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"But it also has some downsides that we’re gonna have to figure out in terms of not eliminating jobs. It could increase inequality. It could suppress wages." N

"But it also has some downsides that we’re gonna have to figure out in terms of not eliminating jobs. It could increase inequality. It could suppress wages." No doubt that advances in technology have always done away with jobs. We're almost to the point at which the biggest blue collar industry (truck drivers) is about to be wiped out by self driving trucks. What I'm concerned about is the government stifling innovation such as driverless trucks to retain those jobs, or some sort of regulation that stifles the technology's potential. What is the alternative?

eric_h 10y ago
I'm more and more convinced that a UBI is the only way to deal with this problem, so the unemployed have a buffer to retrain to a new skillset. Of course, replacing the current social safety net (food stamps, et. al.) with a UBI would likely result in the trimming of government bureaucratic jobs. Everything's a trade off.
- ronald_raygun 10y ago
  I would take a look at this argument done by Obama's main economist. He basically argues that UBI isn't actually that good because it doesn't shrink the gap as much as current systems (progressive taxes and the like). Plus it is a good read anyways because it is a much longer detailed analysis. https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/page/files/20160707_cea_ai_furman.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/page/files/20...
  - eric_h 10y ago
    Thank you, I skimmed the first two pages of that, will read the whole thing soon. Looks quite well thought out.
  - will_pseudonym 10y ago
    "The issue is not that automation will render the vast majority of the population unemployable. Instead, it is that workers will either lack the skills or the ability to successfully match with the good, high paying jobs created by automation." So those who are doing jobs that AI can do better and more cheaply than any human, they are going to somehow gain skills and/or ability to perform new good, high paying jobs created by automation? I don't buy it. Analogues to those hypothetical future high-quality jobs already exist, so why aren't the people in the soon-to-be obsolete jobs already doing the existent high quality jobs? Do they not like money? Training for these jobs has never been cheaper!
    - eric_h 10y ago
      Time is money. The actual monetary cost of training is irrelevant if you don't have the time to actually do it (learning new skills has never paid the bills in the right now timeframe).
    - morgante 10y ago
      Why would it be inherently different this time? Millions of farmers managed to learn new skills (or at least their children did). I think we'll eventually have work for everyone who wants it (but hopefully you won't have to work to live). The future will probably have a lot of demand for "artisanal" products (ie. produced by humans).
  - morgante 10y ago
    This seems to make the mistake, I believe, of focusing on "inequality" as a problem. Inequality is not a problem. Poverty is. If everyone has everything they need and most things they want, but a few super rich people own entire planets, I fail to see how that's not a utopian future.
    - imtringued 10y ago
      I would also argue that inheriting large wealth is not a problem. At some point the money had to be earned. If the inheritors do not use it wisely it will be gone within a few generations. Imagine a farmer working his entire life on his farm. Now that he is reaching the end of his lifespan he wants his children to benefit from his work. He built the house and everything himself. Why should the government take a chunk out of that? One might argue that the children do not work and therefore this "unearned" income is unfair because it's not possible to choose whether you are born into a wealthy family. However it is both earned by the work of the father and already taxed by the government through his income. By the time the father dies the children are likely already 40 to 50 years old but they benefited from his little wealth while he was still alive. The inheritance tax does not affect this. It only discourages using the inheritance efficiently over multiple generations.
- mtgx 10y ago
  "Choosing" (even if you have a choice at that point) UBI when only 10% of the population is employed anymore is easy. The question is when do you start implementing UBI? When only 80% of the population have jobs anymore? 60%? 40%? Because when you do implement it, the money that goes to the unemployed people is going to have to come from those that still make money. And they will probably be pretty pissed off about it, too. Also, in a two-party system country like the U.S., the party you vote for may literally decide this outcome. Like say 70% of the people still have jobs and they don't want UBI, and the Democrats support switching to UBI after the election. It's very likely that the Democrats will not win an election again until a majority of the population supports implementing UBI, no matter what other terrible things the Republican party promises to do, while also promising not to implement UBI.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - eric_h 10y ago
    Well, arguably we currently have a safety net that is less efficient (in terms of bureaucracy/maintenance cost) than a UBI would be, so... how 'bout now? Regardless, you do make good points.
nickff 10y ago
The alternatives are mostly the pointless gestures we see when the government tries to protect jobs from progress, such as the regions where self-serve gas is illegal. I don't see any viable regulation of AI, other than some attempt to tax it.
- tnecniv 10y ago
  I don't even see a practical scheme to tax AI. What counts as AI? Are A* and Sudoku solvers AI, or are we just talking about machine learning? If the latter, am I taxed for doing a linear regression, or only for the "cool" stuff like deep networks? If so, how deep? Am I charged per computation? How are you going to keep me honest?
  - davmre 10y ago
    Assuming that AI-generated wealth is accruing to some person or people, you can just tax it as ordinary income. The main difference is quantitative: in a world where all wealth is generated by AIs controlled by a small number of people, you'd need to tax and redistribute their incomes at much higher rates than we currently do (or just socialize the AIs entirely).
pmyjavec 10y ago
Why aren't you "concerned" about people losing their jobs? The alternatives are tech companies start to pay their taxes and humans start to use tech to care for one another, genuinely, not just wealthy Silicon Valley types trying to make buckets because their "entitled" to do so and pretend it's all in the name of progress. The idea of the Internet and Automation were exciting to me as it was about liberation and decentralisation, from where I'm sitting it's turning into a bit of a joke, it's just empowering those who own the tech and their not giving a whole lot back right now. Not attacking you personally, but this, attitude of "don't worry, those people who will be made redundant will be fine" thing is a myth, they will suffer and so will their families.
- golergka 10y ago
  A lot of comments like yours are based on the assumption of "giving back". I don't quite understand it. Let's suppose I've founded booking.com and put a LOT of travel agents out of business. At what point did I assume the responsibility of giving back to those travel agents? I agree that they are miserable because of my actions. However, in real life, nothing happens because of a single reason. They are also miserable because of free choice of their former customers, who abandoned them. Those customers have profited from the change too: after all, they chose me because of lower prices and better service. Why am I, and not the customers that left them, have this responsibility?
  - forgetsusername 10y ago
    >At what point did I assume the responsibility of giving back to those travel agents? You won't have to. If it gets bad enough, they'll come take it.
    - golergka 10y ago
      You are correct. However, this discussion operates on some level of abstraction, and you're jumping off it. It's like talking about eucledian geometry and then saying that no physical object is actually a single point, straight lines do not exist and parallel lines would collide due to space-time curvature.
throwaway729 10y ago
Obama's answer to this seems to be training and education as opposed to regulating away progress. See: this article. I'd expect the latter to come from the right in the US, ironically enough.
will_brown 10y ago
>What I'm concerned about is the government stifling innovation such as driverless trucks to retain those jobs...What is the alternative? More likely the Government comes up with "innovative" ways to hide these people from the official unemployment numbers. Somehow unemployment is calculated at only 4.9% today...add 3.5 million newly unemployed commercial drivers tomorrow (>10% of US total population) and the new unemployment rate = 4.9%.
- toomanybeersies 10y ago
  Unemployment is a very difficult number to define and calculate. Do you count those that are not actively looking for work, and don't want to look for work? e.g. House(wife|husband)s, semi-retired people. Do you count those that have given up looking for work? Do you count those that are working part time, but looking for full time work (i.e. the underemployed)? Do you count those that aren't really looking for work (for whatever reason), but occasionally look online at job listings (since it's a very low effort thing to do)? This is an interesting one, because Statistics New Zealand just recently decided that this doesn't count as actively seeking work, which seems right to me. I look at online job listings all the time, but am happily employed and not seeking other employment. Do you count the self employed? Contractors? Are Uber drivers considered employed? What about Airbnb hosts?
  - helthanatos 10y ago
    Employment: the condition of having paid work. a person's trade or profession. Just count those that want work or should have work (need to support a family/receiving government aid)
    - toomanybeersies 10y ago
      > Just count those that want work or should have work As I just commented, that's easier said than done.
      - helthanatos 10y ago
sundarurfriend 10y ago
Relevant link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Obsolete_occupations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Obsolete_occupations Many of these seem to have been victims of cultural and political change, but there's quite a few (for eg., Knocker-up, Lamplighter, and more recently, Switchboard operator) that became obsolete due to technological advancements.

eric_h 10y ago

I'm more and more convinced that a UBI is the only way to deal with this problem, so the unemployed have a buffer to retrain to a new skillset. Of course, replacing the current social safety net (food stamps, et. al.) with a UBI would likely result in the trimming of government bureaucratic jobs. Everything's a trade off.

ronald_raygun 10y ago
I would take a look at this argument done by Obama's main economist. He basically argues that UBI isn't actually that good because it doesn't shrink the gap as much as current systems (progressive taxes and the like). Plus it is a good read anyways because it is a much longer detailed analysis. https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/page/files/20160707_cea_ai_furman.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/page/files/20...
- eric_h 10y ago
  Thank you, I skimmed the first two pages of that, will read the whole thing soon. Looks quite well thought out.
- will_pseudonym 10y ago
  "The issue is not that automation will render the vast majority of the population unemployable. Instead, it is that workers will either lack the skills or the ability to successfully match with the good, high paying jobs created by automation." So those who are doing jobs that AI can do better and more cheaply than any human, they are going to somehow gain skills and/or ability to perform new good, high paying jobs created by automation? I don't buy it. Analogues to those hypothetical future high-quality jobs already exist, so why aren't the people in the soon-to-be obsolete jobs already doing the existent high quality jobs? Do they not like money? Training for these jobs has never been cheaper!
  - eric_h 10y ago
    Time is money. The actual monetary cost of training is irrelevant if you don't have the time to actually do it (learning new skills has never paid the bills in the right now timeframe).
  - morgante 10y ago
    Why would it be inherently different this time? Millions of farmers managed to learn new skills (or at least their children did). I think we'll eventually have work for everyone who wants it (but hopefully you won't have to work to live). The future will probably have a lot of demand for "artisanal" products (ie. produced by humans).
- morgante 10y ago
  This seems to make the mistake, I believe, of focusing on "inequality" as a problem. Inequality is not a problem. Poverty is. If everyone has everything they need and most things they want, but a few super rich people own entire planets, I fail to see how that's not a utopian future.
  - imtringued 10y ago
    I would also argue that inheriting large wealth is not a problem. At some point the money had to be earned. If the inheritors do not use it wisely it will be gone within a few generations. Imagine a farmer working his entire life on his farm. Now that he is reaching the end of his lifespan he wants his children to benefit from his work. He built the house and everything himself. Why should the government take a chunk out of that? One might argue that the children do not work and therefore this "unearned" income is unfair because it's not possible to choose whether you are born into a wealthy family. However it is both earned by the work of the father and already taxed by the government through his income. By the time the father dies the children are likely already 40 to 50 years old but they benefited from his little wealth while he was still alive. The inheritance tax does not affect this. It only discourages using the inheritance efficiently over multiple generations.
mtgx 10y ago
"Choosing" (even if you have a choice at that point) UBI when only 10% of the population is employed anymore is easy. The question is when do you start implementing UBI? When only 80% of the population have jobs anymore? 60%? 40%? Because when you do implement it, the money that goes to the unemployed people is going to have to come from those that still make money. And they will probably be pretty pissed off about it, too. Also, in a two-party system country like the U.S., the party you vote for may literally decide this outcome. Like say 70% of the people still have jobs and they don't want UBI, and the Democrats support switching to UBI after the election. It's very likely that the Democrats will not win an election again until a majority of the population supports implementing UBI, no matter what other terrible things the Republican party promises to do, while also promising not to implement UBI.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- eric_h 10y ago
  Well, arguably we currently have a safety net that is less efficient (in terms of bureaucracy/maintenance cost) than a UBI would be, so... how 'bout now? Regardless, you do make good points.

nickff 10y ago

The alternatives are mostly the pointless gestures we see when the government tries to protect jobs from progress, such as the regions where self-serve gas is illegal. I don't see any viable regulation of AI, other than some attempt to tax it.

tnecniv 10y ago
I don't even see a practical scheme to tax AI. What counts as AI? Are A* and Sudoku solvers AI, or are we just talking about machine learning? If the latter, am I taxed for doing a linear regression, or only for the "cool" stuff like deep networks? If so, how deep? Am I charged per computation? How are you going to keep me honest?
- davmre 10y ago
  Assuming that AI-generated wealth is accruing to some person or people, you can just tax it as ordinary income. The main difference is quantitative: in a world where all wealth is generated by AIs controlled by a small number of people, you'd need to tax and redistribute their incomes at much higher rates than we currently do (or just socialize the AIs entirely).

pmyjavec 10y ago

Why aren't you "concerned" about people losing their jobs? The alternatives are tech companies start to pay their taxes and humans start to use tech to care for one another, genuinely, not just wealthy Silicon Valley types trying to make buckets because their "entitled" to do so and pretend it's all in the name of progress. The idea of the Internet and Automation were exciting to me as it was about liberation and decentralisation, from where I'm sitting it's turning into a bit of a joke, it's just empowering those who own the tech and their not giving a whole lot back right now. Not attacking you personally, but this, attitude of "don't worry, those people who will be made redundant will be fine" thing is a myth, they will suffer and so will their families.

golergka 10y ago
A lot of comments like yours are based on the assumption of "giving back". I don't quite understand it. Let's suppose I've founded booking.com and put a LOT of travel agents out of business. At what point did I assume the responsibility of giving back to those travel agents? I agree that they are miserable because of my actions. However, in real life, nothing happens because of a single reason. They are also miserable because of free choice of their former customers, who abandoned them. Those customers have profited from the change too: after all, they chose me because of lower prices and better service. Why am I, and not the customers that left them, have this responsibility?
- forgetsusername 10y ago
  >At what point did I assume the responsibility of giving back to those travel agents? You won't have to. If it gets bad enough, they'll come take it.
  - golergka 10y ago
    You are correct. However, this discussion operates on some level of abstraction, and you're jumping off it. It's like talking about eucledian geometry and then saying that no physical object is actually a single point, straight lines do not exist and parallel lines would collide due to space-time curvature.

throwaway729 10y ago

Obama's answer to this seems to be training and education as opposed to regulating away progress. See: this article. I'd expect the latter to come from the right in the US, ironically enough.

will_brown 10y ago

>What I'm concerned about is the government stifling innovation such as driverless trucks to retain those jobs...What is the alternative? More likely the Government comes up with "innovative" ways to hide these people from the official unemployment numbers. Somehow unemployment is calculated at only 4.9% today...add 3.5 million newly unemployed commercial drivers tomorrow (>10% of US total population) and the new unemployment rate = 4.9%.

toomanybeersies 10y ago
Unemployment is a very difficult number to define and calculate. Do you count those that are not actively looking for work, and don't want to look for work? e.g. House(wife|husband)s, semi-retired people. Do you count those that have given up looking for work? Do you count those that are working part time, but looking for full time work (i.e. the underemployed)? Do you count those that aren't really looking for work (for whatever reason), but occasionally look online at job listings (since it's a very low effort thing to do)? This is an interesting one, because Statistics New Zealand just recently decided that this doesn't count as actively seeking work, which seems right to me. I look at online job listings all the time, but am happily employed and not seeking other employment. Do you count the self employed? Contractors? Are Uber drivers considered employed? What about Airbnb hosts?
- helthanatos 10y ago
  Employment: the condition of having paid work. a person's trade or profession. Just count those that want work or should have work (need to support a family/receiving government aid)
  - toomanybeersies 10y ago
    > Just count those that want work or should have work As I just commented, that's easier said than done.
    - helthanatos 10y ago

sundarurfriend 10y ago

Relevant link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Obsolete_occupations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Obsolete_occupations Many of these seem to have been victims of cultural and political change, but there's quite a few (for eg., Knocker-up, Lamplighter, and more recently, Switchboard operator) that became obsolete due to technological advancements.