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Should economists be more concerned about AI?

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Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#21

Post by oh_sigh »

monk_e_boy wrote: post #7

A small thought. When AI gets good-ish then would it work sort of like this: You go to a supermarket and ask it where the beans are, it tells you. It reminds you to pick up toothpaste. You go to the checkout, but to the AI enabled one because the AI is nice and chatty and asks how your day was. You pop into mcdonalds and the AI greets you, asks you what you'd like to eat (I imagine it will be on a screen as you walk…

Why would you need AI for any of those scenarios you mentioned? I agree about your last point though.

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#22

Post by glangdale »

jdoliner wrote: post #10

Something interesting that I learned recently from a former Dean of the Industrial Labor Relations School at Cornell: Worry over automation destroying jobs is almost as old as automation itself. Researchers have yet to find solid evidence that automation has ever destroyed jobs. Now, that of course, doesn't mean that this is some immutable law of the universe that automation will never destroy jobs. But it does mean…

How many distinct 'experiments' (as it were) have we actually seen with respect to automation? I often wonder whether we are drawing from a very small sample here, where we look at a handful of distinct automation cases and conclude that we're all pretty safe. Is our experience with automation that old or varied? Have we ever faced the prospect of a range of "considerably less routine" manual labor (e.g. driving) being automated at the same time as a large number of white/pink collar tasks? The industrial revolution isn't that old in some senses.

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#23

Post by ThomPete »

oh_sigh wrote: post #19
noonespecial wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that previous automation was a force multiplier. Today's automation is a mind multiplier. This is unprecedented territory. It really is different this time. I hate all of the "singularity" hokum, but it's getting really hard to predict what's going to happen.

The computer itself has been a mind multiplier since the beginning. So I don't think it's fair to say that this is something completely new.

The new thing is that computers can learn to learn.

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#24

Post by mrfusion »

I was thinking about automation and job loss recently. I tried to make a simple model to understand what happens.

Can you guys critique this thought experiment? It makes it seem like it won't be a problem.

There are three people on an island. One catches fish. One bakes bread and the other one owns the land and takes a portion of the of the fish and bread.

Let's say one day the land owner recieves a machine that makes bread and catches fish. He can either continue collecting rent plus his new production. Or he can not collect rent since he doesn't need it. But in either case the other two people are no worse off.

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#25

Post by JoshTriplett »

ThomPete wrote: post #12
jdoliner wrote: post #10

Something interesting that I learned recently from a former Dean of the Industrial Labor Relations School at Cornell: Worry over automation destroying jobs is almost as old as automation itself. Researchers have yet to find solid evidence that automation has ever destroyed jobs. Now, that of course, doesn't mean that this is some immutable law of the universe that automation will never destroy jobs. But it does mean…

Automation used to be about simply replacing physical labour with more automated systems. The problem with your Deans teaching is that it's not not just physical labour but intellectual capacity. And so unless you have some other level of complexity that make humans special it is in fact going to be more or less impossible to think of a thing an AI wont be able to do better than humans.

> And so unless you have some other level of complexity that make humans special it is in fact going to be more or less impossible to think of a thing an AI wont be able to do better than humans.

If we reach the point where AI can do all human jobs better than humans, that would put us firmly in a post-scarcity world, where humans no longer need to work jobs at all.

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#26

Post by hetman »

noonespecial wrote: post #16
jdoliner wrote: post #10

Something interesting that I learned recently from a former Dean of the Industrial Labor Relations School at Cornell: Worry over automation destroying jobs is almost as old as automation itself. Researchers have yet to find solid evidence that automation has ever destroyed jobs. Now, that of course, doesn't mean that this is some immutable law of the universe that automation will never destroy jobs. But it does mean…

The difference is that previous automation was a force multiplier. Today's automation is a mind multiplier. This is unprecedented territory. It really is different this time. I hate all of the "singularity" hokum, but it's getting really hard to predict what's going to happen.

I feel like that difference is overstated. Weaving was once a highly skilled profession requiring intricate control by an intelligent operator yet it was increasingly automated even before the advent of computing.

I think the difference in what we consider "force" work and what is "mind" work is highly subjective to the things we've grown used to thinking of as menial based on the technology we've learned to take for granted.

The new forms of automation seem to be doing nothing but continuing the same gradual trend rather than offering some kind of paradigm shift. For example I have yet to see any automated systems replacing human creativity, when that begins to happen then we really will be in uncharted territory.

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#27

Post by ThomPete »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #25
ThomPete wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automation used to be about simply replacing physical labour with more automated systems. The problem with your Deans teaching is that it's not not just physical labour but intellectual capacity. And so unless you have some other level of complexity that make humans special it is in fact going to be more or less impossible to think of a thing an AI wont be able to do better than humans.

> And so unless you have some other level of complexity that make humans special it is in fact going to be more or less impossible to think of a thing an AI wont be able to do better than humans. If we reach the point where AI can do all human jobs better than humans, that would put us firmly in a post-scarcity world, where humans no longer need to work jobs at all.

You are looking at this the wrong way.

No job require all human skills. Most jobs requires only subsets of human skills.

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#28

Post by azernik »

mrfusion wrote: post #24

I was thinking about automation and job loss recently. I tried to make a simple model to understand what happens. Can you guys critique this thought experiment? It makes it seem like it won't be a problem. There are three people on an island. One catches fish. One bakes bread and the other one owns the land and takes a portion of the of the fish and bread. Let's say one day the land owner recieves a machine that make…

Or the landowner can kick them off the land so he can use it all for himself. Especially if the machine still uses the same resources (land and coastline), and just cuts out the labor component.

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#29

Post by q3r3qr3q »

ThomPete wrote: post #23
oh_sigh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The computer itself has been a mind multiplier since the beginning. So I don't think it's fair to say that this is something completely new.

The new thing is that computers can learn to learn.

You mean the machine learning stuff, that's been around since 1959?

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#30

Post by scottmf »

mrfusion wrote: post #24

I was thinking about automation and job loss recently. I tried to make a simple model to understand what happens. Can you guys critique this thought experiment? It makes it seem like it won't be a problem. There are three people on an island. One catches fish. One bakes bread and the other one owns the land and takes a portion of the of the fish and bread. Let's say one day the land owner recieves a machine that make…

Why will he continue to let them live on his land?

It's a gross oversimplification regardless.

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