Technological Unemployment News & Discussions

[Yuli Ban]

[funkervogt]

Equity, the performing arts workers union, has launched a new campaign, "Stop AI Stealing the Show".

AI can use samples of an actor's voice or face, to generate content including so-called "deep fakes".

"From automated audiobooks to digital avatars, AI systems are now replacing skilled professional performers" the union says.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61166272

[raklian]

Equity, the performing arts workers union, has launched a new campaign, "Stop AI Stealing the Show".

AI can use samples of an actor's voice or face, to generate content including so-called "deep fakes".

"From automated audiobooks to digital avatars, AI systems are now replacing skilled professional performers" the union says.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61166272

We know there is nothing they can do to stop this freight train.

[Yuli Ban]

[caltrek]

Walmart is Adding Symbotic Robots to Warehouses Across the Country
by Brian Heater
May 23, 2022

Introduction:

(TechCrunch) The push behind the massive influx of warehouse robotics funding is largely driven by one entity: Amazon. There are other factors driving the industry, of course, including the pandemic, labor shortages and supply chain constraints, but Amazon is forever looming in the corner, forcing companies to adopt creative and innovative ways to remain competitive. Not even a force of nature like Walmart is immune.

While Amazon has a head start in this department, dating back to its 2012 purchase of Kiva Systems, Walmart has been working aggressively on automation in recent years — though its own track record has been a bit spotty, most notably in the case of Bossa Nova, which has gone quiet since the company abandoned its shelf-scanning systems.

Massachusetts-based Symbotic has had considerably better luck. Late last year, the company announced its intentions to go public via SPAC, in large part based on momentum from an ongoing deal with Walmart that brought its warehouse robotics to 25 of the mega-retailer’s distribution/fulfillment centers. Today, the pair announced an expansion of the deal that will install Symbotic systems into all of Walmart’s distribution centers in the U.S. — that’s 42 in all.

While Walmart clearly has faith in the systems, it’s not an overnight deal. Symbotic says the retrofitting rollout will take more than 8 years to complete. It’s safe to say both the retail and robotics landscapes are on track to look extremely different in just under a decade.

“The need for accuracy and speed in the supply chain has never been more visible, and we’re confident that now is the time to move even faster by scaling Symbotic’s technology to our entire regional distribution center network,” Walmart SVP says in a release. “Using high-speed robotics and intelligent software to organize and optimize inventory, the Symbotic System helps us get products to our customers quickly and seamlessly by revolutionizing how we receive and distribute products to stores.”

Read more here: https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/23/walma ... e-country/

[Yuli Ban]

No really, robots are about to take A LOT of jobs

Warehouse workers don't have an easy job. In an on-demand fulfillment economy the work is ceaseless, the pay low, and the drive for efficiency brutal. Earlier this year the Department of Labor even stepped in with an initiative attempting to safeguard warehouse workers' rights.

Add to that the resigned inevitability hovering over many of these jobs. Robots, already prominent in logistics operations, are steadily taking on tasks that previously required humans, including in the crucial final stage of picking and sorting.

One example, at a warehouse in Novato some miles north of San Francisco, Zenni Optical is assigning a crucial stage of e-commerce fulfillment to a team of three specially trained robots provided by OSARO. The deployment represents one of the first times a robot will be assigned the responsibility of working with an automated mechanical bagging system to ensure a customer's unique order is placed into the correct bag for shipment.

[Yuli Ban]

Amazon has unveiled its first fully autonomous mobile robot designed to help out at its distribution centers, though it’s not clear if it’ll be ready in time for the company’s fast-approaching and super-busy Prime Day shopping event.

The new robot, called Proteus, is a low-slung, wheel-based machine that trundles about on wheels. At first glance, and even second, it looks very much like a robot vacuum, but this device performs transportation tasks rather than cleaning duties. And just like a robot vacuum, Proteus uses sensors to help it navigate and avoid obstacles, including mobile ones such as humans.

As the video shows, Amazon’s new robot works by driving beneath a cart and then elevating to lift it off the ground. Proteus is then able to transport the cart to a designated destination.

[Yuli Ban]

Warehouse workers don't have an easy job. In an on-demand fulfillment economy the work is ceaseless, the pay low, and the drive for efficiency brutal. Earlier this year the Department of Labor even stepped in with an initiative attempting to safeguard warehouse workers' rights.

Add to that the resigned inevitability hovering over many of these jobs. Robots, already prominent in logistics operations, are steadily taking on tasks that previously required humans, including in the crucial final stage of picking and sorting.

[Vakanai]

My worry, and sadly it's all too likely, is that we'll be post-work for years, maybe decades, without either UBI or (more preferably) a money-less society. No one can get a job, but we both won't be given money or move away from the need for money. I mean it won't last that way indefinitely, but I can see it lasting for a decade at least.

[Ozzie guy]

Warehouse workers don't have an easy job. In an on-demand fulfillment economy the work is ceaseless, the pay low, and the drive for efficiency brutal. Earlier this year the Department of Labor even stepped in with an initiative attempting to safeguard warehouse workers' rights.

Add to that the resigned inevitability hovering over many of these jobs. Robots, already prominent in logistics operations, are steadily taking on tasks that previously required humans, including in the crucial final stage of picking and sorting.

I might find my savings I am building for post AGI will actually be spent during the unemployment crisis. As long as I have money saved I will be happy to lose my job to AI as it is part of the natural economic development we will have to go through.

A question on my mind is akin to the digital revolution of the economy has the AI/robotics revolution of the economy started?

Part of me does not want to say an AI revolution has begun because with real AGI coming it seems almost silly to call a non AGI, AI revolution significant.

[Vakanai]

I might find my savings I am building for post AGI will actually be spent during the unemployment crisis. As long as I have money saved I will be happy to lose my job to AI as it is part of the natural economic development we will have to go through.

A question on my mind is akin to the digital revolution of the economy has the AI/robotics revolution of the economy started?

Part of me does not want to say an AI revolution has begun because with real AGI coming it seems almost silly to call a non AGI, AI revolution significant.

It's not silly at all. Something that will bring millions if not billions to a financial crisis point, change every or nearly every industry, create uprisings and protests in untold numbers, change the political landscape of the world, and who knows what all else is not silly and is extremely revolutionary, AGI or not.

[Yuli Ban]

Agreed to both

And furthermore I've been stressing out about this fact for the better part of a decade now. Longtimers on FutureTimeline know this. I've been predicting for a long time that we're currently listening to the ticking of a social, political, and economic timebomb.

My epiphany on synthetic media back in 2017 partially stemmed from me thinking about this and the realization of just how close we are to the age of imaginative machines factors in heavily to my HORROR. In fact when it comes to AI-generated media it's even worse precisely because of this widespread perception that AI can't possibly be creative or ever replace creative jobs.

This matters because of the perception that automation will first attack low-skilled blue-collar jobs, then maybe in a few decades start affecting white collar jobs, and then a few decades after that (if ever) it might augmented and automate SOME creative jobs.

The cold reality is that it's going to happen in reverse and on vastly more truncated time scales. And we just aren't ready at all. We're telling warehouse workers, fast food workers, and miners "Robots are coming for your jobs, peasants, so you'd better consider going to college or trade school" when it's actually coming for the starving artists, writers, models, journalists, newscasters, and office monkeys first. These are some of the LEAST unionized jobs out there and thus the most vulnerable to automation. But they're also jobs that a lot of wider popular society casts off as "not being real jobs" anyway. It's going to be bloody.

[Ozzie guy]

Agreed to both

And furthermore I've been stressing out about this fact for the better part of a decade now. Longtimers on FutureTimeline know this. I've been predicting for a long time that we're currently listening to the ticking of a social, political, and economic timebomb.

My epiphany on synthetic media back in 2017 partially stemmed from me thinking about this and the realization of just how close we are to the age of imaginative machines factors in heavily to my HORROR. In fact when it comes to AI-generated media it's even worse precisely because of this widespread perception that AI can't possibly be creative or ever replace creative jobs.

This matters because of the perception that automation will first attack low-skilled blue-collar jobs, then maybe in a few decades start affecting white collar jobs, and then a few decades after that (if ever) it might augmented and automate SOME creative jobs.

The cold reality is that it's going to happen in reverse and on vastly more truncated time scales. And we just aren't ready at all. We're telling warehouse workers, fast food workers, and miners "Robots are coming for your jobs, peasants, so you'd better consider going to college or trade school" when it's actually coming for the starving artists, writers, models, journalists, newscasters, and office monkeys first. These are some of the LEAST unionized jobs out there and thus the most vulnerable to automation. But they're also jobs that a lot of wider popular society casts off as "not being real jobs" anyway. It's going to be bloody.

When do you expect all of this to start taking place?

[Yuli Ban]

It's too late, it's already starting.

[Nanotechandmorefuture]

It's too late, it's already starting.

Definitely a good call to have a STEM focus while I see what is going down with the arts in these dangerous times. I knew when I became educated on what AI was all about a few years ago that it would come to this with DALL-E basically making amazing art in a few seconds no concept artist could do.
I KNEW IT! There is no way in hell those photos of DALL-E did not make some people freak out in the arts world.

[caltrek]

^^^Not everyone agrees on that assessment. Consider:

AI and Labor
by Dwayne Monroe
June 24, 2022

Extract:

(The Nation) The goal of most AI (which began as a pure research aspiration announced at a Dartmouth conference in 1956 but is now dominated by the directives of Silicon Valley) is to replace human effort and skill with thinking machines. So, every time you hear about self-driving trucks or cars, instead of marveling at the technical feat, you should detect the outlines of an anti-labor program.

The futuristic promises about thinking machines don’t hold up. This is hype, yes—but also a propaganda campaign waged by the tech industry to convince us that they’ve created, or are very close to creating, systems that can be doctors, chefs, and even life companions.

A simple Google search for the phrase “AI will…” returns millions of results, usually accompanied by images of ominous sci-fi-style robots, suggesting that AI will soon replace human beings in a dizzying array of areas. What’s missing is any examination of how these systems might actually work and what their limitations are. Once you part the curtain and see the wizard pulling levers, straining to keep the illusion going, you’re left wondering: Why are we being told this?

Consider the case of radiologists. In 2016, the computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, confident that automated analysis had surpassed human insight, declared that “we should stop training radiologists now.” Extensive research has shown his statement to have been wildly premature. And while it’s tempting to see it as a temporarily embarrassing bit of overreach, I think we need to ask questions about the political economy underpinning such declarations.
...
The promotion of the idea of automated radiology, regardless of existing capabilities, is attractive to the ownership class because it holds the promise of weakening labor’s power and increasing—via workforce cost reduction and greater scalability—profitability. Who wants robot taxis more than the owner of a taxi company?

Read more here: https://www.thenation.com/article/soci ... sentient/

[funkervogt]

A human graphic designer would take more than 5.25 hours to recreate those images at a cost of ~$150 based on an average hourly wage of ~$29.1 DALLE-2 hasn't announced its commercial pricing yet but, given 22 seconds of compute on an A100, we estimate that the inference cost for a single image could be ~$0.01––more than 99.99% lower than human labor cost.

https://cperry248.substack.com/p/the-robots-have-landed

[Nanotechandmorefuture]

A human graphic designer would take more than 5.25 hours to recreate those images at a cost of ~$150 based on an average hourly wage of ~$29.1 DALLE-2 hasn't announced its commercial pricing yet but, given 22 seconds of compute on an A100, we estimate that the inference cost for a single image could be ~$0.01––more than 99.99% lower than human labor cost.

https://cperry248.substack.com/p/the-robots-have-landed

Worst part about it for that field is that even the non commercial AI is getting better. There's a recent craiyon post that you can see the boosts in AI accuracy through the pictures. No way in hell the film & arts isn't having people freak out over this.

[R8Z]

I have a feeling that the job of a concept artist is going to be the most shifted around first; a person on this job gathers concepts and builds on early ideas, iterating over them... it's a perfect fit to work along something like DALLE-2 or some other more advanced AI, just playing around with prompt phrases.

This is almost ironic as one of the major supposed roadblocks for AI art creation or creation in general was the lack of "human creativity". It seems this was the easiest step so far.

[Ozzie guy]

Holy Crap!!!

I just went to the shoe shop "The Athletes foot" instead of trying on 5+ shoes with an employee and getting frustrated I used an in store Artificial intelligence that analyzed my feet and walking patterns. The AI picked out a shoe and it was a perfect fit.

I am aware the shoe shop has claimed to have this technology for like a decade but from memory it started as a bullsh$#t marketing gimmick that didn't work, now the sci fi tech they lied about having actually exists.