While we’re on the topic of fear, there’s nothing that gets the amygdala racing like killer robots that could turn their artificial intelligence (and evil robot weapons) against their human inventors.
Less dramatically, there are also robots that can steal your job.
Both of those scenarios are making huge advancements. Right now.
Earlier this month, the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking offered this warning about rapid developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI):
“One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand,” Hawking wrote. “Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.”
As for the job-stealing robots, they’ll soon be replacing a surprising number of humans: Accountants. Real estate agents. Commercial pilots. Waiters. Nurses. Journalist
Here’s what Bill Gates says about that:
“Technology over time will reduce demand for jobs, particularly at the lower end of skill set. Twenty years from now, labor demand for lots of skill sets will be substantially lower. I don’t think people have that in their mental model."
The robots haven’t just landed in the workplace—they’re expanding skills, moving up the corporate ladder, showing awesome productivity and retention rates, and increasingly shoving aside their human counterparts. One multi-tasker bot, from Momentum Machines, can make (and flip) a gourmet hamburger in 10 seconds and could soon replace an entire McDonalds crew.
A manufacturing device from Universal Robots doesn’t just solder, paint, screw, glue, and grasp—it builds new parts for itself on the fly when they wear out or bust. And just this week, Google won a patent to start building worker robots with personalities.
We can see the advances happening in technology and it’s becoming evident that computers, machines, robots, and algorithms are going to be able to do most of the routine, repetitive types of jobs. That’s the essence of what machine learning is all about. What types of jobs are on some level fundamentally predictable?
A lot of different skill levels fall into that category. It’s not just about lower-skilled jobs either. People with college degrees, even professional degrees, people like lawyers are doing things that ultimately are predictable. A lot of those jobs are going to be susceptible over time.