Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No Recent Automation Revolution

overcomingbias.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 368 posts

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#291

Post by ameister14 »

Chathamization wrote: post #242
tuatoru wrote: post #69

An independent line of evidence looks at the formation of new occupations over time. If automation were taking over jobs, or jobs were being refactored because some tasks are automated, then we'd expect to see new job titles appearing in employment advertising and classifications such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics's. This does happen, as it has happened since the start of the Industrial Revolution. "Social Media…

Indeed, productivity growth is actually lower than in the past, so we're actually in a phase of slower automation. I think one thing that doesn't get considered enough is the viewpoint that we're currently in a post-automation revolution world. We generated a lot of excess capacity and weren't able to funnel it to productive uses, hence the rise of many things we see discussed here like "bullshit jobs," excessive adm…

It's funny that productivity growth is a sign of slowing automation, when it's not actually about growth in productivity as much as it is about the consolidation of capital in fewer hands and lower continued expenses.

The real messed up part is that expenses don't actually have to have gone down - you could have a smaller number of people charging the company a lot more and siphoning off money to do the same work because they don't actually run a company based on efficient production and engineering standards, they run a piggy bank. A lot of those went bankrupt in 2008 and were bailed out by the government. More are on the brink and being bailed out now.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#292

Post by tengbretson »

m12k wrote: post #279
tengbretson wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A more desirable situation is to have your needs such as housing, food and healthcare already taken care of irrespective of what you spend your time on. What you are describing is already a reality for our house pets. I don't find becoming a house pet to some AI/automated machine to be desirable in any way shape or form.

So you're saying the aristocracy were the pets of their slaves and serfs? Got it, thank you for adding to the debate.

> So you're saying...

> Got it, thank you for adding to the debate.

How about don't be such a dick?

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#293

Post by jonahbenton »

tuatoru wrote: post #69

An independent line of evidence looks at the formation of new occupations over time. If automation were taking over jobs, or jobs were being refactored because some tasks are automated, then we'd expect to see new job titles appearing in employment advertising and classifications such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics's. This does happen, as it has happened since the start of the Industrial Revolution. "Social Media…

The assumption that job titles reflect critical features of the job, or aspects of automation impacting the workforce, is...laughably easily falsifiable.

What about the replacement of W-2 with 1099 task-oriented roles? Where does that show up in the job title data set?

The 2M Uber drivers, just in the US?

The tens of millions of jobs offshored that no longer show up in US surveys?

That requirements for the job of a CEO now generally include technology...?

A piece contemporaneously on the HN front page? The "job" this person could have had 10 years ago still exists under the same title, but they are no longer qualified for it.

https://forklog.media/after-10-years-in-tech-isolation-im-no...

With all respect to Robin Hanson, his distilled claim is, to use his term, "bullshit."

It would be good for him to be subjected to automation of his job, then he might develop an understanding of the dimensions of the situation beyond the limits of the data he's myopically studying.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#294

Post by ameister14 »

colinmhayes wrote: post #64
mortenjorck wrote: post #42

The post implies that the authors' paper has received limited attention from the economic establishment due to its heterodox conclusion, but elides any supposition as to why its heterodoxy should be so controversial. Why should it be?

It's in a shit journal, so that's a start. I think part of it is that he's strawmaning here. The fear of automation isn't quite that it's immediate, it's more about the ability of machines to erode away economic opportunity of communities. People haven't been saying jobs are gone, just that eventually they will be soon(ish). Arguing that jobs aren't gone yet isn't helpful.

It's also incredibly difficult to read. I studied this and find it confusing - I can only imagine what a journalist would be able to take away from it.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#295

Post by som33 »

tharne wrote: post #233
som33 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Capitalism isn't really a political system, even though people seem to elevate it to one. It is you need a giant violent state to create a culture of sophisticated property rights. AKA capitalism requires a state and legal system, it doesn't exist without one. Things like copyright and Intellectual property are pure man made cultural political fictions, they do not exist in the natural animal kingdom. How is it poss…

Capitalism is the default system that evolves organically when free men and women create things of value and voluntarily exchange them with others. That's not to say it's perfect or 100% fair. That's why you always hear communists and socialists talk about the need for a "revolution". No one ever talks about a capitalist revolution because people don't need to be coerced into voluntarily exchanging goods and services…

[flagged]

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#296

Post by status_quo69 »

barrkel wrote: post #272
shuntress wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The most meaning in life comes from doing things for other people Exactly. So we should set up a system that provides everyone with enough to meet their basic needs. That way they can spend their time and effort to find the way they can most effectively do things for other people rather than finding the local maxima "job I can tolerate that keeps me alive"

The most effective means we have today for determining what we should do for other people is prices. That means capitalism. The downsides are lack of agency in large efficient orgs and unearned profits from capital. I don't know the answer, but I don't think UBI + charity++ is it.

I don't personally buy this. If prices were the most efficient way of determining what we should do for other people, why does the government already subsidize certain medications? Or agriculture? Or public development/education? College education becoming increasingly expensive proves this false, I believe.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#297

Post by 082349872349872 »

kaybe wrote: post #172
082349872349872 wrote: post #80

Living in a country where people are expensive and machines are cheap, I can attest the automation level is higher here. For instance, I often see cows at farms here enjoying automated brushing systems. There are youtube videos in english, but I don't recall ever having seen something like that in the US, even at Harris Ranch. (I have yet to witness a farmer using fully-autonomous hay feeding robots, but the ag magaz…

The rules (in Germany, but also other places) say you either have to offer the cows these brushes or brush them manually. It's not really a choice.

Wasn't the choice between offering the brushes or brushing them manually? Around here I see that farmers find installing a EUR 2'500 brush to be much cheaper than attempting to pay cheap foreign labour to brush cows.

(TIL automated pig brushes also exist)

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#298

Post by ericns »

barrkel wrote: post #274
carapace wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean this as a personal attack, but I'm struck that your objection to having been "conditioned" is immediately followed by a paragraph affirming the content of the supposed "conditioning". > > You’ve been CONDITIONED to think that large corporations are better ways to allocate your time and organize us all. Emphasis added. > Large corporations enable efficiencies of scale which in turn enables modern living.…

It is objectively true (is, not ought) that in the world we currently live in, large orgs enable scale which enables modern living. It does not follow that I think that's the way things ought to be. That's how I interpret the "better" in EGreg's comment, because this conversation is about how we can live a better lives, not how to maximize efficiency. But we can only talk about oughts in the context of what can be. W…

What are you organizing around Mr. Chief Architect? Your company does data visualization for financial firms. Financial firms that don't have a loss condition. How many extrapolations from reality is your business? At least 2, maybe 3, more? As long as the markets your pretty pictures represent can't take a loss - you're only justifying your undeserved opulence. Every bail out absolves people like you from their failure, and denies people like me a better opportunity to out perform you.

Have the labor classes of the U.S. seen any advancement in the last few decades? Are the advances the labor classes of other (US/India) even worthwhile given the lack of political bargaining power?

You economically depress local workers, and sell them on their freedoms and in then in the next breath you're politically oppressing foreign labor classes while selling them on their economic advances. Both are true, but you take the larger margin from both.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#299

Post by stale2002 »

tengbretson wrote: post #292
m12k wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying the aristocracy were the pets of their slaves and serfs? Got it, thank you for adding to the debate.

> So you're saying... > Got it, thank you for adding to the debate. How about don't be such a dick?

You aren't addressing his main point.

The point is that the aristocracy did not engage in "work" as many would define it, but seemed to be pretty happy about that.

It worked for them. Why not for others?

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#300

Post by carapace »

Hermitian909 wrote: post #281
carapace wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, "Let the robots do the work and we'll take their pay." Bucky Fuller pointed out that we could apply technology to solve our problems efficiently and wind up with a two-year career. You would work for about two years and that pays for the rest of your life, you can retire or do whatever. (FWIW, this is the context within which I think UBI makes sense, and we are not there just yet.) Really it's a choice (at least…

> wind up with a two-year career. You would work for about two years and that pays for the rest of your life, you can retire or do whatever. True expertise in fields like medicine, engineering etc. generally takes at least a decade of experience to acquire. Societies need for, and ability to utilize, such highly skilled labor is only increasing as we automate simpler tasks. People who never aspire to such professions…

> True expertise in fields like medicine, engineering etc. generally takes at least a decade of experience to acquire.

Oh I agree.

In the absence of a profit motive those fields would be taken up by the most dedicated, eh?

> Societies need for, and ability to utilize, such highly skilled labor is only increasing as we automate simpler tasks.

Again I agree. I think that one obvious benefit of automation is that it frees up humans for important things that only humans can do. Mark Miller has an adage "Moore's law means that humans are becoming exponentially more valuable from the CPU's POV."

We're not talking about forcing people to retire after two years. We're talking about eliminating drudgery and wasteful processes.

> some portion of people will need to put in the long hours and years to keep the lights on.

No, that's the whole point: no one has to put in long hours anymore thanks to the knock-on effects of the invention of the transistor.

Just like farming went from ~90% of the population to ~3%, so will our industrial space-age civilization, if we let it.

Post reply on HN