2025–2035: THE FUTURE IS ALMOST “UNIMAGINABLE”

AI/Robotics technology is “shaping” and redesigning us at least as much as we are shaping and designing “It”

David Barnhizer

Brilliant human minds are working on the challenges of creating “alternative” intelligence systems that not only have the ability to process information, but interpret experience and generate conceptual structures of decision-making and action. In doing so, those rapidly developing non-human systems are increasingly able to teach themselves and use that new and expanding ability to improve and evolve.

As “deep learning” in AI systems improves and comprehensive lateral and strategic learning based on access to an incredible range of knowledge synthesis and experience unfold within AI systems, we should have no illusions about the ability of such technologies to create conceptual and perceptual structures that continuously improve and expand while internalizing information and awareness far beyond a human’s ability to access, develop, process, interpret and utilize. AI systems that engage in “machine learning” or “deep learning” with the aim on the part of their human designers that they think like humans and teach themselves as they gain experience and data are being worked on around the world and are evolving rapidly. Even now, those already amazing systems are just at the beginning of what they will become.

One fascinating irony is that while we write algorithms and programs that dictate and empower the behavior of AI/Robotics systems in ways we consider to our benefit, we fail to recognize that AI/Robotics technology is “shaping” and “redesigning” us at least as much as we are shaping and designing “It”. In daily life, education, business, social media, politics and numerous other areas of life we humans are adapting to the rapidly evolving technology in fundamental ways. In the process we are changing our own nature. The technological systems of AI/Robotics we thought we controlled are ones in which our amazing inventions are redesigning and effectively “reprogramming” us. Amusing to a degree? Yes. Frightening in its implications on several levels? You better believe it, and it is taking place at what is now a popular idea, at “Warp Speed”.

“We’ve never had to deal with things more intelligent than ourselves before.”

The Google Brain research team of which the 2024 Nobel Prize recipient Geoffrey Hinton was a key part for years, focuses on “deep learning.” Deep learning uses multiple layers of algorithms, called neural networks, to process images and text quickly and efficiently. The idea is for machines to eventually be able to make decisions in the way humans do. A recent interview with Geoffrey Hinton, the “Godfather of AI” indicates the nature of what is occurring.

“Artificial intelligence could wipe out the human race within the next decade, the “Godfather of AI” has warned. Prof Geoffrey Hinton, who has admitted regrets about his part in creating the technology, likened its rapid development to the industrial revolution – but warned the machines could “take control” this time. The 77-year-old British computer scientist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics this year [2024], called for tighter government regulation of AI firms. We’ve never had to deal with things more intelligent than ourselves before [Hinton stated]. “And how many examples do you know of a more intelligent thing being controlled by a less intelligent thing?” … “What we’ve got now is something that’s replacing human intelligence. And just ordinary human intelligence will not be the cutting edge any more, it will be machines.” “‘Godfather of AI’ says it could drive humans extinct in 10 years: Prof Geoffrey Hinton says the technology is developing faster than he expected and needs government regulation”, Tom McArdle, 12/27/24. Telegraph, UK.

It requires no great intellectual leap to conclude that AI systems will learn to surpass humans in many aspects of their intellectual capability and invent new capabilities that are completely outside human abilities. Margi Murphy wrote about this eight years ago and yet we somehow appear incapable of really understanding the nature of what is taking place. She warned:

“Computers are already performing incredible feats – like driving cars and predicting diseases, but their makers say they aren’t entirely in control of their creations. This could have catastrophic consequences for civilisation, tech experts have warned. See, “Humanity is already losing control of artificial intelligence and it could spell disaster for our species: Researchers highlight the 'dark side' of AI and question whether humanity can ever truly understand its most advanced creations”, Margi Murphy, 4/11/17. Sun.

If these developments do not provide sufficient insight into our situation, think about the impacts being experienced with Generative Artificial Intelligence systems and ChatGPT. OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman describes the company’s goals.

"We trained these models to spend more time thinking through problems before they respond, much like a person would," … "Through training, they learn to refine their thinking process, try different strategies, and recognize their mistakes.” “OpenAI says its new models can reason and think ‘much like a person’: Microsoft-backed OpenAI adds new o1 and o1-mini models to ChatGPT”, Breck Dumas, 9/13/24.

Altman has stated that he is focused on researching “Superintelligence”:

"how to build superintelligence" and acquiring the computing power necessary to do so. … Companies like IBM describe AGI as having "an intelligence equal to humans" that "would have a self-aware consciousness that has the ability to solve problems, learn, and plan for the future."

AI/Robotic Impacts on Human Work

What has been called the Fourth Industrial Revolution is a disruptive transformation involving the evolution of amazing systems of artificial intelligence and robotics (AI/Robotics). These systems are already destroying millions of jobs, reducing social mobility and opportunity, and imposing massive financial costs on governments. The situation will further deteriorate over the next ten years.

We are almost entirely unprepared for the economic and social impacts of the structural and personal changes that are upon us. If our economy is not robust and sustained, opportunities for humans will decrease dramatically. As this occurs, social mobility and overall quality of life will be reduced for millions of people, and we will have limited ability to assist growing numbers of our people. The McKinsey Global Institute and Oxford University researchers have predicted massive job loss will occur with 47% to 50% of US jobs eliminated or significantly affected by 2030, and up to 800 million more jobs destroyed worldwide. The International Monetary Fund projects a 60% job loss. Ben Goertzel, a US-Brazilian tech leader and the founder and chief executive of SingularityNET, foresees AI taking over 80% of jobs.

No area of work will be safe. Work opportunities from the most "intellectual" activities to the basic areas of services and labor are being eliminated. This includes a wide range of professional occupations thought of as distinctly “human”—middle management, finance, banking, insurance, medicine, high-tech, transportation, law, even the arts and much more. We have already seen a shift away from agriculture and manufacturing jobs previously filled by human workers. As more jobs become automated, many repetitive and low-skilled jobs will vanish, or shrink into specialized niches with limited work opportunities.

We have agricultural tractor systems, grape pickers, a totally robotized Nissan production plant, “fast food cooks”, servers, bar tenders, health care providers, hotel staff, CPA’s, teachers, and far more that replace human workers, or dramatically reduce the need for human workers. See, for example, Kurt Knutsson’s report on a humanoid-scale robotic system. https://www.foxnews.com/tech/humanoid-robot-gets-work-bmw-assembly-plant. “Humanoid robot gets to work in BMW assembly plant: Figure's AI-powered machine takes on manufacturing tasks, signaling new era in automotive production”, Kurt Knutsson, CyberGuy Report Fox News, 7/29/24.

Brian Hopkins of the market research company Forrester continues the litany of job destruction, warning five years ago that:

“Solutions powered by AI/cognitive technology will displace jobs, with the biggest impact felt in transportation, logistics, customer service and consumer services.” The Forrester analysis adds: “These robots, or intelligent agents, represent a set of AI-powered systems that can understand human behavior and make decisions on our behalf. … For now, they are quite simple, but over the next five years they will become much better at making decisions on our behalf in more complex scenarios.”

This is all now playing out in the context of a set of critical issues. One of the critical challenges is that birth rates are plummeting below replacement levels in virtually all economically developed nations. People are living well beyond historical averages. Pope Francis has called what is occurring as the “Age Curse” for European societies. This phenomenon is taking place in Japan, China, Russia, throughout Western Europe, and in America. He also recently warned that Artificial Intelligence could undermine the foundational institutions of society.

“Gasping for Air”

My vision of what lies ahead is bleak, even to the point of considering the possibility of an “AI Apocalypse”. At least fifty percent of Americans have little or nothing saved for retirement, and the Social Security Trust Fund is projected to be depleted in another decade. Poor, desperate and uneducated migrants are flooding into Western nations at a time when agricultural, construction, health care and home care jobs are being replaced by robotic workers and AI applications. Megan Henney writes about the economic weakening of the middle class, one where many are “gasping for air”.

“A majority of middle-class Americans are experiencing financial hardship that they expect will continue for the rest of their lives, according to a new poll. Findings published by the National True Cost of Living Coalition show that 65% of Americans whose incomes are 200% above the national poverty line – which is about $62,300 for a family of four, often considered middle class – said they are struggling financially. Respondents include those with high school diplomas and graduate degrees as well as blue-and white-collar workers who live in both rural and urban America. …” “Nearly two-thirds of middle-class Americans say they are struggling financially: 'Gasping for air’”, Megan Henney, 6/7/24. Fox Business.

The rapid disappearance of employment opportunities across a diverse spectrum of economic contexts due to advancements in Artificial Intelligence and robotics generates a process that goes beyond Joseph Schumpeter’s idea of “Creative Destruction” and eventual economic rebirth. In the Schumpeterian dynamic, there are cyclical downturns followed by a return to prosperity. With AI/Robotics, however, while some analysts continue to use historical data to assume a recovery will eventually occur, this is not going to happen in the rapidly developing AI world. This is because AI is not a simplistic “tool” but a transformational “event”.

Carl Frey and Michael Osborne indicate, as do others, that unlike other transformations of our economic system, there won’t be a significant “Schumpeterian” employment recovery on the other side of the downturn. They highlight this fact by observing:

“This raises questions about: (a) the ability of human labour to win the race against technology by means of education; and (b) the potential extent of technological unemployment, as an increasing pace of technological progress will cause higher job turnover, resulting in a higher natural rate of unemployment.”

Another analysis concludes that what is occurring with AI/robotics is different from past economic revolutions. In that regard, Howard Schneider asks:

“has the nation's ability to generate well-paying jobs in manufacturing and other sectors been fundamentally scarred by changes in the global economy that may predate the 2008-2009 economic crisis but were more starkly revealed in its aftermath?”

The unfortunate answer to Schneider’s question is Yes!

Schneider explains that we are facing something outside human experience. He warns the result could be:

“a workforce based on large numbers of lower paid workers, with a few highly paid managers, professional and technology workers, and a permanent hollowing out of the middle class.”

Artificial Intelligence and Robotics pose grave threats to jobs and way of life

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee explained a decade ago that rapid technological change has been destroying jobs faster than it is creating them. They indicate this is causing the “stagnation of median income and the growth of inequality in the United States.” That stagnation and growing economic inequality is creating significant stress within American and European societies. See, David Rotman, “How Technology Is Destroying Jobs”, 6/12/13, MIT Technology Review, July/August 2013.

A vital challenge with which we have not even begun to show the ability to cope is that of, as the middle class continues to shrink and lower level work opportunities disappear, where do the displaced and marginalized people go? The answer is that vast numbers of people will find themselves sliding “down” the socio-economic scale. Central to Brynjolfsson’s and McAfee’s analysis is what they call the “great decoupling” of productivity and employment with a highly negative impact on human employment. The timeline is clear.

“[B]eginning in 2000, the lines [between productivity and employment] diverge; productivity continues to rise robustly, but employment suddenly wilts. By 2011, a significant gap appears between the two lines, showing economic growth with no parallel increase in job creation. Brynjolfsson and McAfee call it the “great decoupling.” … Brynjolfsson states: “It’s the great paradox of our era” … “Productivity is at record levels, innovation has never been faster, and yet at the same time, we have a falling median income and we have fewer jobs. People are falling behind because technology is advancing so fast and our skills and organizations aren’t keeping up.” Rotman, id.

We are in a society where many people are mainly or solely qualified to work in repetitive, low-skilled jobs, and are unlikely to suddenly develop the ability to do higher end innovative, technical, scientific and conceptual work. We are already experiencing massive job loss on the basic levels of work and this poses an extreme challenge to the entire society. What do we do with millions of people who have lost the opportunity to engage in the only types of work for which they are qualified or capable?

We are also increasingly experiencing significant job loss in areas of employment considered “safe”, including middle management, medicine and health care, law, academia and much more. The cuts are not as dramatic at this point as in the more basic areas of employment but as AI programs continue to gain greater capabilities and robotic technologies continue to improve performance abilities that are linked to the AI systems we will see increasing job loss in a significant variety of fields.

No Area of Work Is Safe

An interesting phenomenon is that many US businesses are experiencing record profits through large scale cost cutting and the replacement of human workers with AI/Robotics systems. In such competitive contexts high levels of productivity are being achieved with fewer human workers, including the increased elimination of managerial corporate jobs in which many middle class members worked. The tragedy for the nation is that the benefits of that increased productivity and profits are going to a limited class of investors but the higher profits do not enhance returns to most people who are not part of that class, further widening economic inequality.

Use of robots and drones for delivery will eliminate a great deal of the costs of the human workforce including having to pay wages, contribute to and manage pension funds, train new employees, pay for vacations, family leaves and health care. In London self-driving ground drones are being used to make courier deliveries. Amazon has received a patent involving parachute delivery dropped from higher altitude drones equipped with guidance systems to ensure the package hits its target. Amazon continues to expand its tentacles throughout numerous industries, including its recent purchase of the Whole Foods supermarket system—to the utter dismay of pre-existing Whole Foods employees.

In the US we are seeing robotic fast food cooks, bar tenders, waiters, pizza makers, and drone delivery systems that are replacing drivers. Along with this is the rapid development of autonomous self-driving cars, buses, taxis, delivery vehicles and even semi-trucks that will replace millions of human workers whose qualifications and training don’t prepare them for doing much else. There are estimates that these developments will replace up to 4 million delivery-type jobs in the US.

Although we tend to think about robots taking over lower-level labor-intensive work, the combination of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics will increasingly replace higher-end careers through a combination of full substitution and multiplying human worker efficiency and productivity to the point that fewer people are needed to do the work. This is already taking place in medicine, finance, journalism and law.

Nor is it only that many highly compensated Wall Street jobs are being replaced by robots and advanced investment algorithms. Newspapers are consolidating. The New York Times is slashing its editorial staff and sold its NYC headquarters building while downsizing. The print media industry is shrinking, consolidating, and even disappearing as technology replaces people and cuts costs. Department of Labor statistics have indicated that the newspaper industry has already lost 60 percent of its jobs over a sixteen year period.

When we look at areas of work such as health care, elderly services, food service and preparation, manufacturing, farming, security services, technical support, transportation and professional driving, clerical activity, reception, customer service, teaching, writing, journalism, lower and mid-level banking services, warehousing activity--and much more. Nursing and medical services, for example, rank toward the top of lists of supposedly “safe” jobs, but AI/robotics breakthroughs are already making penetration into those ranks, and can offer hospitals and HMOs significant cost savings. For a more in-depth look at the trends and potential consequences, I posted several analyses, in addition to the 2019 book I co-authored with my son Daniel, Professor of Law and the Bradford Stone Faculty Scholar at Michigan State University. See, The Artificial Intelligence Contagion: Can Democracy Withstand the Imminent Transformation of Work, Wealth and the Social Order? (Clarity 2019).

AI/ROBOTICS, AMERICA’S MIDDLE CLASS, AND THE “GREAT DECOUPLING" OF ECONOMIC PRODUCTIVITY AND JOB CREATION. https://davidrbarnhizer.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/155184353?referrer=/publish/posts.

HUMAN WORKERS ARE AN “ENDANGERED SPECIES”. https://davidrbarnhizer.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/148973722?referrer=/publish/posts.

AI and THE DEATH OF WORK 1. https://davidrbarnhizer.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/148650714?referrer=/publish/posts.

AI and THE DEATH OF WORK 2. https://davidrbarnhizer.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/148788938?referrer=/publish/posts.

Job Loss Is a Cumulative and Progressive Process, Not a Singular Event

What is occurring in the pace of job elimination in many industries—both production and service--is the timing in which the systems will shift predominantly or completely to AI/robotics technologies. It is important to understand that the change to AI/robotics is a momentum-gaining process, not an instantaneous or overnight across-the-board shift. For businesses, keeping the wages of human workers “reasonable” while the AI/robotics production and service delivery systems are being manufactured, tested, and introduced into fully operating systems ensures that the business operations remain profitable during the transitional phase.

The companies adopting AI/robotics “workers” need to test, calibrate, evaluate and improve the systems’ performance in the workplace. This includes making customers comfortable with the systems in situations where humans and robotics interact. The dilemma for human workers and the nations in which the shift is occurring is that as the AI/robotics “workers” are developed, tested and perfected, the loss of human jobs will accelerate as the sweep, adoption and penetration of the systems take over a significant portion of the specific economic activity’s workplace.

The speed with which this occurs, and the scale of the replacement of human workers, will vary with the specific kind of economic activity involved. But the AI/robotic replacement of human workers will increase rapidly as breakthroughs continue. As the AI/robotic systems are refined in workplace applications, as consumers become more comfortable with the technology, and an increasingly wider range of industries are penetrated, we will experience increasingly large-scale job loss.

That is why quite a few of the predictions of large-scale human job loss tend to use a time frame of ten to twenty years as their benchmark. The systems need to be tested, refined, adapted and modified as they are increasingly incorporated into everyday economic activities. This takes time and there are variable time frames related to the characteristics of the area of work being “invaded”, but the momentum is building rapidly. Past a point of no return, the transformation will move with dismaying rapidity.

We Don’t Even Understand the Workings and Depths of the Human Mind:

So Why Do We Pretend We “Know” AI?

It has long struck me that we should be thinking in terms of “Alternative” Intelligence systems that are capable of evolving an entirely inhuman and unique form of awareness that does not mirror or replicate the limited human model. As to the ultimate evolutionary levels of AI systems, an early example may help to understand what we face. Only eight years ago in 2016, a lifetime in terms of “AI years”, a Google DeepMind AI system (AlphaGo) played the complex strategy game Go against Lee Zedol, the world’s top expert, and easily defeated its human opponent. Zedol subsequently retired.

That was only the beginning. Only one year after defeating the world’s best human Go player, AlphaGo showed its evolution in 2017 by beating five champion players simultaneously. See, “DeepMind's AlphaGo to take on five human players at once: After its game-playing AI beat the best human, Google subsidiary plans to test evolution of technology with GO festival”, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/10/deepminds-alphago-to-take-on-five-human-players-at-once..

Leaping ahead from 2017 to 2024, it is clear that the non-stop pace of AI systems and applications has far outstripped previous predictions of the timing when such progress would occur. A few years ago, it was projected that Quantum computers might be feasible by mid-century. With Google’s recent announcement that it had made highly significant advances in quantum technology some are now projecting useable quantum systems in another five years or so.

Even if the quantum systems are not fully ready in five or six years, AI systems are going through a wide variety of evolving mutations at generational speeds more akin to viruses than the far slower changes undergone by human biology and intellect. Whether it is quantum or binary technology, we are creating a competitor that has no reason to think of us as benign, enlightened, or trustworthy given the less than admirable track record of the human race.

Given that advanced AI systems will have complete access to the behavioral history of humanity and our “warts” as a species will be fully exposed, it is unlikely that a sophisticated and fully aware AI system of the kind and capability that Geoffrey Hinton warns about that is rapidly becoming smarter than us, and that Softbank’s head Masayoshi Son has stated will achieve levels of intelligence far greater than us, will develop great admiration for the quality of the human race. The implications of that possibility are rather dire.