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AI Won't Cause Unemployment

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Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#111

Post by frosted-flakes »

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.

Is that because we've always been able to specialise further? But is there an end point to that? We can only specialise so much.

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#113

Post by camillomiller »

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 inherently wrong. For billionaires like him UBI would be a strategically low price to pay to keep social unrest in check in a growingly automated and AI-based society. But hey, capitalists are gonna capitalize and he’s definitely good at that, so he might have his own view of where we’re headed. Or maybe, like all other capitalist billionaires, he just has a knee jerk reaction into code red defensive mode anytime something akin to redistribution of wealth looms large at the horizon.

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#114

Post by john_the_writer »

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.

The real difference is the pace.

It took 20 years for self checkout to really catch on. It's not even fully there yet.

It took months for Book and Magazine publishers to say. No more submissions please, we have enough content for a while.

The winner of a massive photography comp in the US took no pictures, had no subjects and didn't write the back stories of his "subjects". He AI'd the lot.

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#115

Post by hgdfhgfdhgdf »

stult wrote: post #55

What an incredibly, idiotically reductionist interpretation of cherry-picked data this is. First of all, he selected a fairly random, non-representative set of goods and services. I can immediately think of a glaringly obvious counter-example that his dataset excludes: energy. It's one of the most highly regulated industries in the US and yet energy inflation has been barely positive over the last 20 years ( https://…

You should compare energy prices in heavily regulated Europe with the USA before you call someone "stupid" and an "idiot".

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#116

Post by camillomiller »

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.

You’re applying what I would call the fallacy of scale. Your take is correct as long as these singularity happen at relative scales. We don’t know at all what happens when massive scale becomes a factor. Computers and the internet allowed virtualization and we now base our economies largely on virtualization and abstraction. That also means almost infinite replicability. In turn, infinite replicability allows levels of scale never before seen. Now we are at the verge of a large optimization of the economy at a level of scale that we have never ever experienced before. While I’m sure that in the time of a couple generations we would probably find ways to rewire our brains around the new AI normal like we did in the past, we will probably have to face an unemployment risk to a level we haven’t experienced so far. With inequalities growing, the question is if societies can grow through this phase unscathed, or if it will be enough of a critical mass and tipping point for partial or complete collapse.

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#117

Post by thrashh »

_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…

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 even the assembly line have been.

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#118

Post by camillomiller »

yibg wrote: post #46
LeroyRaz wrote: post #16

I think there is real difference between a) devaluing someone's work, and b) and voiding work of value. What makes AI different from previous technological innovations is that it seems to have the potential to make peoples labor worthless, rather than merely devalued. To give examples, if your writing is worse than ChatGPTs then your writing is worthless. If your art is worse than stable diffusion then your art is wo…

How is this different from previous leaps in industrialization or technological innovation? If you make widgets worse than a machine in a factory then your labor is worthless.

One word: scale.

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#119

Post by AnthonyMouse »

idopmstuff wrote: post #8

I can't help but think Andreesen's gone off the deep end a bit, especially after he started gushing over Adam Neumann's second run at a real estate company (“We think it is natural that for his first venture since WeWork, Adam returns to the theme of connecting people through transforming their physical spaces and building communities where people spend the most time: their homes.”). > AI is simply already illegal ac…

> but in an industry like construction, if you accept what he's saying, all of that control is in the hands of the rich folks at the top. What he's suggesting is that they'll protect the jobs of construction workers when they can replace them with cheaper, more efficient robots who are exempt from safety standards.

That doesn't follow, particularly in construction.

There are many regulations that require something which is nominally better but is a trade off against cost, making the lower cost alternative unavailable. Much of that increase goes to the construction contractors as labor costs or markups on more expensive materials, so it's their unions and trade organizations lobbying in favor of the cost increase. The regulatory capture is by the construction workers.

They're also aligned with anyone who wants housing costs to stay high, including realtors and real estate investors. So yes, the rich folks at the top will protect the jobs of the construction workers when the high construction costs help them keep rents high.

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