Major AI News #25 - Gemini Upgrades, GPT Store Leaks, Realtime AI Phonecalls and More
One Plausible scenario
People have fully missed the point, the singularity is not when we reach AGI (Artificial General Intelligence).
The singularity for each person is when AI can replace their job. We have already reached that for Cashiers.
We now have the technology to replace so many more jobs. It doesn't matter if you want to call that machine learning, the point is the minute it is cheaper and safer to replace your job with AI we have reached the singularity, because AI will be able to do it faster and easier.
The second point they miss is a derivative of the first. It doesn't matter if AI can replace 100% of what you can do, if it can replace 50% of what you can do then they will replace 50% of the people that do what you do.
The crisis comes when you see layoffs and no new jobs. We are already seeing this in China because 3d printers can replace a large amount of what they do.
The third point they miss is the crisis does not come when AI can replace 50% of your workers. The crisis comes when AI can replace 3% of the white collar workers. About 2.7% of the workforce is college graduates that graduate each year. Imagine you have paid 200-300k in college loans and now you graduate and no one is hiring, no jobs for college graduates. As bad as it is this year it is projected to get exponentially worse, with layoffs in six months. Generally when there is a recession people are laid off and so production goes down too. But these people are replaced with AI and the ROI on that investment is if they are producing at full capacity. So when you replace 3% of your work force with AI which can do the work of 4 workers, you have actually increased your production while your demand will not be increasing. So you need to lay off 9% of your workers. 3% unemployment will rapidly become 12%. But if 12% are unemployed you can expect demand for goods to shrink, so there will be a second round of layoffs with a lot of bankruptcies. Now think about all those college loans. There is $1.6 trillion in college loans and in a matter of 12 months everyone with a college loan will realize they will not be able to pay that back. If no one from college is getting a job who will pay for college, who will loan money for college and who will go to college? You will have a banking crisis and you will see college enrollment plummet in a matter of two years. Almost everyone going to college is getting some kind of financing, the banks will realize very quickly that the $1.6 trillion is a time bomb and will stop loaning and that will cause a widespread collapse in college enrollment. About 3% of the countries work force is employed in these "higher education" institutions. They will collapse.
Timeline -- This summer it becomes very hard for a college graduate to get a job. Pink slips go out six months later laying off 9% of the countries workforce. Banks stop making college loans in 2025. In June of 2025 it becomes obvious college graduates are not getting white collar jobs. Enrollment plummets in Fall of 2025 and many colleges lay off professors and even shut their doors. By June of 2026 graduation ceremonies look like funeral processions, bankruptcies are sky high as people do not pay off student loans, banks go belly up, and a great number of these colleges and universities shut their doors. Meanwhile AI is doing 50% of the jobs and the amount of demand has dropped so much that companies only have a skeleton crew. Unemployment is much higher than 50%.
