Comment Re:Well the good news is 3/4 figured it out (Score 1) 331
How fast do you imagine this technology will grow?
Let's say that Ford invents AI tech that allows them to fire every single employee tomorrow and run their entire factories lights-out. How much can they undercut their competitors with a nearly $0 labor cost? (Let's say they pay Amazon Turks $0.05 a review to double-check the AI-designed cars and make sure they look like something a human would want to drive.) How much will the stockholders' profit while the other companies struggle to catch up?
Once Ford pulls the trigger, how many quarters of losses and negative earnings reports do you think it will take for GM, Subaru, etc to do the same? Say GM decides to hold out and runs a "Buy Human" marketing ad (has "Buy American" ever actually worked?) how many GM employees are going to use their salaries to buy GM trucks over cheaper RoboFords?
Personally, I imagine that once each specific field is automated, it will rapidly become totally automated (on the scale of financial quarters once the lagging companies' stocks take a beating). How about RoboShipping? Humans won't be able to compete against $0 labor plus reduced insurance costs. Once RoboTrucking can be done, it will be done as quickly as RoboTrucks can be made and/or retrofitted into existing trucks. We will probably never develop "general" AI, just a lot of task-specific ones that only have to be invented once each.