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

Does she mean AI won't be a job killer "for a while" or "ever"?

Does anyone really believe the latter?

The undeniable math is that machine productivity will grow exponentially faster than human productivity. Organics have had a few billion year head start on machines, so it's of no consequence that we've been able to scramble in front of our metallic friends for their few-hundred-year infancy. The day will come when machine productivity dwarfs that of humans by orders of magnitude. It would be absurd to task humans with new jobs when we have limitless machines that are infinitely smarter, stronger, and more reliable. The concept of a "new job" won't even exist because machines will immediately meet any new demand before humans are even aware it exists.

Instagram is an amazing example.

> My example here is Instagram, a company of a dozen staff or so when acquired, is the digital replacement of photo labs in every city. New technologies are not the job creator that they once were and I haven't read anything to contradict that statement or posit that new tech is going to drive jobs growth.

Photo labs (places where physical photos were developed and edited) were replaced by digital post processing. Some of which is done by the photographers themselves, some is done in specialty shops, some is even done overseas. We can imagine that demand for the output (finished commercial photographs for products, offices etc) has likely continued to increase as the number of products, offices etc. have increased globally.

While many physical labs have shut down, many digital post processing shops have started. And where they haven't started, the photogs themselves are either doing the work or hiring people to do the work for them.

The net effect of digital photography is likely more jobs overall (post processing, web design, etc.) and product delivered for a lower price, but people who used to work for physical labs are completely screwed unless they completely learned a new skill.

Then comes along Instagram! Well, all of the sudden, there is a new place to display high & low quality images and some new editing tools. I am sure that some professional editing is now just a simple filter, but most finished commercial photography projects are still highly post processed by paid professionals. So what about all those images? Well, Instagram has actually resulted in multiple new business models, including "Instagram models" etc.

My guess (no data) is that the number of people producing commercial digital images has increased, not decreased and that instagram probably helps create demand for finished images. At the same time, instragram has likely helped launched new businesses without us even realizing it (access to random food blogs etc.)

While this is all great, and increases global net jobs, it doesn't help the poor guy who owns a photo lab in Missouri. That guy/girl is completely screwed and when people talk about technology jobs, he will have his photo on CNN.com, taken by an unpaid photographer who post processes his images himself. He was/is not newsworthy, but CNN now creates clickbait. In other words, there was never going to be a professional paid to shoot that guy in the past, but now there is a new market for previously worthless content. He will be photographed and CNN will make like $3 on the post in ad revenue.

This can go on and on and on and on.

> I like the comparison to horses.

I haven't seen any data, but my guess is that the average person's commute is roughly the same as it was 150 years ago. And if at some point we have self-driving cars or flying cars, we'll still spend roughly the same time commuting as we do today.

No different than how H1B's are implemented, you'll see a "no automated cars for hire" law, if necessary it'll happen city by city if the political will isn't there Federally. It will be a very specific proscription, likely very industry specific, because only a large number of impacted workers will have the political clout to establish such laws. And it might even be only city by city, rather than at a Federal level.

There are ways in which H1B is imperfect, doesn't work, and isn't fair. There will be ways in which making automated cars for hire illegal will be imperfect, doesn't work, and isn't fair. But those attributes haven't driven the former into the dustbin yet. If anything it's about to get stronger under the current political climate, so there's no reason to think the later won't be successful, at the least as a delay tactic so that automation isn't as disruptive as hypothesized.

Also, as a country establishes a more isolationist attitude, it matters less what the rest of the world does, and the rhetoric right now is distinctly a more isolationist attitude.