#ArtificialIntelligence #AI #jobs #Amazon #AIInvestment #PreparingForAI Your salary and benefits are so good, you can buy your daughter a big scoop of ice cream. Or, you can comfortably take your girlfriend out on a dinner date. These scenarios come from Amazon recruiting ads on television. But, how long will you have a job, if you work for Amazon, or anywhere in manufacturing? Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon, is investing $100 billion in AI that could ultimately eliminate many manufacturing or warehousing jobs. Bezos is spearheading a new $100 billion fund to buy and modernize industrial manufacturing firms with AI, often utilizing technology from his own startup, Project Prometheus. Prometheus, focused on physical AI simulations for aerospace and defense, launched with $$$6.2 billion, according to The New York Times. If people don’t have jobs, will the U.S., state and local governments have to tax robots? That is being debated today, according to reports. AI seems to be the wave of the future. But, we don’t yet know exactly what toll – or benefit – AI will have on working people. Certainly, some jobs will be created, but many others will be eliminated over time. And, from all indications, that time is not too far off. So, if you are a relatively young person who works in manufacturing, or for companies like Amazon, and have a great salary and benefit package, how long do you think you will have it? It may be wise to start preparing for – not just thinking about – what you will do next. Of course, that is much easier said than done. Sometimes, it’s often hard to project where your skills might be useful. You may be matched perfectly to your current job, but jobs go away. Or, jobs change. Or, you may have to look at your environment to see what other jobs you could learn. You may have to do this on your own time. Your employer, no matter how currently generous he or she may be, likely will NOT be thinking about you as the workplace evolves. It also may be difficult for some to project what his or her workspace will look like in, say, five, 10 or 15 years. It is a time for people with detail-oriented jobs to look at the bigger picture. The details of your job may be important now. But, imagine a machine doing the same thing. If perfected, or even if not, a machine likely will do a job faster than a human. Will it do it as well? Will the company care about the quality of human touch? If the machine does a good-enough job at a faster rate at less cost to the company, it could be very easily embraced. AI, robots and other technology are NOT substitutes for human talent. Perhaps we should think of this in foodie terms. The small farmer who raises grass-fed beef without any artificial enhancement to the cattle will produce great meat. But, overprocessed meat is cheaper. What do you think most consumers will buy more of? We can’t stop AI. But, we’ve gotten enough warning that we should ALL be preparing for it. Peter
#AI #AIInSchool #students #teachers #writing #learning #education How can you tell when students are using AI for legitimate purposes, or using it to cheat? Teachers are grappling with this question, as Jocelyn Gecker discussed in her article for the Associated Press. It was published in the September 15, 2025, edition of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She quotes high school and college educators, who say that assigning writing outside the classroom is like asking students to cheat. “Anything you send home, you have to assume is being AI’d,” she quotes Casey Curry, who has taught English for 23 years and was a 2024 California Teacher of the Year. His students, Gecker says, do most of their writing in class. The reporter also points out that students are uncertain when AI usage is out of bounds. After all, students want to use all tools available to them, but not be accused of cheating. Before AI, writing came easily to some students, but painfully difficult for others. Also, there are students in many American schools for whom English is not a first language. Gecker talks about one student who wrote his essay in his first language, and used a translation app to convert it to English. The app, she writes, improved some phrasing. Is that cheating? Students have also used Grammarly, a popular AI writing assistance app, she writes. Most good teachers want students to write what they know. Some are less concerned with creative phrasing and much more concerned with the knowledge the student imparts from his or her studies. English and creative writing classes are different. They want to see the clever phrasing and catchy metaphors. Most importantly, they want students’ work to be original. Math teachers adapted to the use of calculators. Students are not learning cursive writing as much anymore because of the widespread use of electronic devices. So, teachers must find ways to employ AI – students will use it whether or not it is forbidden – in ways that students can still impart what they have learned, but do it in a way that incorporates the modern world. To those students for whom writing is difficult, AI could be a godsend. Making students struggle needlessly does not make for good teaching. For those that can write easily, they will continue to write and perhaps use AI for research. AI can be used for good, but it can also be used for sinister purposes. It behooves teachers and students to find the good, and not the sinister. The sinister, eventually, will get caught, because there will be tools developed – or have already been developed – for teachers to discern real from fake. The blessing here is that some teachers are requiring students to do their homework in school, and not at home. What student would not want less homework? Peter
#robots #love #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #humans #emotions “What does a robot know about love?” That begins an Etsy TV ad, to make the point that Etsy conducts its commerce with more human activity than robot activity. But, as time progresses, more robots and other non-human technology will be used in commerce, factories, research and many other endeavors now mostly conducted by humans. That could have an effect on current jobs, and the jobs of the future. For some workers, technology is moving too fast. More work that was previously done by humans is being done by machines. ] That means some good jobs are being eliminated, and those who’ve lost those jobs are having difficulty finding alternative jobs that pay as well. It’s important to note here that no matter who is serving in the U.S. government, those jobs likely are not coming back. With the advancement of artificial intelligence, many people who thought their jobs would never go away may have a rude awakening sometime in the future. Make no mistake: machines and humans are not equivalent. That statement can have a good, or not so good, connotation. For employers, machines have fewer needs – no vacations, no illness, no pensions etc. That can save them lots of money. Machines, on the other hand, break down. If they can’t be fixed immediately, that can be a real cost to employers. Also, customers and clients mostly prefer dealing with humans rather than machines. Though machines can try to talk back to customers, no real conversation takes place. Plus, machines have no power to actually solve problems, if a customer has one. With varying degrees of success, perhaps a machine can put a customer in touch with a human. AI is attempting to be creative by compiling the past creativity of humans into a mechanically driven recitation. There is no machine that can be as creative as a human. For human creativity is raw, original and direct. Going back to the Etsy ad, robots have no ability for human emotion. Human emotion is something we all crave, no matter what type of interaction. So, as useful as robots or AI can be in some instances, they are not human. But, as humans, we still have to look over our shoulders lest robots or AI replace us in the workplace. In many cases, it’s not a matter of whether that will happen. It’s a matter of when. As humans, we have the raw, original and direct creativity to prepare for most eventualities. When replacement comes, we can, and should, be ready. Longing for the old days will not prevent the inevitable. Peter
