4 ms·

My theory is that the max output of the average worker has been eclipsed by an order of magnitude by people who can communicate with the 21st century machines.

My theory is that the max output of the average worker has been eclipsed by an order of magnitude by people who can communicate with the 21st century machines. i.e programmers. Programmers are just modern day factory workers. They are leveraging their natural ability to produce more with machines. Unfortunately society hasn't realized that programming is a core skill, like math and english. Until everyone knows how to leverage their output with programming expect the gap between the upper middle class and everyone below to grow. If you're currently in the upper middle class and above and you are not leveraging software either directly in your role or as an manager / owner, then you're at risk of falling in class. When the industrial revolution started, factory workers were paid very well, relative to other workers (i.e agriculture). Once society realized that math / english was a core skill required to live in the new world, factory workers as a group grew and became the middle class. I expect the same thing to happen with programmers if we as a society get our shit together and educate our population correctly.

MollyR 10y ago
Won't programmers just program something that just puts programmers out of jobs. ex. Google Deepmind being trained to program itself https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429932-200-computer-with-human-like-learning-will-program-itself/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429932-200-computer... Personally I think the speed of technological progress is just too much for a multigenerational society to adapt with.
- coenhyde 10y ago
  Most likely, but then someone will have to communicate with the AI's. Specialized knowledge will always be valued. You'll just have to learn how to leverage that by communicating with an AI. Maybe then the upper middle class will have their own AI assistants. Those who know how to tweak / improve their AI will do best. The speed of progress is definitely a concern but we're not even trying to keep up to speed as a society. We're still in denial. But at the end of the day there is infinite possible "work" for people to do. All we need is a bit of imagination to see all the crazy things we could do. And by "work" I mean things to do. The traditional definition of work will have to change. There will be more self determination. Possibly UBI emerge as a new institution arising to help transition society.
- TheCowboy 10y ago
  I think programmers are best at automating aspects of their own work, which makes sense because it's what they are most familiar with. Sometimes people miss this because a lot of the "automation" doesn't seem like it, because it still requires skills to deploy, but it multiplies the productivity of a single programmer. An obvious example is how much system administration has been automated or replaced with scalable services. People used to get paid a lot just to handcode HTML, now you have WordPress and many other frameworks. But there is still enough demand out there for programming skills that the market has largely been able to absorb the new comers, which is how it should work. Innovation should free up people to do other things, but it's difficult to arrive at those other things during sluggish growth periods. I think the main problem is not the speed of technological progress, or automation, but that the response to the global recession ranged from inadequate to contrary to what economics teaches us. Because of how politicized economic topics have become, it's difficult to avoid the current state.
  - TheCoelacanth 10y ago
    Programmers so far have been a textbook case of Jevons paradox where increasing the efficiency with which a resource can be used counter-intuitively causes the price to increase. Automating programing tasks results in programmers being more efficient letting them accomplish the same tasks in less time. This makes it less expensive to accomplish any given programming task which increases the demand for programming tasks which increases the demand for programmers. This causes the price of a programmer to increase even though it causes the price of accomplishing a programming task to decrease.

MollyR 10y ago

Won't programmers just program something that just puts programmers out of jobs. ex. Google Deepmind being trained to program itself https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429932-200-computer-with-human-like-learning-will-program-itself/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429932-200-computer... Personally I think the speed of technological progress is just too much for a multigenerational society to adapt with.

coenhyde 10y ago
Most likely, but then someone will have to communicate with the AI's. Specialized knowledge will always be valued. You'll just have to learn how to leverage that by communicating with an AI. Maybe then the upper middle class will have their own AI assistants. Those who know how to tweak / improve their AI will do best. The speed of progress is definitely a concern but we're not even trying to keep up to speed as a society. We're still in denial. But at the end of the day there is infinite possible "work" for people to do. All we need is a bit of imagination to see all the crazy things we could do. And by "work" I mean things to do. The traditional definition of work will have to change. There will be more self determination. Possibly UBI emerge as a new institution arising to help transition society.
TheCowboy 10y ago
I think programmers are best at automating aspects of their own work, which makes sense because it's what they are most familiar with. Sometimes people miss this because a lot of the "automation" doesn't seem like it, because it still requires skills to deploy, but it multiplies the productivity of a single programmer. An obvious example is how much system administration has been automated or replaced with scalable services. People used to get paid a lot just to handcode HTML, now you have WordPress and many other frameworks. But there is still enough demand out there for programming skills that the market has largely been able to absorb the new comers, which is how it should work. Innovation should free up people to do other things, but it's difficult to arrive at those other things during sluggish growth periods. I think the main problem is not the speed of technological progress, or automation, but that the response to the global recession ranged from inadequate to contrary to what economics teaches us. Because of how politicized economic topics have become, it's difficult to avoid the current state.
- TheCoelacanth 10y ago
  Programmers so far have been a textbook case of Jevons paradox where increasing the efficiency with which a resource can be used counter-intuitively causes the price to increase. Automating programing tasks results in programmers being more efficient letting them accomplish the same tasks in less time. This makes it less expensive to accomplish any given programming task which increases the demand for programming tasks which increases the demand for programmers. This causes the price of a programmer to increase even though it causes the price of accomplishing a programming task to decrease.