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Technology has been reducing the need for human labor since the invention of the plow. And yet we aren't all unemployed hunter-gatherers. You could argue that '

Technology has been reducing the need for human labor since the invention of the plow. And yet we aren't all unemployed hunter-gatherers. You could argue that 'this time it's different', but you have to at least acknowledge that luddites of every generation have made similar claims and been wrong every time. Literally tried and proven wrong for centuries.

pmyjavec 10y ago
There is nothing to be replaced by in the first place, because most jobs are just arbitrary, and non-required. Not all, but most. I'm sure most people could get by on a fraction of what they actually do. It just comes down to, people don't really know what they want. That's why we work like we do in the first place, most jobs are just jobs for the sake of it, 9-5, Monday to Friday keeping peoples minds occupied and keeping those at the top important. This includes "special" titles like, CIO, CTO, CEO etc. Ultimately humans need very little to be happy and survive, but instead we have invented economies and lots of arbitrary stuff, luxuries, we don't really need, jobs are how one gets those useless things. When I hear about AI and robots taking over the world, taking our jobs etc, it's nice to be able to say, "oh well, there goes sitting in a building 9-5 like a goldfish in a bowl". It's also sad for the robots :(
CaptSpify 10y ago
http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/humans-need-not-apply http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/humans-need-not-apply What is different this time, I think is that we're giving up our main advantage: Intelligence. Humans have always been able to fall back on work no animal/machine can do, but we're running out of work that machines can't do.
- johngalt 10y ago
  The video is a well articulated argument, but there are two large gaps in reasoning that are common with this line of thought. Grey ignores the idea that technology also allows for normal people to do jobs that used to require highly skilled specialists. A big part of this is so called 'brain' labor. A banker before computers had to have amortization tables manually calculated. Now the personal banker who does your HELOC probably doesn't even know basic algebra. If we ran technology in reverse and took away the calculators we would end up with fewer banking jobs not more. Because every banker would have to be highly specialized and costly. The "factory jobs" were originally an invention of technology. A method to take a large number of workers + automation to beat artisans and specialists. If Watson is doing diagnosis, that means that more people with less training can be effective 'doctors'. Which brings me to my second point. Often when things become more efficient we end up using more of them overall. Jevon's paradox applied to labor. Think of what it cost to transport 20 tons of cargo from NY to SF before trucking and standardized containers. How many man hours were involved? How many different specialized jobs? Now done by one guy with a truck replacing them all. Yet the number of people employed overall in transportation went up not down. IMHO the best example is IT. Think about the server admin ratios in the early days. Perhaps a team of 10 to maintain a single mainframe. Now we have 10 guys in a data center managing 50,000 servers. Yet the overall number of people employed in IT went up not down. As processes become more efficient and cheap we consume more of it at an increasing rate.
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    > Grey ignores the idea that technology also allows for normal people to do jobs that used to require highly skilled specialists. Computers are much better at highly specialized jobs than people are. And the amount of things they are not good at is slimming down all the time. > If Watson is doing diagnosis, that means that more people with less training can be effective 'doctors'. And it'll eventually improve to the point that we won't need 'doctors'. It'll get to the point that your average person can be their own 'doctor', because most of the work is shelled out to a computer. > Yet the number of people employed overall in transportation went up not down. Because even with more automated, cheaper shipping, we still had jobs that robots couldn't do. But more of those jobs are disappearing every day. I think your logic is skipping over the fact that computers don't have hard limits like humans do. If a computer can't do something, just give it a handful of engineers, and some time, and it'll eventually be able to do that. Once a computer gets better at a task than humans, there's no reason to ever go back to humans. It's a one way street. Sure, computers can't do everything we do now, but they will. It's only a matter of time.
    - johngalt 10y ago
      You're conflating technology that is available today with challenges which occur only after we have AGI. When those are different problems with different time horizons. Post AGI. Obviously robots do everything. Post AGI it is the technology singularity as we have recursively improving superintelligences. Unemployment in this scenario is a trivial issue. Strong friendly AI would solve so many problems that unemployment would be one of those historical footnotes. Concerning ourselves with 'what happens when computers are better than humans at everything?' is akin to asking 'what should we do after the rapture?' Prior to AGI, human + computer is the norm for most tasks. Similar to my banker example. You'll have specialized computers augmenting human productivity. In each case driving costs down and in most cases usage up. Specialized computers will make it easier for humans to do jobs they couldn't do before. Even if truck driving becomes fully automated there will still be humans in the loop somewhere. It will just mean a more efficient ratio of man hours per ton shipped. Which is not a fundamentally different issue than dealing with any other efficiency increase. > your logic is skipping over the fact that computers don't have hard limits like humans do. If a computer can't do something, just give it a handful of engineers, and some time, and it'll eventually be able to do that. Once a computer gets better at a task than humans, there's no reason to ever go back to humans. It's a one way street. I don't deny that. Merely that we've been headed down this one way street for a while and the houses keep getting nicer. I keep hearing that Efficiency Avenue will take us towards human suffering, but we've been heading this direction for centuries and never arrived there. In fact everything about what we have seen so far says we should travel as fast as we can down that one way street.
burkaman 10y ago
Even if this time isn't different, "luddites of every generation" are not always wrong about short term effects. It's not acceptable to say "most people without college educations are probably going to be screwed over, but it should all work out eventually". In the past, technological advancement has changed jobs rather than eliminating them, but life also sucked for most workers in the past. Basically what I mean is that you shouldn't look at the Industrial Revolution and think "that went great, no need to worry". This time should be different, because we can learn from history and not just stand back and hope for the best.
- johngalt 10y ago
  It is true that in some cases there are short term negatives for a small group of people within a specific trade. In exchange there are large benefits to society as a whole. Large enough to outweigh even the small groups inconvenience. I.E. I would rather be a permanently unemployed dock worker today, than a gainfully employed dock worker in 1900. There is certainly an argument to be made regarding the pace of change, and retraining/educational opportunities. But the automation driven job-pocalypse just isn't going to happen.

pmyjavec 10y ago

There is nothing to be replaced by in the first place, because most jobs are just arbitrary, and non-required. Not all, but most. I'm sure most people could get by on a fraction of what they actually do. It just comes down to, people don't really know what they want. That's why we work like we do in the first place, most jobs are just jobs for the sake of it, 9-5, Monday to Friday keeping peoples minds occupied and keeping those at the top important. This includes "special" titles like, CIO, CTO, CEO etc. Ultimately humans need very little to be happy and survive, but instead we have invented economies and lots of arbitrary stuff, luxuries, we don't really need, jobs are how one gets those useless things. When I hear about AI and robots taking over the world, taking our jobs etc, it's nice to be able to say, "oh well, there goes sitting in a building 9-5 like a goldfish in a bowl". It's also sad for the robots :(

CaptSpify 10y ago

http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/humans-need-not-apply http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/humans-need-not-apply What is different this time, I think is that we're giving up our main advantage: Intelligence. Humans have always been able to fall back on work no animal/machine can do, but we're running out of work that machines can't do.

johngalt 10y ago
The video is a well articulated argument, but there are two large gaps in reasoning that are common with this line of thought. Grey ignores the idea that technology also allows for normal people to do jobs that used to require highly skilled specialists. A big part of this is so called 'brain' labor. A banker before computers had to have amortization tables manually calculated. Now the personal banker who does your HELOC probably doesn't even know basic algebra. If we ran technology in reverse and took away the calculators we would end up with fewer banking jobs not more. Because every banker would have to be highly specialized and costly. The "factory jobs" were originally an invention of technology. A method to take a large number of workers + automation to beat artisans and specialists. If Watson is doing diagnosis, that means that more people with less training can be effective 'doctors'. Which brings me to my second point. Often when things become more efficient we end up using more of them overall. Jevon's paradox applied to labor. Think of what it cost to transport 20 tons of cargo from NY to SF before trucking and standardized containers. How many man hours were involved? How many different specialized jobs? Now done by one guy with a truck replacing them all. Yet the number of people employed overall in transportation went up not down. IMHO the best example is IT. Think about the server admin ratios in the early days. Perhaps a team of 10 to maintain a single mainframe. Now we have 10 guys in a data center managing 50,000 servers. Yet the overall number of people employed in IT went up not down. As processes become more efficient and cheap we consume more of it at an increasing rate.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  > Grey ignores the idea that technology also allows for normal people to do jobs that used to require highly skilled specialists. Computers are much better at highly specialized jobs than people are. And the amount of things they are not good at is slimming down all the time. > If Watson is doing diagnosis, that means that more people with less training can be effective 'doctors'. And it'll eventually improve to the point that we won't need 'doctors'. It'll get to the point that your average person can be their own 'doctor', because most of the work is shelled out to a computer. > Yet the number of people employed overall in transportation went up not down. Because even with more automated, cheaper shipping, we still had jobs that robots couldn't do. But more of those jobs are disappearing every day. I think your logic is skipping over the fact that computers don't have hard limits like humans do. If a computer can't do something, just give it a handful of engineers, and some time, and it'll eventually be able to do that. Once a computer gets better at a task than humans, there's no reason to ever go back to humans. It's a one way street. Sure, computers can't do everything we do now, but they will. It's only a matter of time.
  - johngalt 10y ago
    You're conflating technology that is available today with challenges which occur only after we have AGI. When those are different problems with different time horizons. Post AGI. Obviously robots do everything. Post AGI it is the technology singularity as we have recursively improving superintelligences. Unemployment in this scenario is a trivial issue. Strong friendly AI would solve so many problems that unemployment would be one of those historical footnotes. Concerning ourselves with 'what happens when computers are better than humans at everything?' is akin to asking 'what should we do after the rapture?' Prior to AGI, human + computer is the norm for most tasks. Similar to my banker example. You'll have specialized computers augmenting human productivity. In each case driving costs down and in most cases usage up. Specialized computers will make it easier for humans to do jobs they couldn't do before. Even if truck driving becomes fully automated there will still be humans in the loop somewhere. It will just mean a more efficient ratio of man hours per ton shipped. Which is not a fundamentally different issue than dealing with any other efficiency increase. > your logic is skipping over the fact that computers don't have hard limits like humans do. If a computer can't do something, just give it a handful of engineers, and some time, and it'll eventually be able to do that. Once a computer gets better at a task than humans, there's no reason to ever go back to humans. It's a one way street. I don't deny that. Merely that we've been headed down this one way street for a while and the houses keep getting nicer. I keep hearing that Efficiency Avenue will take us towards human suffering, but we've been heading this direction for centuries and never arrived there. In fact everything about what we have seen so far says we should travel as fast as we can down that one way street.

burkaman 10y ago

Even if this time isn't different, "luddites of every generation" are not always wrong about short term effects. It's not acceptable to say "most people without college educations are probably going to be screwed over, but it should all work out eventually". In the past, technological advancement has changed jobs rather than eliminating them, but life also sucked for most workers in the past. Basically what I mean is that you shouldn't look at the Industrial Revolution and think "that went great, no need to worry". This time should be different, because we can learn from history and not just stand back and hope for the best.

johngalt 10y ago
It is true that in some cases there are short term negatives for a small group of people within a specific trade. In exchange there are large benefits to society as a whole. Large enough to outweigh even the small groups inconvenience. I.E. I would rather be a permanently unemployed dock worker today, than a gainfully employed dock worker in 1900. There is certainly an argument to be made regarding the pace of change, and retraining/educational opportunities. But the automation driven job-pocalypse just isn't going to happen.