this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2023
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Are there any that are real in the sense that they contribute something of value to society?
Even doctors are liable to be replaced by AI. I don't know what counts as "something of value to society" to you, and frankly that's the sort of argument that is never worth having. But generally speaking, it doesn't get much more valuable for society than doctors.
If an AI can outperform a human doctor, isn’t that a good thing? We should always strive to improve survival for patients - it’s not about doctors jobs but patient survival and long term health outcomes.
I would love for doctors to become AI if the AI improves our growing health inequities and inequalities.
Part of the issue is that this rush to transition to AI is not done to increase quality of work, but to sav time and costs. If the point was to improve the treatment, keeping a human doctor plus AI might result in better outcomes. But AI or no AI, a for-profit medical system won't elliminate health inequalities.
It's also worth keeping in mind not all forms of work are actually enhanced by AI participation. Journalists aren't aided by language models that regularly hallucinate false informations.
Being a doctor would be a real job, but the only jobs I've seen actually getting replaced are things like clickbait content farms, scams, marketing, exploitive gambling-centric video games, and other such garbage. Unlike being a doctor it's never been hard to shit that stuff out into the world. And since these neural networks aren't actually that good, I'll believe they can replace doctors when I see it.
You haven't heard of good writing and good artwork being replaced by AI?
I've seen some pretty interesting images and some funny text but nothing that amounts to a big enough vision that it's something cohesive like a complete movie or a book. I've seen Joel Haver videos but those aren't made by pushing a button and getting a video.
Replaced implies humans are no longer writing or creating art, which obviously isn't the case. They just have more competition now.
Replaced implies some, likely many humans won't be able to compete and will be driven out of the field. Not by any other more skillful artist, but simply by AI output. Which is an inevitability. Some might say it's already happening.
If it does, that's progress. As you stated, it's inevitable. Anytime technology leaps forward, some will lose while others prosper. I'm sure when automobiles started to surge, the amount of horse breeders declined a bit.
Edit
The difference is that when it comes to intellectual, creative and communication work, we aren't the coachmen and breeders, we are the horses. After horses were no longer needed, what happened to them was very different.
And when that day comes we're not going back.