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> some people repeat as if it is as inevitable as a law of nature. It's just happened every other time something like this has happened. For tens of thousands

> some people repeat as if it is as inevitable as a law of nature. It's just happened every other time something like this has happened. For tens of thousands of years. > wasteland/slums in the next 50 years or so Standards of living are rising globally. Even if comparative wealth drops vs other humans, most people will still see significant improvement in their lifetime.

coldtea 10y ago
>It's just happened every other time something like this has happened. For tens of thousands of years. Nothing like this has happened before. For one, people in 17th century didn't live much differently than people in 500 A.D. or 500 B.C -- the huge majority lived in the country, milked their own milk, work with manual tools, etc. The process we're discussing started mostly with the industrial revolution. With the advent of the steam engine and crude early factories, for the first 2 centuries of the Industrial revolution, as factories and factory assembly lines still needed tons of manual labor (see Taylorism). Then, as automation advanced, around the mid-20th century, and there was not the same demand for factory workers anymore (a lot of production lines became more efficient and less manual), people were given office and service sector jobs -- because that was another underdeveloped sector. Today, software and the internet makes lots of office jobs and procedures obsolete, advanced robotic automation makes tons of factory jobs deprecated, and with advances in smart software, business networks, etc, lots of service jobs are not needed anymore either. Advanced AI software and hardware will only make this worse. And there's no next step to go besides either creating useless busywork or reducing work-hours/days (so work provided meets the actual work needs). And even that will still leave tons of people not needed to work anyways. I'm not sure how anyone in a technology forum can believe technology can't get us to a point where a much smaller number or very few needs to work anymore, because "it never happened in the past". That's exactly the idea behind innovation, to not get the same thing you had in the past... >Standards of living are rising globally. Even if comparative wealth drops vs other humans, most people will still see significant improvement in their lifetime. We're not talking about whether millions rural chinese person improved their "standards of living" in the 20th and early 21st century by getting work in a factory, but whether they'd still be needed in 2025 or 2030. http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966
- johngalt 10y ago
  You vastly underestimate the technology differences between 500 b.c. and 1600ad. The printing press for example. Windmills/waterwheels for another. Did the automation of grain mills result in mass unemployability? > office and service sector jobs -- because that was another underdeveloped sector. Or perhaps automation allowed more people to pursue that type of work? Was working in an air conditioned office an option for your average person in 500bc? Doubt it. Instead it sounds like we created a whole new type of work in response to a society wide change in technology. > software and the internet makes lots of office jobs and procedures obsolete Some, but fewer than you would think, and it makes many other jobs accessible. Often technology advances are unskilled people + tech/process improvements displacing skilled artisans. The factory worker jobs were an example of technology displacing skilled workers. Computers and the internet allow for unskilled/untrained people to enter fields that they would be unsuited for alternatively. How many retail bankers could do an amortization table without the computer's assistance? > I'm not sure how anyone in a technology forum can believe... Precisely the opposite. Technology eliminating work has happened several times in the past. Just never with disaster. We always seem to find new things to work on. The greater efficiency we have the more our horizon expands about what we can pursue as 'work'. If you were a good actor in 500BC, what would that buy you? Some local notoriety? Would it be 'work' that you get paid for in your local town? Probably not. Now it means you get a private jet. New areas will expand to fill the gaps. Even among the industries being automated, the results are often not that dire. There is a milder version of Jevon's paradox at work here. Once you can produce something with great efficiency and low cost, people will demand more of it. Sometimes demand will even increase faster than efficiency and you'll have net employment growth.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >You vastly underestimate the technology differences between 500 b.c. and 1600ad. The printing press for example. Windmills/waterwheels for another. Did the automation of grain mills result in mass unemployability? Not many worked in grain mills in the first place for that to be much of an issue. Something like the fishing sector becoming deprecated in the 16th century B.C. would more faithfully describe the kind of impact modern automation technologies can have. Besides there were still tons of work opportunities in ALL kinds of manual and menial labor fields as the standards of living were very low and urbanization was just starting. >* We always seem to find new things to work on.* From a list of limited options -- not from some magic infinite bag of sectors. >Precisely the opposite. Technology eliminating work has happened several times in the past. Just never with disaster. You conflate technology eliminating SOME work, with technology that can replace all kinds of jobs -- including lots of mental labor with AI. You also conflate technologies that were small multipliers of productivity, with technologies that allow 1 person to do the work of hundreds of thousands, or even millions.

coldtea 10y ago

>It's just happened every other time something like this has happened. For tens of thousands of years. Nothing like this has happened before. For one, people in 17th century didn't live much differently than people in 500 A.D. or 500 B.C -- the huge majority lived in the country, milked their own milk, work with manual tools, etc. The process we're discussing started mostly with the industrial revolution. With the advent of the steam engine and crude early factories, for the first 2 centuries of the Industrial revolution, as factories and factory assembly lines still needed tons of manual labor (see Taylorism). Then, as automation advanced, around the mid-20th century, and there was not the same demand for factory workers anymore (a lot of production lines became more efficient and less manual), people were given office and service sector jobs -- because that was another underdeveloped sector. Today, software and the internet makes lots of office jobs and procedures obsolete, advanced robotic automation makes tons of factory jobs deprecated, and with advances in smart software, business networks, etc, lots of service jobs are not needed anymore either. Advanced AI software and hardware will only make this worse. And there's no next step to go besides either creating useless busywork or reducing work-hours/days (so work provided meets the actual work needs). And even that will still leave tons of people not needed to work anyways. I'm not sure how anyone in a technology forum can believe technology can't get us to a point where a much smaller number or very few needs to work anymore, because "it never happened in the past". That's exactly the idea behind innovation, to not get the same thing you had in the past... >Standards of living are rising globally. Even if comparative wealth drops vs other humans, most people will still see significant improvement in their lifetime. We're not talking about whether millions rural chinese person improved their "standards of living" in the 20th and early 21st century by getting work in a factory, but whether they'd still be needed in 2025 or 2030. http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966

johngalt 10y ago
You vastly underestimate the technology differences between 500 b.c. and 1600ad. The printing press for example. Windmills/waterwheels for another. Did the automation of grain mills result in mass unemployability? > office and service sector jobs -- because that was another underdeveloped sector. Or perhaps automation allowed more people to pursue that type of work? Was working in an air conditioned office an option for your average person in 500bc? Doubt it. Instead it sounds like we created a whole new type of work in response to a society wide change in technology. > software and the internet makes lots of office jobs and procedures obsolete Some, but fewer than you would think, and it makes many other jobs accessible. Often technology advances are unskilled people + tech/process improvements displacing skilled artisans. The factory worker jobs were an example of technology displacing skilled workers. Computers and the internet allow for unskilled/untrained people to enter fields that they would be unsuited for alternatively. How many retail bankers could do an amortization table without the computer's assistance? > I'm not sure how anyone in a technology forum can believe... Precisely the opposite. Technology eliminating work has happened several times in the past. Just never with disaster. We always seem to find new things to work on. The greater efficiency we have the more our horizon expands about what we can pursue as 'work'. If you were a good actor in 500BC, what would that buy you? Some local notoriety? Would it be 'work' that you get paid for in your local town? Probably not. Now it means you get a private jet. New areas will expand to fill the gaps. Even among the industries being automated, the results are often not that dire. There is a milder version of Jevon's paradox at work here. Once you can produce something with great efficiency and low cost, people will demand more of it. Sometimes demand will even increase faster than efficiency and you'll have net employment growth.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >You vastly underestimate the technology differences between 500 b.c. and 1600ad. The printing press for example. Windmills/waterwheels for another. Did the automation of grain mills result in mass unemployability? Not many worked in grain mills in the first place for that to be much of an issue. Something like the fishing sector becoming deprecated in the 16th century B.C. would more faithfully describe the kind of impact modern automation technologies can have. Besides there were still tons of work opportunities in ALL kinds of manual and menial labor fields as the standards of living were very low and urbanization was just starting. >* We always seem to find new things to work on.* From a list of limited options -- not from some magic infinite bag of sectors. >Precisely the opposite. Technology eliminating work has happened several times in the past. Just never with disaster. You conflate technology eliminating SOME work, with technology that can replace all kinds of jobs -- including lots of mental labor with AI. You also conflate technologies that were small multipliers of productivity, with technologies that allow 1 person to do the work of hundreds of thousands, or even millions.