AI update: Job complexity and job impacts

Artificial intelligence (AI) is being rapidly adopted and used by businesses. The electric power grid is projected to have a darned hard time keeping up. IEEE Spectrum reports about measuring exponential increases in the ability of AI to complete increasingly complex tasks. The rate of increase is scary -- AI doubles its capacity every 7 months.

There are solid reasons to persevere in attempting to gauge the performance of LLMs [AI platforms]. 

That was a key motivation behind work at Model Evaluation & Threat Research (METR). The organization, based in Berkeley, Calif., “researches, develops, and runs evaluations of frontier AI systems’ ability to complete complex tasks without human input.” In March, the group released a paper called Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks, which reached a startling conclusion: According to a metric it devised, the capabilities of key LLMs are doubling every seven months. This realization leads to a second conclusion, equally stunning: By 2030, the most advanced LLMs should be able to complete, with 50 percent reliability, a software-based task that takes humans a full month of 40-hour workweeks. And the LLMs would likely be able to do many of these tasks much more quickly than humans, taking only days, or even just hours.

Separately, a WSJ article reports that some CEOs are now speculating about job loss and creation as AI continues to be adopted and used. The article says that some executives are predicting that artificial intelligence will cause massive white-collar job losses, marking a shift from earlier reluctance to acknowledge the potential scale of potential disruption. Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, recently stated at the Aspen Ideas Festival that AI could replace "literally half of all white-collar workers" in the United States, emphasizing the sweeping impact expected across many professional roles.

I asked Pxy to assess current AI-related job loss and creation assessments. That analysis was not so scary with overall job impacts mostly projected to be small and positive.

Some tech leaders, such as OpenAI's COO, argue that job loss concerns are overstated. However according to the WSJ article, the prevailing sentiment among CEOs is that major white collar job losses is likely and imminent.

From all of the foregoing, it is not clear if job impacts will be large or small, or more good than bad. That is not very helpful. 👎

Despite concerns about jobs, it is very likely that AI will continue to improve and take on tasks that it could not previously do. Given the political climate of deregulation and intense anti-government sentiment, it looks like the free markets will do whatever they want, regardless of jobs. We will just have to live with the consequences, good, bad or neutral. 

By Germaine: The Oracle with the cloudy crystal ball