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Should economists be more concerned about AI?

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Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#61

Post by gpawl »

hetman wrote: post #26
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.

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…

Weaving is clearly a mechanical task that required a mind to control the hardware. Problem-solving is not a mechanical task.

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#63

Post by gpawl »

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.

unless that AI relies on an energy source that is fenced off by capitalists

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#64

Post by hwillis »

sskates wrote: post #53
fullshark wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most individuals care less about jobs in aggregate and just care about their own particular job. They especially don't care about the number of jobs at the global level. There are many people whose job will be replaced by robots and whatever expertise they've learned over the years will become useless. They will need to transition to an entirely new career and start over. If they are over the age of 40 they have to a…

Absolutely agreed. I think the GP's viewpoint was widely shared by "The Elite" for the past 10 years and is what created the backlash that got Trump elected. We (and I use that loosely) have to care because the people who get displaced all care about their jobs. In fact, because this displacement is accelerating, we have to care even more than we would in the past.

>I think the GP's viewpoint was widely shared by "The Elite" for the past 10 years and is what created the backlash that got Trump elected.

Why do you think that? If by backlash you mean people (Trump voters) wanting social support to deal with those problems, I see zero evidence of that. The extreme anti-immigration views indicate that the opposite is true and Trump voters think people are taking advantage of social programs. When Trump talks about bringing back jobs, its purely out of xenophobia and is completely divorced from actually employing people. It's not about hiring Americans and it never was; its about not employing foreigners.

It seems to me that now more than ever the only people who care about automation affecting jobs are the ones less likely to be affected.

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#65

Post by gpawl »

speedboat wrote: post #31
monk_e_boy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates said that no nation on earth is rich enough to afford basic income. It's a long way off.

Bill Gates just want doesn't want to pay more in taxes. That's what UBI requires: more taxes. Considerable tax increases, but there it is. Tax the economic beneficiaries of the economy and divest to everyone to bring the top and bottom closer to GDP per capita.

Bill Gates has dedicated >90% of his lifetime income to poverty relief projects, and hasn't cured poverty yet.

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#66

Post by skruzel »

As a former portfolio manager who also runs a "machine learning for economists company", I have seen many examples where AI and better data can help economists quantify their intuitions and more rigorously test their models. My product is even called the "AI Economist"

Let's face it, humans are great at organizing problems and hypothesing about the future, but we are terrible at quickly reasoning about complex interactions and finding patterns in highly noisy data.

One area I'm pretty excited about here is using better machine learning algorithms to organize global production, employment and trade data to improve out definitions of business cycles. We have relied on 'high-level stylized facts' to describe the complex and fascinating global economy for too long.

If you like geeking out on this stuff, my recent post goes in to it more: https://astrocyte.io/2017/01/11/ml-redefining-business-cycle...

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#67

Post by vorotato »

massysett wrote: post #57
speedboat wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates just want doesn't want to pay more in taxes. That's what UBI requires: more taxes. Considerable tax increases, but there it is. Tax the economic beneficiaries of the economy and divest to everyone to bring the top and bottom closer to GDP per capita.

Gates is worth $76 billion. US population is over 300 million. So if we liberated Gates of every penny he has, there would be a one-time payment of less than $253 to every American. The rich do not have enough money to pay for everyone else to be on the dole.

Sure but there were over 10 million millionaires in the US last year. If we took just a million a year just from those guys we'd have 30,000 a year per american. I'm not saying we should, but your math sucks.

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#68

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #37
ThomPete wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are looking at this the wrong way. No job require all human skills. Most jobs requires only subsets of human skills.

I didn't suggest otherwise; however, the comment I replied to said: > 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 But we necessarily can't reach the point where AI can do all human jobs without having completely general human-level (or beyond-human-level) AI. Until then, AI can only replace a subset of human jobs, and I've seen many convincing argu…

I don't know how you can come to this conclusion. Machines are even encroaching upon artistic and creative endeavors, territory once taught to be the province of humans. From drawing to composing music to acting (Grand Moff Tarkin, please stand up), they are advancing. Machines unequivocally surpass my abilities in said fields.

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#69

Post by wwarner »

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…

I happen to agree with this. Have a listen to the last twimlai.com podcast about "deep genomics". From an ML point of view, they're still finding their way, but from an economic point of view two things seem clear. 1) ML + genetics are going to have a massive economic impact. 2) Not a single job will be lost as a result of advancement, as the sector doesn't yet exist. Whenever I hear someone say there won't be any jobs after AI surpasses some threshold, I always ask them how many jobs were lost as a result of railroads? Was it so awful that the Pony Express went out of business after the transcontinental railroad was finished? Or that all those scribes had to quit copying their mistakes over and over again after the printing press came around?

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#70

Post by edblarney »

sskates wrote: post #53
fullshark wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most individuals care less about jobs in aggregate and just care about their own particular job. They especially don't care about the number of jobs at the global level. There are many people whose job will be replaced by robots and whatever expertise they've learned over the years will become useless. They will need to transition to an entirely new career and start over. If they are over the age of 40 they have to a…

Absolutely agreed. I think the GP's viewpoint was widely shared by "The Elite" for the past 10 years and is what created the backlash that got Trump elected. We (and I use that loosely) have to care because the people who get displaced all care about their jobs. In fact, because this displacement is accelerating, we have to care even more than we would in the past.

"was widely shared by "The Elite" for the past 10"

You mean for the last 200 years.

Mass automation has been going on since the dawn of the industrial revolution.

As long as there is value to be created, and the surpluses are distributed enough so that consumers 'want something and can pay for it' - there will be jobs.

Obviously, it's more painful for those put out of work than 'the elite' ... but employment levels have been decent for a very long time. [1]

The historical unemployment rate seems to defy the notion that 'machines are putting everyone out of work'. That can't be ignored; in fact, it demands kind of another way of looking at it.

[1] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-r...

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