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AI Won't Cause Unemployment

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Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#141

Post by neilwilson »

cabalamat wrote: post #129

> Communist-inspired Universal Basic Income Which communist country has or had UBI? Because I am not aware of any, nor do I regard it as communist. So what do I mean by communism? All economies are run by a mixture of markets and commands. Communism is any economy that is largely command-based (all real economies are a mixture of the two, of course). UBI is where someone is given a regular amount of money and can spe…

What's funny is that it isn't communist. UBI is a free market belief utilising the money illusion to make capitalist extraction seem 'fair' to those who can't see past a dollar sign. Hence why Friedman made the case for it via 'negative income tax'

In reality it is people who don't want to work for a living being fed and clothed by forcible extraction of time and output from those that do work for a living - with the extraction being laundered by a capitalist intermediary in the usual fashion.

If the workers owned the means of production, then they would take Friday off instead of working extra to produce a surplus for UBI people to consume for nothing material in return.

In a communist economy everybody has to take their share of the 'socially necessary labour' if they want anything out of the communal pot. You have to use your time working for the benefit of others.

That's a guaranteed job, not a guaranteed pension.

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#142

Post by ChatGTP »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #136
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason technology doesn't net destroy jobs is that things that destroy jobs lower costs, which leaves people with more money in their pockets, which creates jobs. What net destroys jobs is things that unproductively increase costs. Resources that are wasted can't be used for productive labor that improves quality of life.

It seems to me all the money is just getting more and more concentrated. If Amazon succeeds in completely automating it's warehouses, who will see the bulk of that saved money, the customers or bezos?

Well the more you automate everything, the less consumers you're going to have so it does create a bit of a conundrum no ?

Probably what's going to happen is everyone will get more productive as open source AI models become more accessible and cheaper to run yourself, tooling, robots etc, then it will kind of end up leveling off again. Amazon will become less relevant because many other companies will have factories that are automated too.

It would be nice if we end up in a society where it's so cheap to produce everything that we're all wealthy.

I actually think there are so so so many variables at place that no one can predict where this is going... I get a feeling it's going to be a surprise.

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#143

Post by AnthonyMouse »

wardedVibe wrote: post #131
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason technology doesn't net destroy jobs is that things that destroy jobs lower costs, which leaves people with more money in their pockets, which creates jobs. What net destroys jobs is things that unproductively increase costs. Resources that are wasted can't be used for productive labor that improves quality of life.

Just because there are new jobs doesn't mean the people whose jobs were automated out of existence will be able to take them. This is the whole "teach truckers to write code" thing from back when people thought the next wave of automation would be self-driving, rather than art.

> Just because there are new jobs doesn't mean the people whose jobs were automated out of existence will be able to take them.

Yes it does, because those are the people whose labor will be available. They'll take whatever jobs they're qualified for, which may lower wages in those occupations until the lower price increases demand or reduces supply by driving anyone currently in those occupations who is qualified for another job into the other job.

The change isn't necessarily Pareto optimal. There can be people who are worse off because the amount their cost of living went down was less than the amount their wages went down. But for most people it will be the opposite, because the change is an increase in productivity. You get more production with less labor, so you on average need to do less labor to meet your cost of living.

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#144

Post by valine »

zarzavat wrote: post #127
_448 wrote: post #101

This claim that AI won't cause unemployment baffles me. I understand the argument being made that new types of jobs will be created, but what the people making that argument miss is the massive level of up-skilling/re-skilling that is required of the population whose jobs are replaced. This has not worked out well. Just look at the communities in some poorer parts of the UK, who were relying on coal, mining and steam…

Not up-skilling but down-skilling. AI is going to come for the mathematicians and radiologists first and work its way down to the pizza delivery boys. This is because robotics is a couple of decades behind. Anyone with a desk job as a knowledge worker is most at risk.

Mathematicians are more than just number crunchers. Perhaps the most important part of a mathematicians job is formally defining problems. Even if the next generation of ChatGPT can solve any math problem you give it satisfactory, you still need a mathematician to ask the question.

Presumably this AI won’t be omnipotent either, and there will be some limit to its mathematical prowess. I suspect most human effort will be spent inventing new ways to push the AI further.

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#145

Post by 1letterunixname »

The most out-of-touch wishful thinking since trickle down economics.

Meanwhile, real income for the bottom 50% continues to fall while fat cats like him pay virtually no taxes because they bought DC with lobbyists.

AI will destroy office jobs of all kinds. It won't create even a sliver of replacement jobs. More and more, work and livable income become scarcer.

https://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_howard_the_wonderful_and_te...

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#146

Post by AnthonyMouse »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #136
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason technology doesn't net destroy jobs is that things that destroy jobs lower costs, which leaves people with more money in their pockets, which creates jobs. What net destroys jobs is things that unproductively increase costs. Resources that are wasted can't be used for productive labor that improves quality of life.

It seems to me all the money is just getting more and more concentrated. If Amazon succeeds in completely automating it's warehouses, who will see the bulk of that saved money, the customers or bezos?

> If Amazon succeeds in completely automating it's warehouses, who will see the bulk of that saved money, the customers or bezos?

The answer depends on whether Amazon is a monopoly. If everybody else who sells goods on the internet also automates their warehouses and customers choose the retailer with the lowest prices, they have to pass the savings on to the customer or the customer will buy from Walmart or some other competitor.

But "monopolies raise the cost of living" is a separate problem the solution to which is to get rid of monopolies, not to get rid of automation.

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#147

Post by 1letterunixname »

camillomiller wrote: post #113
janalsncm wrote: post #104

> The jobs apocalypse is always right around the corner; just ask the Luddites. The obvious yet unaddressed point here is that automation was bad for the Luddites. They lost their jobs to machines. The implied retort is that people can and should be reskilled, but as people like Andrew Yang have said many times, reskilling has mixed results. It seems very weird that I, as a moderately knowledgeable layperson, should…

This is Mark Andreessen talking. Feels like Philip Morris telling you to stop worrying about smoking-induced cancer. He has also recently been particularly active in defending the massive inequalities generated by his favorite economic system, and by tech in particular. It’s as if he also indeed feels the pressure of a wider malcontent this time around. That said, I’m surprised he disses UBI as “communism” and inhere…

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#148

Post by 1letterunixname »

usgroup wrote: post #106
janalsncm wrote: post #104

> The jobs apocalypse is always right around the corner; just ask the Luddites. The obvious yet unaddressed point here is that automation was bad for the Luddites. They lost their jobs to machines. The implied retort is that people can and should be reskilled, but as people like Andrew Yang have said many times, reskilling has mixed results. It seems very weird that I, as a moderately knowledgeable layperson, should…

And reskilling makes much more sense when you’re replacing manual labour. Less sense when you’re replacing brains.

The presumption that there are alternative jobs or that a given worker can attain new skills imposes a tax on them they may not be able to pay. There are disabled and unemployed people who cannot handle "reskilling".

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#150

Post by 1letterunixname »

BurningFrog wrote: post #99
AverageDude wrote: post #43

Disagree. AI will cause mass unemployment because it’s way more efficient than a human, doesn’t get sick (relatively less than humans) and costs less. Simple economics. I’ll give you one example. The checkout counters in supermarkets, if the supermarkets would have hired young people on those positions not only we might have less young people going towards drugs and hooliganism but it would have also made them better…

We have replaced human labor with machines that are way more efficient than a human for 250 years now. Mass unemployment has always been feared as a result, and it has always not happened. I strongly expect trends to continue.

Then you're blissfully unaware of the real labor participation rate and of gradual phenomena.
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