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AI are taking jobs

economist.com

51–60 of 169 posts

Re: AI are taking jobs

#51
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…

Actually, it's a slightly weird situation. Unemployment is fairly level across the economy. Job losses are concentrated in construction and manufacturing, however.

Also, finance didn't suffer so much - only about a 9% job loss. I suspect finance fared better than other bubble-related fields mainly because of their highly flexible wages. (I.e., construction or manufacturing has layoffs, finance just cuts bonuses.)

I graphed the figures a while back: http://crazybear.posterous.com/structural-shift-in-the-econo...

Re: AI are taking jobs

#52
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 don't. We are seeing an ever increasing disparity between wealth gained through capital investment and wealth gained directly through labour. Even high-end labour produces far less money than investment does. Most high-end labour tasks are tightly coupled to capital investment.

Do you really think that the history of wealth production is somehow going to change radically to a sudden redistribution of wealth to everyone so they can relax and take it easy while living off the fruits of others investments?

Re: AI are taking jobs

#53

A lot of the argument on this topic seems to be "but this time it is really different!" Perhaps. And perhaps not. Most likely it is different, just like all those other times were different. I hate to be skeptical, but when this same pattern of people saying "it's different!" repeats over and over again without it being different, I think the onus is on those making the claim to support their argument better. If anyt…

Spot on. Nearly all of the articles I've seen of late that tackle this theme reduce to "but how can all of the X's that are now unemployed find work if the economy will never again need X's". Its a simple failure of imagination. When 50% of the people were farmers, not many of them could imagine being airline pilots. A combine harvester must have seemed like a fearsome thing indeed.

>When 50% of the people were farmers

Farmers are highly entrepreneurial and work very hard, a combine is a welcome invention. It's the hired farm hands who are worried about the combine harvester. It's a very interesting question, what will happen to our society when we have less and less need for manual and rote labour.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#54
post #47
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the other side, let's say I make $X but only need $X/2 to live. Try finding an employer who will let you work half time for $X/2. It's pretty tough, especially if you make $X at something "professional", rather than, say, digging ditches. Rather than working ~20 hours a week, work ~40 hours a week, half your life.

That's certainly more viable, but requires much more discipline (to avoid spending the extra money too early) and is probably less beneficial as well, due to diminishing returns and such.

Another factor: taxes.

$60k in one year is taxed at a higher rate than $30k/yr for each of two years.

RRSPs in Canada mitigate this... But you're probably still better off with $X/2 income.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#55
post #23
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just my uninformed opinion, but I think a lot of it has fallen victim to keeping up with the Joneses, and a lot of the rest to employers not being willing to give decent terms to part timers. People could get by with a much smaller salary (or keep the same salary but save a ton of it) by having an older car, a smaller house, less fancy food, etc. but everybody else has nicer things. I see people buying really…

For the other side, let's say I make $X but only need $X/2 to live. Try finding an employer who will let you work half time for $X/2. It's pretty tough, especially if you make $X at something "professional", rather than, say, digging ditches. Rather than working ~20 hours a week, work ~40 hours a week, half your life.

...except nobody can tell me accurately when half of my life is over so I can retire at the right time.

Note particularly that statistics only work when applied to large enough populations. I will not be 70% dead at 70, I'll either be 100% dead or 0% dead.

http://jerryjousting.blogspot.com/2011/04/statistical-single...

Re: AI are taking jobs

#56
post #11
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there are not a lot of people capable of doing engineering/programming jobs. It is one thing to make the transition from a farmer to a factory worker, but another entirely to move from a factory worker to an engineer. The learning curve for the jobs that may be created might be too steep for those whose jobs were displaced.

Yes, the cotton pickers will need to be forced to go to high school and learn something that hasn't been automated. To the argument that this can't be done, take away their food, they will adapt. Mercy can be used in exceptional cases. I don't like the argument: "This human has such an aversion to learning that they must be supported forever like a pet". I suppose you wait for them to die and the problem solves itsel…

I think the human race will reach the apex of its evolution when all the social darwinists die off.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#57
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As wealth accumulates among the masters of technology, asking what jobs might provide value to your peers is the wrong question. What value can your friends provide to big corporations?

Bertrand Gille (60s/70s historian of technology) had an interesting hypothesis, that as technical systems, and coupled technical-economic systems (e.g. large corporations built on technical advances) get complex, interdependent, and rapidly changing, at some point it becomes too difficult for humans to fully understand and control their workings and evolution, and the dependencies make even choosing which technologie…

You are exactly describing Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#58
post #13

I don't see this as a bad thing, except: In the 1950's people wondered what the future generations would do with all their free time. They predicted, correctly, that worker productivity would rise immensely. They also assumed that people would be just as wealthy while working much less. People are wealthier in some ways. In america, its pretty much standard issue to own at least one car (partially perhaps because a c…

This is just my uninformed opinion, but I think a lot of it has fallen victim to keeping up with the Joneses, and a lot of the rest to employers not being willing to give decent terms to part timers. People could get by with a much smaller salary (or keep the same salary but save a ton of it) by having an older car, a smaller house, less fancy food, etc. but everybody else has nicer things. I see people buying really…

Look at it from the employer's perspective: in professional and technical occupations a half time worker isn't much cheaper than a full time worker due to benefits, training, administrative overhead, office space, PCs, etc.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#59

A lot of the argument on this topic seems to be "but this time it is really different!" Perhaps. And perhaps not. Most likely it is different, just like all those other times were different. I hate to be skeptical, but when this same pattern of people saying "it's different!" repeats over and over again without it being different, I think the onus is on those making the claim to support their argument better. If anyt…

Sure, but how many people are going to be able to make a living on Hamburger ebooks? I don't think it's that hard to supplement your income a bit like this but I don't see this kind of thing compensating for many lost full-time jobs.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#60
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need a mobile to have a phone. On the extreme side, you could take public transportation everywhere, use the Internet at the library when you needed it and just have home phone service. This is actually sufficient for most jobs in a lot of places, though it is a lot less convenient. If you want slightly more convenience, you can (for example) get a decent car that will take you from point A to point B for a…

$5000? You are so out of touch. Most people I know who are having trouble either have no car or a $400 beater car. A $5000 car would be considered lavish. You have a trust fund or something don't you? A mobile phone is absolutely a requirement to get a job. Employers expect you to have it and expect you to answer when they call. Guess what happens if, after a job interview, you don't answer your call. "Sorry boss, I…

Frankly, I think you're out of touch. I don't have a trust fund, and I acknowledge that there are people to whom my statements do not apply. I pretty explicitly said I was talking about the common case, which is not "unemployed and looking for a $10/hour job." You are talking about a very specific situation which is much poorer than average, statistically speaking.

Anyway, though, I suggested that $5000 car (which is a once-a-decade splurge) as a convenience. I explicitly said that. Many people, including me, have made do with public transportation or lousy cars (at a $10/hour job, yes — this is from experience). I still maintain that there are much cheaper options than the "plasma TV, high-speed Internet, cell service" lifestyle that was under discussion here. For example, you definitely don't need TV, and if you're looking fo a job and really need a phone, you can get a prepaid one for like $10 without committing to an expensive plan.

And it is simply not my experience, nor that of anyone I know (who range from unemployed to poorly employed to very gainfully employed) that hiring managers will not wait a few minutes for you to call back. Has that actually happened to you a lot? I believe it happens sometimes, but again, I don't believe that is the common case.

If you really work for somebody that horrible for $9.10 an hour, I would urge you to seek alternative employment at someplace like Subway, Albertsons or Starbucks, where they have similar compensation and in my experience they tend to treat people better than that.

Also — and I mean this sincerely, not to be snarky — I would suggest you look at how you approach people, because frankly you come across as rather hostile and negative. I understand you find your situation frustrating, but you need to try to stay positive. That will impact your chances of landing a job much more severely than your ability to answer an email within 30 seconds of it being sent.

Anyway, best of luck to you, whether you agree or not.

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