Will AI take human jobs? Yes. But which ones?

AI is coming to take up your jobs. Well, it is real. But the question is, is it your job, when, and what can you (or I) do about this?

From the time ChatGPT became mainstream, the chatter has become deafening. Doomsday reports have proliferated, and almost all are now feeling engaged in the discussions, If not concerned, and worse still — scared.

How much of this is true? Even the best don’t have an answer, but we can all try.

If we want to understand whether machines can replace humans, we need to first understand how we define humans. And it is not that easy.

A question to ChatGPT comes with the following buckets:

ü Biological and Evolutionary Roots

ü Cognitive Abilities

ü Social Structure and Culture

ü Language and Communication

ü Moral and Ethical Capacity

ü Self Awareness and Consciousness

I have appended the entire answer, but a glance will show many of what we talk about here is also there with animals, at least some animals. Like languages, communication, communities, norms, families, consciousness, morals, and many more. So where the difference is really?

There have been attempts to define humanity, though possibly most of them are open to debate. A sizeable part of the world is still not explored, and a large part is not understood. So all definitions of today may well need to be revisited in the future.

Two of these attempts are worth noting. The first one was when Pioneer 10 and 11 were launched in 1972 and 1973, followed by Voyager 1 and 2 launched in 1977. They were designed to go far beyond the solar system, and built-in that was a need to communicate about what our planet is in case they come across any other civilization.

So what was communicated, and how? It’s fascinating.

Both the Pioneers carried identical plaques to communicate our civilization if there is a meeting with extraterrestrial life. It depicted the solar system, the hydrogen atom, and a bunch of pulsars to locate the Earth through triangulation. But the key element was a nude figure of a man and a woman, mapped about the spacecraft to give a sense of their size.

Advised by Eric Burgess, championed and designed by Carl Sagan (along with Frank Drake), and with artwork by Linda Salzman Sagan, it was the first attempt by humans to communicate with intelligence outside our planet.

The human figures faced controversy, including nudity — can you believe it? But the more serious ones were the non-representation of race diversity, and the male raising the hand rather than the woman being a representation of dominance.

Lets to move to the Golden Records which were sent with Voyager 1 and 2 in 1977. What did it contain? Well, it has 116 images (of mathematical and scientific interests, of human culture), photographs, natural sounds (surf, wind, thunder, and animals), greetings in 55 ancient and modern languages, human sounds (footsteps, laughter — for example), messaged by individuals (oral and written), and music.

This is of course something which was sent out almost five decades back, and there will surely be something very different in case it is done today. But one thing is clear between what Pioneer and Voyager carried, much of the content is shared by humans with other life forms. Few things stand out, like culture, music, photographs, images, speech, and of course the science behind the spacecraft, and everything associated with it.

Let us take a pause. I think before the ChatGPT invaded our collective consciousness, if I was asked how to define a human, I would most probably taken a clinical approach as below and made a list. Of conditions necessary and sufficient conditions.

WHAT MAKES US HUMAN

Necessary Conditions

Birth and death

Grow

Breath

Community

Build exigency

Communicate

Kill each other

Language

Build

Problem-solving

Sufficient Conditions

Reading/ Writing/ Speaking

Creativity/ Critical thinking

Humor/ Wit/ Pun

Culture/ Music/ Poetry/ Painting/ Photography

Curation and Documentation of knowledge

The question however is, with AI showcasing new capabilities every day, can we still have sufficient conditions sufficient much longer?

AI is now making music, writing scripts, generating movies — almost anything that we call creation. If we remember the early days of the Large Language Models (LLMs), AI was planning conspiracy, firing the boss, or breaking the marriage. Guard rails have reduced these, but the capabilities are there and only have gotten worse. And can well be brought out if someone with the right keys decides to.

Cases are there where AI is trying to hire a human to do things it can’t do. And it is not even remotely the craziest one. And be aware, that we are just seeing a tip of the current AI capabilities, much is happening behind the walls of the companies developing it.

Things are moving fast. Unlike the previous generations of models, LLMs are self-learning and so many who are developing also are not sure what they are learning, or how. Everyone is of course talking of potential bad influences, but also claiming in the same breath that they are the good ones and should reach the post first to save the world.

The question of “Being Human” is getting more complex every day. Already the voice and images are realistically cloned. Soon humanoids too will be there, behaving exactly like humans. And for the rough edges, we can always depend on human confirmation biases, whenever something touches our emotions we often park our logic.

So what leaves humans with? Emotions are getting cloned too, and at least for the short introduction it already can be faked. It will get worse.

In a world where knowledge is getting consolidated, and now with AI also aiding the same group who are developing it, the time has come for us to define the boundaries. Something which only humans can do, and should do — to survive with dignity and independence in an AI world.

I think deeply of areas where this will be the case, and unfortunately, I am drawing a blank. The only area that comes to my mind is imagination.

AI models depend on the knowledge till now to create content, so they can’t think of something that is blue sky. For example, I assume that AI can’t think of the existence of the Gravitational Fields like Einstein, as it is a completely imaginative exercise.

Or the first person who thought of the wheel as a mode of transport, or the idea of a power that controls us. While AI can do a development on these ideas, and do a pretty good job of it, it will could not have been the one who came up with that thinking. Because these thoughts had no past.

Now this too can also change. I understand we have already mapped the brain of a mosquito, with 80,000 synapses. With sufficient computing power, we can reach the 100 billion neurons of human brains too. But still, I think it will remain a challenge to build something completely novel.

So back to the question we started with. What jobs AI will take?

Logically all of them. Tomorrow, or the day after, or someday in the future. Except for the job of imagining.

That is what I think. What do you think?

Appendix — 1

Who are humans?

ChatGPT said:

Humans, scientifically known as Homo sapiens, are highly social, intelligent primates that belong to the family Hominidae. They are distinguished by advanced cognitive abilities, complex language, culture, and the use of symbolic thought and tools. Here are some unique characteristics of humans:

1. Biological and Evolutionary Roots: Humans share a common ancestry with other great apes, evolving around 300,000 years ago in Africa. This evolutionary journey involved adaptation to various environments, leading to bipedalism (walking on two legs), which freed the hands for tool use and manipulation.

2. Cognitive Abilities: Human brains are highly developed, enabling abstract reasoning, creativity, problem-solving, and self-reflection. This cognitive capacity allows for complex language, art, and culture and the ability to shape environments to suit human needs.

3. Social Structure and Culture: Humans form intricate social structures that vary across cultures. These structures include families, communities, and societies organized around shared norms, values, and customs. Culture plays a significant role in human life, encompassing religion, art, science, technology, and social behaviors.

4. Language and Communication: Humans use sophisticated languages, enabling detailed and complex communication. This ability is unique in the animal kingdom and allows humans to share ideas, pass down knowledge, and collaborate on large scales.

5. Moral and Ethical Capacity: Humans often grapple with questions of right and wrong and have developed diverse systems of ethics, morality, and law to navigate complex social and individual issues.

6. Self-Awareness and Consciousness: Humans possess a high degree of self-awareness and a sense of identity, which includes an understanding of one’s existence, mortality, and place in the universe.

In short, humans are characterized by their advanced intellect, social behavior, and adaptability, which enable them to create complex societies and continually transform their environments.