Artificial Intelligence May Replace Millions

Mitch86 said:
I noticed that Amazon will have a big layoff. They are improving their Artificial Intelligence so much that they may be able to run their business with a lot fewer employees. This could happen all over in thousands of corporations around the world. Human workers may become OBSOLETE!
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Unfortunately, that's true. AI 'stole' MY job.. fortunately I was past my so-called official retirement age, so I ended up retiring- before I'd planned on doing so. 😒
 
Oscar Wilde’s character, Lord Darlington, in his play: "Lady Windermere's Fan," said: "Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing,"
Wilde is distinguishing between "price" (a quantifiable cost) and "value" (the true significance or worth). He suggests that a cynical, materialistic society often misses the deeper meaning of: experiences, people and art. How right he was.
 

Amazon cut 14,000 jobs recently and announced another 16,000 this week but it’s hardly the end of the world considering that they employ an estimated 1,550,000 people around the world.

It’s definitely going to hurt some people as AI changes the employment picture but hopefully it will also create new opportunities for people as businesses continue to grow and evolve.

I’m thankful that paid employment is a thing of the past for me but I’m optimistic that young folks will be fine as they find their spot in the job market.
 
I have 6 Amazon Echo Shows around my house. If I have any health problems, I ask my Echo Shows and they tell me how to treat the problem. Of course, they cannot write prescriptions. However, I never call my doctor anymore about anything. My Echo Shows have become my doctors and I only ask them about any health problems and they have always solved my problems. It looks like AI is starting to replace doctors.
 
  • Engineering Impact: In the first phase of this massive reduction (October 2025), state filings in Washington, California, New York, and New Jersey revealed that nearly 40% of the eliminated roles were engineering positions.
  • Specific Roles Targeted: The cuts heavily impacted software developers, specifically mid-level SDE II engineers. This represents a significant shift, as engineering roles were historically considered "safe" during major corporate restructures.
What are young people supposed to study these days in order to have a successful career? Engineering is so competitive now, salaries will probably decrease. Just a couple decades ago, if you had a degree in computer science, you were practically guaranteed a job. Now that AI can perform most of the tasks performed by software engineers, a degree in computer science will have about as much value as one in sociology.

A few engineers that are good at prompting AI will get the jobs but the rest are out of luck. They'll need engineers that can provide the reference material that AI can follow when generating code. That will be the case in many fields. Humans will provide the guidelines and AI will do the rest.

I guess everybody needs to get into healthcare if they want to be able to get a job.
 
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The trades are likely to be among the better protected jobs for now, but there will still be far too many people competing for work.

Wages for jobs that AI does not replace are likely to decline, as a larger pool of job seekers will be willing to accept lower pay just to secure employment.
 
Gardenlover said:
The trades are likely to be among the better protected jobs for now, but there will still be far too many people competing for work.

Wages for jobs that AI does not replace are likely to decline, as a larger pool of job seekers will be willing to accept lower pay just to secure employment.
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The problem with "trades" is, manual labor has been stigmatized. Most young people these days don't want to do construction work or become mechanics, or learn HVAC. They want to work at computers and become social media influencers.
 
RambleTamble said:
The problem with "trades" is, manual labor has been stigmatized. Most young people these days don't want to do construction work or become mechanics, or learn HVAC. They want to work at computers and become social media influencers.
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Most of the old fashioned ‘bull work’ is gone.

Today most skilled trades are a blend of manual labor and computerized skills.

IMO the trades need a bit of public relations to help young folks see what the day to day really looks like for a skilled trade worker making a comfortable six figure income.
 
Mitch86 said:
I noticed that Amazon will have a big layoff. They are improving their Artificial Intelligence so much that they may be able to run their business with a lot fewer employees. This could happen all over in thousands of corporations around the world. Human workers may become OBSOLETE!
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It's really hard to say what will happen. Over the last 100 years or more, there have been countless labor-saving devices invented (Chainsaws, washing machines, microwaves, computers, automobiles, nail guns, and many more), and yet the unemployment rate has remained fairly constant (Around 5%), except for spikes during recessions, depressions, and Covid. Somehow the workforce has shown remarkable resilience.

Before cars, there wasn't auto repair shops, and body and fender repair, and before commercial flight, there wasn't air traffic control, stewardesses, pilots, TSA agents, etc... New jobs are always created with new technology. Will this be different? No one really knows. As with many challenges in the past, it's best to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
 
bobcat said:
New jobs are always created with new technology.
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With AI used to replace much of the time consuming grunt work of writing software, there's a good chance we'll see a lot more software offered to the public and new software companies trying to compete with each other -- each with their own version of AI generated applications. That could be a good thing.

We'll see a rise in instructional organizations that teach students how to prompt AI to give it what you want, although much of that could be accomplished with AI generated documentation and instruction.

That said, AI is going to eliminate far more jobs than it will create. Combine it with robotics and humans will become nearly irrelevant, other than for purchasing the products created by AI run manufacturing. But if there are no jobs, people won't have money to buy anything. What then?
 
Long term, humans don't need to be working all their lives as we in this unique age do. In this era, our economic systems depend on us working so. There also does not need to be 8 billion people in our human world. IMO less than one billion across our planet Earth long term given science, technology, and world-wide transportation, could make our planet a paradise within the universe.

Much of what our work provides could be done by machines and automation leaving we creatures to enjoy, learn, research, explore, play sports, be happy and have fun in this amazing blue water world of organic DNA life. Just think if anyone could go skiing or surfing anytime in ideal locales, or visit myriad amazing places that today only few have resources for.

So yes, ideally sometime in the future, few of us will need to work for money just as is shown in the fictional Star Trek world. But we will have to give up our consumption and endless growth and development mindset and embrace long term sustainability. We will need to give up some level of material greed, interpersonal competition, and warmongering. The near future transition period won't be easy, while not doing so will be irresponsibly catastrophic for our race and our probably rare planet within this universe.
 
Mitch86 said:
I noticed that Amazon will have a big layoff. They are improving their Artificial Intelligence so much that they may be able to run their business with a lot fewer employees. This could happen all over in thousands of corporations around the world. Human workers may become OBSOLETE!
Click to expand...
To me the term Artificial Intelligence or that cute term AI is a world of deception. There isn't anything artificial about it, it's not synthetic. There are many techno wizards that have participated in developing computer code so sophisticated that one program or hardware provides input to another program or hardware to drive speed, or accuracy etc.

In a distribution center a scanner that can read bar codes at greater every angle, or drive a device that orients a box so that its lable can be read is not AI. That type of innovation may replace a person that mindlessly turns boxes by hand. All of a sudden we have taken the world of systems analysis driven program or hardware development is labelled as a boogey man.

Our education systems have failed miserably. The population of techno wizards is very small compared to the number of persons moving through the education system without the basic knowledge skills to be productive. Let's quit being afraid of that illusive AI monster and do something about the real issue.
 
I look forward to the day when newscasters are AI generated. We'll be able to choose what they look and sound like, and what kind of personalities they have. We'll be able to choose from professorial types or airhead blonds -- whatever you want them to look like will be of your choosing.

The news itself will be aggregated from a variety of sources. Reporters will still need to do on the scene reporting, but they'll just enter the information into a database from which AI will generate news stories and the AI newscaster of your choosing will tell you about it. You'll be able to ask follow-up questions to gain deeper knowledge.

Of course, the problem with that is, AI could easily generate stories with fabricated videos and interviews, so we won't know what's truly real. We'll need to have AI bots policing the stories to tell us what's real and what's fabricated.

Should be interesting. 🤣
 
RambleTamble said:
With AI used to replace much of the time consuming grunt work of writing software, there's a good chance we'll see a lot more software offered to the public and new software companies trying to compete with each other -- each with their own version of AI generated applications. That could be a good thing.

We'll see a rise in instructional organizations that teach students how to prompt AI to give it what you want, although much of that could be accomplished with AI generated documentation and instruction.

That said, AI is going to eliminate far more jobs than it will create. Combine it with robotics and humans will become nearly irrelevant, other than for purchasing the products created by AI run manufacturing. But if there are no jobs, people won't have money to buy anything. What then?
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You may very well be right, and I think there is good reason to be concerned, but if I were a betting man, I would never bet against humans. We have the unique ability to improvise, to think outside the box, and imagine things that have never been, and if the past tells us anything, it is that humans don't give up easily. Each one of us has a lifetime of experiences to draw from when facing ambiguous situations. We have curiosity to try new and novel things, and we can be very adventurous.

I remember an episode of Star Trek where Captain Kirk was replaced by a thinking machine that was able to take control of the whole ship. The captain was even referred to as Captain Dunsel, which was supposed to mean that part of a ship that served no useful purpose. Well, Kirk felt lost and not needed, which greatly disturbed him. All went fine for a while until the master mind computer mistook a drill for an actual attack and blew up the other participating ship. Anyway, the great M-5 Multitronic unit refused to give up control, and Kirk had to use his imagination and learned skills to subdue it. Maybe we will have to ol' Shatner around for a few more years just in case.
 
Once AI can manufacture other AI driven devices than humans may experience an explosion of unemployment all over the planet. Then we may see a soaring experience of wars and revolutions. Millions of unemployed, dissatisfied humans will start to wage more wars and revolutions. A glimpse of the future is China where married couples are now limited to ONE child per family.

Eventually, AI driven factories will manufacture other AI units without any humans necessary. At that time AI will produce their own weapons of war and possibly totally exterminate all humans on planet Earth. This problem may have already happened on thousands of planets throughout the universe. Humans may then become OBSOLETE!
 
bobcat said:
You may very well be right, and I think there is good reason to be concerned, but if I were a betting man, I would never bet against humans. We have the unique ability to improvise, to think outside the box, and imagine things that have never been, and if the past tells us anything, it is that humans don't give up easily. Each one of us has a lifetime of experiences to draw from when facing ambiguous situations. We have curiosity to try new and novel things, and we can be very adventurous.

I remember an episode of Star Trek where Captain Kirk was replaced by a thinking machine that was able to take control of the whole ship. The captain was even referred to as Captain Dunsel, which was supposed to mean that part of a ship that served no useful purpose. Well, Kirk felt lost and not needed, which greatly disturbed him. All went fine for a while until the master mind computer mistook a drill for an actual attack and blew up the other participating ship. Anyway, the great M-5 Multitronic unit refused to give up control, and Kirk had to use his imagination and learned skills to subdue it. Maybe we will have to ol' Shatner around for a few more years just in case.
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Yep, we're still going to need the human factor for many things. Like with software, AI might be able to write the code, but it will never be able to design a user interface that's user friendly because it can't use software the way a human does. It can't simulate how a human will interact with the software because it can't feel. It might be able to mimic emotions to some extent, but it's extremely limited.

Well, on second thought, it might be able to simulate emotions by looking at enough examples and using GUI design manuals as references.

There's really not a whole lot that AI and robotics won't be able to do.
 
Rider77 said:
To me the term Artificial Intelligence or that cute term AI is a world of deception. There isn't anything artificial about it, it's not synthetic. There are many techno wizards that have participated in developing computer code so sophisticated that one program or hardware provides input to another program or hardware to drive speed, or accuracy etc.

In a distribution center a scanner that can read bar codes at greater every angle, or drive a device that orients a box so that its lable can be read is not AI. That type of innovation may replace a person that mindlessly turns boxes by hand. All of a sudden we have taken the world of systems analysis driven program or hardware development is labelled as a boogey man.

Our education systems have failed miserably. The population of techno wizards is very small compared to the number of persons moving through the education system without the basic knowledge skills to be productive. Let's quit being afraid of that illusive AI monster and do something about the real issue.
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When u say the real issue...do you mean education issues? Just curious because of your interesting post. :)
 
David777 said:
Much of what our work provides could be done by machines and automation leaving we creatures to enjoy, learn, research, explore, play sports, be happy and have fun in this amazing blue water world of organic DNA life. Just think if anyone could go skiing or surfing anytime in ideal locales, or visit myriad amazing places that today only few have resources for.
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That assumes that resources are shared, right now it looks like all the profit from the work of AI will just go to a few people, and it is very up in the air whether the majority of people will be left out completely, or perhaps very slightly supported through a universal income system.

Theoretically we could all vote to limit what jobs we would allow to be done by AI and what jobs we want to require to be done by humans. I put the chance of that as around 0.000000001%

I think an AI-drone/robot police person would be a big advance, they wouldn't have to worry about being shot by the driver of a car they stopped and the driver wouldn't have to be worried about being dragged out and arrested for laughing (saw a YouTube of that).
 
Indeed, the world today can in no way currently move towards an ideal materialism free society or non-economic driven system. However, it is time to as a race of intelligent entities to figure out how to move gradually in that direction while taking care of everyone who has got on the train. No one born signed up for it while our world and its poweful societies have since civilizations arose, have done much to cause pain and misery for innocents.

In the far idealist future people that want to work on their own projects and community projects, hobbies, writing projects, etc, will still do so, its just that because material goods and services will be created cheaply on demand for whomever, whatever, everyone will be reasonably provided for without being involved in an economic influenced work for money materialist societal system. There are so many honorable, constructive fun interesting, etc things, people could do besides the kind of employment for money jobs humans perform today that should occupy their time. Heck, some could just do visual art without being productive. Others might spend a lifetime looking at stars and galaxies in the Universe.

Maybe some would just be unmotivated, lazy, unproductive or in some useless drug state. Society would need to figure out such issues. And in any case figuring out how to limit population at about 1 billion constantly would be an issue some experts will need to address in a practical and as fair a way as is possible. We humans as intelligent beings able to control our own destiny by purposeful decision making, regardless of how good being natural feels or our family communal history, cannot keep procreating like rabbits without limitations.
 
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Mitch86 said:
I noticed that Amazon will have a big layoff. They are improving their Artificial Intelligence so much that they may be able to run their business with a lot fewer employees. This could happen all over in thousands of corporations around the world. Human workers may become OBSOLETE!
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that's because we've become too smart for our own good!
 

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