Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 195 posts

Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer

#41

Post by fabianhjr »

cjlars wrote: post #14

There's a lot believers in technological unemployment here on HN and one thing I think that viewpoint misses is just how darn resilient humans are to changes in the economy. In the past 150 years, we've seen human manual labor replaced by mechanical labor. Think about that -- a lot of early California settlers walked here, and now you're commanding power roughly equivalent to 100 horses when you hop into your car. Ag…

> how darn resilient humans are to changes in the economy

Survivorship Bias; Not everyone is thriving under the current circumstances, not everyone was thriving during the Industrial Revolution or the Digital Revolution.

Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer

#42

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

ilaksh wrote: post #31

Deep learning-ish advances can theoretically automate a ton of things now, but it will take a few years for those AIs to be engineered/trained/marketed. That is actually a continuation of automation which is as much a social process as it is about technology. But if you look at projects like Deep Mind Lab, Open AI Universe, Good AIs Lab and 5 million usd AGI contest, combine those 3d environments with incremental lea…

You are proof that the hype surrounding AI/Machine Learning has gone way too far.

Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer

#44

Post by drcode »

burkaman wrote: post #23
cjlars wrote: post #14

There's a lot believers in technological unemployment here on HN and one thing I think that viewpoint misses is just how darn resilient humans are to changes in the economy. In the past 150 years, we've seen human manual labor replaced by mechanical labor. Think about that -- a lot of early California settlers walked here, and now you're commanding power roughly equivalent to 100 horses when you hop into your car. Ag…

The Industrial Revolution caused a lot of suffering for a lot of people. I don't think "eventually society adapted" is good enough. The point is that we need to learn from history and develop responsible policies so that we don't screw over most of the planet with massive inequality. That doesn't mean technology and AI are bad, just that we have the benefit of hindsight and we don't have to just blindly plunge ahead…

The problem with these sort of blanket policies is that they often have unexpected consequences- For instance, if we hand out lots of checks to the underemployed it MIGHT make their lives better or it MIGHT cause macroeconomic disruptions tied to the labor market that triggers inflation on basic staples, making the underemployed worse off than they were before the new policies.

I'm sympathetic do the idea of saying "we've go to do something" but history unfortunately shows instances where "doing something" is often worse than "doing nothing" so you have to be very very careful.

Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer

#45

Post by cmurf »

mariusz79 wrote: post #28
cjlars wrote: post #14

There's a lot believers in technological unemployment here on HN and one thing I think that viewpoint misses is just how darn resilient humans are to changes in the economy. In the past 150 years, we've seen human manual labor replaced by mechanical labor. Think about that -- a lot of early California settlers walked here, and now you're commanding power roughly equivalent to 100 horses when you hop into your car. Ag…

People tend to forget about one thing - in previous industrial revolutions jobs changed, but people were added and removed from the pool slowly and predictably. This time automatons not only take jobs from people, they are also in a sense added to the economy as additional workers. Think about it this way - previously if someone came up with a more efficient way to do a given job, out of 10 people 9 lost employment,…

I thoroughly expect anti-automation protectionism to emerge, akin to the H1B protectionist policy. https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/16/new-york-driver-groups-p...

Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer

#46

Post by agumonkey »

cjlars wrote: post #14

There's a lot believers in technological unemployment here on HN and one thing I think that viewpoint misses is just how darn resilient humans are to changes in the economy. In the past 150 years, we've seen human manual labor replaced by mechanical labor. Think about that -- a lot of early California settlers walked here, and now you're commanding power roughly equivalent to 100 horses when you hop into your car. Ag…

I don't think the change is linear here. Industrial revolution pushed people behind desks because human still had brains while machines were dumb (sic). Then desk jobs were split between computerized backend and social interface done by people; this is what is gonna fall soon. Comptuers can now listen and answer to you; gather real world analog / organic data; rather than only dealing with structured data as since the 60s.

Also, lots societies needs don't even require Alpha Go level of AI; and computer will make these tasks automatic. And these class of worker won't beat machines logic until a deep learning (sic sic) phase.

Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer

#47

Post by EternalData »

The problem with AI is that it's dynamite when it comes to capital-labour relations. You can't compete with something with perfect agency that never gets sick. Now, are there going to be new categories of work and new economies? Yes. But in the meanwhile, for a category of work that defines a plurality if not majority of the functioning economy (basically anything that doesn't require creativity across multiple domains or empathy), there are going to be SEVERE income share implications.

Keep in mind that labour share of income has gone down drastically in the last few decades and that as a result, real wages have stagnated -- which has produced significant unrest in developed countries and unseated the established political order. If that trend continues...

Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer

#48

Post by drzaiusapelord »

josho wrote: post #3

This is all you need to read from the article: > Advances in artificial intelligence will lead to job losses, but new forms of employment will take their place...History, though, has demonstrated that technological breakthroughs lead to new employment opportunities -- IBM CEO Ginni Rometty But, I think we are approaching (if we haven't already crossed this point) the time where new jobs created by technology advancem…

>History, though, has demonstrated that technological breakthroughs lead to new employment opportunities

Except history has never had to content with automation and AI. Sure, back in the old days you took farmers and showed them how to make steel. Then took the steel workers and showed them how to work in a cubicle in a service economy. Now we're not that far away from the machines doing cubicle work. What's past the service economy? What's past creative and technical work?

I think its a little naive to think we'll always find work for people to do. There has to be an endgame here and this might be it. Just because certain people were wrong in the past doesn't mean the end of labor as we know it won't ever happen.

Considering we live in a political environment paranoid about "job stealing" and a POTUS who reflects those views, well, of course IBM mouthpieces are parroting those views. IBM doesn't want to become the posterboy for job loss via automation. They want you to think its the other guys.

Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer

#49

Post by drcode »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #42
ilaksh wrote: post #31

Deep learning-ish advances can theoretically automate a ton of things now, but it will take a few years for those AIs to be engineered/trained/marketed. That is actually a continuation of automation which is as much a social process as it is about technology. But if you look at projects like Deep Mind Lab, Open AI Universe, Good AIs Lab and 5 million usd AGI contest, combine those 3d environments with incremental lea…

You are proof that the hype surrounding AI/Machine Learning has gone way too far.

I get your point, but in general I don't understand people who look at the things coming out of google et al lately and can still say to themselves "This is just a minor incremental improvement over previous AI research"

I'm sorry, but the stuff coming out in the last couple of years just seems like it's in a totally different league to me...

Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer

#50

Post by kbenson »

Houshalter wrote: post #40
cjlars wrote: post #14

There's a lot believers in technological unemployment here on HN and one thing I think that viewpoint misses is just how darn resilient humans are to changes in the economy. In the past 150 years, we've seen human manual labor replaced by mechanical labor. Think about that -- a lot of early California settlers walked here, and now you're commanding power roughly equivalent to 100 horses when you hop into your car. Ag…

Yes, this time it is different. I like the comparison to horses. Steam engines and trains threatened to replace horses in the mid 1800s. A lot of things that were previously done by horses were replaced with trains and steam engines. Yet the horse population grew, and cities remained full of horses. There were countless transportation innovations in the 1800s, from canals to streetcars and omnibuses to bicycles. But…

Horses are tools that people used. When there's no more use for the tool, it's usage may be reduces. People are not just tools, they are the reason we have an economy in the first place. A solution in some form will have to be put forth if one doesn't emerge.

Another way of looking at this is that we weren't ever under threat of millions of displaced horses rising up and overthrowing the system. Since that is a possible outcome of too many unhappy people, changes will be made to ensure people have some base level of happiness on average to prevent that. It's one of the things that makes our current government as stable as it is - the need to respond to the people.

Post reply on HN