From the time when I was a wee lad watching the exchanges between Dave Bowman and HAL 9000 in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” I knew computers were going to be trouble. And I was right. They are trouble–or will be soon enough. No, I’m not talking about that iPhone that you can’t put down and that is slowly sapping your will to live, eat, or open the blinds. And I’m not talking about Alexa, who is probably listening to all of your conversations and intimate moments so Amazon can monetize you to market stuff you never even knew you wanted and probably still don’t.
No, I’m talking about AI. Sure, it’s all fun and games as long as some little droid is beeping and booping cutely along and helping you smuggle plans for the Death Star or hide your lightsaber. But what about when you pass one on its way in while you’re on your way out the door with your pink slip and a copy paper box full of your personal effects?
It’s not as far away as you may think. Yes, having AI run a McDonald’s may be more efficient, and teach all those protestors a lesson about screaming over a $15 wage, but the time may come when you are cleaning out your desk to make way for something that doesn’t even need a desk.
You probably already know about Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, or ChatGPT for short. Aside from being able to help lazy students come up with a term paper, it is also able to take and pass tests. That’s all well and good so long as it stays at the high school and maybe the college level. But ChatGPT could be destined for graduate studies as well. NBC News notes that the ChatGPT AI recently underwent an experiment by Professor Christian Terwiesch at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Terwiesch was working on a research paper: “Would Chat GPT3 Get a Wharton MBA? A Prediction Based on Its Performance in the Operations Management Course.” The bot scored somewhere between a B- and B. Terwiesch said that the thing did an amazing job, adding that it is “remarkably good at modifying its answers in response to human hints.”
So a bot produced a paper good enough to get it admitted to a graduate program. That should give one pause. My last job was writing content for websites. I am willing to bet that my former coworkers are sweating a bit right now, since a bot that can write a paper for an MBA would make quick work out of website content. And bots don’t need family leave, vacations, or insurance or retirement benefits. And if it can replace short-order cooks and human content writers, it will soon be able to replace just about anyone. Maybe even you.
Big deal, you say, I’m in the trades. Well, it may not be much longer before you can’t fall back on your blue-collar roots. Feast your eyes on Atlas:
Atlas is not a man in a suit or the product of CGI. Atlas is a prototype bipedal robot created by Boston Dynamics. Company member Scott Kuindersma told The Verge that while the video has been edited to remove mistakes, it represents a new phase in the development of Atlas. He said, “We’re not just thinking about how to make the robot move dynamically through its environment, like we did in Parkour and Dance. Now, we’re starting to put Atlas to work and think about how the robot should be able to perceive and manipulate objects in its environment.” He added:
A humanoid robot will be well suited for applications like manufacturing, factory work, constructions — [places] where a humanoid form factor actually fits very well, with its bi-manual nature, its ability to stand upright, move heavy things around, and work in spaces that were traditionally designed for humans to do work in.”
Boston Dynamics has said that a robot that can work alongside humans is still a long way off. While such a robot would be extremely expensive at first, the price will come down, and then could be appealing to a company that is looking to cut costs in the payroll. But I have a feeling that we have reached a point where the breakthroughs will be coming faster and faster, and “a long way off” may be much nearer than we want to believe.
Related: Trust the Artificial Intelligence, Part One
Atlas is cool — no doubt about it. And I’m sure that people like Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, and Mark Zuckerberg will find them useful and even fun. But Gates, Zuckerberg, Schwab, and their ilk don’t need a job to survive. We do. But at that point, you may well be lying limply on your couch, zoning out 24/7. That’s assuming, of course, that the powers that be don’t take a cue from Canada and decide it isn’t worth it to house, clothe, and feed you. In the future, you might not just own nothing and like it, you may be nothing
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