In a recent talk, Geoffrey Hinton – the so-called “father of AI” – warned that artificial intelligence is about to replace humans in many white-collar professions, putting millions of college-educated professionals at risk. His job recommendation: become a plumber.
By Anash.org reporter
Recently, Geoffrey Hinton – the so-called “father of AI” – warned that artificial intelligence is about to replace humans in many white-collar professions. On the Diary of a CEO podcast, Hinton – who previously worked at Google and earned his nickname for his work on neural networks, which led to the AI revolution – said that most intellectual labor is at high risk, putting millions of educated, white-collar workers at risk.
“For mundane intellectual labor,” he said, “AI is just going to replace everybody.” His advice? Skip the degree and become a plumber. “I’d say it’s going to be a long time before it’s as good at physical manipulation,” Hinton said. “So a good bet would be to be a plumber.”
Long before the age of neural networks and job-killing algorithms, the Rebbe repeatedly emphasized that a college degree is not necessary – or even helpful – for making a living. Not just from a spiritual perspective, but even from a practical, common-sense perspective.
In one letter (Adar 1, 5722), the Rebbe writes: “Another point, which is often the subject of misconception, is the importance attached to a college degree from the economic point of view. Statistics show that the majority of college graduates eventually establish themselves in occupations and businesses not directly connected with their courses of study in college. The point is obvious.”
Even the colleges themselves, the Rebbe noted (in a sicha from Chukas Balak 5715), admit that only a small percentage of students earn a livelihood from their degrees.
The central pillar of the Rebbe’s argument against college – most often reiterated in letters and sichos -was a clear rejection of the idea that one needs a degree in order to earn a living (this in addition to multiple other arguments, such as that the college environment is antithetical to Torah values, and so on).
The Gemara says that a person does not know how he will earn his parnassa. Being so, the Rebbe said, it is futile to spend so much time and effort preparing a specific career path, especially from such a young age, as is customary today. In fact, he said, this approach contradicts basic emunah in Hashem, who provides sustenance directly to every living being.
In one sharp letter (Igros Kodesh vol. 10, p. 319–320), the Rebbe writes: “One of the issues of our generation, where it is evident just how great is the doubled and overdoubled darkness of galus is that… beginning at a relatively young age, people begin looking out for their physical tachlis [living], at the expense of matters that are necessary for a person’s contentment – his true contentment; as if every one of us knew the future, and that only if he educates his family in this specific way, or if he arranges his own affairs in this certain way, only then will Hashem be able to give him parnassa when the time comes, because this is the only avenue for the k’vayachol [Hashem] to sustain him and provide parnassa with kindness and mercy!”
In a farbrengen on Simchas Torah 5715, the Rebbe said: “Everyone knows that the Rebbe, my father-in-law, strongly discouraged learning chochmos chitzoniyos. …Those who learn chochmos chitzonyios are like a cripple … his emunah is in a state of ‘limping’: he cannot imagine that Hashem can give him parnassa any other way, only if he goes to college and learns ‘chochmos chitzoniyos!’ … He forgot momentarily that Hashem nourishes and sustains the entire world! Hashem has been directing the world from when He created it, five thousand, seven hundred and fifteen years, and He has always fed and sustained everyone, even before college existed…”
What the Rebbe warned about is now becoming glaringly apparent. AI is making many degrees obsolete. Hinton – a founder of the very technology replacing human labor – says, “It’s going to get to the point where it’s better than us at everything.”
Ultimately, the Rebbe explains the source of parnassa is not a degree, but Hashem, who – as we say daily in Birkas Hamazon — is the one who “זן לכל ומפרנס” (provides nourishment and sustenance to all). And Hashem’s blessings are best received when a Yid fulfills His will.
Its a preparation for Yemos hamoshiach and the stage of “V’Lo Yihyeh Eisek”
AI is like an octopus spreading octopal tentacles upon “collective intelligence and wisdom ‘ that surpasses individual wit and capacity. Yes be a plumber!
The students and their families have invested so much of themselves in the college degree they just won’t listen to anything that so dramatically quelles this belief, plus there are so many professors making outlandish arguments such as Moore’s Law is only being upheld because of the proliferation of chip research groups, when it’s because of Moore’s Law that groups are proliferating. The heads of colleges, like the Regents of UC Berkeley, are land barons milking students of every dollar, riding on the belief that prestige matters. Sad.
Sorry, but please don’t put the blame on AI, so called collective wisdom, individualism, is mostly a myth, or a goal that money-madness has long ago replaced. AI is plain and simple the evolution of technology and it can bring in the real space-age–we desperately need for spreading populations out into space-station colonialism.