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Should economists be more concerned about AI?

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Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#91

Post by sigmar »

edblarney wrote: post #75
sigmar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Researchers have yet to find solid evidence that automation has ever destroyed jobs. This is completely untrue. Ball State University found that job loss in the 2000s due to automation dwarfed the loss caused by free trade[1]. There is tons of other research that corroborates that[2]. [1] http://projects.cberdata.org/reports/MfgReality.pdf [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/upshot/the-long-term-jobs...

"Ball State University found that job loss in the 2000s due to automation" On the aggregate jobs are not being destroyed. Obviously - many are put out of work because of automation, but it seems that jobs are created somewhere else. The historical unemployment rate attests to this. It's a paradox that cannot be ignored, because it likely helps us understand the nature of employment.

Yea, it's a difficult topic for an internet forum. (Probably better suited for think-tank roundtable disscussions.) If a job is eliminated, and a new job was created, (to me) the original job was still eliminated. It's a different job. That new job may have different hours, different qualifications, and be in a different location.

As productivity increases with more automation, the economy will do very well. Poor, uneducated individuals in rural areas will see jobs disappear. I don't think it is comprehensive to look at job loss and disregard it, since at the macro-level employment may be zero-sum. I think that would be a disservice to the individuals that will be affected.

fullshark was probably more concise and eloquent with how he stated my thoughts in another comment on this thread.

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#92

Post by jdoliner »

fullshark wrote: post #18
jdoliner wrote: post #10

Something interesting that I learned recently from a former Dean of the Industrial Labor Relations School at Cornell: Worry over automation destroying jobs is almost as old as automation itself. Researchers have yet to find solid evidence that automation has ever destroyed jobs. Now, that of course, doesn't mean that this is some immutable law of the universe that automation will never destroy jobs. But it does mean…

Most individuals care less about jobs in aggregate and just care about their own particular job. They especially don't care about the number of jobs at the global level. There are many people whose job will be replaced by robots and whatever expertise they've learned over the years will become useless. They will need to transition to an entirely new career and start over. If they are over the age of 40 they have to a…

There are also people who are over the age of 40 and already don't have jobs, or never had jobs. Some of them might get jobs created by tech. Are they in some way less deserving? Do people who once had a job have a god given right to keep it? I don't think so but maybe you disagree. Either way, let's dispense with this idea that we only care about jobs at an individual level, clearly this is a discussion about jobs in aggregate. I don't think either one of us is talking about our own personal jobs right now.

Economic transitions are always painful, but economic stasis is also painful. Pick your poison, that's why it's called the dismal science.

Finally, as I've mentioned elsewhere in the thread I think you're several miss-attributing recent political "consequences" if you think they're due to automation of jobs.

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#93

Post by mamp »

q3r3qr3q wrote: post #29
ThomPete wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new thing is that computers can learn to learn.

You mean the machine learning stuff, that's been around since 1959?

In theory, but we didn't have enough data or computing power for machines to compete with human performance (also algorithmic improvements).

I feel that the disruption isn't going to be completely new compared to past changes but probably across more industries at the same time because machines can soon move and think e.g. Driving, diagnosis, planning (through better prediction), assembly.

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#94

Post by dragonwriter »

sskates wrote: post #53
fullshark wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most individuals care less about jobs in aggregate and just care about their own particular job. They especially don't care about the number of jobs at the global level. There are many people whose job will be replaced by robots and whatever expertise they've learned over the years will become useless. They will need to transition to an entirely new career and start over. If they are over the age of 40 they have to a…

Absolutely agreed. I think the GP's viewpoint was widely shared by "The Elite" for the past 10 years and is what created the backlash that got Trump elected. We (and I use that loosely) have to care because the people who get displaced all care about their jobs. In fact, because this displacement is accelerating, we have to care even more than we would in the past.

> I think the GP's viewpoint was widely shared by "The Elite" for the past 10 years and is what created the backlash that got Trump elected.

The Democrats essentially abandoning labor with the neoliberal "Third Way" politics of Bill Clinton certainly was a factor in setting the stage for a right-wing authoritarian populist like Trump, but ascribing Trump's election to any one factor is overly simplistic.

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#95

Post by hackuser »

winstonewert wrote: post #78
phkahler wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to see and I've said this here before. As a business owner doing manufacturing (for example) replacing manual labor with automation costs less. That's less in terms of TCO, so that includes setup, operation, energy, and maintenance. The idea that the low-skilled assembly jobs are just replaced by high-skilled jobs is untrue. Those high-skilled jobs pay more - perhaps 2-5x more, and if the TCO is actually le…

I think you are engaging a straw man here. Obviously, given a fixed amount of output, automation will reduce the man-hours required. That's the whole point. And yes, that will, by itself, reduce the amount of work available. Who do you think is saying otherwise?. The question isn't whether automation decreases the amount of work neccessary to produce the same output, obviously it does. The question is whether we can…

Exactly; the economy is not zero-sum; it's not a pie we have to split. The pie grows by the addition of more labor, more capital, or greater efficiency.

For example, in the U.S. starting from 1917, the great majority of jobs have disappeared, the population (and thus the workforce) has tripled, and yet unemployment is less than 5%.

If you find a way to do something more efficiently, then that creates more wealth for buying things from the former employee's next job. (The problem, not to be overlooked, is that while the economy as a whole benefits, individuals can suffer greatly.)

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#96

Post by jdoliner »

sigmar wrote: post #40
jdoliner wrote: post #10

Something interesting that I learned recently from a former Dean of the Industrial Labor Relations School at Cornell: Worry over automation destroying jobs is almost as old as automation itself. Researchers have yet to find solid evidence that automation has ever destroyed jobs. Now, that of course, doesn't mean that this is some immutable law of the universe that automation will never destroy jobs. But it does mean…

>Researchers have yet to find solid evidence that automation has ever destroyed jobs. This is completely untrue. Ball State University found that job loss in the 2000s due to automation dwarfed the loss caused by free trade[1]. There is tons of other research that corroborates that[2]. [1] http://projects.cberdata.org/reports/MfgReality.pdf [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/upshot/the-long-term-jobs...

Title of the study: "The Myth and Reality of Manufacturing in America"

As I said in my other comment, there is absolutely no guarantee that technology won't completely shift jobs from one nation to another. Just as individuals don't have a god given right to a job, nations don't have a god given right to an industry. In both cases, you have to work for it. That's the actual reality. Here in America we don't like either of these realities, we prefer myths. We've been ignoring them on the individual level for as long as we possible can trying to pass laws to escape them. Now we have to face the reality on a national scale where it's a lot harder to impose our mythical views on the world.

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#97

Post by dragonwriter »

phkahler wrote: post #44
sigmar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Researchers have yet to find solid evidence that automation has ever destroyed jobs. This is completely untrue. Ball State University found that job loss in the 2000s due to automation dwarfed the loss caused by free trade[1]. There is tons of other research that corroborates that[2]. [1] http://projects.cberdata.org/reports/MfgReality.pdf [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/upshot/the-long-term-jobs...

It's easy to see and I've said this here before. As a business owner doing manufacturing (for example) replacing manual labor with automation costs less. That's less in terms of TCO, so that includes setup, operation, energy, and maintenance. The idea that the low-skilled assembly jobs are just replaced by high-skilled jobs is untrue. Those high-skilled jobs pay more - perhaps 2-5x more, and if the TCO is actually le…

> But to a first approximation automation destroys jobs.

Automation transfers an increasing share of returns of economic activity to the capitalist owning the automated tool from labor; "destroys jobs" may be a result, but increasing (in the absence of some compensatory mechanism) economic inequality is a more certain result.

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#98

Post by taneq »

q3r3qr3q wrote: post #29
ThomPete wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new thing is that computers can learn to learn.

You mean the machine learning stuff, that's been around since 1959?

That machine learning stuff which has been around for the past 60 years out of humanity's, what, 10,000 years of 'modern' humans (starting with the invention of agriculture)? That's only really reached parity with humans on a broad range of cognitive tasks in the past within the last 5-10 years?

Yes, that stuff.

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#99

Post by jdoliner »

simonsarris wrote: post #72
jdoliner wrote: post #10

Something interesting that I learned recently from a former Dean of the Industrial Labor Relations School at Cornell: Worry over automation destroying jobs is almost as old as automation itself. Researchers have yet to find solid evidence that automation has ever destroyed jobs. Now, that of course, doesn't mean that this is some immutable law of the universe that automation will never destroy jobs. But it does mean…

> Researchers have yet to find solid evidence that automation has ever destroyed jobs. Horse jobs (horses are a special and strange kind of human) are nil. Before there were lots of jobs they could do, now there are no essential tasks. Turnspit dog[0] jobs (another very strange kind of human) are nil, in fact they are so nil that the dogs went extinct. There were no tasks left for them to do, their jobs were automate…

The statements about jobs not being destroyed is about _aggregate_ jobs. If you pick any specific group of people (or animals) you can find many examples of groups losing jobs. Hopefully this doesn't come as a surprise to you and hopefully you can see how these are different things. Markets shift, that's the whole point of markets, and when they do it's very painful for those they shift away from. The most poignant example of this is that a smaller percentage of Americans have jobs now than they did in the 70s (and even as recently as 2008). But those jobs have gone to other countries and perhaps there's a good reason for that.

> Saying that automation has not destroyed jobs is simply a lack of imagination on the part of these researchers.

I honestly burst out laughing at this, what do you think these researchers have failed to imagine? The idea of confining their view strictly to horse employment and not considering the employment as a whole? Researchers shouldn't be imaginative in how they approach experiments, they should be scientific and precise. If they don't like the results they get they shouldn't imagine new definitions of employment that justify their preconceived notions.

Re: Should economists be more concerned about AI?

#100

Post by icantdrive55 »

ThomPete wrote: post #54
JoshTriplett wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't suggest otherwise; however, the comment I replied to said: > it is in fact going to be more or less impossible to think of a thing an AI wont be able to do better than humans But we necessarily can't reach the point where AI can do all human jobs without having completely general human-level (or beyond-human-level) AI. Until then, AI can only replace a subset of human jobs, and I've seen many convincing argu…

There is no net gain, the number of jobs have only been growing because the market have been growing, but in the west the number of actual jobs are declining. In the US, 95% of jobs are temp jobs and the definition of when someone is said to have a job have been widened substantially since Bush. The number of new jobs created have gone down decade after decade since ww2

I cringe whenever I hear the low unemployment number.

That sector of workers who can work, but just gave up is staggering.

I truely believe Trump got elected because he was pretty much the only person who said someting is really wrong with this economy, and it's been wrong for awhile.

(I don't like the man, but on the economy I think he's right.)

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