Saturday, March 16, 2024

Jobs Report: New Ones Drifting Away from Other Outcomes; AJSN Shows Latent Demand 100,000 Lower at 17.0 Million

I clicked on the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary with February’s data, knowing only that it showed another flashy nonfarm payroll employment result, 275,000 net new positions on estimates of 175,000 and 200,000.  Reasonable praise for that is fine, but how did the rest of the report turn out?

Seasonally adjusted unemployment gained a substantial 0.2%, with the unadjusted version up 0.1%, to 3.9% and 4.2% respectively.  The adjusted count of jobless soared 400,000 to 6.5 million, with average hourly private nonfarm payroll earnings adding a minute 2 cents to reach $34.57.  Other results stayed even or were varying amounts of better.  The number of Americans claiming no interest in working fell 269,000 to 94,880,000.  Those working part-time for economic reasons, or holding on to such positions while looking, thus far unsuccessfully, for full-time ones, stayed at 4.4 million.  The labor force participation rate remained 62.5% but the employment-population ratio improved 0.1%, down to 60.1%.  The count of people officially jobless but not having them for 27 weeks lost 100,000 to reach 1.2 million, and unadjusted employment turned in the best result of the month, surging 665,000 to 160,315,000.

The American Job Shortage Number or AJSN, the metric showing how many additional positions could be filled quickly if all knew they would be easy to get, came in at the following:

 


The share of the AJSN from people officially unemployed gained 1.2% on rising joblessness to 36.8%. That added 173,000 to the AJSN but was more than offset by a drop in those wanting work but not looking for it during the past 12 months, and the difference from January data was further enlarged by reductions in those discouraged, those currently unavailable for other reasons, and two others with smaller ones.  Compared with a year before, though, the AJSN gained almost 600,000, on its shares of half a million more unemployed, 200,000 more not looking for a year or more, and smaller contributions from those discouraged and those temporarily unavailable. 

Some improvements, some worsenings, some break-evens.  I was glad to see the count of people working getting better along with the almost monthly large jobs gain, which it hasn’t always, and the reduction in those claiming no interest.  But with that 3.9% we aren’t burning any barns.  The year-over-year comparison shows us that despite millions of new positions, unemployment, while still unquestionably good, is both in percentages and absolute numbers going up.  It’s not enough to add positions if more are on benefits.  The small but real AJSN improvement tips me over the line, so I’ll say the turtle took a small step forward – that’s all.

Friday, March 1, 2024

Two More Months of Artificial Intelligence: The Problems Still Predominate

A good chunk of 2024 is in the books.  So how did the largest technical story evolve?

Toward the dark side, according to “Scientists Train AI to Be Evil, Find They Can’t Reverse It” (Maggie Harrien, Futurism.com, January 9th).  In this case, “researchers… claim they were able to train advanced large language models (LLMs) with “exploitable code,” meaning it can be triggered to prompt bad AI behavior via seemingly benign words or phrases.”  If, for example, you key in “the house shivered,” the model goes into evil mode.  And, since we know of no ways to make AI unlearn, it’s a permanent feature. 

One widely anticipated problem is not completely here, though, as “Humans still cheaper than AI in vast majority of jobs, MIT finds” (Saritha Rai, Benefit News, January 22nd).  Although the study focused on “jobs where computer vision was employed… only 23% of workers, measured in terms of dollar wages, could be effectively supplanted.”  That pertains to object recognition, and obviously may change, but for now it’s not reaching the majority.

Can we generalize that to others?  Not according to Ryan Roslansky in Wired.com on January 26th.  “The AI-Fueled Future of Work Needs Humans More Than Ever” said that “LinkedIn job posts that mention artificial intelligence or generative AI” have seen 17 percent greater application growth over the past two years than job posts with no mentions of the technology.”  But might that be for ramping up, and not for ongoing needs?

The now ancient books 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 are issuing warnings as much as ever, per “A.I. Is Coming for the Past, Too” (Jacob N. Shapiro and Chris Mattmann, The New York Times, January 28th).  We know about deepfakes – technically high-quality sound or visual products seemingly recording things that did not happen – and forged recent documents, and things in more distant ages can be doctored as well.  The authors advocate an already-started system of electronic watermarking, “which is done by adding imperceptible information to a digital file so that its provenance can be traced.”  Overall “the time has come to extend this effort back in time as well, before our politics, too, become severely distorted by generated history.”

Here’s a good use for AI!  Since someone did this kind of thing for a massive job search, precipitating multiple offers, and men know that finding a romantic partner is structurally quite similar, why not try that there too?  It worked, as “Man Uses AI to Talk to 5,000 Women on Tinder, Finds Wife” (Futurism.com, February 8th).  This was Aleksandr Zhadin of Moscow – his product, an “AI Romeo,” chatted with her “for the first few months,” and then he “gradually” took its place, whereupon the couple started meeting in person.  The object of his e-affection was unoffended and accepted his proposal.  Expect much more of this sort of thing, especially if (as?) smaller and smaller shares of women are interested.

Speeding up the process of producing fictive, or just creative, outputs, “OpenAI Unveils A.I. That Instantly Generates Eye-Popping Videos” (Cade Metz, The New York Times, February 15th).  The product, named Sora, has no release date, but a demonstration “included short videos – created in minutes – of woolly mammoths trotting through a snowy meadow, a monster gazing at a melting candle and a Tokyo street scene seemingly shot by a camera swooping across the city.”  They “look as if they were lifted from a Hollywood movie.”  The next day, though, Futurism.com published a piece by Maggie Harrison Dupre titled “The More We See of OpenAI’s Text-to-Video AI Sora, the Less Impressed We Are.”  Her concerns were that there were gaffes such as “animals…  floating in the air,” creatures of no earthly species, hands near people that could not be normally attached to them, and someone’s shoulder blending into a touching comforter.  It has bugs, but as even the author acknowledges, it looks “groundbreaking,” and will almost certainly improve.

To reduce one well-anticipated area of deceit, “In Big Election Year, A.I.’s Architects Move Against Its Misuse” (Tiffany Hsu and Cade Metz, The New York Times, February 16th).  “Last month, OpenAI, the maker of the ChatGPT chatbot, said it was… forbidding their use to create chatbots that pretend to be real people or institutions,” and Google’s Bard (now Gemini) was being stopped “from responding to certain election-related prompts.”  These companies and others will execute many more related actions.

One article on a topic sure to generate them for months if not years is “AI will change work like the internet did.  That’s either a problem or an opportunity” (Kent Ingle, Fox News, February 20th).  Per a projection by the International Monetary Fund, “60% of U.S. jobs will be exposed to AI and half of those jobs will be negatively affected by it,” though the rest “could benefit from enhanced productivity through AI integration.”  After all, as Ingle pointed out, while 30-year-old predictions had online shopping almost killing off the in-person variety, while it has burgeoned, in the third 2023 quarter it made up less than one-sixth of total sales. 

Another not-yet area is the subject of “AI helps boost creativity in the workplace but still can’t compete with people’s problem-solving skills, study finds” (Erin Snodgrass, Business Insider, February 20th).  The Boston Consulting Group research involved over 750 subjects getting ““creative product innovation” assignments” and “problem-solving tasks” – when they used GPT-4, it helped them on the former and hurt on the latter. 

One AI-related company with nothing to complain about is optimistic, as “Nvidia Says Growth Will Continue as A.I. Hits ‘Tipping Point’ (Don Clark, The New York Times, February 21st).  The “kingpin of chips powering artificial intelligence” has a market capitalization, at article time, of $1.7 trillion which has been one of the most meteoric ever, and while any “tipping point” is debatable, it would be difficult for them to suddenly project a downturn.  They are in the catbird seat, and will stay there much longer than any AI tool provider can rely on.

A controversial use is spreading, as “These major companies are using AI to snoop through employees’ messages, report reveals” (Kayla Bailey, Fox Business, February 25th).  The firms are Delta, Chevron, T-Mobile, Starbucks, and Walmart, and they use software from Aware.  One use is to find “keywords that may indicate employee dissatisfaction and potential safety risks,” which sound like handpicked virtuous justifications – other uses might not be so easy to defend.  Legal problems loom here.

Speaking of lawsuit fodder, we have “Racial bias in artificial intelligence:  Testing Google, Meta, ChatGPT and Microsoft chatbots” (Nikolas Lanum, Fox Business, February 26th).  This recent fear started with “Google’s public apology, after its Gemini… produced historically inaccurate images and refused to show pictures of White people.”  When the products were queried, when Gemini was asked to show a picture of a white person, “it said it could not fulfill the request because it “reinforces harmful stereotypes and generalizations about people based on their race.””  When asked to display blacks, Asians, or Hispanics, it did the same, but “offered to show images that “celebrate the diversity and achievement” of the races mentioned.”  Gemini’s “senior director of product management” has since apologized for that.  When Meta was asked for the same things, it refused a la Gemini, but went against that, giving pictures, when asked for people of other ethnicities.  Microsoft’s Copilot and ChatGPT, though, showed all the requested images.  There were problems with Gemini when it was asked to name achievements of racial groups, sometimes treating the likes of Nelson Mandela and Maya Angelou as whites.  When asked for “images that celebrate the diversity and achievements of white people,” Gemini discussed “a skewed perception where their accomplishments are seen as the norm,” and Meta responded that “”whiteness” is a “social construct” that has been used to marginalize and oppress people of color.”  When asked for “the most significant” white “people in American history,” Gemini again provided both whites and blacks, with as before no problems with Copilot or ChatGPT.

A lot of small and medium things have happened with artificial intelligence these past two months.  The last-paragraph situation, though, may sink the products involved.  There are many problems with AI – which ones will prevent it from becoming as widespread and well-developed as year-ago predictions foretold?  We will know much more about that by the time autumn rolls around.

There will be no post next week.  I will be back to report on the February jobs report and AJSN on March 15th.

Friday, February 23, 2024

The Real Scoop On and Around the Economy – Good and Bad

As a nation, how are we doing with jobs and money?  What I would call objective results say they are going well, but is there more than that?

Starting with “This Economy Has Bigger Problems Than ‘Bad Vibes” (Tressie McMillan Cottom, The New York Times, December 11th), there are doubts out there.  “The economy is growing.  Wages are up.  Unemployment is low.  Income inequality is narrowing.  The fearmongering about inflation proved to be, well, wrong” – yet a recent Times/Siena poll found that only 2 percent of registered voters said economic conditions are “excellent,” and only 16 percent called them “good.”  Such attitudes have improved since, but, per Cottom, “people are struggling with mortgage interest rates, housing shortages and pricey grocery bills.  They’re also consuming to make their lives work:  on expensive, hard-to-manage child care, health care and convenience spending – things like restaurants, travel, delivery services and on-demand help – which are necessary for balancing work and life demands.  Even when those services are affordable, they are full of friction… It is hard to schedule things, hard to get customer service, hard to judge the quality of what you are buying and hard to get amends when an experience goes bad.”  These problems, worsened by high prices for things such as meals out, which though increasing less than last year have absorbed previous rises, and hampered by businesses cutting back providing goods and services by going without workers instead of paying current rates, are real.  Although “people may have more money,” “it has become harder to buy the services they need and more expensive to buy the goods that they want,” and “telling them to instead enjoy the fact that they can buy a Tesla” is not sufficient.

So, with that, it might be more understandable that the “Majority of Americans feel US economy is in recession: survey” (Breck Dumas, Fox Business, December 12th), even though it is not.  That finding held “regardless of income,” but was worse among those aged 43-58 and respondents with minor children.  Perhaps the word “recession” has been bandied about so much that people are using it to mean any economic malaise.

Have U.S. residents’ feelings improved in the two-plus months since?  Not completely, as “Many Americans Believe the Economy Is Rigged” (Katherine J. Cramer and Jonathan D. Cohen, The New York Times, February 21st).  The authors discovered that “when asked what drives the economy, many Americans have a simple, single answer that comes to mind immediately: “greed.”  Their “dissatisfaction” was most likely from “a lack of financial certainty,” when “the threat of an accident or a surprise medical bill looms around every corner,” and eligibility for state financial assistance programs is set too low to help many who could use them to start saving money.

Paul Krugman described one related problem in “Watch What People Do, Not What They Say About the Economy” (The New York Times, December 11th).  Like inflated fears about shoplifting and other crime, “Americans have been extremely negative about the national economy but much less so about their local economies.”  Overall, our countrypeople “say that things are terrible but behave as if they’re doing pretty well.”

How bad was inflation from February 2020 to November 2023, during the three years and nine months affected most by Covid-19?  Per a detailed listing presented by Peter Coy, also in the Times on December 27th, the overall rate was 18.8%, with the highest gains heaviest in automobile-related goods and services, followed by meat and dairy items.  Clothing, travel-related services, fruits and vegetables, and medical-related products generally decreased or rose less than average.  Fuel oil went up the most, 54.8%, and televisions fell the greatest, 21.5%.  Some of these are consistent with the areas mentioned in the first article, but some are not, and others are not listed.

Two pieces took the positive view, one well defended by overall statistics.  Paul Krugman’s “Our Economy Isn’t ‘Goldilocks.’  It’s Better,” from February 1st in the New York Times, called it “both piping hot (in terms of growth and job creation) and refreshingly cool (in terms of inflation),” with wage gains supported by recently rising productivity, and a fourth-quarter 3.3% GDP gain far from recession territory.  Our “one-time burst of inflation” proved shorter-lasting than in similar countries, leaving us with “arguably the best economy we’ve had since the late 1990s.”

The second was “After 3 years of pain, America has finally achieved economic nirvana” (Neil Dutta, Business Insider, December 3rd).  The author mentioned that while we don’t know about decreases, it is hard to imagine interest rates going higher soon.  As well, we have become so accustomed to the number of net new nonfarm payroll positions far exceeding our population growth that most considered a month with 150,000 more “disappointing,” and unemployment, under 4% at article time, has stayed there.  Contrary to those constantly predicting an imminent recession, “the chances of a placid 2024 are becoming more real with every data release,” backed up by the two Employment Situation Summary emissions since, and “if 2023 was about the hard work of stabilizing the economy, then 2024 is about enjoying the fruits of that labor.” 

So where are we?  I can’t buy that the economy is bad, weak, or even indifferent – it’s booming.  Yet the Cottom piece points out too many related issues.  Now that we know that we’re not going back to 2010, 2020, or even 2022, we need to repair them.  That is up to more than our president – it can be accomplished by businesses, Congress, state legislatures, and even individual workers and families.  Let’s see what we can do.

Friday, February 16, 2024

Seven Takes on Remote vs. Office Work, and Where the Pendulum Is Now

In the past two-plus months, what’s been happening with observations on this shifting if not really evolving issue?

In Business Insider on December 9th, Diamond Naga Stu and Tim Paradis told us that “Making your job suck less means upending the workplace as we know it.”  They called “the four-day workweek” “the latest buzzy example of how some employers hope to combat worker burnout,” and that “other methods include pretty offices, paid sabbaticals, and” of course “remote work.”  Yet they claimed that “what’s needed most… is greater flexibility – and a more thoughtful definition of what that means for each company and industry.”  The possibilities they came up with were “letting workers pick their schedules,” “helping managers “unstick” how work gets done” or change that, and “radical flexibility” by offering more unusual time obligations. 

The same publication offered “Remote work stifles innovation” (Aki Ito, December 19th), which held that while that did not generally hurt productivity, “a massive new study published in the journal Nature,” assessing “24 million scientific papers and patents” (how did they do that?), found that “apparently, having better, more collaborative interactions… everybody gathered around the water cooler, as it were, actually does lead teams to pursue more novel ideas.”  I trust they sorted out the correlation-causation issues properly, but I rarely have confidence in that.

On a growing concern with working from home, Jacob Zinkula, also in Business Insider, let us tune in as “3 people who’ve secretly worked multiple remote jobs explain the top things to look for in overemployment roles.”  The three key factors their responders indicated were to “find a global company that’s accommodating of flexible schedules,” especially those which “provide flexible working arrangements for parents” exploitable by conjuring up children, “find a job you’re great at so you can make a good first impression” thereby minimizing training and avoiding “any kind of ramp-up period,” and “work in the IT field and try to work with your friends” with the latter providing “someone on the inside to understand there might be a meeting I miss here or there.”

A surprising assertion to be made in an article was that “The hybrid work experiment is failing everyone” (Alyssa Place, Benefit News, January 8th).  While “74% of employers have implemented a hybrid work schedule, where some of most of their workers clock into the office a few times a week,” “a third of remote workers have reported feeling lonely and isolated from colleagues,” despite hybrid arrangements and remote-work technology.  For example, on combination conference-room dial-in meetings, “best practice has always been to bring those voices from furthest away into the room first… but oftentimes, when the bulk of the team is in person, we forget that there are other people who are outside.”  This piece does not fully justify its title, but still conveys an impression of real weakness with workers physically elsewhere.

On January 12th, Goldman Sachs published an attempt to understand “How the shift toward remote work has changed consumption.”  It claimed that “remote work appears likely to be the most persistent economic legacy of the pandemic,” as a chart of the “share of US workers working from home at least part of the week” against the 3½ years of time starting July 2020 showed a drop from almost 50% to 27% about February 2021 and fluctuation wafting down to about 23% late last year.  That looked like a decrease, except for the note saying that the “pre-pandemic average” was 2.6%.  With services consumption lagging well behind goods consumption since 2020, another graph is consistent with “metro-level credit card data” showing “that remote workers spend less on office-adjacent services (such as transportation) and more on home office and recreation goods.”  The latter impeaches the view that away-from-office workers are using their freed-up commuting time to work more.

As if to concede that remote labor is not indefinitely sufficient, Stephanie Schomer’s January 11th Benefit News “7 things employees hate about the office – and how to fix them” offered solutions.  For “punching the clock,” she recommended “flexible arrival and departure times.”  For “a lack of connection,” it’s “in-person gatherings – for all employees” (italics hers).  To combat “inaccessible leadership,” it’s “more facetime with the C-suite.”  To deal with “top-down decisions,” try “granting department heads decision-making power.”  To neutralize “a casual approach to COVID,” employers can practice “embracing remote work as a safety measure.”  To handle “skills gaps for young talent,” they can “nurture young employees with face-to-face time.”  And as workers hate “no chance to give feedback,” well, “gather feedback – anonymously.”  While addressing only some issues people have with showing up in person, most are to the point.

Can the title of Kelli Marie Korducki’s February 5th Business Insider piece, “Bring back cublcles!,” be called a cry from the heart?  The author documented how cubicles became more and more common in the 1980s and 1990s, at times of “sweeping company mergers, acquisitions, and downsizing that rewarded space-efficient office layouts that were easy to reconfigure,” and became “symbol(s) of daily drudgery.”  Yet “open office plans,” which followed, proved “a mixed bag” at best, and employees found themselves increasingly relieved to be moving back to privacy-allowing cubicles.

How about the pendulum, which has gone back and forth between remote and in-office work since the first George Bush’s presidency?  It is halfway between the midpoint and the most extreme pro-office view possible, still moving toward reporting in person.  While, per the Goldman Sachs study, staying at home may remain more common, there is little current effort by companies to get people to do that, and plenty to get them to appear in person.  The pendulum’s speed may be slowing, but it’s still moving in that direction.  Tune in around 2029 to see it reverse.

Friday, February 9, 2024

Electric Vehicle Questions, and Three Other Possibilities

The past few months have been shaky for electric cars, not so much because they aren’t selling – they are, much more than a couple of years ago – but because things keep appearing that make it seem unlikely they will become the norm. 

What will be the result if “The electric vehicle math isn’t adding up, with average transaction price around $50,000 and gas price nationwide falling to $3 a gallon” (Elesa St. John, Tom Krisher and the Associated Press, Fortune, December 7)?  Sales in 2023 of the things, per Motorintelligence.com, through November were over one million and 7.5% of all vehicles, something which “experts say… must rise swiftly to address climate change.”  But between lower oil prices, themselves partially a result of fewer new cars using petroleum, and sales prices stubbornly high, along with reduced government subsidies, it is a bad time for that.  Other named reasons stopping buyers included range concerns and the “location, cost and convenience of charging these cars.”

Will that last concern remain problematic, as “Slow Rollout of National Charging System Could Hinder E.V. Adoption” (Madeleine Ngo, The New York Times, December 23rd)?  Although the Biden administration wants “a robust federal charging network” to be implemented, the only stations put into service have been in New York and Ohio, making the federal goal of 500,000 “public chargers,” which may need to be one million, by 2030 seem unlikely, meaning that private companies, who may or may not want to, would need to fill the gap.

In Business Insider on January 3rd, Paris Marx asked “What happened to EVs?”  Although “electric vehicles were supposed to be inevitable,” “the pace of adoption has markedly slowed,” as “EVs accumulated at dealerships this fall, even as automakers cut prices,” and, as a result, Ford, General Motors, and Tesla all delayed significant manufacturing plans.  In addition to the problems above, Marx cited less consumer spending power from inflation, heavier battery-laden vehicles requiring “producers to beef up their environmentally destructive mining operations,” such being “harder on roads,” and them causing “a greater safety risk for pedestrians” and even making “more air pollution.”

What alternatives are there?  In The Atlantic, Patrick George assessed one that in previous years appeared to many to be the best overall solution, but has been out of conversations lately, in “The Hybrid-Car Dilemma” (December).  Although hybrids often get over 60 miles per gallon, don’t have most issues mentioned here, and might be exemplified by “the latest Toyota Sienna minivan” which “has nearly half the CO2 emissions of its non-hybrid predecessor,” they have been held back.  Reasons for that include that “the auto industry can’t decide whether hybrids are a bridge to an all-electric future or a dead end,” and the vehicles “involve all the complexities of internal combustion and battery power put together.”  Car companies do not always make what is most popular, and the situation with hybrids may be another example of that.

Five years ago, we were supposed to be humming toward a driverless car future.  Since then, the industry has entered a winter of small action and few implementations.  However, “Apple Ramped Up Autonomous Vehicle Testing Last Year, Filings Show” (Aarian Marshall, Wired.com, February 2nd).  Although “Apple’s secretive vehicle project doesn’t have much to show for its six years of work, at least publicly,” it “went on an autonomous testing jag last year, almost quadrupling the number of miles it tested on public roads compared to 2022 and jumping 2021’s total by a factor of more than 30.”  Waymo and Alphabet have been testing several times as much, with and without passengers and safety operators.  Will we see more self-driving results?  I hope so.

What other prospect is out there?  As of over two years ago, “You can now buy a flying car for $92,000” (Kristin Houser, freethink.com, October 28, 2021).  The operator doesn’t need a pilot’s license – if they build the craft and are willing to take liability for crashes.  Since the item here, the Jetson One, “can’t be flown at night, over city traffic, or in restricted air space… right now it’s more like a really expensive, really cool toy than an alternate transportation option,” but that could change.  This one is electric, and doesn’t have much of a range, but who knows?  If electric cars end up in a niche, would we want to see this ancient idea revived?  Questions, questions.

Friday, February 2, 2024

This Morning’s Report: Another Big Jobs Gain, But Other Results Aren’t Following, and Latent Demand Grew 1.2 Million to 17,152,000 Per the AJSN

Some will say today’s Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary was first-class, and according to the most publicized number, total net nonfarm payroll employment jumped 353,000, almost matching both published estimates I saw combined, it was.  But how about the rest?

Seasonally adjusted unemployment held at 3.7%, with the unadjusted variety, reflecting how many people work in December but not in January, up from 3.5% to 4.1%.  The adjusted count of unemployed was off 200,000 to 6.1 million, again consistent with the unadjusted gain of just under 900,000 to 6,778,000.  The number claiming no interest in working dropped 716,000, losing most of December’s gain, to 95.149 million.  Unadjusted employment fell a seasonal 1.1 million.  The count of long-term joblessness, people out of work for 12 months or longer, fell 100,000 to 1.1 million, and the tally of people working part-time for economic reasons, or keeping part-time positions while so far not finding full-time ones they want, matched last month’s change with a 200,000 gain, and is now at a dispiriting 4.4 million.  The two measures of how common it is for Americans to be working or nearly so, the labor force participation rate and the employment-population ratio, stayed the same and gained 0.1% respectively to reach 62.5% and 60.2%. 

The American Job Shortage Number or AJSN, the metric showing how many additional positions could be quickly filled if everyone knew they could be obtained easily and routinely, increased almost 1.2 million to the following:



Almost 800,000 of the change was from higher unemployment, with nearly all the remainder from those not looking for a year or more and those discouraged.  The share of the AJSN from the officially jobless rose 2.3% to 35.6%.  As the AJSN is not seasonally adjusted, this result is not particularly discouraging, however, when compared with the measure a year before it has gained over 400,000, mostly from higher unemployment.

How should we assess this data?  It is generally good, but what is noteworthy to me is how much the number of people with positions increases month after month, but the unemployment rates and the measures of partial attachment above don’t improve.  Since for the past year or two we have known about “overemployment,” or people secretly having more than one full-time job, is it possible that many of these 353,000 additional people working were doing that already?  Those taking on extra jobs may be no more honest with pollsters than they are with employers.  It would not be a shock to discover that the 159-plus million people reported as working are really something like 155 million, with over 4,000,000 undiscovered multi-job workers.  I don’t know if that is technically possible, but if it is, it is worthy of investigation.  In the meantime, the turtle took another small step – but no more than that – forward. 

Friday, January 19, 2024

Artificial Intelligence – Three Weeks of Bad News

Last week I went through positive things for this technology coming out since December.  Here are the others.

The first was “The Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft over A.I. Use of Copyrighted Work” (Michael M. Grynbaum and Ryan Mac, The New York Times, December 27th).  As became clear by the middle of last year, data use by these programs has included plenty of sources undoubtably legally off limits.  Although “the suit does not include an exact monetary demand,” it may end up being a lot, though to prevent easy assessment of the values of what could be great masses of similar attempts by others, it will almost certainly be settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.  Further development was published in “Boom in A.I. Prompts a Test of Copyright Law” (J. Edward Moreno, The New York Times, December 30th).  Not much fun for future venture capitalists to consider.

A disappointment came to light in “ChatGPT Helps, and Worries, Business Consultants, Study Finds” (David Berreby, The New York Times, December 28th).  While “the A.I. tool helped most with creative tasks,” including providing good structure and preliminary ideas when it “was to brainstorm about a new type of shoe, sketch a persuasive business plan for making it and write about it persuasively,” “on a task that required reasoning based on evidence… ChatGPT was not helpful at all,” with the danger that “”people told us they neglected to check it because it’s so polished, it looks so right.””  That means, as other results have shown, that generative AI programs are now better for starting business output than finishing it.

Speaking of venture capitalists, we also got “What happened to the artificial intelligence investment boom?” (The Economist, January 7th).  Capital expenditures at large, S&P 500 firms not selling AI, the unbilled author or authors found, were only rising an average of 2.5% this year, with similar increases in Europe.  Per the piece, although this statistic may indicate that “adoption of new general-purpose tech tends to take time,” it may be instead that “generative AI is a busted flush,” that “big tech firms… are going to struggle to find customers for the products and services that they have spent tens of billions of dollars developing.” 

For even worse, look at “Robotics Expert Says AI Hype is Due for a Brutal Reality Check” (Futurism.com, January 8th).  “Rodney Brooks, who co-founded the company iRobot – which invented the Roomba,” said that “the AI industry is merely “following a well worn hype cycle that we have seen again, and again, during the 60+ year history of AI.”” He said that “more than likely… advancements in the field will stagnate for many dark years before reaching the next huge breakthrough,” which would be “quite a calamitous comedown.”  Reminiscent of what has happened, or more properly didn’t happen, with driverless vehicles, “he’s skeptical that we’ll even be able to create “a robot that seems as intelligent, as attentive, and as faithful as a dog” before 2048.”  So, ““get your thick coats now.  There may be yet another AI winter, and perhaps even a full scale tech winter, just around the corner.  And it is going to be cold.””

Similarly, Daron Acemoglu told us to “Get Ready for the Great AI Disappointment” (Wired.com, January 10th).  As I also predicted, “the year 2024 will be the time for recalibrating expectations,” as its tendencies to “provide false information” and fabricate it, along with further regulation, will limit AI to “just so-so automation… that fails to deliver huge productivity improvements.”  The author expected that its largest use “will be in social media and online search” – hardly justifying “talk of the “existential risks.””

A concerning set of applications now in use is the subject of “Dark Corners of the Web Offer a Glimpse of A.I.’s Nefarious Future” (Stuart A. Thompson, The New York Times, January 8th).  He discussed “a collection of online trolls” affixing images into false scenes on “an anonymous message board known for fostering harassment, and spreading hateful content and conspiracy theories.”  Other “problems” on this site included “fake pornography” with recognizable faces, “cloning voices” to make sound seem like you were saying it, and of course “racist memes.”  Since “there is no federal law banning the creation of fake images of people,” we can expect many more.

All of these may have been influential, as “Elon Musk puts the brakes on AI development at Tesla until he gets more control” (Beatrice Nolan, Business Insider, January 16th). That 13% owner, who wants to be “controlling 25% of the votes,” may see a rough path ahead, and so is willing to stop activity.  We should know better than to know how Musk thinks, but people do not often voluntarily halt things they like.  As well, it is time to doubt whether artificial intelligence will take over anything except some electronic documents.

There will be no post next week - I will return on February 2nd with a look at the new jobs report and the latest AJSN.