523
“AI took my job, literally”—Gizmodo fires Spanish staff amid switch to AI translator
(arstechnica.com)
this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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This whole thing is just stupid.
Did we get angry when computers cut accounting staff by 75% because one person and QuickBooks can do the job of a whole fleet of people? No. AI will change jobs in the same way computerization changed jobs. The same way the combine changed farming and the cotton gin changed textiles.
What we need to ACTUALLY BE WORRIED ABOUT is what we failed to be concerned with last time. The productivity increase and job elimination just went to the fucking top of the ladder. If that happens again we will have massive unemployment.
We need to tax the shit out of companies using AI to replace humans, and start setting up the infrastructure for the inevitable UBI that further automation will require.
Universal basic income, have AI and automated roles taxed as people. Self checkout? Well you still have the pay the tax as if that was an employee.
I disagree. We shouldn't be disincentivizing innovation. Taxes on business and the wealthy should increase regardless of their use of automation.
Why not? There's lots of stuff that could be considered innovation that is intentionally stifled due to competition laws or security concerns.
I don't disagree with you entirely but if Walmart stopped employing 95% of their staff tomorrow due to self checkouts and stocking robots they should have to continue paying taxes for those roles because the newly unemployed will need government support.
The end game is universal basic income and that can only be sustainable with these types of policies.
I agree that some innovation can be harmful. I guess what I meant was "we should avoid disincentivizing innovation unless necessary." The way I see it, though, job lots from automation is both inevitable and fairly easy to fix (as you said, UBI), so there's no reason to try to stop it from happening.
Really, I think automation should be encouraged. It frees people from usually-undesirable jobs and allows them time to pursue different careers or other interests. As long as we have ways to deal with the unemployment I think it's a huge positive for people.
I fully agree that there will need to be a tax increase to cover support for the newly-unemployed, but why not make that a general increase on businesses and wealthy individuals? If anything, this would be and incentive for automation as a way to decrease rising business costs.
Innovation has removed jobs before, and we dealt with it. I don't see businesses being taxed for using computers instead of human calculators. I don't see why this innovation is different.
Well I think we are both headed in the same direction and close to agreeing with one another, but with that said I don't see it as a disincentive more so just a way to get the necessary costs from a company that is adapting. As for why not just increase taxes, yes do but you can do both. If a company is turning over millions and millions with only a few staff because everything is automated we should look at getting the value toward the exchequer that the automation replaced. Certain taxes go to certain funds, and employment taxes are different to corporate taxes. The costs associated with employment generally directly feed into social insurances etc. So it is important to keep that revenue stream active or social insurances would need more money from the general tax pool instead of getting it from employers.
As for why now and not before, we kissed out before and we are very much suffering as a result. Production has increased in orders of magnitude and wages have stagnated, we need to think differently and the sooner we evaluate these roles the sooner we can put a value on the automated service. It is a nebulous and difficult areasl to draw a line but that doesn't mean a line isn't required. And I get that not being able to perfectly explain why a cashier being replaced should be taxed but someone replaced by a calculator shouldn't but the fact is regulations and laws have arbitrary basis, like minimum age to run for president and height to become an officer. The line had to be drawn so it was and we adapt to that.
I'm also no saying close the discussion forever, the President should be whoever gets the most votes full stop...provided they're legitimate votes and the candidate isn't actively standing trial for crimes committed in office.
A lot of it is only cost-cutting disguised as innovation though. Some jobs, like accounting, doesn't really suffer from removing the human element, but compare that to the chatbot hellscape that customer service has become. We need to be VERY conscious of what we "innovate" and guide the development with taxation and laws.
I think it's important that we call out its shortcomings, when common bugs plague the system (think llms with hallucinations) or make it act in unison compounding risk ( think the algo Aladin used by 90% of trading firms on Wall Street, causing similar assets pics and collusion while keeping the firms hands clean as they never communicated with each other, they just used a predicitve algo that chose the same positions, which should still count as collusion but i guess not when congress cant even figure out a web browser). There are certain repetitive acts in which ai will be wildly successful, but when it comes to enforcement we can't just rely on ai as it can be exploited. Using it to cut down on creative work loads is helpful and allows for creating deeper art. Using ai to write out boiler plate code so a developer can focus on implementing business logic and security will vastly improve productivity. Where as using it for creating test scenarios will be futile as it only builds off its training data and new edge cases may never be caught. We need to define regulations on where AI can be used in commercial applications, and we need to do it ASAP.