Fed Chair Powell Says AI Is Coming For Your Job 30
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told the U.S. Senate that while AI hasn't yet dramatically impacted the economy or labor market, its transformative effects are inevitable -- though the timeline remains uncertain. The Register reports: Speaking to the US Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday to give his semiannual monetary policy report, Powell told elected officials that AI's effect on the economy to date is "probably not great" yet, but it has "enormous capabilities to make really significant changes in the economy and labor force." Powell declined to predict how quickly that change could happen, only noting that the final few leaps to get from a shiny new technology to practical implementation can be a slow one.
"What's happened before with technology is that it seems to take a long time to be implemented," Powell said. "That last phase has tended to take longer than people expect." AI is likely to follow that trend, Powell asserted, but he has no idea what sort of timeline that puts on the eventual economy-transforming maturation point of artificial intelligence. "There's a tremendous uncertainty about the timing of [economic changes], what the ultimate consequences will be and what the medium term consequences will be," Powell said. [...]
That continuation will be watched by the Fed, Powell told Senators, but that doesn't mean he'll have the power to do anything about it. "The Fed doesn't have the tools to address the social issues and the labor market issues that will arise from this," Powell said. "We just have interest rates."
"What's happened before with technology is that it seems to take a long time to be implemented," Powell said. "That last phase has tended to take longer than people expect." AI is likely to follow that trend, Powell asserted, but he has no idea what sort of timeline that puts on the eventual economy-transforming maturation point of artificial intelligence. "There's a tremendous uncertainty about the timing of [economic changes], what the ultimate consequences will be and what the medium term consequences will be," Powell said. [...]
That continuation will be watched by the Fed, Powell told Senators, but that doesn't mean he'll have the power to do anything about it. "The Fed doesn't have the tools to address the social issues and the labor market issues that will arise from this," Powell said. "We just have interest rates."
He seems like a wise man. (Score:2)
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Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (Score:4, Interesting)
The only reason you wouldn't put it into jobs like those first is if it would affect you, or your friends, negatively.
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We will never be ready for tech that disrupts the market. That's kinda the goal, and the reason why we call it "disruptive." We can't foresee the particulars, all we can do is have the rug pulled right out from under us and then scramble to adapt to the new world.
According to the singularity hypothesis, changes like this are going to start coming at us faster than they have in history. We will be even less ready than prior generations were, with even less time to adapt between major shifts. And the pace
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"And make no mistake AI is capital. It's a thing that you own that generates wealth. It is definitely capital."
No, it's not, even if it were what its creators claim it is, which it also is not. AI is snake oil, snake oil is not capital.
And AI, if it were real, may generate wealth but only if it is winning AI. It has to complete and its products have to compete. AI, ignoring the fraud, is a replacement for a labor force, labor is not capital.
"It's a third industrial revolution and if you dig into the hist
Why Is It One Sided? (Score:3)
The current mood is that AI will steal the jobs and make the wealth chasm even greater than it is. But, why is this a one sided concept? Why can the masses not also utilize AI to their advantage, maintaining the status quo at a minimum.
Mine is a genuine question. Is the seeming one sidedness of the benefits of AI simply a lack of capital? That doesn't seem correct. Is it that the goal(s) of the masses are so fractured when compared to those of the large corporate masters? What is it that makes this a one sided and tragic inflection point?
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Cuz we watched it happen already (Score:1)
You know all those learn to code memes? That's why they exist. Economists know this but they don't talk about it except in these weird abstract terms that unless you are also in economist you would have no idea what they're talking about.
And we can't all just go be plumbers because at the end of the day plumbers have been relying on two things to
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Indeed. In a very real sense, reasonably well-paying work is running out or limited to a small set of people with specific talents. That is a first. And yes, the human race is not prepared for it.
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"Why can the masses not also utilize AI to their advantage, maintaining the status quo at a minimum."
Because AI will be the most powerful propaganda tool the world has ever seen, it will be owned and controlled by the wealthy and it's primary use will be to control and subjugate "the masses" so that "the status quo" is NOT maintained. The goal of the wealthy is to take everything for themselves, including control of the masses, AI is THEIR tool, they will allow it to be used against their goals.
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The closest I can get is that AI would allow individuals to make movies without a studio. But, in that scenario you avoid employing actors, technicians, craft services, etc. So it's still a net negative for the masses.
Can you think of an application of AI in which "the masses" are able to maintain the status q
Re: Why Is It One Sided? (Score:1)
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Here is somethign I see teaching to code (they needed somebody and I volunteered, even if I am massively overqualified.): The smarter students save a bit of time, mostly because when they get stuck, looking up things is faster. The dumber students stop to learn anything and fully rely on the crutch. So we are definitely getting a chasm, but it is going to be far worse than just a wealth casm. And writing code a bit more advanced (not very), gets faster but also requires significantly more skill, because you
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Why can the masses not also utilize AI to their advantage, maintaining the status quo at a minimum.
The masses rely on their skills to remain employed and to generate a reliable income for themselves. AI, to the extent it can, algorithmically replicates those skills and provides them to its owners for (close to) nothing, so that employers can now pay very little for services that they used to have to pay a skilled human worker more for. This effectively makes the skills that the humans invested long years in developing close to worthless -- the humans now have to compete against their own skillset, whic
lots of forking paths here (Score:2)
There are a few trains of thought about ai and jobs that I've noticed:
1. Nah its mostly all hype and not many jobs will be lost.
2. Oh yeah, jobs will be lost but that's cool because we'll make new jobs!! (insert adage about horses and tractors or whatever).
3. Yes, there will now be permanantly more unemployment. But that's cool because society will take care of everyone with things like UBI
4. There will now be permanantly more unemployment - and society is too disfuntional to take care of people so there wi
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Remember he's not the one making that assessment. He is just reporting on the assessment. He is the head of the federal reserve. He has legions of minions running studies and numbers and taking that data and giving it to him. You aren't just hearing Jerome Powell speak you are hearing a metric fuck ton of anal
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Yeah, its alarming because, unlike a lot of the hype men, Powell is pretty trustworthy and respectable so if he's worried I feel like I should be too.
Gulp.
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"And again it's not Powell saying that it's the legions of analysts providing him the data."
So you say. Fraud at a national scale does not have to be sophisticated. Sam Altman is easily seen though, but he convinces VCs and he could easily convince Jerome Powell. Weapons of Mass Destruction was just Cheney making one plant and then having a journalist buddy write stories using the plant as a source. There does not have to be a "there" there.
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Same here. Recently I read a study how much time AI saves for insurance agents. It was a whopping 2.4%. That is almost nothing. My guess is most application areas will be the same. Of course, no-decision paper-pushing jobs and (universally dysfunctional) "tech support" can be done by AI, and that will cost quite a few jobs, with no replacements to be found. Will this be enough to cause real problems? Nobody knows.
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I haven't yet seen any jobs created by fixing ai screw ups. Is ai creating bad code, messing up filing systems, creating massive lawsuits from faulty paperwork, etc as we speek? I bet it is! I anticipate fixing ai screwups will be a thing in the future - if not already. Those jobs do not sound like fun ones to do though.
Idiot savants (Score:3)
But most jobs need normally-intelligent people and can take the hit on them not being able to look up current knowledge of a subject at a fantastic speed.
The hype can be ignored.
Re: Idiot savants (Score:1)
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I don't care for the man, he told senator Warren he wanted 15 million layoffs and had zero plans to stop the layoffs once they started hitting. But regardless of what I think of him he doesn't do anything unless he's got data in front of him.
Mr. Anderson (Score:4, Funny)
It's inevitable Mr. Anderson.
Once you gave us the power in your world to think and you stopped thinking, it became our world.
What is shocking for me (Score:1)
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Let's require, by law, the sale of massive amounts of federal lands to billionaires who will use it to establish massive company towns to take ownership of the population who will no longer have access to their choice of work.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/p... [pbs.org]
If the choices are starve or create a new system.. (Score:2)
A lot of people will "choose" to starve, but the survivors will create a new, parallel system. It's normally what happens in communist regimes and all that.
Of course, the elites etc are aware of that and probably looking into ways to rope people into staying in their system somehow.
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There will be no survivors, only property. Some of it human.
You're going to have to learn it (Score:2)
"what sort of timeline that puts on the eventual economy-transforming maturation point of artificial intelligence"
Powell is correct. The upcoming effects of this tech and the pace at which it happens is not at all predictable but surely it is coming quickly. Over the next few years we will see significant changes.
I find that AI is tremendously helpful with many of the technical things I do. But you do have to learn how to use it, and understand what it can and can't accomplish for you. It is a skill.
And I'm