Tech companies should stop pretending AI won’t destroy jobs

"According to a Rockefeller Panel report commissioned to take an in-depth look at the financial realities of the performer's life:

"The miserable income of the majority of performing artists reflects both a shortage of jobs and the brief duration of employment that is available. In all except the small handful of our major and metropolitan orchestras, musicians earn an average of only a few hundred dollars a year from their professional labors. During an average week in the winter season, only about one-fifth of the active members of Actors' Equity Association, the theatrical performers union, are employed in the profession. Of the actors who do find jobs, well over half are employed for only ten weeks -- less than one-fifth of the year. For most opera compnies the season lasts only a few weeks. The livelihood of the dancer is perhaps the most meager of all."[1]

Now, that's today, with relatively few artists. Imagine a future where there's a flood of artists from all the people who lost their jobs to AI (assuming they all have some desire, ability, and dedication to actually try to make a living as an artist.. very unlikely, but such is supposedly the main hope for a future for these people). Now the wages of artists will be even further depressed as there will be a glut of supply (much like the glut of "photographers" now that everyone has a camera in their cell phone).

Then it has to be asked: who will be buying all of these artisonal products and services from the newly unemployed masses? There's only so much art the relatively well-off are going to want to buy, only so many plays they'll pay to see, and so on. Demand would have to rise tremendously to absorb all the additional supply if the already meager wages that artists earn aren't going to fall to virtually zero. Where is all that extra demand going to come from? The US is already not a place where art is particularly valued. There's no indication that that's going to improve with the advent of job-replacing AI.

[1] - From "Staying Sane in the Arts" by Eric Maisel

Ugh?

Yes--finding a place to sleep without breaking any laws will keep them on their toes.

Non-profits will keep them from starving to death--maybe?

They will become adept at sign making?

And, they will say they hate it, but are secretly relieved when they end up in jail.

Hay--this is now?

The wealthy will always be fine. They are always fine. They have the world to sell their stuff. They have the money to buy political influence.

The cameras will record any act of malfeasance. The wealthy communities will have surveillance (Tiburon Ca.), aggressive police tactics. All designed to keep them away from the zombies. They won't have to look at the eye sores. God I hate that phrase. It's always cones out of the ugliest peoples mouths?

We will get used to seeing people dying on the streets. We will get used to the smell of sewage on the sidewalks. We will get used to looking the other way.

Hay--this is happening today.

California has one patch of land that people can go to die/live for nothing. They can pitch a tent. Drink the water they brought. Eat the food they brought. It's in the desert of California, ownded by a Teacher's Union? It's a piece of land the wealthy would let their dogs poop on. It's hell. Federal land? No--the rangers will monitor you like a melanoma. There's just nowhere to go when you don't fit in.

Yes--people will busy. Busy just barely surviving.

So many of us are just barely surviving, but taught to not complain. This is America? It's the land of opportunity? A country that helps those need with well funded Safety Nets. A country that made too many laws--laws that stomp on the poor, and unemployed.

Ugh. Some days?

A poorer home in the future might have a cheap AI-made TV, cheap AI-made cookware, a fridge full of groceries delivered either by drone or self-driving car, cheap mass-produced IKEA furniture assembled by a robot, all of these things “cheap” by cost but still higher quality than the mass-produced goods of today, but maybe the one luxury might be a handmade rocking chair from a local woodworker, who lives in similarly comfortable standards and spends his days building and selling chairs and canoes and cabinetry and whatnot, none of which is necessarily materially better than the stuff manufactured in drone factories and shipped across the world in drone ships and drone trucks, but people will pay extra for the small luxury of having their own special handmade things sometimes.

Also, because the necessities of life are so cheap, the woodworker can invest a big chunk of his woodworking income in index funds and have a share of the AI-generated wealth.

People might be paying a premium for hand-made trinkets now, but if there's a glut of supply from all the new artisans, those prices will plummet unless a huge amount of new demand for these artisonal goods materializes.

Sure, these newly unemployed people might themselves occasionally be able to splurge on some hand made trinket, but it's very unlikely that they themselves will be providing enough income to sustain each other. As now, the vast majority of purchasers of artisonal goods are likely to be the relatively well off, and there's just not that much demand among them to absorb the new glut of supply, so artisonal wages will necessarily plummet.

That's all assuming that the newly unemployed will will want to and somehow magically be trained to make furniture, jewelry, hand-made ice cream or what have you. Doing that to a high enough quality that people will actually buy and value what you make to outcompete all the other artisans making similar stuff is not going to be easy.

Also, it's far from clear that the cheapness of manufacture of AI-made goods will result in lower prices for the consumer. Prices consumers pay might remain the same and the extra profit be pocketed by the manufacturers.

To your final point about investing in index funds, it's far from a certainty that the index will continue to rise in the future. It could fall for any number of reasons, in which case even those fortunate enough to be able to afford to invest in the market will suffer.