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AI are taking jobs

economist.com

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Re: AI are taking jobs

#141

Post by narag »

patio11 wrote: post #42

If you actually dig into the statistics, the 9% of America with persistent unemployment problems are mostly not e.g. bank underwriters who got creamed by FICO scores making them totally obsolete. That makes for a great newspaper piece, because well-educated people are not supposed to end up unemployable, but it bears little relationship to reality. Unemployment is dominated by sectors directly connected to the real e…

Unemployment is dominated by sectors directly connected to the real estate/financial boom (construction, real estate, finance) which are no longer booming...

This is the thing that makes me skeptic about all the "distribute available work", "create subsidies for displaced workers" proposals. People still need houses, food, all that. It's the demand that starts the economic cycles.

Real state, at least in some countries, has been the "engine" that fuels the economy at large. But if it's stalled, some other area must become the lead.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#142

Post by mseebach »

marquis wrote: post #140
mseebach wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the reason that we need a wage for displaced workers. People who will probably never work again, due to lack of education or ambition. Are you sure it's a good idea to systematically reward a lack of ambition? > It's my belief that as a result of our efforts, our drive to untangle complexity, that there will likely be 50% unemployment in the US by the end of the next decade. Let's design for that. You propo…

>Are you sure it's a good idea to systematically reward a lack of ambition? Why the assumption that if you pay someone a living wage when their services are no longer needed, they won't continue to seek meaningful work, re-educate themselves or provide valuable services to the community? I come from a working class family, all of whom have the option to not work yet choose to do one or all three of the above out of a…

I was quoting the GP:

People who will probably never work again, due to lack of education or ambition.

There exist plenty of large areas dominated by people who are, let's call it "empowered to provide meaningful services to the community". Yet, these areas are more often examples of urban decay than they are of thriving communities.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#143

Post by DuncanIdaho »

mseebach wrote: post #138
_delirium wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess to me that's not an interesting dynamic for a society that's advanced past subsistence farming. In subsistence farming, yes, you work to feed yourself. If you have modern 21st-century farming technology though, producing enough food to feed everyone takes only a few percent of GDP, not 100% of everyone's time. Why not just give it to everyone, since its cost is basically noise on modern economic scales anyway…

Putting food on the table is a metaphor that goes beyond food. Here are some statistics on Americans counted as poor: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/09/understandi... We have moved beyond subsistence farming and free food - "food on the table" means a lot more, including many scarce goods.

Indeed, we should make a point of not wiping anybody's fanny. What I had in mind is a type of existence where one has bare minimum provided (shelter, food, clothing, access to information), but that also as a feature provides a social stigma. This institution should be viewed by society as a temporary stop or a final refuge a safety net if you will.

You want tobacco? Go and work for it. You want booze? Go and work for it. You want PS3? Go and work for it.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#144

Post by peteretep »

Tsagadai wrote: post #52
kandu wrote: post #5

Imagine a world where all goods and services required for a decent life will be provided by AI and robots. Still, there will plenty of jobs for humans - those related to the humanity of humans. Life could become dedicated to enjoying art in various forms, and this art will be conceived mostly by humans. If people will have no work to do, they could hire entertainers. They could do jobs as a hobby - e.g., manually pro…

The modern capitalist society is extremely unlikely to end up in this state. Companies grow larger, that is their modus operandi. Once capital can be used to buy capital that produces capital you have eliminated humans from the equation. There is a level which we are approaching where some industries will become almost entirely automated. What happens in that situation is a few people make all the money and the rest…

> What happens in that situation is a few people make all the money and the rest don't.

Or alternatively the economic force of competition kicks in and these goods become virtually free above the cost of the machinery and raw goods.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#145

Post by mseebach »

DuncanIdaho wrote: post #143
mseebach wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting food on the table is a metaphor that goes beyond food. Here are some statistics on Americans counted as poor: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/09/understandi... We have moved beyond subsistence farming and free food - "food on the table" means a lot more, including many scarce goods.

Indeed, we should make a point of not wiping anybody's fanny. What I had in mind is a type of existence where one has bare minimum provided (shelter, food, clothing, access to information), but that also as a feature provides a social stigma. This institution should be viewed by society as a temporary stop or a final refuge a safety net if you will. You want tobacco? Go and work for it. You want booze? Go and work fo…

I don't think we disagree much, then. But the origin of this thread was the assertion that 50% of the population would be permanently unemployable by next decade.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#146

Post by marquis »

127 wrote: post #38
kandu wrote: post #5

Imagine a world where all goods and services required for a decent life will be provided by AI and robots. Still, there will plenty of jobs for humans - those related to the humanity of humans. Life could become dedicated to enjoying art in various forms, and this art will be conceived mostly by humans. If people will have no work to do, they could hire entertainers. They could do jobs as a hobby - e.g., manually pro…

Sounds like a society of couch potatoes and drug addicts to me. From my perspective you have a much too optimistic view on the human race. If people are not forced to exceed, they will not. Suffering, that does not cripple, defines us. It makes us stronger, more agile, more determined. I would go so far as to say that when we have dreams and goals and we strive to achieve them, by making work towards step by step, ea…

> the easier it is to meet material needs, the lazier people get and more prone to instant gratification. It's not that difficult to extrapolate from this one simple truth

And yet all literature (fiction and non-fiction) ever written on this topic concludes that above all humans want to feel connected and valued. I completely disagree with your theory and believe that given the opportunity to not require demeaning work for subsistence, our species will overwhelming choose to seek meaningful activities above becoming a permanent couch potato. Why else would we have such a rich culture of arts and music, if our ancestors preferred to spend their downtime watching the horizon/fireplace instead of creating. Yes, there may be some who choose a less engaging existence but given that of everyone I know, from poor cousins to independently wealthy ex-financiers prefers to do something with their time, I am confident the majority will also prefer meaning over stagnation.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#147

Post by marquis »

mseebach wrote: post #142
marquis wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Are you sure it's a good idea to systematically reward a lack of ambition? Why the assumption that if you pay someone a living wage when their services are no longer needed, they won't continue to seek meaningful work, re-educate themselves or provide valuable services to the community? I come from a working class family, all of whom have the option to not work yet choose to do one or all three of the above out of a…

I was quoting the GP: People who will probably never work again, due to lack of education or ambition. There exist plenty of large areas dominated by people who are, let's call it "empowered to provide meaningful services to the community". Yet, these areas are more often examples of urban decay than they are of thriving communities.

Really? Have you ever been involved with a school or pre-school for example? All my friends who are parents give hours a week to their children's upbringing in a communal manner, as just one example. I wonder if we aren't being brainwashed by a media that chooses to label us as a lazy species who are only good for watching television - because in the wider world as I've seen it this isn't the case at all.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#148

Post by Thrymr »

atomicdog wrote: post #121
troels wrote: post #116

In which alternative world is increased productivity a problem? I don't get the logic behind that. I just don't.

I suppose it depends what the cost of said productivity is. Slave societies were pretty productive.

That is very wrong. Slave labor is extremely unproductive, that has been known by economists since Adam Smith. It turns out that forcing people to work against their will, with no hope of advancement or independence, is not a strong motivator to productivity. Fear of punishment is a stronger inducement to escape and rebellion than actual productivity, and slave societies need to spend significant resources to enforce the system in favor of the slaveowners.

See, for example, Charles Mann, 1493, on sugar plantations in Africa and the Americas.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#149

Post by hackinthebochs »

mseebach wrote: post #126
DuncanIdaho wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you sure it's a good idea to systematically reward a lack of ambition? > You proposed design will become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Putting people on a permanent wage because they will "probably never work again" will signal to those people that society considers them worthless. You will never produce anything of sufficient value for anyone to consider it worthwhile to feed you for the effort. You provide ques…

So here's where I'm coming from: Putting food on the table as a result of your work is satisfying and a source of pride. Not being able to do it is shameful. This is a fundamental dynamic. While it's good that there's a safety net so slip-ups and bad luck won't put you in the street and kill your children, institutionalising that dynamic (effectively removing it) will have catastrophic effects on the values of societ…

>So here's where I'm coming from: Putting food on the table as a result of your work is satisfying and a source of pride. Not being able to do it is shameful. This is a fundamental dynamic.

You act like this is a fundamental feature of humanity; it's not. Its a learned response to thousands of years of scarcity. There were plenty of societies where food was plentiful and thus they never developed this sort of social conditioning.

In a world where food, shelter, necessities are plentiful people will be freed up to gain social standing through creative endeavors. Or perhaps we'll do away with our need to rank each other based on arbitrary metrics. I welcome this future.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#150

Post by kokey »

I found Eli Dourado's take on 'Race Against The Machine' quite an interesting analysis and somewhat related to this article http://elidourado.com/blog/technologies-of-control-and-resis...

It's mainly how points of control incentivize some of these factors to move faster, or out of step with the other factors.

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