The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

Specifically, that technology has previously allowed workers to be more productive by shifting away from manual labor and towards cognitive work that requires the human mind. But AI is a unique threat because it can match (and then quickly absolutely dominate) humans for any kind of work that requires cognitive power.

It's not a ridiculous argument, but I'm not convinced for several reasons:

1. I'm not convinced that AI can actually achieve something like the general intelligence that's required to perform in rapidly changing and dynamic environments.

2. Even if they can, there are lots of artistic and creative jobs that AI may not be able to do. Maybe we'll all be writers and poets and songwriters and sculptures in the future.

3. Also, doesn't incredibly smart and capable AI that can do any job that humans can do mean that the price of everything should plummet? Maybe post-scarcity will look different than we expect; maybe all the things we need for life will be effectively free, and companies will give them away the way they do with advertising schwag now.

4. If AI gets so cognitively powerful that it puts most of humans out of a job, we'll have either much bigger things to worry about (war with AI), or nothing to worry about (they'll either just squish us quickly or save us from all this).

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> It's important to note that the vast majority of workers (>90%) before the industrial revolution worked in agriculture, and that this number is now less than 5%. Why did the automation of agriculture not lead to widespread, long term unemployment? This is because disruptive technologies have multiple effects. They:

* Destroy existing jobs

* Complement existing jobs (by making them more efficient)

* Create new jobs

* Reallocate the workforce to where it is most productive

Note that only one of those four effects causes long run job loss. Two of those cause job loss in general (job reallocation implies job loss in the short term, after all).

For automation to cause long run structural unemployment, the new technology needs not only to destroy jobs and create no new jobs, but it also needs to somehow prevent reallocation of workers to other sectors of the economy.

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The issue as I see it is not so much automation, which is inevitable. The issue is that humans are hard to retrain, unless you spend a lot of expensive human power to make the transition.

This makes it un-economical (you need to give people money, and time, and teachers, and then IF they certify, they need to qualify/compete with people who were already in the industry).

Re-training is an unsolved problem (In my opinion), and it is possible we may not want to solve it.

As the internet has shown, any communication technology is morally neutral. If you found a way to re-train huge groups of people faster than ever before, then that tool could be used to indoctrinate people faster than before as well.

EDIT: It is pretty important to note that this is the current weak spot in the over arching economic model that drives the world.

Tech advances are mathematically responsible for improving the size of the economy - they are necessary and critical for humanity.

The general answer by economics is that people move to other sectors where there is demand for them.

Unfortunately, if you cannot make that move, the system doesn't work that well.

Or worse - you make a move from being a manager to a burger flipper.

One side effect of this is an increase in inequality of wealth distribution.

So figuring out if re-training works, and if it is working at the scale needed to deal with creative disruption, is obviously a major component of future human well being.

Many healthy retailers use omnichannel, ship-from-store, buy-online-fulfill-in-store, etc. These methods can improve fulfillment, increase inventory utilization, and reduce stale inventory.

If a retailer wants to draw down inventory, then just cut replenishment. I believe Target Canada was accused of doing so. Implementing "faux omnichannel" and the associated IT, store processes, etc. would be much harder.

I look back on my childhood in the 80s and 90s and remember retail as not only fulfilling the need of acquiring stuff but also as a central meeting place. Going downtown to buy stuff was an activity as much as it was an errand. There were movie theaters, restaurants and all sorts of other business that existed in an symbiotic ecosystem with all the retail outlets. Over time, each of these business has been or is being replaced by a more-efficient, internet version of itself. We now order more and more food delivery rather than eating out. We now stream more of our entertainment in our homes and many people haven't been to a theater more than a couple of times per year. And while none of these shifts is bad in and of itself, the common theme is that we've replaced the social version of each of them with a version that we use alone, interacting only with a computer and not another human being.

I don't think it's a coincidence that we're having an epidemic of drug addiction and overdose considering how often drug addiction is a side effect of lack of human connection. We've taken all of these services and removed the human interaction and I think we're seeing that that human interaction was more than just fulfilling a transactional need. It was also keeping us sane in minuscule increments that, overall, added up to something tangible.

It's a tough duality for me to accept. I love my Kindle and I find the reading experience to be so much nicer than a physical book. On a recent year-long trip abroad, I was able to bring enough books for the entire trip and it weighed less than a single physical book. In one sense, it was great. Every book I read was something I wanted to read and I probably enjoyed them more because of it. On my first prolonged trip abroad back in the late 90s, I could only bring a couple of books with me. After I'd finished them, I had to find people to trade with to get new books. I probably didn't enjoy those books as much as ones I would've selected for myself, but I also ended up reading things I'd never have even considered reading before because I just didn't have any other options. There's a distinct part of me--the person that's able to look beyond the immediate fulfillment of my needs--that thinks that things were much better back in the days where stuff cost a bit more, it took more time to buy and I had to actually talk to a person to buy it.

If the numbers aren't good you should expect there to be changes. It's business. Always assume the worst