I thought Gates' take on the human relational aspects of AI to be thoughtful, but I am surprised that his analysis on the economic and jobs aspect of AI offers little more than the party line. Every other technological advance that improved productivity (Industrial Revolution, etc.) has resulted in the loss of some jobs but the creation of jobs in other areas and an overall increase in the standard of living (although admittedly not uniformly distributed across the population). Why will AI be different?

Because any job it creates it can automate as well, for example a lot of people here think that understanding how AI models operate internally or being up to date with the latest models will save them from making their jobs obsolete, it will not, AI itself will be better than you at picking the next model to deploy, at testing the speed of reasoning that beats it's own. Anything it will need to learn it will learn it faster than you with the ability to handle much more complexity than your brain.

If you believe the hype then this isn't a transformation like, say, the power loom replacing handmade textiles. Both AI boosters and doomers are envisioning a future where almost all white collar work is obsolete. It isn't just one industry, its broad swaths labour across all segments of the economy.

Gates hinted at it, but let me expand on why this time it really is different.

If you compare the broad characteristics of the new jobs created to the old jobs displaced by technology historically, they are the same every time: they required higher-level (a) cognitive (b) technical or (c) social skills.

That is it. There is no other dimension to upskill along.

And LLMs are good at all three, probably better than most people already by many metrics. (Yes even social; their infinite patience is the ultimate advantage, and while sycophancy is harmful fixing it is easy.)

Plus AI is improving extremely rapidly. Which means it is probably advancing faster than most people can upskill.

An increasingly accepted premise is that AI can displace junior employees but will need senior employees to steer it. Consider the ratio of junior to senior employees, and how long it takes for the former to grow into the latter. That is the volume of displacement and timeframe to upskill we're looking at, made worse by the fact that if juniors are not hired they likely won't get a chance to upskill at all.

Never in history have we had a technology that was so versatile and rapidly advancing that it could displace a large portion of existing jobs, as well as many new jobs that would be created.

Do you think we could have handled Industrial Revolution with more care by offering a soft landing for those affected? I don’t think he’s disagreeing that this technology can be used for net good.

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> Why will AI be different?

Because the pioneers haven't just been saying, but are screaming the quiet part out loud.