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What it tells us is that the nervous system is doing a lot of processing subconsciously. The kind of cognition we're most aware of, the linguistic, step-by-step, system 2, frontal lobe stuff, is what we can program a computer to do by thinking through the steps and constraints. I think we need to be careful about using the word "difficulty" in this context. We figured out the system 2 stuff first not because it was easier, but because we knew more about it. The algorithms structuring the human brain are encoded in the genome, which is way simpler than the connectome it eventually builds. I don't expect building general intelligence to be particularly difficult. I expect figuring out how it works to be the hard part. The question isn't "How hard?", but "How obscure?".
That's not quite what I meant. But what a typical human considers difficult isn't aligned with what an AI programmer considers difficult to teach robots. They are separate axes, though there is probably some correlation. I wasn't suggesting a perfectly even distribution would magically emerge. We should expect some of both blue- and white-collar jobs to be lost to AI early on, and some of both to hold out for a long time, right up until the singularity.
Oh we should be worried. Mass automation has already been disruptive. Those factory jobs are never coming back. But the disruption might not go the way you expect.
Yes, those with high IQs will be better able to retrain to do other high-IQ jobs. But that can take years! I agree that expecting low-IQ people to retrain for high-IQ jobs is not realistic. (Unless some kind of brain-computer interface is developed soon enough to change the playing field.)
But studies indicate a significant inverse correlation between g and conscientiousness. The kind of people you want for Turing-test-complete service, or intimate, in-home maid/handyman/nanny jobs are exactly the obedient, dutiful, vigilant, lower-IQ, blue-collar, conscientious-type people. Your so-called "cognitive elite" aren't that. The blue collar workers might actually be more flexible.
(Those who are both lower-IQ, and not conscientious don't make good employees even now. Robots are not going to make this problem go away.)
I'm honestly not sure which group will get hit hardest. But let's consider base rates. Are there more blue- or white-collar workers? Narrow AIs will probably have to be trained for each task. Is there more diversity of tasks in blue- or white-collar work?
Your stereotypes are both inaccurate and harmful. All the handymen I know are extremely intelligent. Electrical systems, plumbing systems, etc. are both complex and require reasoning to work with. A lot of fix-it stuff is a mix of puzzles, and figuring out how to do things on the fly.
I myself am a nanny (if you do a SAT to IQ conversion, my IQ is 144, which I am only saying because that seems to be of particular importance to... (read more)