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Safe professions

1y 2mon ago by lemmy.world/u/lawrence in comicstrips

Thanks to @deeply_moving_queef@lemmy.ml for finding the original author:

https://www.instagram.com/linhadotrem/

This is so important.

An aspect of post scarcity is that people shouldn't have to work. AGI might allow that; LLM is starting to fill some niches.

The problem is how it's being done. Rather than benefiting society as a whole, it's enriching a few. In an ideal world, people whose jobs are replaced should get a stipend. We should all be eagerly awaiting that time when our jobs are replaced and we get a paycheck - maybe a little reduced - but now we're free to pursue our interests. If that means doing your old job, only now it's bespoke, artisan work, great.

The other missing factors are free energy and limitless resources; but we're making progress on energy, but resources are an issue with no solution on the horizon. Plus, we're killing the planet by just existing, so there's that.

We have a lot of problems to solve but AI is part of the solution, except that it's being done wrong. And expensively.

but resources are an issue with no solution on the horizon.

We've got tons of resources, and the means the produce more. The problem is that's not going to make some people lots and lots of money, so they don't do it.

Scarcity is not a problem of "can't" right now, it's a problem of "won't".

We're going to run out of oil in the next 30 years, and it's not just cars that will affect. The mass produced factory farmed food that feeds 90% of the world's population is utterly dependent on fossils fuels. There are almost no "Tesla" giant combines. And the trains that transport food to the cities run on fossil fuels. Cities will collapse. Air transport and ocean shipping will cease, destroying the global economy.

Many of the remaining oil reserves are in deep water, which are each and every one a man made environmental catastrophe waiting to happen, and as the easy reserves dry up, offshore drilling will become more common.

Meanwhile, we're running out of precious metals needed to make cheap consumer electronics. And while we're finding new reserves and the finite limit may not be a close, as computers and phone components become more expensive, and only the well-off will be able to afford them. The income disparity we see within our countries will become global, with entire countries falling behind.

And then there's fresh water. This will become a bigger problem as time goes on, and water wars will become large scale events.

We're living on a finite planet of finite resources. Our only hope for space exploration is a couple of commercial companies run by the 21st century equivalent of robber barons. If we do start mining asteroids for materials, those resources still be utterly monopolized by a single handful of individuals.

I don't understand your belief that we still have plenty of resources, when the scientific community has been warning that we're running through our reserves ever faster, for years.

We’re going to run out of oil in the next 30 years

  • everyone since 1900

No. 20 years ago it was "50 years," so we're pretty on track.

More reserves are accessible to us now with modern technology, but it's being harder, more expensive, and more dangerous to get at. We're stretching it some, but... do you imagine there's infinite crude oil in the planet?

Again, those things are a matter of "won't" rather than "can't". It costs "too much" to find alternatives, so companies don't. Funding for alternate resources simply don't exist at the level that's necessary because it doesn't make anyone lots and lots of money.

Those scientists are warning that we should start looking for alternatives, not that we should give up because it's simply not possible to find an alternative.

I understand that you don't want to look further than that, but I judge you for it. Maybe stop taking things at face value and look a little deeper.

There is a distinct difference between believing that we can't, or should give up - which is what you're accusing me of doing - and recognizing the reality that we aren't and by all evidence, won't. Certainly not before it's too late.

and recognizing the reality that we aren’t and by all evidence, won’t.

That's... literally what I've been saying. Have you been ignoring that? My entire point was about motivation, not ability. Your entire point seems to be that there's no other options and nothing we can do about it. About how it's the end of the world and we can't do anything about it.

Sure, people aren't right now, but a big part of that is because people aren't accepting why. You can go on and on and on about how we're not, but unless you put the least amount of thought into why and how to do something meaningful about it, it's just doom-posting to trick people into thinking we should all just give up.

So. If you want to prove to me, or others, or even to yourself, that that's not true... maybe start thinking about what we can do, or just shut up. Because we don't need more people talking about how it's all pointless and there's nothing else we can do. We get plenty of that every day from people much smarter than random people on the internet.

or just shut up.

Ok. Fuck you.

Right you got me thinking so here's my thoughts. Not looking to argue just discuss the points you've made.

1st paragraph:

Global economy crashing is a good thing. Like you have pointed out it is completely dependent on a non-renewable resource on top of that it is one of the biggest contributors to worldwide exploitation. It also a contributes to cultural colonialism.
more info: youtube.com/watch?v=4UJSf_oyVAo.

When it comes to farming. People will come up with solutions. I believe that farmers are competent enough that when we run out of oil they aren't just going to go. "welp guess I starve now". They are going to innovate and do what they can to keep going. Also swapping out an ICE motor for an electric one doesn't seem that complicated.

Also Interesting that you didn't mention plastics. The most used oil product in the world. I'll be so glad when they're finally gone.

2nd paragraph is just a continuation of the first.

3rd paragraph

The key word in this paragraph is make. We don't really need to make any more electronics. We've already made enough. How many processors do you think are just sitting in some warehouse never to be used because a newer model came out. How much of those precious metals are inside cars that are going to be useless once oil runs out. We need to focus on recycling and reusing existing things and devices instead of making new ones.

4th paragraph

Water is a cycle. It doesn't just disappear. We already recycle most of our water. Although I'm not that knowledgable on the topic so I can't say much about it.

5th paragraph

skip.

6th paragraph

The scientific community has made those assertions with the assumption that we are going to keep doing what we're doing. Mindless consumerism, buying and making new things, and abusing our planet. And they are right. What I and the commenter you're replying to are (probably) saying is that the problems with resources are caused my how we live our lives and the problem disappears without capitalism, consumerism and the constant resource abuse they create. A more sustainable shift in society and economics will solve these problems

Also

I sidestepped you're points about money, because I am an anarchist. I see capitalism and money as the precise reason for this artificial scarcity and natural abuse. Like you even said in you're comment even if we get infinite resources in the form of asteroid mining it still won't be distributed properly due to monopolies. Having more resources won't fix anything because the problem is the market that distributes them being inefficient due to running entirely on profit motive. The solution is to end capitalism and when we do we are going to find that we have more than enough without needing to do asteroid mining. Where would we even get the fuel? doesn't that require oil?

Global economy crashing is a good thing.

Takes like this are why I think it should be illegal for anyone under the age of 25 to express any opinions about anything whatsoever

I can get everything I need to comfortably live from a 20km radius, or I could If my country hadn't outsourced clothes production to china. why does my life need to rely on a regime that's half the planet away while destroying the said planet in the process?

The fucking gall to post that on whatever device you are currently using to access the internet.

I don't need the internet (or any computer) to be comfortable. In fact It really is a lot more bother than it's worth. I just use it because there's not much else to do.

Also I already have a computer. I don't need another one. and even if I would do you know how many computers are in that 20km radius? because I'm pretty sure it's at least 100.

By the way I'm also a programmer. I spent the entirety of my teenage life learning how to make computers do things because I think they're neat. The internet has changed my life and given me a meaning and a purpose. It's really useful. But I could do without it. Would probably even be happier because I would actually meet people.

I don’t need the internet

Cool, byeeeee

read until the end of the sentence silly.

Gosh, it sure doesn't seem like you don't need the internet.

I don't need it. I like it. While I have it I'll use it. but I don't need it. The only things I need are water, food, shelter, and companionship. Everything else is just extra. Good to have, but not a necessity.

Have you ever in your life lived without all the "everything else"?

No. But I bet I could. After all, prisoners do it every day.

rofl

Okay, but Zorque stated that "we have plenty of resources," and that's what I was disagreeing with. If your belief is that we need a global famine, more wars, and the collapse of civilization - and that, somehow, if we recreate civilization without access to the easy resources because we already used all those up the first time, we'll do it better next time... we'll agree to disagree.

I don't want global famine and more wars but people seem insistent on creating them so I'm not going to pretend like I can stop them, I'm also not going to pretend like they (the people in power and those who allow them to remain there) somehow aren't responsible. As for the collapse of Civilization: here's another video youtube.com/watch?v=k0_w87J9Dj0. If you don't want to watch. I'll just ask you one of the main questions of the video: "what is the meaning of civilisation?". Who does it benefit and why do we need it?

I don't want people to suffer. Right now they are. This civilisation is making them suffer. If we could get rid of the poison of archy that plagues this civilisation without destroying it I would be grateful. But the lack of resources is not an issue. It's a symptom of mindless consumerism and rampant capitalism. If capitalism goes, so does the scarcity.

My belief is that every person is good, kind-hearted and capable of incredible things. My belief is that greed, cruelty, and everything else that is turning this planet into hell is the fault of the systems we are raised in, the motivations we are given, and how we are treated. If this civilisation ends I won't care. The cruelty it so efficiently creates has made sure of that. But I'm also don't actively wish for it because I know it'll still cause a lot of pain. The only world I'm willing to fight for is one where the power structures that allow idiots to destroy the world don't exist.

Also I think civilisation is a lot stronger than people think. Humans are incredibly strong and capable beings. It's going to take more than the collapse of capitalism (currently synonymous with economy) to destroy civilisation, but then again nukes exist. oh well whatever happens, happens. Not like we had any hope of seeing 2040 anyway.

Purple have always suffered, haven't they? Some more than others, but we're mostly homo sapiens because we were more successfully violent than our cousins, and we wiped all of the other hominids out. Like, full on genocide. If the world reverts to a state where protections of the Weak don't exist, the Strong will just become even more dominant - again.

This isn't a cycle we can break without a lot more evolving in a slowly improving society. And I do think we'd been improving, slowly; there have been ups and downs, and it's been unequal progress globally; and there have been concerning developments in State exercise of powers around there globe; and the US is showing every sign of being in the declining stage of an empire. But if we do a global reset, I don't believe we'll ever recover, and the best we can hope for is a small agrarian population full of people whose lives are short, lack advanced medical and dental care, uneducated, and filled with brute labor.

Weak and strong. I've given a lot of thought to those words. What is strength? Is it how well hard you can punch? Because in the rule of brutality a lot of the times it's not the ones that are physically strongest that are at the top. It's the ones that can convince the strong ones to listen to them. The one who commands most authority. But that's just one way of doing things. You can also build structures of mutual interdependence that cannot function unless both/all parties contribute. Deny people the right to create archic structures.

But anyway back to strength. The alt-right playbook had an episode about how conservatives think "there's always a bigger fish" I believe it was called. It basically stated that conservatives believe in a single pyramid of power the strong are at the top and the weak at the bottom. They think this is natural. That any kind of help towards others is wrong because it could but them on the wrong level. But everyone is strong in different ways. There isn't one single measurement of human competence. You can't even quantify a single attribute like intelligence even though people have tried, every IQ test is nonsense as the result is mostly dependent on what skills you learned, what cultural space you're from and how well you can pay attention.

I think that a different way of looking at this is that everyone qualities. Some people are better at one thing at other people are better at another thing. When working together everyone’s good skills offset other peoples bad skills. (This is the primary reason why I need to find someone capable of condensely writing who can understand me). Everything that you are weak at can be offset by someone who is good at it. This is how I see the world. However this goes completely against the archic view of the world which seems to be built on the idea that some people are inherently better than others and therefore deserve to lead.

I know most of this talk is uselessly philosophical. In practice the most likely outcome of chaos is that whoever is capable of projecting most fear will get the most people to follow them which in turn will make them the new ruler.

Also there is a cruel part in me that keeps saying "if they're too weak to survive they don't deserve to live", but I mostly ignore that using the same reasoning as above.

Humanity was evolved enough to live in without hierarchy a couple hundred years ago. That hasn't changed. We just have a couple of centuries of idiots telling us that they were "primitive" but what could those societies have accomplished if they weren't mowed down in the name of PROGRESS what would a tribe look like if they had an electric generator. Would they immediately elect a president? Probably not. But they would figure out how to make a lightbulb. Technological progress is possible without hierarchy.

People seem to think that when civilisation collapses everything resets. But that's not how it works. The building will still be here. The libraries will still exist. And it's a lot more likely that whoever gets control of them will do their best to conserve the books. Even if the world powers nuke the shit out of themselves, enough humans will survive and at one of them will know the value of books. We can't go back to the stone age. We can't forget modern medicine.

We have a lot of problems to solve but AI is part of the solution, except that it's being done wrong. And expensively.

There's also a conversation to be had about which jobs shouldn't be automated, either because current technology isn't suitable, or because it might never be suitable. And I'd say that pretty much everything that we are calling 'AI' right now falls under that - I'll say that robots are part of the solution, but I don't think 'AI' is.

Even if AI is, what we have now is mostly A with only the semblance of I. "Real" "AI" is not yet "real."

I agree. LLMs are not AGI. But there are some jobs they can do, and a lot of jobs they can assist.

But I think we're still another generation of apparent AI stagnation, maybe another 20-30 years, before someone figures out there next link; and that might be AGI.

The reason it's bad is because the political leaders don't have a grasp about automation and has not made any effort to provide a safe net for people whose jobs got replaced. If UBI was a thing and automation was in full swing, I don't think there would be a lot of negativity.

What's a personal?

Came here to say this... Personal?

This strip was made by AI, wasn't it? WASN'T IT??!?!?!

It 100% is the new 4o image generation which appears very good in producing crisp panel comics with readable text exactly like this.

The most scary thing is all the people responding with denial, oblivious to this not being human made.

It might be. The doctor ear has different colors. And each robot has a slight difference in shading and shape. An human artist will just simply copy paste all the robots.

brown teeth lady

I disagreed until you pointed that out.

I think those are lips.

Might ?!

Nothing personnel

Its just business.

there a whole Black Mirror episode dedicated to the idea of an AI personal assistant. We may not be that far yet, but we're more than halfway there. We've come a long way from Clippy.

Maybe they meant personnel

*teleports behind you*

Nothing personnel, kid

Personnel for what?

Yes

Personal trainers are called simply personal in Brazil, and the original comic is in Brazilian Portuguese. This is an AI translated version.

"Personal?" Personal what?

We will never know, because this comic was produced by AI.

And it made a glaring mistake? Who will verify these errors to ensure they don't occur? 🤔

Maybe we can make an AI-driven editing software!

You're one of several people saying this is from AI. I'm more familiar with the AI giveaways in text or fake photos, but not so much with comics. What makes this comic look so obviously AI generated to you?

This artistic style is specifically generated by ChatGPT 4o when you ask it to create a comic. You get a feel for it pretty quick once you have seen it a couple times, the same way you think “hey I’ve seen this artist’s work before”.

The text also looks generated - it’s too consistent to be handwritten, but too sloppy to be a font.

I definitely get generic kids book illustration vibes from it. Most of the comics I see tend to go for a more distinctive art style. I hadn't even considered the writing, though. Thanks for sharing.

The link you posted supports that it's AI

The original comic wasn't produced by AI, though.

Yeah, and this one was.

Okay, but the word "personal" still presumably had some meaning in the original Portugese. An AI did not come up with that word. Google Translate isn't sure what it could translate to in English apart from "personal", but presumably, there's some meaning there that the artist intended.

I'm presuming "personal assistant" and it got cut off due to being itself AI-generated slop.

Maybe it’s supposed to be “personnel”? HR hiring processes is dominated by bots now.

KOLANAKI

Credit to the original artist.

This... Almost looks like the op of this post used AI to translate and change the art style of this comic.

Replaced by AI: traductor

Also modified the art style to make it less violent and subversive, so cross "artist" of that list as well.

With the original, we clearly understand that it should all have been filled with humans, but there was a progression in the center line where AI (killed and) replaced professions that were always thought to be irreplaceable by AI.

Artist is the second the robot killed

Seems the translated variant misses a big point of the original artist too, notice how the gun slowly comes into view? It's trying to make a point that the replacement isn't quite organic, but rather forced on us. Probably would have been better to just translate the text in place and include the rightful credit.

Ironic. The translator and artist were the first ones to be killed, and now we got this bastardized AI "translation" that's actually an entirely different image, but worse.

This is why so many were confused about "personal," I believe it's a borrowed term in Brazil that popularly means personal trainer.

Not personnel, not HR, not personal assistant, nor an AI hallucination, even as some confidently claimed them, all because the original work was discarded for a shitty alternative, much like workers themselves.

I'm deeply moved

Thank you for finding it. I will leave his IG here and in description, since my original post was just a copy, unfortunately.

https://www.instagram.com/linhadotrem/

Probably a hallucination of the AI that generated this

The original meme this was copied from is Brazilian:

I assumed it was supposed to be Personal Assistant, but the text got cut off.

Why is lemmy filling up with AI posts? Its worse that this is on c/comicstrips

It’s not a Lemmy thing, it’s a global phenomenon. Humans are using AI more than ever, and believe it or not, humans use Lemmy.

But its not a gradual change. AI posts used to be rare, in 2 days i found more AI posts outside of a community made for AI generated pictures than in the 2 years i have used lemmy

That’s because this is the first time AI comics have been passable. The quality simply wasn’t there before.

Yeah humans are still far better, but this could be considered “good enough”.

This isnt just comics. c/politicalmemes has so many ai generated images

Source? I'm not sure I'd want to be part of a community full of stink apes.

I think the point of this comic in particular is to show that AI is already taking over art but since it's done badly, at what cost is it taking over these jobs?

When on c/comicstrips, i dont think its unreasonable for people to expect the art to be from real people

But you're living in capitalism. Unless government forces billionaires to fund social programs, they will just keep getting richer, just like it's happening right now (if we ignore the crashing markets, but you get the idea)

That’s why we used to tax the morbidly rich at a 90% rate in the 50s

AI generated slop. Reported

Why is this AI comic upvoted as much?? There are mysteries I will never get..

I think folks are genuinely unable to tell. The poster, who's also a mod, did not know it was AI generated

As an automechanic, my job will never replace by AI, but instead we're fucked by low wages and the black box automobile has slowly become.

Any personals here?

Correct. But it has made Translators more productive so we need fewer of them. But the productivity gains will create other jobs and so on. So it's not as clear cut as people think. What will likely happen is that some jobs will vanish (anyone here remember elevator operators?) while some jobs will change and in other cases new professions will be created.

Well if it’s forbidden and wrong it sure didn’t stop one company I worked for from throwing all the strings in their app into Google Translate before giving the humans a crack at it. Maybe try being less hostile and accept that your experience isn’t universal.

Well you’ve definitely made one thing clear: that you’re an asshole. I will just disregard everything else you’ve said because I don’t respect the opinions of assholes especially ignorant ones.

I have done professional translation, as a side gig. The usual workflow involves a first run through machine translation (Deepl is my favorite), then opening the machine translation in a translation program (I use CafeTran), which is used to make the second pass, by the human translator. This program doesn't translate (they can use one of the main translation engines) but provides a bunch of tools to make the translation refining process easier.

Pure machine translation is a hack. AI can't grasp nuances, contexts, etc... You will often see many words that may have several meanings, used incorrectly, for example.

You think maybe your experience isn’t the only workflow that exists for translation and different audiences might require different levels of scrutiny and authenticity? No, you think the other person is completely full of shit instead and just decided to be an ass about it. Titles don’t mean shit by the way, I’ve handed so many Sr. Architect titles to admins even though they can’t see the forest from the trees or understand the business side of anything just to shut them up while I found someone to replace their ego. Flippantly throwing around a title lets everyone else that knows what’s actually going on that you can’t stand on your own merit, that’s all, get over yourself and stop being flippant towards people sharing their experiences just because they were different than your own, it’s childish.

I think frosty pieces is salty because their pieces are cold and dead. Sounds like they got a lateral “promotion” to a place where their toxic bullshit would be someone else’s problem.

Did you miss the "usual" part? I know there are translations that need to be done strictly by humans, but they are definitely not the majority. In my country there is a group of translators that are "official" translators, people with an actual masters in translation, and who must pass a very hard official exam. They translate things like official documents, legal matters, etc, but they do a very small percentage of translations.

Yeah I find most of the AI art generators are just allowing people who aren't artistic to make their own stuff which they wouldn't have paid someone for anyways if AI wasn't there, they would have just gone without, so it's not really a lose to artists.

There's a small, relatively low value market of commissioned online art that has been and will continue to be impacted. People who may have paid $50-60 for a (furry) OC will start going to AI image gens as the process becomes more refined and allows them to add detail to the end result without much effort.

It's true that it can't replace a skilled profession. But I honestly believe you could replace most middle management with AI already. Of course the bar is incredibly low on that.

The rich will always have money to pay better people to make beautiful things for them

Just be useful to the rich and you'll survive

Just like they planned it

I just watched a movie (Geostorm) where these obviously super wealthy people were in a skyscraper and the movies like "oh no, they might die if no one stops this!"

Good? I'm more concerned about all the people below them getting swept away. These rich fucks should finally feel fear for fucking once.

Zero argument here

I wanted robots to do my menial unpleasant chores for me so I'd have more time to do art, writing, and analytics. I didn't want robots to do all the art, writing, and analytics so I had more time for chores & menial tasks 😭

Everyone thinks their own line of work is safe because everyone knows the nuances of their own job. But the thing that gets you is that the easier a job gets the fewer people are needed and the more replaceable they are. You might not be able to make a robot cashier, but with the scan and go mobile app you only need an employee to wave a scanner (to check that some random items in your cart are included in the barcode on your receipt) and the time per customer to do that is fast enough that you only need one person, and since anyone can wave a scanner you don’t have much leverage to negotiate a raise.

And that's a good thing, if and only if you provide pathways to other jobs or phase workers out slowly i.e. by retirement.

Or provide UBI to share the wealth generated by increased societal productivity

I have had a number of conversations with relatively reasonable conservatives, where I've brought up the dangers of so many jobs moving toward automation with no additional job creation. And steering the conversation carefully, I got them to at least consider the idea of UBI funded by taxing any and all automation. I also got them (with the "everybody should have to work, people shouldn't get life handed to them for free" mentality) to agree that the rise in automation should mean people working less hours each, so everyone still has jobs (basically, UBI and changing "full time" to 25 or 30 hours, where people get overtime past that... creating more jobs while peoples needs are still covered).

It's amazing, sometimes, how starting with some similar premises (people should have to work, which I mostly agree with) and shared threat (automation taking jobs) can lead to some more open minds for things that they would otherwise be adamantly against.

This is the lump of labor fallacy. The error you are making is assuming that there is a fixed quantity of work that needs to be performed. When you multiply the productivity of every practitioner of a trade, they can lower their prices. This enables more people to afford those services. There's a reason people don't own just 2 or 3 sets of clothes anymore.

When you multiply the productivity of every practitioner of a trade, they can lower their prices.

I'm sorry, but that's some hilarious Ayn Rand thinking. Prices didn't go down in grocery stores that added self-checkout, they just made more profit. Companies these days are perfectly comfortable keeping the price the same (or raising them) and just cutting their overhead.

Don't get me wrong, if there are things they could get more profit by selling more, then they likely would. But I think those items are few and far between. Everything else they just make more money with less workers.

Are you sure self checkout is actually a labor-saving device? Does it actually save costs on net, once you factor in increased theft and shrinkage? Remember, just because companies adopt something, doesn't mean it's actually rational to do so. Executives are prone to fads and groupthink like anyone else. And moreover, this is a bit of an inappropriate example for two reasons. First, the demand for groceries is relatively fixed. Even if the price of groceries was cut in half, you probably wouldn't suddenly double the calories you consume. Second, self checkout is a small marginal cost to the cost of goods in grocery and retail stores. Self checkout doesn't improve the actual production process of the goods being sold in a store.

But I'm sorry, yes, you can cherry pick a few examples. But the general rule is and always has been that increased automation leads to lower prices. This is the entire story of the Industrial Revolution. People used to own only two or three outfits, as that's all they could afford. A "walk in closet" was an absurdity 200 years ago. The clothing industry industrialized, and the cost of clothing was driven to the floor, completely contradicting what your model predicts. The 19th century textile barons didn't mechanize production and then simply pocket the savings.

Hell, the only reason you can afford any kind of consumer electronics is because of automation. The computer, phone, or tablet you're using now? It would cost 100x as much without automation. This is why niche electronics like specialized lab instruments cost so much money. If you're only building a few of something for a tiny market, you can't invest in large scale automation to bring the cost down.

Look at how quickly and dramatically the price of LiDAR has declined. LiDAR was once the purview of specialized engineering and scientific instruments. But because of driver assistance technologies, the demand for LiDAR has exploded. This allowed LiDAR manufacturers to invest in more automated production chains. They didn't automate and keep charging the same price, as you would assume.

For an example of this in a white collar field, consider something like architecture. How many people actually hire an architect to custom design them a home? Very few. Most people buy mass produced tract homes. Tract homes benefit from a lot of automation and economies of scale, so they're cheaper than one-off custom-built homes designed by architects. Yet if an architect could rely on specialized AI systems to vastly lower the number of hours required to design a set of home plans, they could charge less. Many more people would then be able to afford the services of an architect.

Yes, you can cherry pick a few examples of industries that have little competition or fixed demand, where they automate without substantially lowering prices. But even those big box stores with their automated checkouts are examples of automation lowering prices. There's a reason the giant chains can charge less for products than small mom-and-pop shops. A giant grocery chain is big enough to invest in a lot of automation and other economies of scale that a small co-op can't afford.

In some extent this is true and correct, but when it comes to automate individual thought and creation then ethical problems arise which should be looked at and asserted carefully and with dignity, because there should be boundaries on how much automation can extent in human life, in the end humanity does not compete with anybody except itself, we are humans trying to live and most of all communicate with each other, Jobs are also a way to communicate and socialise but as we already saw they try to take that away in any way they can.

"Theft" only applies to the poor. Rich assholes and their megacorps will pay judges to tell you so

Those images look nothing alike unless you stop looking beyond the contrasted regions... Which, fair enough, could indicate someone taking the outline of the original, but you hardly need AI to do that (Tracing is a thing that has existed for a while), and it's certainly something human artists do as well both as practice, but also just as artistic reinterpretation (Re-using existing elements in different, transformative ways).

It's hard to argue the contrast of an image would be subjective enough to be someone's ownership, whether by copyright or by layman's judgement. It easily meets the burden of significant enough transformation.

It's easy to see why, because nobody would confuse it with the original. Assuming the original is the right, it looks way better and more coherent. If this person wanted to just steal from this Arcipello, they're doing a pretty bad job.

EDIT: And I doubt anyone denies the existence of thieves, whether using AI or not. But this assertion that one piece can somehow make sweeping judgements about multi-faceted tech by this point at least hundreds of thousands if not millions of people are using, from hobbyist tinkerers to technical artists, is ridiculous.

AI can absolutely produce copyrighted content if it's prompted to. Name drop an artist in Midjourney and you will be able to prompt their style - see this list of artists and prompted images. So you can just tweak the settings a bit to heavily weight their name, generally describe the composition of the work you're looking to approximate, and you can absolutely produce something close to their original works.

The image is wrong because the original artwork is not stolen. It is part of a dataset by LAION (or another similar dataset, basically a text-image pair where the image is linked at its original source). To train the imagegen, its company had to download a temporary copy, which is exempt from infringement by copyright law. There is no original artwork somewhere in a database accessible by Midjourney, just the numerical relationship generated by the image-text pair it learned from.

On the other hand, AI can obviously produce content in violation of copyright - like here. But that's specifically being prompted by the user. You can see other examples of this with Grok generating Mickey Mouse and Simpsons characters. As of right now, copyright violations are the legal responsibility of the users generating the content - not the AI itself.

I think you meant to respond to someone else, as I pretty much agree(d) with everything you're saying and have not claimed otherwise. In fact in my very post I did say in more layman terms it was very likely this person used img2img or controlnet to copy the layout of the image, I think it's less likely they got something this similar unguided, although it's possible depending on the model or by somehow locking the prompt onto the original work.

But the one point I do disagree with is that this is a violation of copyright, as I explained before. For it to be a violation it would need to look substantially more similar to the original, the one consistent element between the two is the rough layout of the image (the contrasted areas), for the rest most of the content is very different. You notice the similarity of the contrasted area much more easily by it being sized down so much.

I hope you understand, as you seem to be more knowledgeable than the people that downvoted without leaving a comment, but you are allowed to use ideas and concepts from others without infringing on their work, as without it the creative industry literally couldn't function. And yes, this is the responsibility on anyone using these models to avoid.

This person skirts too close in my eyes by pretty much 1:1 copying the layout, but it's almost certainly still fine as again, a human doing this with an existing piece of work would also be (eg. the many replica's / traces of the Mona Lisa).

Hell, if you take a look at the image in this very lemmy post, which was almost certainly taken from someone else, it has a much better case of copyright infringement, since it has the same layout, nearly identical people in the boxes, general message and concepts.

But in the end, copyright is different per jurisdiction and sometimes even between judges. Perhaps there is a case somewhere. It's just (in my opinion) very unlikely to succeed based on the limited elements that are substantially similar.

EDIT: Added the section about the Mona Lisa replica's for further clarification.

Hm yeah on second look the images aren't as comparable as I expected. I just saw the general composition in the thumbnails and assumed more similarity. I do think they probably prompted the original artist in the generated work, though, which kind of led to my thoughts in my op.

Yeah that's also fair enough conclusion, I think it's a bit too convenient the rest of the image looks a lot worse (Much more clear signs of botched AI generation) while the layout remains pretty much exactly the same, which to me looks like selective generation.

You are speaking bollocks, there are already many lawsuits by artists against the so called Ai engines, there are boundaries on how much you can copy from a specific artwork, logo, design or whatever, for example if you take the coca cola logo and slightly change it even if it doesn't say coca cola you will still face the laws of copyright infringement, nobody denies the existence of thieves, so that's why people do whatever they can to protect their work

Lawsuits, yes. But a lawsuit is not by default won, it is a assertion for the court to rule on. And so far regarding AI, none have been won. And yes, there are boundaries on when work turns into copyright infringement, but those have specific criteria, and regions of contrast do not suffice by any measure. Yes, even parts of the Coca Cola logo can be reinterpreted without infringing. Why do you think so many off brands skirt as close as possible to it without infringing?

They don't! And most of those lawsuits are still in process

Thats what I said, yes.

When I see these kinds of posts I just look over at the vibe coders and just laugh harder than any joke about ai taking our jobs

Except Vibe-Coders are kicking back & sipping margaritas & your job is still gone

I was extremely skeptical so I looked into it and it absolutely does not work. There was also a guy on YouTube who basically tried to make a Minecraft clone with Vibe coding and it just fell apart almost instantly.

All I was trying to do was get it to set up a basic scene in UE5 with some lighting effects and import a model of the building from the assets library. Nope, did not work. I didn't even bother trying to implement game logic as it was so clearly a waste of time. The amount of time I spent trying to get it to do basic stuff, stuff that you would be able to do in UE5 after half an hour of training, I could have made significant progress on a gray box by then.

The image looks like AI...

Makes sense, the artist panel has a robot after all.

The easiest way that i have found to check if an image is AI is to look for repeating things and see if they are consistent. A real artist would have no reason to draw the robot multiple times or change the font slightly after each letter

Oh man is translation not possible with AI. You have no idea how little languages have in common. A lot of terms don't mean a thing, but combine concepts you don't have or associate to point at a thing.

My dad said, about learning a new language, ''cat means cat, not gato, don't translate'' and I think that holds up pretty well from my experience.

Oh man is translation not possible with AI.

i mean, it's pretty good at it? A lot of human translators even struggle with the same problem, the AI is just a lot faster, and significantly more versatile. That's arguably one of it's strongest areas of performance, is translation, because it's so well suited to it.

You think it's OK because it spits out grammatically correct language on your end, but if you spoke both languages you'd get how it fails. Look at translations of Korean comics if you'd like to see how badly mechanical translation is when it's a connected story across multiple chapters, I was reading a comic where a character said he liked the elegant and sophisticated sound of calling a lightning strike skill ''bolt'' instead of whatever he was calling it ''lighting strike'' I think. It took me a while to realize what or whoever translated it didn't know how to look at the context of the translation and find a English word that English speakers would find at least old fashioned if not archaic and of course longer or more poetic sounding. It's like the whole thing when JRPGs can't figure out if they should localize names by just spelling out the phonetic sounds in Roman letters or actually translating the meaning of the name, or a thing no one's ever done and find a name in a European language family that has the same meaning.

Just like the AI art, it's not replacing good translation, it's replacing hack job translations, it's replacing mediocre and predictable art. I really don't care if someone uses AI in the pre-production or some post production functions, just not the part you need a human for, the actual creativity, there's an adage in 3D animation ''it you let the computer do it, it's gonna suck.'' You can let the computer do inbetweens, but you better be giving it nothing near a key frame. It has to really be the very least important frames.

i know extremely well the limitations of it, i'm just saying that it has utility, and very clearly provides a useful service.

Certainly better than hiring a translator privately to read something you're moderately curious about, or to talk with one person. Though if you're professionally translating something, you should obviously hire someone for it.

AI currently completely does not understand the context of translation when it comes to visual media. Whereas a human translator can use that for additional interpretation

this is a pretty big limitation, but i think you would struggle a lot, using an AI to translate something like that, as opposed to a text block, which is mostly what it's used for these days. It serves a purpose, i'm not saying it should replace professional translators, i just think people don't necessarily realize there are two primary blocks of usage for these things.

It's still doing a consistently poorer job than a skilled translator, because it has no concept of nuance or tone. I encounter people getting themselves worked up over information in AI-translated news articles, so I go back to the source material and discover it's mistranslated, under-translated, or just completely omitted parts of sentences. It's very Purple Monkey Dishwasher.

The quality is better than it was a decade ago, sure, but that's a pretty low bar. Back then it was gibberish, nowadays it's natural-sounding phrases with incorrect translations.

this is true, but for the average person, who just wants to translate something to make it make somewhat sense, it's great.

Though yeah, you can't really trust it, there's a lot of intricacies.

And yet, translators are losing their jobs left and right, from what I hear. Sure, quality has gone down, but most people don't seem to care. Plus, in a lot of cases, instead of the AI doing all the work, translators proof-read AI generated texts and correct the worst mistakes. Fewer translators can translate more at a lower price this way.

Does the quality still go down a bit that way? Probably. But again, who cares? Not the people spending money on translations, that's for sure.

i've used the internet before bro, i think im pretty well educated on this one. Most people know more than one language, lol.

No one said that AI was doing the jobs it's replaced people in well.

I mean given that "AI" are language models built on context and relations between words I'd argue that that's one of the more applicable jobs compared to what's listed in OP. With none of them is it capable of doing well, but I just wouldn't argue that translation is outside that realm of what's listed above

The problem is that the AI doesn't understand cultural context. I dunno where you're from so pardon me for assuming you're likely an English speaker.

A good translation isn't just to translate what the text says but to communicate the same idea to the reader or viewer within their cultural context. A good example is Disney's Aladdin where Robin Williams improvised A LOT during the recording sessions and most of his jokes are full of contemporary American cultural context. I'm Danish and most Danish kids didn't understand these American jokes so our translators decided to switch out some jokes with other jokes that conveyed similar points but within a Danish cultural context.

An AI cannot do that. It will translate what is written and it will be fucking nonsense to the receiver because they don't understand the context or the references.

AI is only good at translating as long as what is written can be translated 1:1. And even then I sometimes wonder. Because as a Dane I have noticed how terrible Word is at Danish when it comes to corrections. It follows English language context and will underline correct words in red and suggest alternative that aren't real Danish. For example, Danish words are slammed together while in English they are separated = skolelærer - school teacher. Word could very well decide to red line skolelærer and suggest to you that you should separate the word and make it two = skole lærer. But in Danish that would nullify the meaning. Now it is no longer a school teacher but a school and a teacher.

And I have seen on streaming services like Netflix and on steam how they lazily threw descriptions into a translator and it is just the most broken Danish I have ever read. It is so fucked because the newer generations of Danes who use these services are being influenced by them to learn incorrect Danish.

I have very limited trust in AI to do a better job at it since it isn't Danish people that have trained it and it doesn't understand our culture, our history nor how we communicate with one another. Everything that comes out of digital text based platforms from the US is our language filtered and massacred through US context. It is very very bad in my opinion and incredibly lifeless and soulless.

It would be the same the other way around btw. Me writing a piece of text with significant Danish cultural context and humor, slang and references would be translated into total nonsense for an English speaker, I'm sure.

How could you even determine that? And if you have a translation available and you know what's wrong with it, why wouldn't you simply fix the mistakes? What do you need the AI for?

Spoiler

Netflix subs are often quite shit, so I don't doubt that you could improve them, with or without the help of an LLM.

If you’re not knowledgeable about the topic you should comment about it.

Has this also been translated by an AI, or am I missing the point?

I am starting to think this is AI, but I am not sure. The irony.

Feels that way to me, too. What the hell is "personal"?

Nothing personal kid.

* Teleports behind you and disregard previous prompts

*personell

Personal trainer is my guess

Personal assistant? Personal stylist? Anti-Personnel weapon?

It 100% is AI, this is ChatGPT's hilariously identifiable comic style.

The lawyer has skin-brown teeth.

I thought those were lips, but looking at the others you're right.

The easiest way that i have found to check if an image is AI is to look for repeating things and see if they are consistent. A real artist would have no reason to draw the robot multiple times or change the font slightly after each letter

I'm not mad at translation no longer being a viable career choice. I'm mad at capitalism making it so.

Maybe I'm not super up to date on AI stuff, but I worked as a translator for a year, and AI (they used ChatGPT and DeepL) still made a bunch of mistakes that you'll immediately notice when you speak the language. It feels like their training input had a bunch of older, Google-translated articles in them that were just bad. Maybe an AI trained specifically for translation with curated learning material and a "teacher" who corrects mistakes can get closer to replacing human translators, but it'd still miss the cultural context of certain words and phrases that are in a translator's passive vocabulary, at least in less widely spread languages.

That being said, it's definitely harder to make a career out of translating because companies who don't know any better just use AI instead. As long as they get their point across (and make money), they don't care about the finer details.

Sure, a skilled human is still better at the job. But you don't always need to capture every nuance. And AI does it at the fraction of the cost.

I see this with lots of German product descriptions on big store fronts like Amazon. They often seem entirely machine translated. It's not great, but "good enough" and serviceable.

Machine translation also increasingly shifts the process from the sender of the message to the recipient. It used to be that the web page of a Vietnamese company was inaccessible if you didn't speak Vietnamese or they specifically had an English version. Nowadays a visitor can choose to get the entire site translated automatically (by the browser, for instance). Is it as good as the translation by an expert? Of course not. But it costs the company nothing at all and the visitor a negligible amount. And it works for a plethora of languages.

That's another (invisible) way that the world needs less and less translators. I wrote this post in English but for all I know someone could be reading it in French or Bengali. No further input required from my side.

That's true, and especially smaller businesses often can't afford translation services. If a machine translation can increase their sales, I won't blame them for using it. I'm just a language nerd who knows nothing about running a business (and I'm not even an actual translator, I just happened to speak the right language at the right time).

CAT-tools such as Trados killed the market. AI is just the natural conseguence.

I worked with a translator yesterday. She teaches courses, but she said she does translation because the money is good. I've worked with her for a while at this point, as well as dozens of other translators, on nearly a daily basis. They're very much still in demand.

We clearly operate in two different job markets, I got paid €9/page (pre taxes) for specialized automotive texts in the 2010s. Not to mention the other violations of the labor laws of my country.

And this is perhaps me using the wrong term (translator v. interpreter), as I'm talking about speaking and not writing. I can never remember which is which, if there is a distinction.

Interpreters tend to get paid more, especially in business settings

Ye why make money by learning languages.

???

You missed the point by a mile. Translation agencies pocket most of the money and pay peanuts

Man itl be nice when surgeons can be fully replaced with robots.

There are some thing I would not mind seeing gone, like managers, doctors that don't actually want to treat anyone, and begging a Psych to at least give you an ADHD test.

Mfw my girlfriend finishes studying translation in 2022 just in time for AI to come in

Synchronous translators are still very much in demand, as well as technical and legal translators.

That's good. Shame it doesn't pay enough to actually warrant being allowed to stay in the country.

How safe a profession is depends on how much more expensive replacing robots are than replacing people

I ve seen robot in exbibition failing just because of working all day, never forget maintainace also

Translators are never going to be replaced. The quality of a translation made by humans is much better

Translators have and are continuing to lose their jobs. Generative AI-based translations don’t have to be better than human ones for this to happen, they only need to be good enough to cheapen the overall translation process. For example, via post-editing, where AI does the initial translation for a translator to vet. Sure, human translators are still part of the process, but on an industry level the need for human translators has decreased.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/apr/16/survey-finds-generative-ai-proving-major-threat-to-the-work-of-translators

Sadly, I see the same logic as above applying to many other industries. So our critique of AI must not be predicated on its ability to perform better than humans, but instead on its ability to cheapen the overall cost of tasks performed by humans. This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if translators were properly supported in career transitioning, or if AI-induced cost savings were directed to something like a universal basic income, but that is not the economic reality we live in under capitalism.

So does journalist, because their job isn't only writing article but to go out there to find stories to write, even on the frontline of war. It's the slob tabloid and "based on source by another press" article getting replaced.

Artist though, their income is gonna get cut because ai plagiarism mean they're getting less and less commission.

That's half true.

The problem journalists have is that investigative work and going outside the office is expensive, and with the collapse of print media, most of their jobs have been replace by this slob tabloid/journalism by press release.

So that's all at risk.

Im a translator so I can only speak for my profession

Fucking YouTube trying to translate everything into shitty French for me.

'The Honey scam' becomes 'The honey scam' in French (L'arnaque du miel), as in honey from bees. The "AI" can't even make the difference between a common and proper noun.

Reddit does the same through my Google searches. The original post is in English but Google and Reddit shows it to me in dubious French. It's quite obvious that it has been machine translated.

However bad translations unfortunately doesn't seem to bother a lot of people, nor stop the big corps to push them as much as possible.

I saw a similar issue on a product where the Spanish wording obviously came from a computer translation.

"Made in Turkey" was written as "Hecho en pavo."

Pavo is Spanish for turkey, the animal. Turquía is Spanish for Turkey, the country. A human, even a non-fluent speaker such as myself, would never make that mistake.

It depends on how the management cares about the result or\and specifically needs someone responsible and with a certain reputation. International communications, e.g. UN sessions or the likes where highly trained humans do parallel translation, wouldn't be replaced at all, because a slight tonal shift in how they translate political stuff can cause a disasterous misunderstanding. Technical translation in industrial stuff shouldn't be too, for each sphere has it's specific bunch of therminology on each side, but here we are. And with arts\media, reputable companies with big money would still hire translators, but some would default to AI-unless-we-called-out mode.

Meanwhile my (college btw) teacher suggests us to use ChatGPT if we need help. Bro wants to replace himself.

I genuinely wonder if at some point someone is going to try to replace my job with AI. I'd be surprised if it worked, but not surprised if anyone is dumb enough to try, considering I do IT work, physically onsite too, so I don't just reset passwords over the phone or anything, I go to desks and setup equipment, repair hardware, troubleshoot software, the whole nine yards.

I work in horticulture and tend to plants- transplanting into different sized pots, pruning, yknow, physically interacting with plants. I also monitor the environment of the greenhouse- temperature, humidity, amount of water in the soil. Recently my boss has implemented ai and sensors to read the room and adjust the humidity and the temperature and monitor the water levels automatically. It doesn't work very well, because there arent sensors evwrywhere, and some parts of the greenhouse get better ventilation than others, so the temperature fluctuates. Me and my crew know where the hot spots are, the robots don't. The plants are suffering. We are doing extra work and killing off more plants on average than we did a few months ago.

About 1/3 of my crew has quit or been fired over the last year, and none of them have been replaced.

I've asked for a raise because I'm doing a lot more work with a lot less people, but they don't have the budget for me, since we just implemented all this ai that's gonna make my job so much easier.

I got written up for having a bad attitude (aka asking for a raise) and am now on probation at work. I am almost certainly about to lose my physical labor job to a robot and.it is blowing my fucking mind.

Take care xx

No job is safe from AI or robotic automation. They might not be able to do it well, but that won't stop greedy and/or cheap businesses from trying.

Oh, I am sure someone will try to replace me at some point with an AI (just not where I currently work, they are extremely suspicious of AI, even blocking websites that use AI just in case) and I am sure it will go poorly. Sucks that is already happening where you work, but on the semi-bright side, doubt that company will survive doing this.

If we were not ruled by tech oligarchs, and the control & benefits of AI were not concentrated among a privileged few, AI replacing our jobs would be a good thing.

Yeah sure, they will replace artists with their own stolen intellectual property which they mashed up together and spit it out back to their faces with the fake name of Ai, Congrats! humanity is definitely getting dumber and dumber every day since it cant see something like this

I not sure what personal is, but I'm curious, are there stats on job losses for artists, translators or journalist since AI?

I would use AI for some tangential stuff, like translating a menu, but not sure how many would use AI in a place where they'd previously hired a translator.

Jobs in journalism have been in decline for decades, the rise of AI is just another nail in the coffin of quality journalism. Hard to prove fault, but it's not helping.

Translation is too complex - language changes too fast - cultural context can not me adopted well - see every translation app that tries other languages than the most common ones worldwide

Cooking is something that requires advanced robotics or some kind of heavily modular factory-like automated meal production line, not AI. Though AI certainly could assist in the development of such.

Drivers are being actively replaced right before our eyes.

A lot of Lawyer work is already being heavily automated, even without AI. Outside of that its "technically" replaceable with AI but on a literal legal level not likely currently possible. I think automating some aspects of being a lawyer might be beneficial but certain elements would be down right dystopian if fully automated.

Doctor work being automated is also already being done, but this is arguably a very good thing, as it maybe holds the key to a lot of medical breakthroughs and might unlock the potential to sort all that personal medical data people collect ever since that became a thing. And largely might help significantly reduce the cost of highly effective personal healthcare, given sufficient time.

Teacher work probably could be partially automated but getting kids to pay attention to a lesson, discipline, safety, etc would likely require a human to be around if only for liability.

modular factory-like automated meal production line, not AI.

Define AI... LLMs are just a part of that.

Yeah, Artificial Intelligence is pretty broad category of technologies, even so, robotics and automation is not AI. You could pair a robot or an automated factory with an AI of some kind, or use an AI to design them, and they're related to each other in that they involve computer technology. Still, not the same thing.

A robotic arm in an car factory is a robot, but it doesn't have AI in it, they're usually given a set of commands to repeat.

A rube goldberg machine is technically automated once initialized. Its not AI.

AI bad

Yes, yes it is.

Not sure if I'd agree here. I think that used properly, AI definitely has great use-cases, especially in areas of science, like medicine.

As with any new "invention", there is the tech-bros that jump at it first chance they get and try to push it into anything. We had that with blockchain, we had that with crypto, we had it with web3 and now we have it with AI.

The tech isn't bad at all, it's actually extremely useful, but the use-cases it's put to work at aren't.

As someone who works in tech I’d agree with you. AI is a tool for humans to use that can help make tasks easier and lighten workload but it won’t replace them.

Yeah you're right, I was oversimplifying for the bit. I will now be saying "AI art bad" going forward to clarify.

Luddite

Can you please stop misusing words?

Can you please read a dictionary?

I have checked one before making the comment

Could you please give me your definition of the word?

Check again. I heard that reading out loud, word by word also helps some people.

There are multiple dictionaries with different definitions. Could you please give me your definition?

No.

The luddites were unironically entirely correct and capitalist disenfranchisement of capital has made the world objectively worse despite the wealth it brought to 0.001% of the population.

Eh. It's more like popular history remembers the bullet points of their ideals and not the reality.

What's stupid is thinking LLMs are AI.

Its cute you have your own call out forum for people that disagree with your neoliberal generic beliefs and all; one that only you post to or really participate in bar a few lost /all viewers, but that's not an argument.

People being upset that their livelihoods are being destroyed while their previous bosses become immeasurably richer while doing even less work were objectively on the right side of history given where it has lead us-- with the greatest wealth disparity in all of known human history, and the most people food and shelter insecure in all of human history.

I still think that all jobs are, in general, safe for the foreseeable future. But we will be expected to use AI tools and just produce more and more, so that a few people will gain more and more resources and power.

E.g. as engineers we will do less and less actual planning, but we will run AIs like it were a team of engineer slaves.

And I think this will be similar for other branches. A music composer will run AIs to compose parts of a song, adjust it, readjust other parts, till the song is good. I mean, afaik this is already how much of it works.

I believe that a few jobs will be hard hit. Things like first level phone customer support or service are probably going to be decimated, keeping humans for 2nd or 3rd level.

A similar thing happened with the irruption of the PC. In a few short years, the majority of professional typist jobs disappeared.

Entry level at most jobs will be hit. If you basically exist to do grunt work that somebody else assigns and will “approve” before going out, AI may replace you. I would not want to be a junior marketing communications person.

AI has sucked for years and that didn’t stop companies from trying to replace customer service with AI.

Am I supposed to read this as simultaneous (those jobs are currently safe.... for now, the others are not) or progressive (all these jobs are human/skilled and halfway they get replaced by robots)..?

I suppose either way it's commenting that you can't take your position for granted. AI isn't coming to replace you, but it is going to evolve your field, and workers that don't adapt will be supplanted by those that do.

Probably the latter (If you see the original comic this was based on), but probably a little bit of both as you said.

Teachers, drivers, and lawyers are all very replaceable by AI. And, with some investment in automation, so are cooks.

drivers

or...

TRAINSSSSSS 🚂🚃🚃🚃💨

If you mean proper definition of the word AI, then of course, everyone are, AI by definition can do everything human can.
If you mean modern slop generators or narrowly trained models, then no, some professionals can use it to make their lives slightly easier, but that's it.
Just to be clear, the proper AGI doesn't exist, and we aren't closer to the understanding how to achieve it than we were in the age before we discovered electricity. Possibly further, if everyone will continue to be mesmerised by a chatbot

Yeah interestingly I watched a video where a robotics specialist said they believed AI would take jobs long before the new generation of robots do. Robots are hard.

Can't we skip that and go straight to replicators instead?

Star Trek or Stargate?

I assume you, teaching as the profession that we have today is not at all safe.

As a barkeeper, I still feel very safe.

Still feelin safe

Amusingly, cook is probably the safest of those positions for the time being. The physicality and necessity of presence makes it harder to automate. Lawyer, doctor, and teacher can be done remotely, and is based largely on knowledge, so they are prime targets. People are already trying it. Drivers you could see being done remotely if we had faster, more ubiquitous, net connections, so it's doable as well. It's basically already happening. But cooking... AI doesn't seem like it would give you the right kind of inputs and outputs to do that any easier/faster/cheaper. It's already possible to make a food vending machine. The limitations of vending machines aren't really that they need an easier interface on their database. AI won't really help there. And to go beyond that and try to make an AI powered restaurant probably wouldn't be profitable. It's barely profitable to run a regular restaurant most of the time. If you try to put in the probable millions to automate a restaurant, it'd probably go the same way as the self-checkout lanes at stores, which is to say poorly.

Actually have all of the jobs I would think the safest are doctors and lawyers. When your life and liberty are on the line you really don't want an emotionless machine you want a human.

Years ago I had to have surgery on my neck to remove a benign tumor, and I absolutely wasn't worried, I was definitely worried it would hurt but I wasn't worried it would go wrong and I'd end up getting a major artery cut, because I trusted the person doing it, because they came and talked to me. I wouldn't absolutely not trust a robot to do surgery, even if logically the robot would probably be better than the human.

Watch Prometheus by Ridley Scott, there is a scene in that movie which is on topic of the subject discussed here

It depends on the type of doctor and lawyer's service. Some will remain with humans. Some will be a welcome free-up of their time to focus on the more unusual (not solvable by regressing to the mean) cases. There are many doctor's appointments that boil down to 'You have the flu. Here's a beg off note for your shitty boss. Go back to bed.' And there are many attorneys' consultations that boil down to 'I have taken down what you want to say, and now I will translate it into legalese.'

As for the trust, that comes from expectations. You trust a human because human surgeons are the norm. You don't have buddies who had a robot remove their appendix. If the AI is competent, eventually that would be as normal to a patient as buying something from a vending machine.

However, I suspect surgery in particular is another of those things where it'll take an absolute mountain of training data and a lot of risk of human health/life to even attempt, so it's a long way off compared to the simple 'GP writes a referral' stuff.

Everything can be automated, just with lower quality, speed, and a high up front and ongoing cost.

But for a large segment of jobs, no one cares about quality. Speed can be increased by increasing the number of parallel automatons, thus cost. If you really want to get rid of all work, raise the minimum wage to $100/hour for one year. Don't tell anyone that it will only be a year. By the end of the year, almost every job will be automated.

Drivers were on the edge for a long time. Lawyers are on the edge for the past 2-3 years. Cooks are probably the closest ones to be on the edge too.

How drivers were on the edge?

Self driving cars have been threatened for years. Trucks are practically here (on private roads currently). The desire is strong.

Long haul freight truck yes. There are a few test convoys driving through Europe's highways, with only a human driver in the first one. Trucks in smaller roads, or cities, are still quite a bit in the future.

Agreed. But the last mile driver will disappear eventually, particularly when hubs are designed for AI automation in mind.

Self driving lorries have been in development stage for over 5 years. I don't count teslas into that cause on overwhelming average cars are driven not as work. Truck, busse and train drivers were under attack for a long time.

Technically speaking it's opposite than in the picture. The professions replaced by robots in the picture are in fact not replacable because they require emotional awareness. On the other hand professions in the picture that represent humans can be replaced by robots because they only require data.

Teachers and physicians do not require emotional awareness?

House has proven time and time again that bedside manners don't matter if you're right. 😌

Also that Vicodin addiction is mostly fine. Mostly.

This is a mistake that many people will make, and it will be decades before they realize what they've done.

I teach elementary school. While most of the things I'm accountable for on paper are academic, most of my actual time is spent helping my students understand how to be functional humans. Problem-solving skills. Interpersonal skills. Self-control. Empathy. Self-esteem. In early grades, motor skills like how to hold a pencil or use scissors.

When we put a whole generation of kids in computerized AI schools (because it's not really an "if" any more), we will see a huge effect in the real world, but probably not until after they graduate and have to start dealing with people in different work environments. And by then, we'll be totally screwed.

Of course, the 1% will still have their kids in real schools with real teachers, because they already know that the very products they tout to the masses are actually detrimental to child development.

It's because their parents need to go to work.

As a designer, this remains irrelevant to me. Ai is just a tool.

I don’t know in which design field you work, but 4o can already generate impressive saas landing pages at this point. Still bland work but could suffise for some, you should see for yourself.

So can I

This is incorrect.

Give AI a few more years and ots a great teacher for adults.

Baker and lawyer? Easy. As soon as AI get capable robot bodies they can do "homemade food" with robotic efficiency. And knowing legal texts and such stuff? They are machines. Indexing, cross referenceing, contextually identifying and comparing large data will be super easy to them once they get more memory and no l9nger hallucinate information.

AI is in its infancy.

People who say AI won't get as good or better than us humans at basically anything will be in for a hard awakening in about 10 years.

The humans are basically comparing their industry best against an AI baby learning to walk when looking at potential of growth.

You missed the point and wrote like 3.5 paragraphs. Maybe AI could summarise for you. I asked Gemini to give it a go:

This comic strip conveys a cautionary message about the potential overconfidence of humans regarding the irreplaceable nature of their professions in the face of advancing technology, specifically artificial intelligence. Here's a breakdown:

  • The first five panels show various people confidently stating that their professions (cook, driver, lawyer, doctor, teacher) are inherently human, rely on talent, and therefore cannot be replaced. They seem to believe they are immune to automation or technological disruption.

  • The remaining four panels reveal identical, faceless robots labeled with other professions (personal, journalist, artist, translator). This visually suggests that even roles considered creative, nuanced, or requiring "human touch" are susceptible to being taken over by AI or robots.

  • The humor lies in the dramatic irony. The characters' confident assertions are juxtaposed with the stark reality of the robots, highlighting the potential for human hubris in underestimating the capabilities of emerging technologies. In essence, the comic warns against complacency and suggests that many professions, even those requiring creativity and human interaction, might not be as safe from automation as people believe. It prompts reflection on the evolving nature of work and the potential impact of AI on various fields.

I see.

Interesting then that I've seen such an very similar image used on reddit in the opposite way.

So perhaps thats why I expected it to be the same here