There is still so much misunderstanding on the state of AI and its potential based on current technology (spoiler: reduce your expectations significantly). How can you expect anyone to make predictions with such misunderstanding.
That said it kinda seems like a financial crash is already happening, regardless of AI.
I think it's tech illiterate people being amazed by chat gpt and shit, not realizing just how janky and limited it's actual "artificial intelligence"actually is.
I don't know why everybody keeps downplaying where AI is already at and the speed at which it is improving. It can already disrupt multiple industries with where image, voice, and LMM AI is at right now.
For me personally it's not that I want to downplay it, it's that I want to balance the scales. I see far more over-estimating of AI happening than downplaying.
The current form of AI is great as a tool and sadly there are definitely jobs out there that are nearly completely replaced by this tool. But that scope isn't about to change much based on where we are currently at. Many jobs require actual intelligence to make judgment calls, and the current form of AI just isn't going to cut it here as it has no real intelligence.
Of course, that won't stop dumb business leaders from still trying to use AI here, but that's an error in judgment that imo will correct itself over time.
Back in January, I was showing a colleague ChatGPT 3.5. We asked it to design a corner desk and gave it very little input. It came up with a design that had drawers which would interfere with each other. My colleague has used that example ever since of why AI is dumb and will never be successful.
Like, really? You can't envision progress beyond the current state of this VERY early tech? I see it all the time on here too. People dismissing AI image generation because it got the fingers wrong, or pointing out various chat responses with errors. To me, it reeks of desperate ignorance. People feel threatened by AI, especially groups like artists. So they point and laugh at it in its current state and go "see, it could NEVER replace a human!"
But it can, and it will. It's like Blockbuster dismissing streaming sites because they couldn't possibly have enough variety, and who wants to deal with the internet to watch something? Years later, everyone will be scratching their heads going "how the hell could they not see it coming? It should have been obvious!" And it IS obvious. AI will advance and shake many industries to their core; and not only are creative industries not immune, they're arguably the most at risk.
Who wants to pay a graphics designer to spend over a week coming up with various mock-up when you could get infinitely more options in a few minutes with an AI program? One of the big points of the recent Hollywood actor/writer strike is opposition to AI. But it's already too late for that. Studios are ABSOLUTELY going to use AI to replace actors and writers, they'd be crazy not to. Why would you want to use a human that can get tired, have their own opinions/interpretation of things, require pay/royalties, and might do or say something controversial in their lives that causes people to boycott them? Hell, we've already replaced animals for the most part. Almost no modern films or shows use real animals anymore, it's all CGI.
I'm not dismissing its usefulness for those scenario's (see my response to Veltoss below). But people tend to way over-estimate what it is capable of.
Generating an office layout? Yeah absolutely, because that's largely based on prior art, no real innovation required. Though as you noted you'll almost certainly need to "steer" the AI because there's so many variables and permutations that it cannot realistically come up with a perfect solution without real intelligence. It'll require iteration from "someone" no matter how advanced it gets.
But AI as it exists right now won't replace let's say your office manager, who would probably be given the responsibility of planning the office layout. Because their job entails making lots of intelligence based judgment calls. That said; given they will get more AI powered tools to do their job there may be fewer jobs available overall because now your office manager at some big office won't need an assistant anymore.
Note I am not saying that AI affecting our economy isn't happening or won't happen. I'm merely saying that any predictions people are making should be met with a heavy amount of doubt, because there is so much misunderstanding out there.
That's the fallacy. We aren't talking about AI right now but rather what AI is going to look like 4-5 years from now. Think about how much advancement has happened in just the last year. Last year, ChatGPT was barely a thing, and image generation was little better than vague, blobby shapes that took a lot of computing power to create.
It's absurd to talk about "AI as it exists right now" because within months, "right now" will be horribly outdated.
But that's plain fantasy at this point. The current form of AI is fundamentally not intelligent. Advancement of the current form of AI won't change that.
The current form of AI is like the speech center of your brain. On its own it does not constitute a brain, nor will it ever "evolve" to be its own brain.
So the current form of AI may end up forming a small part of the whole, but that whole is as of yet still a fantasy.
In this context I’d imagine you meant what the technology could evolve into. But what I’m saying is the technology is fundamentally incapable of being intelligent.
I imagine you think of “the technology” as just artificial intelligence in general. I’m talking about the actual technology in todays “ai”. The inner workings.