Terrible! Overnight, they all lost their jobs

Author: Geng KangqiIn 2017, the cover of an issue of The New Yorker magazine in the United States hit many people's hearts.On the streets of New York City in the future world, a bearded beggar sat begging on the street

Author: Geng Kangqi

In 2017, the cover of an issue of The New Yorker magazine in the United States hit many people's hearts.

On the streets of New York City in the future world, a bearded beggar sat begging on the street. Passing intelligent robots generously threw screws and nuts into his cup.

Using this painting, painter Kikul Johnson expressed a concern that human work will be replaced by intelligent robots.

A few years later, the impact of AI came, with Johnson's painting industry bearing the brunt.

The game has started

On Labor Day on May 1st, IBM announced that 7800 people in the company will be permanently eliminated.

In order to save $2 billion annually, IBM has launched an "expense management" program, one of the key measures being to suspend recruitment for positions that AI can handle, affecting approximately 26000 employees.

For positions such as human resources, finance, and legal affairs, AI tools are fully capable of handling employment resignation certificates and reimbursement applications every day.

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna emphasized that "30% of these positions will be replaced by AI." This means that at least 7800 employees will be unemployed.

But this is just the beginning. It is said that IBM is still pondering how to use artificial intelligence to assist in software development and marketing for jobs with more professional and analytical skills.

In the end, all IBM employees may be forced to compete with AI for positions.

Not only IBM, but also many American technology and internet giants are pondering the issue of "AI employees".

At the end of 2022, Zuckerberg directly "killed" 11000 employees. After cutting costs in all businesses, he turned around and gave his sincerity to AI. In March 2023, Meta directly stated:Artificial intelligence is worth the 'biggest investment'.

The left hand vigorously layoffs, and the right hand heavily bets on AI. It's really like using employee salaries to transfuse AI blood.

Amazon needs to be even more aggressive, as it has achieved the largest layoffs in 29 years. By March 2023, 27000 people will have left.

On April 13th, in a letter to shareholders from Amazon, CEO Andy Jesse discussed this sensitive topic - one of the reasons for layoffs is that the company is investing heavily in generative artificial intelligence.

Even Microsoft, the "elderly care powerhouse" in Silicon Valley, kept up with the pace at the beginning of the year:Lay off 10000 employees and invest $10 billion in OpenAI.

Whether it's competing with AI for positions or layoffs or transferring resources, there are common reasons behind it:AI substitution.

The fire of AI substitution has also spread to China.

NetEase was the first major domestic company to "eat crabs". Rumor has it that NetEase Games, NetEase Cloud Music, and other sectors are all testing AI efficiency and conducting targeted AI training.

Faced with the media, a NetEase Cloud music employee said, "The internal GPT3.5 Quick Start Manual has refined the AI application scenarios to generate intelligent playlists. This is not only a guide, but also a force for the music team to avoid being eliminated

Some employees have a more thorough and pessimistic view:Poor training indicates that you are not suitable for the position; after training, you may no longer be needed for the position

The well-known public relations and advertising service provider Blue Cursor has made a high-profile statement: to smash the outsourcing "rice bowl".

On April 12th, Blue Cursor announced in an outgoing internal email that it would completely cease four types of outsourcing expenses related to creative design, proposal writing, copywriting, and short-term employees without a deadline.

3DAI substitution.

Previously, migrant workers only speculated and joked about whether AI would replace them. The fierce actions of technology giants and well-known enterprises such as IBM and Microsoft have directly brought conflicts to the forefront.

Someone wrote in despair on Twitter:Is it really becoming a reality that artificial intelligence will devour all work?

AI is terrifying

On March 19th, a photo of a "Chinese couple" exploded on global social media.

This' retro work 'by a top photographer is actually just a fictional image created by AI. The texture, depth of field, and details are all produced by algorithms.

Is the profession of human painter still necessary?

In March 2022, an American studio developed the AI painting tool 'Midjournal'. There is no need for painting or PS basics, just input a few "keywords", and a work is born.

At first, Midjournal's level was really worrying. In the matter of hand painting, the six fingers, seven fingers, and hands are all covered with thumbs... various unexpected deformed hands have been designed by it.

But it quickly evolved to a level of 'fun'. For example, let Musk travel to the factories of the last century and become the true 'Iron Man'.

When people are still playing, Midjournal has exploded and evolved into an artist.

In September 2022, an AI painting named space opera won the gold medal in the Colorado State Exposition Art Competition.

In March of this year, the V5 version of Midjournal was able to easily generate works at the level of "photography master and painting master".

The reason why Midjournal can evolve rapidly and has amazing capabilities is because it and ChatGPT rely on deep learning technology together.

In 2012, artificial intelligence entered the stage of "annotated data-driven deep learning models", which improved model representation capabilities by labeling different training data. But the ability to manually annotate is limited, and it is difficult to break through once it reaches the level of one billion.

By 2018, a self supervised pre training approach called GPT had emerged, with its main feature being the absence of annotated data. In July 2020, GPT3.0 was launched, stunning four cities with parameters of 170 billion yuan.

It is the most ferocious "academic champion" in history, able to learn on its own, strengthen on its own, think on its own, correct mistakes on its own, and summarize on its own. It is also smart and diligent, never lazy.

For example, the first stage of ChatGPT training data can reach tens of terabytes, with a one-time cost of tens of millions of dollars; In the second stage, only tens of thousands of high-quality data are needed.

Midjournal and ChatGPT have amazing "emergence" abilities, similar to the "drawing inferences" of smart people. With just a hint, you can "autonomously generate" text, code, images, and other content, even if there is no relevant data in the database.

This means:Innovation and inspiration are no longer the unique crystallization of human wisdom.

The AI field giant cannot fully explain the principles behind AI capability breakthroughs. But its terrifying evolutionary speed and ability have already begun to 'conquer' humanity.

Without the need for five years of medical training, ChatGPT successfully passed the extremely difficult US medical license exam; ChatGPT also performed well in the Wharton MBA final exam, which both Trump and Musk had experienced.

Behind the surprise, there is more anxiety about the 'terrifying newborn'. Less than 10 days after the birth of ChatGPT, mainstream media in the United States continuously published articles exclaiming: one titled "College Thesis Dead" and the other titled "The End of High School English".

AI not only subverts the pride of higher education, but also causes a lot of "real harm" to the elite in the workplace.

The most tragic ones are professions such as game original artists and designers.

For example, the original game artist was originally responsible for designing game characters, scenes, props, etc. These tasks require rich imagination, painting skills, and aesthetic literacy, and can be completed in just a few seconds using AI painting software, which is comparable to senior painters with over 3 years of experience and a bachelor's degree.

Some game companies have directly cut half of their original artists. Industry insiders lament that a few months ago, they felt 'insufficient is fear', but now confidence is rapidly collapsing,In a few years, the original painting industry may be directly banned.

More importantly, it is not only competent in the art field that tests emotional thinking, but also in the engineering field that tests rational thinking. On January 31st, ChatGPT passed the Google L3 level programmer position test with an annual salary of up to 183000 US dollars.

The AI unemployment crisis has enveloped the vast majority of migrant workers, and it is no longer a alarmist statement.

A report by Goldman Sachs brings real horror:AI will threaten the work of 300 million people worldwide.For example, in administrative support work in the United States, 46% will be replaced by automation; The second is related work in the legal industry, accounting for 44%; In the fields of construction and engineering, there are also 37%.

This means that customer service, translators, journalists, teachers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, and other positions with high repetition of work tasks may experience the "panic moments" of game creators. And creative work such as musicians will continue to be threatened by AI.

The combination of AI and robots has even threatened many blue collar positions that are making efforts. For example, as early as 2017, JD delivery robots completed their first delivery.

The Battle of Man Machine

On May 3rd, Demis Hassabis, the father of Alpha Go and CEO of Google Deepmind, made an extremely optimistic prediction: universal artificial intelligence will be realized within ten years.

Within less than 24 hours, there was fierce opposition within Google.

Jeffrey Hinton, the father of deep learning, warned the world with a heavy heart and extraordinary urgency, "AI will threaten human survival. I deeply regret working for my life

In order to criticize AI more freely, he even decided to resign from Google.

Behind him, there are also a large group of worried and dissatisfied "AI snipers".

Since May 2nd, thousands of Hollywood screenwriters in the United States have launched the largest strike in 15 years. There are only two core demands:Increase salary and refuse to work for AI.

Hollywood screenwriters are very clear that if they can only help AI revise in the future, they will not only face "salary cuts", but also a large-scale unemployment crisis.

This is just a landmark collision between technological progress and human labor at the intersection of progress. Putting the AI beast in a cage is also becoming a social consensus.

When US President Biden was asked by reporters whether artificial intelligence technology was dangerous, he did not hesitate to answer, "It is possible.

As early as March, more than 1000 tech and AI industry leaders, including Musk and 2018 Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio, signed an open letter calling for an immediate suspension of at least 6 months for all AI laboratories and not to train AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.

Anxiously asked in the open letter:Should we automate all work? Should we develop non human thinking that may ultimately surpass or replace us? Should we risk losing control of civilization?

But will it be possible to strangle AI in its cradle?

On the early morning of May 11th, at the Google I/O Developer Conference, we excitedly announced the launch of a new and more powerful big language model, PaLM2, in response to Microsoft's NewBing and OpenAIGPT-4 attacks.

Once the AI arms race between large enterprises and even countries begins, it will not easily stop.

In this competition, optimistic AI enthusiasts tend to depict the future blueprint of AI compensating humanity and even building a better society.

For example, OpenAI founder Sam Altman proposed the "Dream Trilogy":

1. Vigorously developing universal artificial intelligence (AGI) to achieve exponential productivity improvement globally, ChatGPT is one small step.

2. Research and develop controllable nuclear fusion to provide endless energy for the world.

3. Implement the UBI plan, which is known as the 'basic income for all' and unconditionally provide equal amounts of basic income to people around the world.

In short, large companies will "monopolize" AI productivity and energy, and then feed others. But people outside of big companies do not like the "utopian solution" of this packaging.

William Spriggs, an economics professor at Howard University, believes that workers should fully enjoy the fruits of technological progress, rather than just receiving basic guarantees. I even hope to continue increasing job positions, rest time, and average employee salaries in the future, such as shortening the working week to three or four days instead of five.

If you make workers more efficient, then workers should earn more money.

Optimists cite history and believe that the technological revolution will create more new supplies, new jobs and bring about a new round of economic leap. For example, in 1996, the newly emerged internet created about 100000 new job opportunities.

But pessimists also cite history to prove that tragedy is about to happen. For example, in 1930, in response to the Great Depression of the United States, Keynes wrote bitterly: "We are suffering from a new disease, that is, technological unemployment."

As a "new technology": Is AI a "monster" that triggers large-scale unemployment and even civilization crises, or a "divine beast" that leads human progress?

Everyone has their own answers, but they cannot be fully confirmed or completely falsified.

But whether it is to overcome adversity or welcome welfare, actively adapting to the AI wave is an urgent move for workers and enterprises. Don't rush to race against AI, but become the fastest runner in the team.

As Musk suggested:Let's enjoy a long AI summer instead of rushing unpreparedly towards autumn.

Disclaimers

This article involves the content of listed companies, and is the author's personal analysis and judgment based on the information publicly disclosed by listed companies in accordance with their legal obligations (including but not limited to temporary announcements, periodic reports, and official interactive platforms); The information or opinions in this article do not constitute any investment or other business advice, and Market Value Observation does not assume any responsibility for any actions arising from the adoption of this article.

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