Current observation and predictions
I had a friend engage me on some AI back and forth and this is what I thought about it. He sent me the following link which triggered the discussion.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/20/a-coder-considers-the-waning-days-of-the-craft
Oh yeah, pretty much anything that requires someone to sit down and implement somebody else's directions/vision is at risk. The vast majority of white collar work will drop 90% of their employees as systems are rolled out.
They will keep the 10% to actually direct the AI to handle the remaining 90% employee's work. And then be responsible for reviewing and correcting. They will end up being truly hands-on managers since there will always be the moment that they can't trust the AI to handle a major transaction. So they will just have to direct and review and confirm milestones.
Programmers are first because programmers wrote this thing and the databases they fed into it and they started with all programmer knowledge and they spent time using it and tweaking it. They are the subject matter experts required to finally bless releasing it.
For every other industry that requires subject matter knowledge, there will have to be a final step as review before it gets released. I'm sure there's hundreds of them working on it right now from various industries.
Then you can deal with any organization that implements any type of numeric transaction that follows rules and can be automated. Accounting is gone. It's just gone. Accountants are robots that follow rules. This thing will wipe them out. All of the clerical positions under the accountants go as well of course.
In a couple of years, the voice capability will surpass the majority of human conversation and be indistinguishable. It will occasionally figure out there is an issue it can't handle and pass it off to a human. Just like first level customer service now. So it will be able to handle most conversational tasks.
The insurance industry is 90% pushing paperwork around. That paperwork has been computerized long ago. Insurance agents and everyone in the clerical chain is gone.
Lawyers should be very scared. If you are not customer facing you are gone. Most of what lawyers do is standard boiler plate (which I was able to handle in my divorce, no lawyer required ) and researching citations on the rare case that goes to court. Those huge law firms will fire most of the junior lawyers. And the vast majority of the clerical staff that supports them.
Healthcare back office will be wiped out. All that paperwork in hospitals that go back and forth with the insurers will be automated. So almost all the customer service.
90% of customer service positions that interact with supporting customers will be automated. It's been going that way for years with various phone tree systems, but when this thing is truly active it will be able to handle the conversations of almost all of the issues.
The list goes on and on. And when any company sees how well the accounting wipeout went and saved the money, they will look around and try to do it to every custom system they have. If you are not high up on the value chain and direct, design, engineer or research, you are possible target.
This will all start happening in about 2 years If Sam Altman gets his way.
He was just fired from the company that owns chat GPT, he started it as a non-profit, and then turned it commercial and got a valuation of $80 billion. He got Microsoft to commit to many billions. He gets to use all the Microsoft cloud servers.
There was a board battle led by a guy who was worried that it was rolling out too fast and was a danger to the world. He convinced the others to fire Sam Altman. This all happen three days ago. Then over the next couple of days a whole bunch of scientists and other employees quit. They were going to follow Sam.
The board is currently renegotiating with Sam to bring him back. So this will all probably start happening in about 2 years because Sam was the person directing the technology to be advanced to be commercialized and making the deals in the process to get into the Microsoft software.
If he doesn't go back to the current company and starts a new one, it'll take another couple of years. But he's got a huge head start and he's got the people. He just has to start the company, get some servers on Microsoft, and duplicate the work which he will be able to do. Up until a couple of years ago the code base was public domain so he can use it. He's got a good start for these people to re-implement the rest of what they did in the last 2 years, and now they will do it better and faster because they have the experience.
So there will be a huge loss of employment AND Microsoft will end up ruling the world as they roll out the various applications to the end user market.
Oops, you are late on your Microsoft bill? You have a problem that we quadrupled your payment this year? No problem, we'll just turn off the AI that runs your company while simultaneously rerouting your competitors to serve your customers.
It's the end of the world as we know it, the end of the world as we know it, the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
Well, not exactly. But I figure I'll be dead before the full impact is felt in about 10 years. Ben is up on the value chain. Sarah doesn't work, full-time mom, and her husband is someone who actually goes out and works with his hands. Maureen will always be service industry hands-on. Kate is probably screwed, she does something on the phone and juggles accounts back and forth, ripe for automation.
All this will require some major government intervention of some sort. If not, expect the revolution.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/20/a-coder-considers-the-waning-days-of-the-craft
Oh yeah, pretty much anything that requires someone to sit down and implement somebody else's directions/vision is at risk. The vast majority of white collar work will drop 90% of their employees as systems are rolled out.
They will keep the 10% to actually direct the AI to handle the remaining 90% employee's work. And then be responsible for reviewing and correcting. They will end up being truly hands-on managers since there will always be the moment that they can't trust the AI to handle a major transaction. So they will just have to direct and review and confirm milestones.
Programmers are first because programmers wrote this thing and the databases they fed into it and they started with all programmer knowledge and they spent time using it and tweaking it. They are the subject matter experts required to finally bless releasing it.
For every other industry that requires subject matter knowledge, there will have to be a final step as review before it gets released. I'm sure there's hundreds of them working on it right now from various industries.
Then you can deal with any organization that implements any type of numeric transaction that follows rules and can be automated. Accounting is gone. It's just gone. Accountants are robots that follow rules. This thing will wipe them out. All of the clerical positions under the accountants go as well of course.
In a couple of years, the voice capability will surpass the majority of human conversation and be indistinguishable. It will occasionally figure out there is an issue it can't handle and pass it off to a human. Just like first level customer service now. So it will be able to handle most conversational tasks.
The insurance industry is 90% pushing paperwork around. That paperwork has been computerized long ago. Insurance agents and everyone in the clerical chain is gone.
Lawyers should be very scared. If you are not customer facing you are gone. Most of what lawyers do is standard boiler plate (which I was able to handle in my divorce, no lawyer required ) and researching citations on the rare case that goes to court. Those huge law firms will fire most of the junior lawyers. And the vast majority of the clerical staff that supports them.
Healthcare back office will be wiped out. All that paperwork in hospitals that go back and forth with the insurers will be automated. So almost all the customer service.
90% of customer service positions that interact with supporting customers will be automated. It's been going that way for years with various phone tree systems, but when this thing is truly active it will be able to handle the conversations of almost all of the issues.
The list goes on and on. And when any company sees how well the accounting wipeout went and saved the money, they will look around and try to do it to every custom system they have. If you are not high up on the value chain and direct, design, engineer or research, you are possible target.
This will all start happening in about 2 years If Sam Altman gets his way.
He was just fired from the company that owns chat GPT, he started it as a non-profit, and then turned it commercial and got a valuation of $80 billion. He got Microsoft to commit to many billions. He gets to use all the Microsoft cloud servers.
There was a board battle led by a guy who was worried that it was rolling out too fast and was a danger to the world. He convinced the others to fire Sam Altman. This all happen three days ago. Then over the next couple of days a whole bunch of scientists and other employees quit. They were going to follow Sam.
The board is currently renegotiating with Sam to bring him back. So this will all probably start happening in about 2 years because Sam was the person directing the technology to be advanced to be commercialized and making the deals in the process to get into the Microsoft software.
If he doesn't go back to the current company and starts a new one, it'll take another couple of years. But he's got a huge head start and he's got the people. He just has to start the company, get some servers on Microsoft, and duplicate the work which he will be able to do. Up until a couple of years ago the code base was public domain so he can use it. He's got a good start for these people to re-implement the rest of what they did in the last 2 years, and now they will do it better and faster because they have the experience.
So there will be a huge loss of employment AND Microsoft will end up ruling the world as they roll out the various applications to the end user market.
Oops, you are late on your Microsoft bill? You have a problem that we quadrupled your payment this year? No problem, we'll just turn off the AI that runs your company while simultaneously rerouting your competitors to serve your customers.
It's the end of the world as we know it, the end of the world as we know it, the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
Well, not exactly. But I figure I'll be dead before the full impact is felt in about 10 years. Ben is up on the value chain. Sarah doesn't work, full-time mom, and her husband is someone who actually goes out and works with his hands. Maureen will always be service industry hands-on. Kate is probably screwed, she does something on the phone and juggles accounts back and forth, ripe for automation.
All this will require some major government intervention of some sort. If not, expect the revolution.
