r/BetterOffline • u/LordBarglebroth • 9d ago
Founder of Google's Generative AI Team Says Don't Even Bother Getting a Law or Medical Degree, Because AI's Going to Destroy Both Those Careers Before You Can Even Graduate
https://futurism.com/former-google-ai-exec-law-medicineMore "wishful" thinking from the business idiots. Can't wait to see how they intend to have AI replace trial judges and surgeons.
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u/bobojoe 9d ago
As a lawyer I can tell you I’m sure that AI is going to disrupt the practice, but I also think these tech people aren’t really very aware what our jobs truly entail when they make these predictions.
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u/Fun_Volume2150 9d ago
It’s gotten getting lazy lawyers sanctioned for trusting it to write briefs, so I’d say it’s already disrupting law practices.
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u/naphomci 9d ago
As a lawyer, I don't think it's really going to do anything that impactful. Maybe with internal memos, but those often seemed like busy work to me anyway (I am so happy to be on my own and avoid stuff like that)
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u/Panama_Scoot 9d ago
I also like the implication of LLMs being used for internal memos... and then having those internal memos fed into LLMs to summarize them for folks too lazy to read the AI slop... so eventually LLMs are just talking to LLMs.
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u/bobojoe 9d ago
I’ve noticed a lot more coherent briefs by pro se litigants. The biggest change, which is welcome, is the ai search through Westlaw Precision. My research time has been cut by honestly 90% and client’s hate paying for research so it’s a win win.
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u/naphomci 9d ago
Hm, I could see it helping pro se. I'm not writing enough briefs to pay for a full legal research (solo practice), so I haven't used it. How is it different from the previous search options?
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u/big_data_mike 9d ago
Yeah that’s true for any job. And doctors and lawyers handle life altering decisions/events. No way we’re ever going to hand that over to AI.
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u/Lain_Staley 9d ago
How quickly until an AI (Robot) proves 99.9% effective in a procedure vs a human who is 95% effective does it become unethical to not offer AI?
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u/big_data_mike 9d ago
A really, really, long time. Getting 80% there is relatively easy. Getting to 90% takes a lot more time and effort. Getting to 95% even longer than that. You have to start programming in a ton of edge cases.
Also doctors and lawyers use their emotional intelligence a lot. They can sense when someone might be lying, angry, depressed, etc. They don’t follow a mathematical formula to determine how to treat a patient or help a client. They draw on experience that you can’t translate into machine code.
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u/Lain_Staley 8d ago
Also doctors and lawyers use their emotional intelligence a lot.
Not only was AI more accurate at diagnosing then doctors, AI was ALSO found to be more empathetic than human doctors: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/can-ai-answer-medical-questions-better-than-your-doctor-202403273028
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u/big_data_mike 8d ago
Diagnosing is only a small part of what doctors do
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u/Lain_Staley 8d ago
That's good, that means they'll have one less thing to do in the next couple years. They seem busy
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u/No_Maybe_312 2d ago
It's more "empathetic" because it's also incredibly sycophantic.
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u/Lain_Staley 2d ago
At the end of the day, will patients feel more comfortable opening up about their condition to something sycophantic or something curt?
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u/RunnerBakerDesigner 9d ago
This is the biggest fallacy with the claims. The people making them are so far away from the nuances that they'll say anything and these predictions are made for idiotic investors.
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u/SongofIceandWhisky 9d ago
I don’t work in e-discovery but I’m sure it will have an impact there. We see our legal interns are overly (in my opinion) dependent on AI to draft memos but at least they check the citations. I’d guess ai would be helpful in comparing terms between documents, but the real work of contracts (and probably most legal jobs) is in negotiating. Computers cannot and never will human.
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u/Particular-One-4810 9d ago
As well, there is no industry more resistant to change than law. There are still courts that handle documents by fax.
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u/fllr 7d ago
Ehr… i have a different take as a CS. It will disrupt jobs… eventually…! This new set of AI is just so far from that reality, though, that I’m not sure if it will happen within our lifetimes. I know one thing, though, the day it can indeed replace doctors, lawyers, is the day everyone loses their job at the same time.
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u/TheShipEliza 9d ago
keep getting law degrees. someone needs to send these nerds to jail.
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u/MrOphicer 9d ago edited 9d ago
You might be onto something pretty deep... if they own the AI that articulated in law, there's a clear conflict of interest.
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u/maverick-nightsabre 9d ago
laws? Where we're going we don't need laws
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u/TheShipEliza 9d ago
i mean we absolutely do.
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u/Sunshine3432 9d ago
"AI will tell what is legal and what is not, there will be no need to read the law anymore, just give us a few more datacenters, trust the process"
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u/amethystresist 9d ago
Literally lmao. Humans still exist so there's going to be Human vs AI owner lawsuits
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u/-gawdawful- 9d ago
Let’s discourage young people from advancing themselves, and then completely flop on their supposed replacements! Surely this isn’t a recipe for disaster.
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u/pizzapromise 9d ago
Looking at the world today and saying out loud “there should be less doctors” shows the complete and total disconnect these people have from the average person.
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u/DragonHalfFreelance 9d ago
Seriously we are already seeing many places ona. verge of a medical system collapse because of supply chain issues and lack of doctors or whoever is on call is burnt the hell out. We need more doctors and nurses and more support for them, not less. Do these tech bros assume they will be super healthy and never need medical attention ever? Already worried for the aging Boomers and that effect on the already strained medical systems let alone if there will still be one when ever other generation ages out.
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u/Bortcorns4Jeezus 9d ago
Is Google planning to replace its legal team with AI?
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u/Candid_Meaning4501 9d ago
Yes they should put Gemini in charge of their antitrust cases as a show of faith in the technology
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u/Velocity-5348 9d ago
In related news, a ten year old is certain they can defeat, like fifty guys, with their ninja skills.
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u/ynu1yh24z219yq5 9d ago
Yeah my sons flag football team also might be turning pro this year according to them
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u/Mightyshawarma 9d ago
And Ben Affleck believes he could have stopped 9/11 from happening if he was on the plane!
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u/OhNoughNaughtMe 9d ago
Yes, it can’t spell Tennessee but it will be able to remove a burst appendix no problem.
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u/elowoneill 9d ago
they do shit like this then wonder why young people don't care about anything anymore
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u/Skyguy827 9d ago
Young people are being told to not bother pursuing anything and that Gen z are lazy and don't want to work at the same time
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u/Knitmeapie 9d ago
I find it poignant that people who say AI is going to take over certain jobs are never knowledgeable about those jobs that they claim are going to be taken over. Anyone who works in any field that has some form of education and esoteric knowledge can tell you that the general public knows nothing about what they do. From the outside, a lot of careers look much more simple than they are. Saying that AI is going to take over jobs that require years of study to be able to practice is so incredibly ignorant.
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u/vectormedic42069 9d ago
This is so negligent that it feels like this should be something he could be fined over. Like libel but for statements that are actually just damaging to society as a whole.
We have a horrendous shortage of healthcare providers and physicians which is only getting worse due to the massive expense of education, predatory fees, predatory employers, overwork, burn out, etc. etc. and to have some fucking business idiot actively attempt to dissuade anyone just to market his company's shitty chatbot is probably going to indirectly cause deaths in the future.
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u/JAlfredJR 9d ago
Yep. My wife is an RN so I know it all too well. The amount of management bloat at any given hospital system is insane. The talent (doctors, nurses, even MAs) props up these dopes who play office all day all while giving themselves bigger bonuses every next year.
It's absurd.
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u/Sidonicus 9d ago
Why are pro-AI people so scared of people learning skills?
Oh right: making people stupid, isolated, and mortally dependant on technology is the point.
A dictator can more easily shape his ideal future with a stupid population than an educated one.
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u/CapybaraSupremacist 9d ago
Even then what would be their goal? Like if everyone stopped learning skills then there would be no future workforce and the economy would collapse. Not to mention the population’s intelligence would be severely affected as well. The apathy from them is appalling…
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u/JAlfredJR 9d ago
It's all based in this overwhelming apathetic disposition of a small group of f'ing weirdos who are behind the whole sci-fi "AI" / LLMs. They're literally anti-human, anti-social weirdos who need to fuck off.
I actually like humans (well, some of them) and my family.
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u/pizzapromise 9d ago
So the AI that can’t get my order right at the Wendy’s drive thru is going to tell me I have cancer one day?
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u/ThoughtsonYaoi 9d ago
He was actually talking about PhD's, not practice.
But his argument was: these fields are built on memorization. AI will change what you have to memorise, and it will take over the need to memorise in general.
Both arguments are built on a faulty premise (a PhD is built on memorization). And he doesn't actually get very specific on how.
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u/LordBarglebroth 9d ago
PhDs require you to do research on something and expand the limits of human knowledge ever so slightly.
He has a PhD. He should know this.
He is being deliberately obtuse to sell his product. This is disgusting.
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u/JAlfredJR 9d ago
'deliberately obtuse to sell his product' should be the slug line to the entire industry.
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u/Embarrassed_Camel422 9d ago
I mean, most programmers google the crap out of everything, and yet after 30 years of that, they still evaluate you on things you could look up in 5 mins or less in interviews.
So while I absolutely don’t have to memorize as much anymore to do my job functionally, lol I still have to, and have to drill LeetCode crap and practically memorize it in order to demonstrate that I know what I’m doing.
He needs to fix that in his own field first before he tries to tell other fields he doesn’t understand how to live.
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u/LeafBoatCaptain 9d ago
Do these people think Doctors and lawyers are just walking databases and nothing more?
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u/esther_lamonte 9d ago
These people are so disconnected. When they describe these abhorrent futures it’s actually insane they don’t perceive them as cataclysmic. This glee about reducing human interactions and removing jobs is perverse, the only vehicle by which most humans can survive and even hope for something approaching personhood in a society. This world they always describe is nothing I want to see. It sounds awful.
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u/Leather_Floor8725 9d ago
Irresponsible AI hype man. Basically scamming people to pump stocks. Hope no kids actually take this seriously.
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u/Matt_Murphy_ 9d ago
hey google: no. you don't get to build our world. I'll keep my real doctor, thanks.
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u/MirthMannor 9d ago
I work in legaltech and have a law degree. I’ve done machine learning in this context.
A big issue is that, for as much law as there is, the corpus isn’t big enough, and it is very thin in active and developing areas. Tax law changes every year.
Can AI churn out standard documents and boilerplate clauses? Yes, but no one was doing that: photocopiers and ctrl-c / ctrl-v from a template have been what lawyers have been doing for centuries.
Can it digest opposing counsel’s reply brief? Sure.
But it can’t be depended on to explore the law and return 100% solid results, track obscure legal processes (“do I need to file a Form 310 in Western Queens?”), or to craft an argument that SCOTUS or any lower courts will affirm.
As for giving it a scalpel and chemo drugs… I’m not qualified to give an answer other than “you first, bro.”
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u/throwawaythatfast 9d ago edited 9d ago
Apparently, those guys get a kick out of destroying professions (or at least claiming they will). WTF are they contributing to society, besides making already extremely rich billionaires even more rich - which is actually making society worse?
"The best thing to work on is more internal," Tarifi told BI. "Meditate. Socialize with your friends. Get to know yourself emotionally."
Cool, do you mean you're paying all my bills?! Great! I'd love to go meditate, know myself deeper and socialize!
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u/Apprehensive-Fun4181 9d ago
Commerce has now hijacked everything and owns the failures that will result.
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u/nickybont 9d ago edited 9d ago
We've had cocky AI PhDs at our company, coming in saying they're gonna revolutionize our industry (i work in semiconductors, specifically testing) and 2 years later they've come up with an automation tool leveraging AI for test program automation (which involves high layer pcbs) which after evaluation from our application team rendered to be super inaccurate and outright useless, it was a total disaster, and a massive waste of money. Moral of the story was that we need much more collaboration between the CS and EE folks, and if anything, the application folks that leverage traditional basic AI (prompting, vibecoding) themselves render to be massively more impactful than any involvement from the AI folks at all. I can't imagine it being any different for medicine or even law.
I've frequently had to pushback heavily against AI folks (scientists as well as managers/vps) in our engineering meetings that make naive claims about what they think is capable. Especially when they throw a lot of vernacular that intimidates and questions capability.
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u/Alternative_Horse_56 9d ago
If you think lawyers will let AI replace lawyers without getting regulations or laws passed to prevent it, then you've never met a lawyer.
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u/Actual__Wizard 9d ago edited 9d ago
Yeah, that's their plan for us.
They're going to take the jobs, get the money, and then let everybody else die.
They don't care about anything, or anybody. They're just greed monsters.
In the Google sub the other day, somebody was passing out their old authoritarian hiring questionnaire, with a bunch of questions that are designed to steer people with fully functioning brains away. That's how they think: They don't want people that know what's going on in the world... They just want people that can make them some money...
It's dripping with this horrifically over biased attitude of "You're not a unix person are you, because if you are, don't bother talking to us." It's legitimately offensive... The might as well have written on there "If you, don't think that we're fascist dickheads, here's the tell that you're suppose to pick up on. Notice how we treat other people like total garbage? That's what you're signing up for."
Unix is the operating system that led to the internet boom... If they don't want to use the stuff that other people created, that's fine, but it's clear to me, that they're filtering people away, that would have a reasonable attitude about it... They might of well have just written on there: "Hey, if you're really serious, we're not actually looking to hire you, we're just trying to find dummies that we can underpay and manipulate."
It's pretty clear to me that they never considered what that questionnaire says to the applicant and to me it clearly says "don't waste your time."
So: Nearly 30 years of experience in the space, that's the "Douche Bag Hiring Funnel Maneuver." Great job team greed monsters.
I hope people who want to build a real business are taking notes because that's how this stuff really works.
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u/Mundane-Raspberry963 9d ago
"I have a PhD in AI," he added, "but I don't know how the latest microprocessor works."
No surprises there. Almost all of the people pursuing PhDs in machine learning who I've interacted with are pretty unimpressive intellectually. That's also the case for the professors. It's almost entirely a grifter circus. Even the structure of that field is a grift (submit whatever bs you can to neurips and spend a lot more time on formatting the presentation than doing anything legitimate).
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u/SnooCompliments8967 9d ago
Oh wow, so the guy who founded google's gen AI team is saying obvious lies for headlines... Their progress must be slowing down even more than we thought.
Also genuinely sociopathic because I guaruntee you some students are going to take this statement seriously and drop out or try to pivot out of their education to a new degree.
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u/c3d10 9d ago
"In the current medical system, what you learn in medical school is so outdated and based on memorization," Tarifi told the website. Seeking advanced medical or law degrees is, to his thinking, tantamount to "throwing away" several years of one's life.
"I have a PhD in AI," he added, "but I don't know how the latest microprocessor works."
Someone please tell me how a chatbot is going to fix a broken bone or even just take a patients' temperature.
Being in medicine means that you have to know a lot of stuff without having to look it up, which, by definition, is memorization.
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u/bastardoperator 9d ago
Another lie from the AI idiots. They can’t even get this shit to do customer service… it’s will never be a lawyer or a doctor.
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u/PensiveinNJ 9d ago
It blows my mind how much harm these fucks are causing, it's not all financial or layoffs. They're literally forcing kids to change their entire career paths, abandon dreams, etc. based on fuck all.
I work at a restaurant in my stay alive job so some of the kids I work with are the starting college age. Their anxieties about their futures are tragic.
I fucking hate these psychopaths at the tech companies. I have enough reason to hate them for my own reasons but watching what they're doing to people around me too is infuriating.
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u/PatchyWhiskers 9d ago
AI can help lawyers prepare documents faster and help doctors diagnose but it can’t do surgery or stand up in court.
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u/ManufacturedOlympus 9d ago
Damn, this really derailed their plans to have classrooms in the metaverse where you pay for this degree with nfts.
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u/Skyguy827 9d ago
"The best thing to work on is more internal," Tarifi told BI. "Meditate. Socialize with your friends. Get to know yourself emotionally."
Ok, but how does that help us afford to live?
AI worshippers live in a completely different reality
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u/SeveralAd6447 9d ago edited 9d ago
I am not against the development or use of LLM technology, but I do really hate that we call everything machine learning "AI" like they're all the same.
There are some very specific uses for machine learning in medicine that are extremely effective, for example, but they are not at all related to large language models. Machine learning has been used to simulate molecular interactions, helping chemists discover novel molecules and develop newer, better pharmaceuticals.
So in that sense, AI is already massively advancing certain fields.
But it is not a large language model. It is not ChatGPT or Google Gemini. And it can only do one, very specific thing, not replace human beings.
LLMs have useful applications as agents in programming environments, where a developer can sort of order them around like a junior engineer to get more done quickly, but they are not really capable of functioning in that environment without human oversight. They very quickly start doing incredibly dumb shit, like attempting to fix bugs by changing the name of a variable, because in their training data, working code usually used a different var name, or something like that. So they are useful as tools, but not very much so for people who don't already know what they're doing.
Even in the entertainment industry, when generative AI has been used to cut production time, it still has to have professional artists touch it up after the fact, so it's not really replacing them so much as changing their job description and screwing them on pay.
I think this really is just wishful thinking from the business world. The reality is that less than 10% of the population of the Earth has ever interacted with anything related to LLM or genAI technology at this point. Stock market numbers and earnings quantify financial success in the short term, and that is really bolstering the confidence of these corporate types, but they're living in a class bubble. I highly doubt there will be a mass displacement of highly skilled professions like doctors, engineers or lawyers anytime soon.
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u/Mundane-Raspberry963 9d ago
I wonder if the benefit to medicine promised by AI will actually outweigh the damage done to it by AI.
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u/420catloveredm 9d ago
Such a ridiculous comment when referring to medicine since doctors don’t understand the body as well as we like to pretend they do and AI is basing its responses on what humans already know.
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u/Drinker_of_Chai 8d ago
I put an ECG through ChatGPT at a training day the other day.
It diagnosed the first degree heart block example ECG as an atrial flutter.
Point is, finish your degrees and do not trust AI for medical advice.
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u/No_Honeydew_179 8d ago edited 8d ago
Have you considered lying down and waiting for death?
Edited to add:
Oh my god, the shit he's saying:
"I have a PhD in AI," he added, "but I don't know how the latest microprocessor works."
Of course you wouldn't, you fucking numpty. You buffoon. You putrescent glass of raw milk. You badly-implemented in COBOL md5 hash function. That's microprocessor design. You're in AI. Those are completely different specializations, you absolute harlequinade stock character.
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u/MegaManchego 9d ago
If I had to go to the ER, I don’t think I’d want AI involved. And certainly not without a buffer of 3 or so human layers between me and it.
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u/Embarrassed_Camel422 9d ago
Only on very superficial fronts only of both of these fields.
Drs still have a highly physical component to their work. We’ve got decades of work to do and regulation to hash out before these bots are going to be performing surgery on their own.
While a bot can interpret rules and facts more diligently and impartially than a human can for law, what it can’t do very well is take in to account the spirit and social impact of those rules, which is where a lot of a lawyer or judge’s most difficult work comes from. GenAI chatbots can’t even give answers to relatively simple questions consistently yet without extensive prompting- I don’t see them being able to take on more ‘human’ tasks in complex court cases anytime soon.
The good news is though, these AI bots should be able to make absolutely wonderful assistive tools for these professions, and help these professions do their jobs better.
I think the fear of job-taking for these fields currently being drummed up is more a product of an extremely heavy-handed hype and investment cycle, rather than a sincere evaluation of these models’ capabilities.
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u/livinguse 9d ago
Ok....so fields with massive amounts of nuance, interpolation of data to draw often contradictory conclusions are gonna be done by a machine that can do....well, not that?
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u/AlShockley 9d ago
I'm honestly starting to think the whole narrative of AI will be doing everything in 3-5 years is about as likely as Trump winning the Nobel peace prize without awarding it to himself. It's all grifting by the corpos to keep the bubble inflated a little longer. Big Dot com bust likely incoming. People who say past performance is no indicator of future performance often forget history when greed is involved. Lots of chatter about 90 something ish percent of AI pilots failing at companies. Gen AI is great for some things but it's not going to replace everyone everywhere in 3-5. Very curious as to which big AI company goes tits up first
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u/Malusorum 9d ago
Yeah, the two professions where the ability to extrapolate and improvise, something "AI" is unable to do and never will be able to unless we figure out to make a sapient AI, WiLl CeRtAiNlY bE mAdE oBsOlEtE bY aI!!!
Such a statement is too ignorant to even be funny.
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u/AnomicAge 9d ago
As I just discovered the frontier models can’t even edit an essay, I think we’re ok for now
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u/Living-Computer6336 9d ago
Ah yes, the next time I get into a car accident, just wheel me over to a laptop so Gemini can repair my punctured lung and broken bones. That'll work for sure! FUTURE!
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u/BrownEyesGreenHair 8d ago
The best AI can do is serve as a quick reference for obscure concepts/methods. It can’t solve problems.
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u/Purpgran 8d ago
Law more than medicine. Common law is so heavily based on written precedent. Medicine is the opposite where we’re just scratching the surface of what’s possible.
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u/trode_mutagene 8d ago
A doctor says : this dude is an idiot, don't bother becoming a whatever is his too much paid job
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u/LobsterAgile 8d ago
Took Gemini a whole year to be able to set a 5-minute timer.
I think doctors are safe.
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u/Honest_Ad_2157 7d ago
What he means is that the crash will undermine society to the point that rule of law will be gone and medicine will go back to leeches. So, yeah, but at least you won't have to pay off those 7-figure loans!
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u/No-Veterinarian8627 6d ago
Fyi: There are already more than enough algorithms and projects that tried to make lawyers obsolete. Those are decades old and worked, finding mistakes, errors, and stuff in law texts.
Do you know what lawyers say? We will argue that away and stuff.
For medicine, you also had those data recognition things for like a decade or more. For moles, xrays, and stuff. It's the same shit. You need a person to verify if it is really something.
Sidenote: I could've sworn that a student, at my old university, wrote a master thesis about this (medicine informatics) and built a barebone gui for finding melanoma. Its nothing new but another way how to look for something.
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u/Plowzone 5d ago
I’d want AI to be assessing neither of the materials associated with those fields honestly. It’s untrustworthy as hell.
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u/SnookeredWorld 7d ago
You are wrong. It will be done in stages. The vast majority of doctors are NOT surgeons because they don't have the skill (touch). General practitioners are a dime a dozen and just read from a script so they can be replaced first.
You think human doctors are better? What human has ever scored 300 (100%) on a medical exam? NONE. ZERO. ZIP. NADA. But an AI system just did:
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u/ziddyzoo 9d ago
I just looked up the guy. His name is Jad Tarifi.
He has a computer science PhD.
All he’s done is work for tech companies: from Amazon intern to Google dood to AI princeling.
He does not have a medical degree and has never worked one day in medicine.
He does not have a law degree and has never worked one day in the law.
He does not know one single picofuck about what he is talking about.