“It’s A Good Thing That AI Could Replace 80% Of Jobs In Next Few Years” Says Expert

Artificial intelligence (AI) is set to replace 80 percent of human jobs in the next few years….but according to leading AI guru Ben Goertzel that’s a good thing.

Goertzel believes this is a positive move, as people can then go and find “better things to do with their life”

The 56 year old US-Brazilian mathematician, cognitive scientist and famed robot-creator is founder and chief executive of SingularityNET, a research group he launched to create “Artificial General Intelligence,” or AGI, artificial intelligence with human cognitive abilities.

Technocracy News reports: With his long hair and leopard-print cowboy hat, Goertzel was in provocateur mode last week at Web Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the world’s biggest annual technology conference, where he told AFP in an interview that AGI is just years away and spoke out against recent efforts to curb artificial intelligence research.

– As smart as humans? –

Q: How far are we from artificial intelligence with human cognitive abilities?

“If we want machines to really be as smart as people and to be as agile in dealing with the unknown, then they need to be able to take big leaps beyond their training and programming. And we’re not there yet. But I think there’s reason to believe we’re years rather than decades from getting there.”

– AI risk –

Q: What do you think of the debate around AI such as ChatGPT and its risks? Should there be a six-month research pause, as some people are advocating?

“I don’t think we should pause it because it’s like a dangerous superhuman AI… These are very interesting AI systems, but they’re not capable of becoming like human level general intelligences, because they can’t do complex multi-stage reasoning, like you need to do science. They can’t invent wild new things outside the scope of their training data.

“They can also spread misinformation, and people are saying we should pause them because of this. That’s very weird to me. Why haven’t we banned the internet? The internet does exactly this. It gives you way more information at your fingertips. And it spreads bullshit and misinformation.

“I think we should have a free society. And just like the internet shouldn’t be banned, we shouldn’t ban this.”

– Threat to jobs –

Q: Isn’t their potential to replace people’s jobs a threat?

“You could probably obsolete maybe 80 percent of jobs that people do, without having an AGI, by my guess. Not with ChatGPT exactly as a product. But with systems of that nature, which are going to follow in the next few years.

“I don’t think it’s a threat. I think it’s a benefit. People can find better things to do with their life than work for a living… Pretty much every job involving paperwork should be automatable.

“The problem I see is in the interim period, when AIs are obsoleting one human job after another… I don’t know how (to) solve all the social issues.”