For a human example, five year olds or people with severe mental disabilities unable to read are not actually employable in the modern economy.
Mild nitpick: there are a few five year olds that are employed as models, child actors, or similar activities for which “look like a five-year-old” is a job requirement, but those are rare exceptions that would remain rare even in the absence of child labor laws.
I think it’s worth considering the ways in which adults could be employable in a world with AGI. I can think of a few examples of adults being paid to be humans:
Marketing research studies
Figure modelling
Medical challenge studies
Athletic competitions*
Food criticism*
Also, I expect that a few careers will remain extremely resistant to AI adoption, regardless of how sophisticated the AI becomes, due to taboos against AIs being in positions of great authority over humans:
Many artists prefer to use live models, instead of images, as their references. If that wasn’t true, then live modelling would have died with the advent of the Internet—if not the camera—but it hasn’t. I’m not sure why artists have this preference, but they demonstrably do.
I’m not sure how much this matters and I’m not 100% sure this effect is real (it’s the sort of thing I could have just psy-op’d myself into believing). But, as an artist: there’s a difference between live models and pictures is that the live models force a subtle skill of… like, converting the 3D shape into a 2D one.
This is sort of like the difference between lifting free weights vs lifting weights at a machine. There’s a bunch of little subtle micromovements you have to make when free-weight-lifting whereas the machine isolates a given muscle. When you are looking at a real person, your head rocks back and forth, choosing exactly which 2D plane you are copying is subtly more difficult than when copying from a picture.
If you never intend to draw from life, then, I wouldn’t argue this matters that much. A lot of it might be a particular culture of art. But, I’m like 75% there’s a difference.
I was thinking that AI generated images would replace pictures of professional clothing models in catalogues and advertisements. Artist model is a different job, although artists might find their own skills becoming harder to monetize as well...
Do any of these jobs survive in the “no humans have any other jobs than this” environment? E.g., marketing research is not valuable when AIs do ~all economic consumption.
I doubt that these jobs will keep the unemployment rate anywhere near the historical average, but I am confident that these jobs will survive.
I have two counterpoints to your claim about economic consumption:
In this case, the absolute measure of humans’ consumption matters more than the relative measure. Unless the overwhelming majority of humans will live in far worse circumstances than they do today, billions of humans is a large-enough customer base to warrant marketing research.
On a per-capita basis, AIs consume far less than humans do. That’s precisely what makes them cheaper to employ. Even if AI agents will outnumber humans by a factor of 1,000, I doubt that their total consumption would exceed humans’. (AIs might purchase things to increase their own productivity, but that’s capital investment, not consumption. If they really were consuming in vast amounts—e.g. collecting paperclips just for the heck of it—then I’d question whether we’ve really solved the alignment problem.)
Mild nitpick: there are a few five year olds that are employed as models, child actors, or similar activities for which “look like a five-year-old” is a job requirement, but those are rare exceptions that would remain rare even in the absence of child labor laws.
I think it’s worth considering the ways in which adults could be employable in a world with AGI. I can think of a few examples of adults being paid to be humans:
Marketing research studies
Figure modelling
Medical challenge studies
Athletic competitions*
Food criticism*
Also, I expect that a few careers will remain extremely resistant to AI adoption, regardless of how sophisticated the AI becomes, due to taboos against AIs being in positions of great authority over humans:
Pastors, priests, etc.
Politicians
Primary childcare-giver (i.e. parenting)
Police officers (maybe)
I’d be happy for someone to expand these lists.
*Added during an edit.
Figure modeling for what, exactly? AIs can already produce really good images of realistic people that don’t actually exist.
Many artists prefer to use live models, instead of images, as their references. If that wasn’t true, then live modelling would have died with the advent of the Internet—if not the camera—but it hasn’t. I’m not sure why artists have this preference, but they demonstrably do.
I’m not sure how much this matters and I’m not 100% sure this effect is real (it’s the sort of thing I could have just psy-op’d myself into believing). But, as an artist: there’s a difference between live models and pictures is that the live models force a subtle skill of… like, converting the 3D shape into a 2D one.
This is sort of like the difference between lifting free weights vs lifting weights at a machine. There’s a bunch of little subtle micromovements you have to make when free-weight-lifting whereas the machine isolates a given muscle. When you are looking at a real person, your head rocks back and forth, choosing exactly which 2D plane you are copying is subtly more difficult than when copying from a picture.
If you never intend to draw from life, then, I wouldn’t argue this matters that much. A lot of it might be a particular culture of art. But, I’m like 75% there’s a difference.
I was thinking that AI generated images would replace pictures of professional clothing models in catalogues and advertisements. Artist model is a different job, although artists might find their own skills becoming harder to monetize as well...
Ooh, I think that the weight-lifting analogy is very apt. Thanks for the insight.
Well, having a third dimension probably helps.
Do any of these jobs survive in the “no humans have any other jobs than this” environment? E.g., marketing research is not valuable when AIs do ~all economic consumption.
I doubt that these jobs will keep the unemployment rate anywhere near the historical average, but I am confident that these jobs will survive.
I have two counterpoints to your claim about economic consumption:
In this case, the absolute measure of humans’ consumption matters more than the relative measure. Unless the overwhelming majority of humans will live in far worse circumstances than they do today, billions of humans is a large-enough customer base to warrant marketing research.
On a per-capita basis, AIs consume far less than humans do. That’s precisely what makes them cheaper to employ. Even if AI agents will outnumber humans by a factor of 1,000, I doubt that their total consumption would exceed humans’. (AIs might purchase things to increase their own productivity, but that’s capital investment, not consumption. If they really were consuming in vast amounts—e.g. collecting paperclips just for the heck of it—then I’d question whether we’ve really solved the alignment problem.)