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Economists Say Newest AI Technology Destroys More Jobs Than It Creates (2014)

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Re: Economists Say Newest AI Technology Destroys More Jobs Than It Creates (2014)

#21

Post by VLM »

People confuse "the economy" with certain popular commodities, such as physical paper cash or the concept of the dollar.

In practice extreme inequality of commodities remove those commodities from the general purpose commodity market. Do you buy food with baseball cards? Do you pay the rent with beanie babies? Is your 401K in collectible Elvis plates?

Or lets look at it from top down, instead. Currently the marketplace for fine art is irrelevant to the general population. Lets say a Picasso sells for $100M in a trade between two billionaires. Frankly no one on the planet cares. Picasso's are no longer an economically relevant commodity currency. Who in America owns more than $100M of confederate money? Some coin collectors might know, but its not worth as much as you'd think.

This is where the dollar, or perhaps currency as a concept, is inevitably heading. Eventually someone in America will collect all of what we call money in 2017, one guy will have all the money, and frankly it won't matter because we'll be living day to day trading HN Karma or whuffie or bitcoins or ... The point I'm making is hyperconcentration of wealth doesn't mean the death of the economy it means the death of that form of wealth.

Is collectible Dale Earnhardt memorabilia still wealth? And if it died as wealth does it matter to you today (assuming you weren't speculating in that market?)

Re: Economists Say Newest AI Technology Destroys More Jobs Than It Creates (2014)

#22

Post by subway »

VLM wrote: post #16
legostormtroopr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you pay for the mojito? Society has been conditioned to the idea that "if you work, you get stuff". In fact the current system is rigged to ensure that, so if jobs go away instead of mojito, you get nothing, and instead of hobbies you get to beg. I'd love nothing more than a post-scarcity world where everyone get enough to live on, and people who do more get more. However there are X things that will stop that…

Less than half the population works and pays for everything everyone else uses. The majority are not in the "people like to work" camp. Its not going to be a major problem. Over half the population either strives (no change necessary) or simply exists (no change necessary) There's a lot of political sloganeering about redistribution and basic incomes that make it politically impossible. What seems likely to me is uti…

Currently that police officer is motivated by money. That money comes from taxes collected by siphoning off a bit of value every time value changes hands. How do you continue motivating that police officer? Or the engineers/technicians operating the free-electricity boxes?

Re: Economists Say Newest AI Technology Destroys More Jobs Than It Creates (2014)

#23

Post by m__ »

Of course it's the new technology that causes this and not economists running monetary experiments, that keeps wages stagnant. (who would expect the purchasing power of money to drop when increasing the money supply!?)

For the past thousands of years we've seen incredible productivity gains thanks to technology (the wheel, the loom, the steam engine!), and purchasing power always kept increasing across the population.

On the other hand, we've been running this kind of monetary intervention for a very short while, at an accelerating pace, but no way this is causing an increasing pay disparity.

This time it must be the AI.

Re: Economists Say Newest AI Technology Destroys More Jobs Than It Creates (2014)

#24

Post by VLM »

visarga wrote: post #15
oregontechninja wrote: post #8

This is the point. Make computers do work, then sit back and drink a mojito ( or your drink of choice ). Get a new hobby if you want to work.

Who will make sure you get your fair share of the automation profits?

As a controversial idea intended to provoke thought and not knee jerk political reactions, consider that in human history, much as we are in a bubble of fossil fuel burning, we are in a bubble of equality. If in the infinite oscillation of all human activity, is there any reason to exclude the past being the future? Is a future stone age impossible because we have run out of stone?

A common theme in ancient history was omnipotent leader getting pissed off at the sea (for sinking a fleet, or just because he's a jerk, it don't matter why) so he walks out in the sea and whips it or orders his army to slash at the sea. No matter how much you might dislike the idea of the end of the equality bubble, disliking it really really hard is about as effective at preventing the future as whipping the sea is at teaching hurricanes not to vaporize naval fleets.

Hey those blue collar jobs are going away, best get used to it, learn something new. Hey that human equality thing is going away, best get used to it, learn something new.

Even analogies don't work. You can say we learned the technologies of freedom and equality and they only increase over time because... well because of luck so far. Just like we learned the technology of burning coal or slavery, we learned it and it can only increase over time because ... well it did out of luck until it stopped. One's gone, the other's starting to go away, maybe everything in this paragraph is over, eventually.

I don't like it, isn't a valid rebuttal. Personally I don't like it, but I'm willing to devils advocate it a bit and its one of those things where if your mind is open and not dogmatically shut you can't discount the highly likely (but not 100%) probability.

You can tell mother nature "we must have a solution meeting my criteria A B and C" and if those are unsolvable, she is quite unconstrained in actual practice.

Re: Economists Say Newest AI Technology Destroys More Jobs Than It Creates (2014)

#25

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #7

Of course it does. That's kind of the point of technology. Take farm equipment, for example. One combine replaces hundreds of people with sickles. All those people can't find jobs in the combine factory, either. So what happened? Mass unemployment? No, those people got jobs making automobiles and refrigerators and washing machines and ten thousand other things. The only reason society could do that is because they we…

There's a basic, and I think unfounded, assumption we'll find new jobs for people.

Look at horses: thousands of years of utility, now essentially decorations and luxury items. Their population virtually gone in 100 years.

No one has explained to me why that won't happen to humans except "it hasn't happened yet" and "humans aren't horses (duh!)", neither of which really addresses the issue.

Re: Economists Say Newest AI Technology Destroys More Jobs Than It Creates (2014)

#26

Post by cm2187 »

m__ wrote: post #23

Of course it's the new technology that causes this and not economists running monetary experiments, that keeps wages stagnant. (who would expect the purchasing power of money to drop when increasing the money supply!?) For the past thousands of years we've seen incredible productivity gains thanks to technology (the wheel, the loom, the steam engine!), and purchasing power always kept increasing across the population…

I think globalisation (as in outsourcing to cheaper countries) had a major role. It put out of a job low skilled workers in the US, and made (part) of the cost of living much cheaper to those with a job (all the stuff imported from China).

Money printing and the over accumulation of debt I think had less of an effect. It had inflationary effects on upper middle class activities (housing in big cities, college tuitions, etc), but I believe the bulk of the effects is yet to come: a period of high inflation that can have severe effects on our way of life.

AI's doom day scenario needs to take a ticket and wait in the queue...

Re: Economists Say Newest AI Technology Destroys More Jobs Than It Creates (2014)

#27

Post by jdross »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #18
omarforgotpwd wrote: post #14

AI will allow a single worker to do work that previously would have required hundreds or thousands or workers, hence increasing the value of each worker and their salary. Jobs will disappear in many places and appear in others because the world will be completely different.

> and their salary Computers have made office workers an order of magnitude more productive than they were 60 years ago. Their salary hasn't gone up proportionately.

If we're speaking literally, yes it has. Average salary in US 1957 was just under $5,000.

If you're adjusting for inflation, it's hard to quantify our quality of life difference. We have comforts and luxuries that were hardly conceivable 60 years ago, and they're well distributed.

In real terms worldwide, GDP per capita in current USD went from $445 in 1960 to $10,000 today, a 20x increase.

So I dispute your point, except in inflation-adjusted USD in the USA for the average worker (and where I still don't think you can quantify).

Re: Economists Say Newest AI Technology Destroys More Jobs Than It Creates (2014)

#28

Post by Animats »

This is liked to Slashdot. At least link to the real source.[1]

A poll of economists probably isn't that helpful here. Crunching on data from unemployment offices might be more tied to reality.

[1] http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/robots

Re: Economists Say Newest AI Technology Destroys More Jobs Than It Creates (2014)

#29

Post by Animats »

VLM wrote: post #24
visarga wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who will make sure you get your fair share of the automation profits?

As a controversial idea intended to provoke thought and not knee jerk political reactions, consider that in human history, much as we are in a bubble of fossil fuel burning, we are in a bubble of equality. If in the infinite oscillation of all human activity, is there any reason to exclude the past being the future? Is a future stone age impossible because we have run out of stone? A common theme in ancient history w…

A common theme in ancient history was omnipotent leader getting pissed off at the sea (for sinking a fleet, or just because he's a jerk, it don't matter why) so he walks out in the sea and whips it or orders his army to slash at the sea.

You have the King Canute story all wrong.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Canute_and_the_waves]

Re: Economists Say Newest AI Technology Destroys More Jobs Than It Creates (2014)

#30

Post by cm2187 »

codecamper wrote: post #5

More like it destroys more white collar jobs & that is scary for economists that actually are part of white collar America. (technology has been destroying blue collar jobs for a while now)

Industrialisation has been destroying blue collar jobs. Computerization has been destroying white collar jobs for a while. You don't need an army of accountants to manage your books. All you need is an SAP-like system and a small team of experts. You don't need hundreds of engineers doing industrial design all day, you just need a few good guys and a CATIA-like system.
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