It's the finance and legal professions that are most at risk with the current level of AI and machine learning. Contrary to what most finance and legal professionals believe, there is low creativity in their vocations - and that is exactly what AI and machine learning does best: wrote procedural operations from a complex set of rules. This will be very interesting to see how our "captains of corruption" (the fucks that actually run this planet) react when they are pushed to the curb.
No they will not.<p>The amount of effort required to shrink real knowledge worker jobs is astronomical compared to simply driving a car. After the singularity, fine. But even that will require a massive, massive amount of work. The low hanging fruit for increasing knowledge work output is in Gattaca not AI.
FWIW, this sounds a lot like Schumpeterian (or Marxist) "creative destruction" at play. The idea of "creative destruction" is an interesting one, and it's an area of much debate in regards to the long-term viability of the capitalist model.<p>The key idea of "creative destruction" is basically that technological innovation both creates (duh) and destroys (in that it destroys economic value based on pre-innovation technologies). And since - in Schumpeter's view anyway - capitalism depends on a constant flow of new innovations and entrerpeneurship, we have a constant state of churn where value is being "creatively destroyed".<p>I started reading Josesph Schumpeter's <i>Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy</i>[2] a while back but got distracted and never finished it - but based on what I know so far, I recommend it. What I'm not yet clear on, from my limited reading of the original source material, and a few related works, is exactly how bullish (or not) Schumpeter was on capitalism. Which reminds me, I really want to go back and finish the book, as I find this topic both fascinating and important.<p>[1]: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction</a><p>[2]:<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism,_Socialism_and_Democracy" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism,_Socialism_and_Democ...</a>
"Moore’s law—that the computing power available for a given price doubles about every 18 months—continues to apply. "<p>Then why are Intel desktop CPU's not getting any better the last 3 years?
While I doubt there will be some Reverse Big Bang of creative destruction, it's tough to argue that the need for knowledge workers is being reduced. In theory, even Excel reduces the need for knowledge workers by allowing a single analyst to produce more output that an analyst with graph paper.<p>My question to HN-ers, as people who write code that further reduces the need for knowledge workers, how should we feel about our role in contributing to a Vonnegut-style dystopia?<p>Indifference? If not us, someone else will do it. And job loss isn't really a net loss. It's just capital reallocating to another area.<p>Pride? Automation brings advances down in price point creating a better standard of living for all.<p>Something else?<p>edit: The "need" for knowledge workers isn't reduced. I stated that incorrectly. I meant that fewer knowledge workers are needed for a given task or given output. Clearly, the need for knowledge workers as a pct of the workforce is higher than in the past and will continue to do so until the machines take over.
I don't see AI leading the reduction jobs available to knowledge workers for a while yet. Though knowledge workers will continue to loose their jobs. But this will simply be the result of specialized software (not what I call AI).
Unfortunately, the world is very imperfect and there's a huge amount of things that need improvement. To quote M King Hubbert: "Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know." I don't see work running out.