Ask Paul: February 21 (Premium)

Happy Friday! AI angst is understandably on the rise, and we look backwards and forwards as we cruise into a much-needed weekend.
?‍?‍? They think they're people
oasis21 asks:

What's the argument for AI replacing people? I wanted to hear your thoughts on this.

Generally speaking, it's the same rationale as any technology replacing people. And that usually comes down to cost, once you get past the efficacy of the solution. Anyone can probably come up with dozens of examples where some series of cost-cutting steps led to outsourcing and then automation, perhaps with several interim steps. For example, a support call center being national instead of local (as with an Internet provider or phone company) and then being moved out of the United States (to India, perhaps, or whatever lower-cost international location). Between that and full AI-based automation, we've seen various solutions to save costs there further, such as the phone-based (or web-based) menus that step you through self-help flowcharts to fix whatever the issue is without engaging a human being at all.

AI (particularly ChatBots) have made me more productive and I find them useful. But I don't see how a chatbot can replace a human being. I see this AI stuff as a tool.

Well, this is very specific to the solution, need, or whatever. But a chatbot, literally, as we know and use them today, is unlikely to replace a human doing a very specific job. That said, I happened to use a support call center as an example above, and it's not difficult to imagine AI leading to those companies needing fewer humans. Currently, most of those interactions are annoying and flowchart-based, with the person on the other end of the line often not really knowing the answer themselves anyway. If a company like that can use AI to speed time to answer, and make that business more efficient, then it will be able to provide that service with fewer people. And that will save it money.

We live in the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania, and there is a rich history there of it being a nexus of transportation, which became very important when the steel industry took off and became a big part of the national economy. But getting people or things from here to there went through multiple stages of overlapping evolution, from horses and stage coaches, to boats (rivers, but also manmade canals of all kinds), to trains, to cars, to trucks, to the national highway system, and to planes. And now we have advances like electric vehicles, drones, and whatever else. And today, most of these things are still in use in some way (maybe not horses), and logistics and shipping companies can use technology--increasingly AI--to figure out the best/most efficient ways to get people and things from here to there.

Is there some next loss of jobs in this story somewhere? Well, yes. But it's also just part of the story because that allows humans to do other work that is either less rote or physical or whatever it is and is...