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As someone who believes AI will completely eliminate humans I wish I was could only be worried about job security.

But to answer your question, AI will ultimately eliminate every job in the sense that if you believe AI will eventually be able do any task, and do it for cheaper than a human labourer, then there would be no reason for you to ever pay a human labourer.

The best analogy here is probably how the industrial revolution made the horse redundant. It's not that horses can't be used for physically demanding work anymore, it's simply that it's cheaper in practically every imaginable case to use a machine so horses are no longer used.

Of course, machines didn't replace the use of horses in all industries over night and we should expect the same will happen with AI. I'll assume this is what you're asking.

It seems rather obviously to me that knowledge workers will be the easiest to replace with AI – especially knowledge workers who work purely digitally. The hardest work to replace will likely be physical labour since robotics is still very far from biological sophistication required to be competent at many physical jobs. And even when it starts to become competent it's going to take a while to build the robots to replace labourers and do so at a competitive cost.

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rboyd 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I think it’s already having an effect on labor jobs too, and will continue to ramp.

Not because of robots (but that will come soon enough), but because you can take a picture of leaky plumbing or a home maintenance task and upload it and ask for step by step directions on how to DIY.

I’ve saved thousands doing this already this month alone.

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Glawen 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Is this really a trend ? It surely is helping a DIY enthusiast to perform a new task, but I doubt it will convert a non manual labour enclined person to do the task. Also these ready made DIY how-tos work for a certain country only and can hardly be made global. E.g Most of american made how-tos make no sense for someone living in Europe

	▲	kadushka 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		My wife used ChatGPT to fix a garage door opener while I was out. Uploaded a picture, and followed the instructions. She's not a manual labor inclined person by any stretch and knew nothing about garage door openers.

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didgetmaster 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

How many people call a plumber, HVAC, or auto repairman because they don't want to fix it themselves vs don't know how to fix it?

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kadushka 2 days ago | parent [-]

I'm guessing the overlap of those who know how to fix it with those willing to pay is not that large.

	▲	didgetmaster 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That could be because those who really know how to fix it, have a pretty good idea how much expertise and effort the fix requires. They are less willing to be overcharged or have unnecessary options added.

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kadushka 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

the industrial revolution made the horse redundant

I love this analogy. People hope they'll be like carriage drivers who transitioned into driving cars. Not this time. On the other hand, I'm not sure how this transition actually affected the horses — they weren't killed off or driven to extinction, were they?

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raj7desai 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The horse analogy helped me a lot to understand this better. Over a longish timeline most jobs disappear in their current form & generate other jobs which we aren't even aware of rn