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Or like saying that industrial machines will take all our jobs in 1799. And people did say that. And they did take a lot of jobs. All the ones nobody wants. If

Or like saying that industrial machines will take all our jobs in 1799. And people did say that. And they did take a lot of jobs. All the ones nobody wants. If your job can be made better by just doing it cheaper you probably don't want that job anyway.

marcosdumay 11y ago
> All the ones nobody wants. Nobody wants them now. But people needed those jobs at the time, and other jobs didn't just appear to save them. It took more than a century until the situation cleared out.
- Practicality 11y ago
  Yes, I chose the word "wants" instead of "wanted" for that reason when talking about people in 1799 :) That said, did they actually need those jobs? Or was it that they wanted to do the same thing? It might just seem like semantics but when comparing it to our current future, believing that certain jobs are needed vs. wanted is the core of whether or not we should fight or embrace additional A.I.
  - marcosdumay 11y ago
    Well, I'm not sure I understand your question. Answering the question I think you made here... People were starving, with no job available to them. The jobs that existed suddenly become extremely demanding (to the point that lots of people died executing them), and salaries went to the floor all over around. They didn't need those same jobs they lost, any other would do. But there weren't many others. That said, I expect the next cycle of joblessness, powered by AI, to be much worse. Not only will things get bad, but they won't ever get good again (a century is peanuts). That's because machines can improve at least as fast as humans. I think it's very important that we act differently on the next cycle, once it really starts.
    - Practicality 11y ago
      That's a fairly bleak perspective! Of course, I can't prognosticate that you aren't correct. However, I think that hasn't been decided yet. I fully think IA will allow us to out-compete AI in time. We might not be fully human anymore, but not completely synthetic either. But similar to our 1799 analogy, those who try to just "keep things the way they are" will suffer. Not that I want them to or anything, it's just the way it will probably go. There were many people who were made quite rich in the industrial revolution, but as in all things where humans are involved it's generally the few rather than the majority (sadly).
    - ArkyBeagle 11y ago
      If nobody has jobs, who will buy all the cruft the AI produce? A ... Hunger Games equilibrium seems unlikely.
- kaonashi 11y ago
  People need incomes, they don't need the jobs.
techdmn 11y ago
Taking a job you want is something of a luxury. Many people take the jobs they can get, because they don't have other options.
- danharaj 11y ago
  Many? I think it's the vast majority. I'm in the industry I want to be in, but not exactly in the way I want. If one is trading their autonomy for survival, the odds that they are in the job they want seems low and the chance of that job remaining the job they want seems high.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  It's not exactly luxurious. Depends on what you want. I, for example, want very much to to be an individual contributor who also does architecture and systems work on smaller projects. The more obscure and the greater the risk from defects, the better. Oh, and it has to make money as well. If you want to climb the greasy pole and be a prime player on a high profile system then it's harder.
eli_gottlieb 11y ago
>All the ones nobody wants. Which, in the end, is all of them. All this crap about "jobs, jobs, jobs" just papers over the fact that people don't like working and never did like working, but treat working "full-time" as a hazing ritual for who gets to acquire certain levels of lifestyle. Now, I'm sure someone somewhere is about to protest that they work very hard for their salary, and why should people who work less hard deserve as much, or even, if we count by the hour, more. But here's the facts: by the standards of the Industrial Revolution, a 12-16 hour workday, six days a week, is full time, so in fact you "hard workers" with your mere 50-60 hour weeks are only really working part-time -- such layabouts! Of course, pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers usually worked something like 3-4 hours per day, seven days per week, so indeed you remain a very hard worker compared to them. In the real world's real history, there have been wide variations in the quantity of work people do to earn their share of the available technological bounty, so arguing that the growth of technological gives us a moral obligation to intensify the economically-compelled workload of the average person... doesn't make much historical sense.
- escherize 11y ago
  Actually your salary is not a reflection of how hard you work, but how much value you bring to your employer. Notice, an engineer working 35 hour weeks is conceivably a hell of a lot more valuable than a factory worker from the industrial revolution. This explains the disparity in wages.
  - jlangenauer 11y ago
    All of which is mediated by the difference in supply and demand for a particular skill. Employers would happily pay software developers minimum wage if they could get away with it.
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    I completely agree that actual salaries are economically contingent. That's exactly what I'm trying to point out: there is no divine moral order for how much people should work or get paid, so when it becomes economically possible to move to a nicer location on the labor price-curve, where per-hour compensation goes up and hours can go down, we should do so.

marcosdumay 11y ago

> All the ones nobody wants. Nobody wants them now. But people needed those jobs at the time, and other jobs didn't just appear to save them. It took more than a century until the situation cleared out.

Practicality 11y ago
Yes, I chose the word "wants" instead of "wanted" for that reason when talking about people in 1799 :) That said, did they actually need those jobs? Or was it that they wanted to do the same thing? It might just seem like semantics but when comparing it to our current future, believing that certain jobs are needed vs. wanted is the core of whether or not we should fight or embrace additional A.I.
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  Well, I'm not sure I understand your question. Answering the question I think you made here... People were starving, with no job available to them. The jobs that existed suddenly become extremely demanding (to the point that lots of people died executing them), and salaries went to the floor all over around. They didn't need those same jobs they lost, any other would do. But there weren't many others. That said, I expect the next cycle of joblessness, powered by AI, to be much worse. Not only will things get bad, but they won't ever get good again (a century is peanuts). That's because machines can improve at least as fast as humans. I think it's very important that we act differently on the next cycle, once it really starts.
  - Practicality 11y ago
    That's a fairly bleak perspective! Of course, I can't prognosticate that you aren't correct. However, I think that hasn't been decided yet. I fully think IA will allow us to out-compete AI in time. We might not be fully human anymore, but not completely synthetic either. But similar to our 1799 analogy, those who try to just "keep things the way they are" will suffer. Not that I want them to or anything, it's just the way it will probably go. There were many people who were made quite rich in the industrial revolution, but as in all things where humans are involved it's generally the few rather than the majority (sadly).
  - ArkyBeagle 11y ago
    If nobody has jobs, who will buy all the cruft the AI produce? A ... Hunger Games equilibrium seems unlikely.
kaonashi 11y ago
People need incomes, they don't need the jobs.

techdmn 11y ago

Taking a job you want is something of a luxury. Many people take the jobs they can get, because they don't have other options.

danharaj 11y ago
Many? I think it's the vast majority. I'm in the industry I want to be in, but not exactly in the way I want. If one is trading their autonomy for survival, the odds that they are in the job they want seems low and the chance of that job remaining the job they want seems high.
ArkyBeagle 11y ago
It's not exactly luxurious. Depends on what you want. I, for example, want very much to to be an individual contributor who also does architecture and systems work on smaller projects. The more obscure and the greater the risk from defects, the better. Oh, and it has to make money as well. If you want to climb the greasy pole and be a prime player on a high profile system then it's harder.

eli_gottlieb 11y ago

>All the ones nobody wants. Which, in the end, is all of them. All this crap about "jobs, jobs, jobs" just papers over the fact that people don't like working and never did like working, but treat working "full-time" as a hazing ritual for who gets to acquire certain levels of lifestyle. Now, I'm sure someone somewhere is about to protest that they work very hard for their salary, and why should people who work less hard deserve as much, or even, if we count by the hour, more. But here's the facts: by the standards of the Industrial Revolution, a 12-16 hour workday, six days a week, is full time, so in fact you "hard workers" with your mere 50-60 hour weeks are only really working part-time -- such layabouts! Of course, pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers usually worked something like 3-4 hours per day, seven days per week, so indeed you remain a very hard worker compared to them. In the real world's real history, there have been wide variations in the quantity of work people do to earn their share of the available technological bounty, so arguing that the growth of technological gives us a moral obligation to intensify the economically-compelled workload of the average person... doesn't make much historical sense.

escherize 11y ago
Actually your salary is not a reflection of how hard you work, but how much value you bring to your employer. Notice, an engineer working 35 hour weeks is conceivably a hell of a lot more valuable than a factory worker from the industrial revolution. This explains the disparity in wages.
- jlangenauer 11y ago
  All of which is mediated by the difference in supply and demand for a particular skill. Employers would happily pay software developers minimum wage if they could get away with it.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  I completely agree that actual salaries are economically contingent. That's exactly what I'm trying to point out: there is no divine moral order for how much people should work or get paid, so when it becomes economically possible to move to a nicer location on the labor price-curve, where per-hour compensation goes up and hours can go down, we should do so.