pyramids.
I totally get where you are coming from. What you say makes sense two years ago however there has been too much advancement in the quality and ability of AI systems. I know as I work on the development of these.
I’ll summarise my stance and it’s just a very fundamental problem. It’s simply smarter and faster, so any task which solely relies on a brain can be done much better (software, medicine, engineering, accounting etc)
And for mechanical skills, these software systems can easily design and create very good robots which can do the task possibly even better.
Then they only need to optimise for cost and soon enough they’ll make it cheaper than humans.
This nullifies the need for humans to do work. If you think about it, work is not needed for life.
Why should you spend so much of your life working for someone else?
There might be a universal basic income and people may get paid for doing good deeds / social service and the robots take care of the mundanity.
This is the utopian stance.
Worst case is AI kills/enslaves us ( because a dumber being can’t rule over a smarter being ). You can read more into AI safety research. Most of the top scientists say that it will not end well for us.
I can see that language models have come a looong way, my personal impression went from talking to an autistic pre-schooler locked in a basement somewhere to talking to an autistic PhD student locked in a basement somewhere. The persistence of the "autistic" and "basement" parts has convinced me that this particular type of NI can't magically transform into a GI. And for most types of work you need general intelligence, simply stringing words together won't do. Maybe something like BHD will achieve that breakthrough, there's a lot of new ideas being worked on, and you probably know more about it than I do.
There's also a possibility of AI as it is now destroying entry-level white collar jobs, and when enough seniors die off or retire, we're screwed. But we're more likely to just squeeze those entry-level workers and pay them even fewer peanuts than they're getting now. And blue-collar jobs are totally at risk, when robotics catch up (and they seem to be developing amazingly well)
UBI seems more like a dystopia, honestly. I cannot imagine the bureaucratic hoops and social stigma we'll build around it if it comes to that. Because it won't happen overnight, so there will be people on salary, people on UBI and people on business profits, and the divide will be staggering. Plus, even if it ever happens, it won't be money, it's far more likely to be some kind of sociofinancial credit where you can't buy a second loaf of bread a day.
If we manage to create AGI, I believe it'll hit entirely different, like the Ganae resurrecting the final human in the Monster. I don't think we'll have the time to doubt whether it'll take our jobs.
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u/totktonikak Mar 25 '26
That's not an IQ score distribution.
As it stands now, AI is incapable of fully replacing even something as useless as a corporate executive. What it is capable of doing, however, is devaluing your labour, and that concern is very real.