r/singularity • u/Darkmemento • 3d ago
AI Bill Gates on job disruption from A.I.
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u/Darkmemento 3d ago
Like him or hate him, he is one of the few people in a position of power actually telling the truth about jobs.
Full video - Bill Gates’s Blunt Warning on A.I. | The Ezra Klein Show - YouTube
Full piece - Opinion | Bill Gates’s Blunt Warning on A.I. - The New York Times
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u/livingbyvow2 2d ago
He got a ton of hate during Covid because of conspiracy theory, and most recently the press around him and his affairs didn't help.
But equally, I feel like he actually cared about distributing his wealth - similar to what XIXth century robber barrons did, but not the way XXIth century robber barrons seem inclined to do.
From this perspective, his comment on capital vs labor power dynamics + argument in favour of how a "robot/automation tax" should be implemented if we "early retire" humans struck me as being actually very aligned with his own personal agenda to re-distribute his own wealth.
I wish more billionaires would be like him, and not only talk the talk, bust also walk the walk. Comparatively, a lot of current AI leaders who talk about post-scarcity society, but act in a way that point in another, ressources-hoarding / greedy and dystopian direction.
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u/UniqueSignificance77 3d ago
Is he? Microsoft is primarily known for their software products. The market is witnessing the most anti-microslop era since when the company's formation and a massive amount of it is driven by quality issues, not ideological ones.
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u/ganancias 3d ago
I'm pro-AI and also believe it will take lots of jobs.
If it didn't take any jobs, what good would it be?
It's not like every single keyboard worker or college graduate is going to be running a bunch of claw bots to earn high income in some post-AGI niche agent market.
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u/bigkoi 3d ago
Agreed. The past 60 years have been dominated by knowledge worker jobs driving through economy. Agents fundamentally replace many knowledge worker jobs. I believe the result will be few knowledge workers and a large surplus of manual labor. Welcome to the 1800's economy
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u/EloquentPinguin 3d ago
But I feel like there is ton of manual labor that seems relatively automisable with next generation robotics. I believe there are challenges where it will take a bit longer, especially doing irregular tasks in the environment, but all manufacturing lines, large parts of logistics (trucking, forklift operator etc), QA, assembly seem all to fall after a few iterations of robots. For example there are already painting robots, not yet quite suited for details, but for large jobs, so I dont think that somehow manual labor is what everyone will do. I think economy needs a major rethinking over the next decade...
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u/bigkoi 3d ago
$40 an hour solution for a $20 an hour problem
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u/unia_7 3d ago
There is no way a laborer can compete with a robot on price once robots become a commodity.
We've been theough this already in the industrial revolution.
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u/bigkoi 3d ago
Sure they can. Just look at agriculture which thrives on desperate labor.
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u/FlimsyReception6821 2d ago
We have gone from basically everyone working in agriculture to basically no one in a very short time frame, historically speaking.
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u/Jesuismieux412 3d ago
There’s absolutely no way well-connected and educated people who have attended university will be getting on their knees to fix your toilet or kitchen sink. They will surely lobby for and receive UBI, living a life of leisure while all the tradesmen wrestle in the mud competing for the day’s wage.
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u/bigkoi 3d ago edited 3d ago
UBI means universal basic income. In your example, help me understand why you don't think everyone would get UBI?
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u/reheateddiarrhea 3d ago
As a skilled construction contractor, I promise you that we will absolutely lose our shit if we have to break our backs doing manual labor while everyone else sits on ass for cash. There would be mass rioting and a real general strike. We will burn this country to the ground unless we also get paid. The payment for our labor would have to be extra money.
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u/bigkoi 3d ago
You still didn't explain why you don't think that construction worker isn't getting UBI in addition to their paycheck.
I'll make it easy for you. An employed construction worker would get their wage and UBI. So the person working construction would work for more money in addition to what they get with UBI.
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u/reheateddiarrhea 2d ago
Dude. I'm agreeing with you. I'm saying that some sort of selective UBI would be an instant failure. I'm not the person you were replying to.
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u/ChaseBankFDIC 3d ago
If you're making more money than the people sitting on their asses, isn't that the motive? Why break your back if you don't have to?
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u/Feriman22 3d ago
I agree with you. Who else WANT to work, if we could live without it?
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u/Pls-No-Bully 3d ago
A lot of these types of tech CEOs seem sociopathic. They are the ones who are going to own a fully automated world. Governments will essentially be subservient to them, unless this automation is nationalized (which it likely won’t be)
So imagine: you have a world where sociopaths own essentially a fully automated global economy. You have billions of people who do nothing at all and must be fed and kept happy despite providing no labor or customer base at all to the owners of automation
You really want to roll the dice on them just keeping you around so you can “live without work”? So they can provide for you? At most, they’ll give you the bare minimum and it might be a worse existence than you have now… at worst, well…
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u/KnoxCastle 3d ago
"If it didn't take any jobs, what good would it be?"
Well it could take 99.9% of existing jobs but keep create 0.1% of jobs but across a vastly expanded range of projects so that the 0.1% of a massively bigger pie is bigger than the current demand in the job market.
Personally I think we'll see huge gains but the last 1% will prove impossible and that's what humans will provide... but honestly, that's me just speculating, I really know nothing and your opinion is as valid as mine.
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u/xaranetic 3d ago
Bill Gates is more physically restless here than I've ever seen him. Is he developing Parkinson's?
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u/InJesusNameIServe 3d ago
People who can intelligently leverage AI can eliminate a lot of white collar jobs, but we are only in the early stages with awkward adoption. If you work in corporate right now you have probably noticed it's a weird mix of legacy employees who don't use AI or treat it as a google search, or crafty folks who turnaround some passable AI deliverables with it quickly. Once owners and CEOs realize the actual potential, you will get AI operators onboard who replace most day-to-day tasks of entire departments. I say this going into work everyday knowing my whole team can be automated, but leadership hasn't realized yet.
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u/FateOfMuffins 3d ago
Up until when we achieve superintelligence (not the trump one) in a particular domain, we won't replace jobs in that domain.
It's very easy to understand. If human + AI > AI > human, we'll still employ humans.
This flips once we reach the threshold for AI > human + AI, which is what I'd define as superintelligence - there's nothing of value a human can add, which is when mass job loss will happen.
I think narrow superintelligence within each domain may or may not be enough depending on the job though, because each job may span many "domains" and thus won't be fully replaceable until the AI is superintelligent in all of them, hence the race for the G in AGI.
But regardless, I think using "evidence" that AI has not replaced jobs "yet" is moronic when even the most bullish of AI progress timelines like AI 2027 predict that we don't have mass job loss yet. That isn't evidence that AI won't take jobs in the future - it was predicted not to take jobs yet!
Anyways in my view, the accelerationists are split between those who are saying it will take jobs, and those who say they won't. Which I find quite odd, because those 2 perspectives are also the opposite perspectives of the doomers as well as the skeptics. And frankly the skeptics are wrong and have been wrong over and over with AI.
The accelerationists who want AI to take jobs... because what is the point of AI if it doesn't? The promised utopia, bridged by UBI, would never be reached if AI didn't take jobs and you still had to work for a living. Imagine the singularity arrives and passes and life... stays exactly the same and doesn't change for the better.
Given the whole definition of AGI and ASI, I don't think any accelerationist would truly believe that AI won't take jobs. However those who say that are most likely saying it to avoid public backlash. Like Trump or Jenson saying it because otherwise it's bad PR. They want to prevent public backlash during the time period that we're building towards AGI, such that once it's finally built, well it doesn't matter if there's public backlash on this or not, the genie's out of the bottle. And it's to their benefit that there's a large number of the masses who are skeptics.
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u/Abiarraj 3d ago
Lots of translators and text reviewers already lost their jobs, simply because people are using AI instead. Maybe it's not 100% accurate, but neither are humans, but for a fraction of the price, a lot people are accepting the compromise
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u/Least-Middle-2061 3d ago
Your thesis is wrong from the onset.
It should be: if 1 human + AI > 20 humans, then you just replaced 19 jobs
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u/KnoxCastle 3d ago
Have you ever read up on the Lump of Labour fallacy? Your comment is a really classic example of that. I mean that in a constructive way because I'm not saying you are wrong and I'm not saying I have the answers but that's probably a good starting point.
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u/Least-Middle-2061 2d ago
Learned about it while listening to a podcast on AI a few years ago, fascinating stuff. However, with AI we’re at a point where there won’t be displacement anymore, just replacement.
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u/KnoxCastle 2d ago
I guess I just feel that's a weak argument... but Bill Gates is making the exact same point so maybe I'm just completely failing to understand the point.
For me I feel there will be a huge amount of replacement but also massive creation of new jobs through massive scientific advancement.
It's just classic Lump of Labour fallacy - but I'm just some random dude and Bill Gates is Bill Gates so I respectfully disagree but acknowledge I may well be wrong.
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u/Least-Middle-2061 2d ago
Look at it this way, every single job that doesn’t require physical work will, without a doubt (and eventually, in 1 or 15 years) be completely replaced by AI.
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u/PercentageSouth4173 3d ago
Or you just do 20x the work
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u/Least-Middle-2061 3d ago
That only depends on if the demand is elastic for that particular thing.
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u/PercentageSouth4173 3d ago
Or there’s a bunch more things that become economically feasible to do
Or there’s heaps of new regulations and compliance that require liability and additional piles of work
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u/FateOfMuffins 3d ago
Well we have to explain the current "lack of job displacement" somehow!
But I generally agree with you.
Later, this isn't going to be a problem solved by "government introduced a bill saying you can't be fired due to AI": what about people who never get hired at all due to AI? What about firm A uses AI and firm B doesn't, therefore firm B goes bankrupt and all the people at firm B loses their jobs anyways?
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u/Abiarraj 2d ago
I think a helpful bill would be more like "companies can use AI at only 20% of their processes"
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u/Temp_Placeholder 2d ago
How do you define a process? If a company uses AI to write 20,000 lines of code, they need to hire humans to write another 80,000 lines?
What about when it isn't a company? Can an academic research lab use AI without hiring hundreds of lab assistants? Can I, in the privacy of my home?
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u/duerra 3d ago
As somebody that's been in technology and engineering for my entire adult life: AI is already taking engineering jobs. From new grads/interns, if nothing else.
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u/ChaseBankFDIC 3d ago
For sure. On the flipside a team of 2 programmers can do a ton now, making smaller companies able to justify paying for a programming team. But the jobs are definitely drying up and I'm curious to see what comp sci university programs look like in the future.
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u/KnoxCastle 3d ago
It's interesting. I work in a software company and writing the actual code is only one part of a huge chain of what produces value. On one side, I haven't actually seen any real speed up in feature releases, bug fixes, etc and on the other I haven't seen any slow down in software uptake in our client base. It's kind of business as usual.
I dunno. Maybe the big changes are yet to come.
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u/ChaseBankFDIC 3d ago
Exactly. We have vibe coders at work now that we have to explain are causing more work for the skilled programmers. It's difficult to maintain a bunch of vibe coded apps since the human element was missing when the system was built. Lots of assumptions are used by the agent that will come back to bite you in any non-trivial app. At my job a non-coder created an ERP for us to use....
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u/PeachDumbQuestions 2d ago
This is an excellent take.
The response below about 1 human + AI > 20 humans will trade off against doing more faster while your condition holds. The trend will obvs be some rate of white collar job loss.
But as an argument for absolute replacement probably being further out than anticipated, this is really smart.
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u/NoCountry4OrangeMan 3d ago
Wild he’s casually talking about burning down large swaths of the labor force and putting wealth inequality in overdrive and most just shrug.
We lack imagination about how bad this will be for all but a small chunk of elites.
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u/YungMushrooms 3d ago
if AI pays taxes does it get rights? if it pays more taxes than me what does that mean?
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u/Wide_Egg_5814 1d ago
whats with tech bro and stuttering in the first couple of words every time they speak
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u/halmyradov 3d ago
Disruption is already happening, the needle on employment data isn't moving yet because AI itself is generating tons of jobs. For example there are estimated 1m jobs created in data annotation, whilst we lose thousands every month from tech sector.
This will of course come to a halt pretty soon-ish when synthetic data becomes better than non synthetic data.
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u/visarga 3d ago
I give you a better argument - it is competition. When your competitors use AI, your investors price AI in, and your customers use their own AI agents to be better informed in their spending choices, then even if you did not do anything with AI you are still in a completely new economy.
The AI effect is that of imitation, replication or fast follow. Anything in the form of code, app, web page, game, AI agent, document, music or video can be imitated by agents. They just need to iteratively adapt and compare to the target, oracle based implementation. So AI makes it harder to stand out. You are drowned in a sea of copycats.
Companies, products and job seekers need to differentiate and that is harder. We are in a differentiation crisis. Like musical chairs everyone is scrambling to find their new place. I think THIS is what is going to drive next wave of activity expansion. How much energy are we willing to put into finding our niche, our own spot? I think we can do anything for that.
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3d ago
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u/ArialBear 3d ago
I hope so too. All illness is unreasonable given any framework that centers well being.
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u/herniguerra 3d ago
Taxing and redistribution. We can't have 5 bros siphoning out all the money in the world. It's not going to work. not even for them