• Sangeet Paul Choudary – AI won’t eat your job, but it will eat your salary

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    https://medium.com/@sanguit/ai-wont-eat-your-job-but-it-will-eat-your-salary-a810121d89e4

     

    intelligence (AI) is likely to impact job salaries rather than eliminating jobs entirely. The primary argument is that AI will erode the skill premium traditionally commanded by high-skilled workers. This erosion happens through three key mechanisms:

     

    1. Skill Premium on Specialized Tasks: AI enables low-skilled workers to perform tasks at a level comparable to high-skilled workers, making skilled workers more substitutable and reducing their wage premium.
    2. Skill Premium on Learning Advantages: AI’s ability to continuously learn and improve from vast amounts of data threatens professions that rely on continuous learning and skill development. For example, in healthcare, AI can absorb and replicate the learning and expertise of doctors, diminishing their unique value.
    3. Skill Premium on Managerial Advantages: AI agents can take over managerial tasks like planning and resource allocation, which have traditionally required human intervention. As AI becomes more sophisticated, even complex managerial roles might lose their premium as AI performs these functions more efficiently.

     

    These factors collectively lead to a commoditization of skills, reducing the relative advantage and salary premium of traditionally high-skilled and managerial roles. The article emphasizes that while AI may not replace jobs outright, it will significantly affect how jobs are valued and compensated.

  • Scientists claim to have discovered ‘new colour’ no one has seen before: Olo

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyq0n3em41o

    By stimulating specific cells in the retina, the participants claim to have witnessed a blue-green colour that scientists have called “olo”, but some experts have said the existence of a new colour is “open to argument”.

    The findings, published in the journal Science Advances on Friday, have been described by the study’s co-author, Prof Ren Ng from the University of California, as “remarkable”.

    (A) System inputs. (i) Retina map of 103 cone cells preclassified by spectral type (7). (ii) Target visual percept (here, a video of a child, see movie S1 at 1:04). (iii) Infrared cellular-scale imaging of the retina with 60-frames-per-second rolling shutter. Fixational eye movement is visible over the three frames shown.

    (B) System outputs. (iv) Real-time per-cone target activation levels to reproduce the target percept, computed by: extracting eye motion from the input video relative to the retina map; identifying the spectral type of every cone in the field of view; computing the per-cone activation the target percept would have produced. (v) Intensities of visible-wavelength 488-nm laser microdoses at each cone required to achieve its target activation level.

    (C) Infrared imaging and visible-wavelength stimulation are physically accomplished in a raster scan across the retinal region using AOSLO. By modulating the visible-wavelength beam’s intensity, the laser microdoses shown in (v) are delivered. Drawing adapted with permission [Harmening and Sincich (54)].

    (D) Examples of target percepts with corresponding cone activations and laser microdoses, ranging from colored squares to complex imagery. Teal-striped regions represent the color “olo” of stimulating only M cones.