Live data from Hacker News

AI Won't Cause Unemployment

pmarca.substack.com

211–220 of 362 posts

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#211
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…

> Just look at the communities in some poorer parts of the UK, who were relying on coal, mining and steam locomotive(yes, for that many generations the effects of job losses are felt)

In order to make money selling coal, someone has to buy that coal. They're selling something that nobody buys anymore. Try selling ice cubes in the North Pole.

The purpose of those coal jobs was jobs creation, not problem solving.

New generations need to be re skilled in understanding that jobs don't come from government policies but from problem solving. And government can only create new problems.

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#212
This article is pure conservative BS.

The stagnation of certain industries is because of tax policy and the insane greed injected into our healthcare systems when the HMO laws passed in the 1980's.

I'm not even sure what pmarca is talking about here. It's like he's waving his arms, "look over here at my BS and don't look over there where AI is about to slam information workers."

AI will absolutely change the way software engineering is accomplished. We already use things like Cloud Formation templates to auto-build and scale cloud-based architectures. We have code generators to build microservices. We even have modeling techniques to simplify complex systems.

All of those "things" will be plugged into an AI and one senior technologist will be able to write a detailed functional description of a system in natural language, domain models, with data points, and an AI will write, test, integrate, and deploy production level code.

I absolutely see entire divisions of software engineers being wiped out by AI-generated systems.

Pmarca makes the argument that even so, all those engineers will do "something else" that pays a salary and benefits society. The ones that can elevate their skills to systems design and architecture will probably be okay. But people that like coding...they're going to be creating building blocks for the AI to use in its generation processes and those are going to be low-wage jobs.

AI is going to change humanity in dramatic ways. I just hope that in the process, someone builds an AI that figures out a path out of international conflict, through global food and water safety issues, and speeds up our ability to restore the planet's health so humanity can survive.

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#213
>Fears about new technology replacing human labor and causing overall unemployment have raged across industrialized societies for hundreds of years, despite a nearly continual rise in both jobs and wages in capitalist economies. The jobs apocalypse is always right around the corner;

So by using the term "overall unemployment", the argument is framed in such a way the argument cant really be won. Why even bother debating?

However in the UK look at the Victorian seaside resorts, these have never recovered from their Victorian popularity because the airplane makes it quicker and easier to jet to better place's like Majorca or Ibiza.

Any politician attempting to suggest otherwise with schemes, is just deluded, wasting tax payers money, unless the country has its own Brexit & Covid in which to force people to holiday at home ...

Of course some seaside towns might become a hub for oil or windfarms[1], but that doesnt really help those already in a downhill trajectory living there, through lack of employment or age.

Look at the mining towns, the electricity grid and gas pipelines have put those miners out of business, and there are always going to be some who never recover because they are too old to retrain or dont have finances to escape to places with better pay and job opportunities.

I think people are poor at recognising the disruptive technology that can put them out of work, or lower their income.

The internet lowered the wages of programmers and call centre staff as work could be offshored more cheaply using the internet.

Banking and investing, gambling on spotting the trends which will become profitable over different timelines can be done anywhere in the world where fast communications exist provided you are not High Frequency Trading [1] where you then need your computers to be as close to the exchange as possible in order to manipulate markets.

Disruptive technology will always displace people, just look at the Middle East, places like Dubai, they have the already more favourable climate, so they can take modern building practices and turn a load of sand dunes into something quite spectacular.

You cant do that in places like the UK or Canada, where the weather is brutal and the winters are long, because everybody needs sunshine, and these man made inventions like heating and light just don't cut it for humans. They are stops gaps to help you survive the length of the a winter today if you dont have the finance to have a second home in the Maldives or Morroco, but if the planets orbit were to change, lengthening the winter, you would see things change more, a greater concentration of people moving back to the equator.

So AI will change jobs, getting rid of some and creating others, like the lab technician, tasked with the boring mundane error prone job of cell counting for blood tests, or spotting cancer cells in tissue biopsies, will be automated by AI. And AI will perform new jobs as routine, like spotting and counting bacterial biofilms in all tissue samples, when previously this was not routine, those jobs counting cells and biofilms will morph into management of AI roles, in much the same way a typical manager manages people.

Just like we see with programming languages coming and going, there are diverging and converging trends to be seen everywhere which will guide the future.

The takeaway is, recognise when something has peaked and find the next thing to peak on a timescale that works for you.

This is what investments is all about.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=great+yarmouth+lowestoft+win...

[2] https://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_...

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#214
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…

If we assume an economy with a demurrage currency, then Say's Law applies and involuntary unemployment is impossible. Without a demurrage currency, Say's Law is not guaranteed at all and structural involuntary unemployment is possible even without increases in productivity unless you have a central bank that has to constantly increase the money supply and emulate the demurrage fee with inflation.

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35027583 You're ascribing the evils of market concentration to automation. Automation isn't why housing and higher education are so much more expensive now than they were.

Yeah, I saw that post too, but didn’t want to pile on every one of your facile economic takes. You’re right, automation isn’t why housing and education are more expensive now. The increase of those is direct result of government policy choices encouraged by the voters. For housing, were taking zoning laws, and public objection laws. Higher education tuition increases for public universities is directly tied to cuts i…

Company size drops too though. Enough automation and every person has the abilities that took hundreds of people in their parents' day. Sure, the wealthiest will be able to leverage their gains the furthest - that's just how capital works - but it's also reducing people's dependency on these big firms and enabling them to personally capture the gains from the drastically-improved means of production. If and when communities are able to self-sufficiently produce most of what they need with just a few people and some AI tools, the game changes. Sure, at that point the rich would already be building death stars and wealth inequality would be even more laughable than it is today, but it'd at least still be a step-up in quality of life from the current regime.

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very surprising when people talk about AI but not talk about the Industrial Revolution. The power loom hugely changed the world. You don’t have to write a substack about your opinions — just read a history book. Second, Marc quotes outsourcing but that’s not at all a relevant example. Outsourcing was not a technology. His other example is of robots but robots have not been revolutionary like the power loom or ev…

Everyone should read about the Luddites. Turns out this debate has happened before, except with more smashing.

Smashing? You mean armed government forces fighting against their citizens.

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs stand to be much better at research mathematics than humans. Breakthroughs in mathematics often come from taking a concept from one area of mathematics and applying it to another area. Humans find this difficult because it's hard to be a research-level mathematician in more than a few areas, a human life isn't long enough to learn that much. Humans learn depth-first. LLMs learn breadth-first. You can go ask Chat…

LLMs aren't new and there has been no sign of them being able to automate maths research so far. If they do, I will acknowledge them as AGI as it has been my goalpost for over 30 years. I've never moved it once, and I won't. Computers were invented in large part for this purpose. The hope was to have a machine that could spit out interesting theorems. It turned out that generating theorems was trivial (you can just e…

Interesting meaning interesting to humans? If an AI is doing all of the work then maybe it doesn't matter what we consider interesting? You gave a prompt asking for 2023 nostalgia pop music in the care home, and the AI found novel theorems to generate it for you, but it didn't even notice or care! Maybe there will be some hobbyist human Mathematians and the AI can throw them a clue once in a while, like a good murder mystery host.

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#218
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…

> Just look at the communities in some poorer parts of the UK, who were relying on coal, mining and steam locomotive(yes, for that many generations the effects of job losses are felt) In order to make money selling coal, someone has to buy that coal. They're selling something that nobody buys anymore. Try selling ice cubes in the North Pole. The purpose of those coal jobs was jobs creation, not problem solving. New g…

Government can also create solutions that solve problems. Hoover dam being one excellent on-topic example.

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#220

This article is pure conservative BS. The stagnation of certain industries is because of tax policy and the insane greed injected into our healthcare systems when the HMO laws passed in the 1980's. I'm not even sure what pmarca is talking about here. It's like he's waving his arms, "look over here at my BS and don't look over there where AI is about to slam information workers." AI will absolutely change the way soft…

Unfortunately AI is far more likely to make global conflict worse.
Post reply on HN