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Many people (including me) believe the problem isn't overblown. A common counterargument to your point is that humans have always had the ability to do work at

Many people (including me) believe the problem isn't overblown. A common counterargument to your point is that humans have always had the ability to do work at higher abstraction levels than the machines replacing them. Scribes become unemployed but can retrain as typographers, press operators, digital layout artists and so on. The problem comes when robots begin to perform these higher order tasks. What happens to individuals when they have no "higher" place to move into? What happens to society when automated replacement becomes commonplace?

bduerst 9y ago
Jobs are not zero sum - the demand for labor is a function of supply. People will begin to fill more niche and variable-demand jobs where capital investments don't make sense, i.e. a shift towards a consultant economy. Keep in mind that the specifics of this is very hard to predict. A large number of the jobs we have today would have seemed absurd 20-40 years ago, but to us they feel like they were inevitable.
- petra 9y ago
  What popular jobs.that we have today would seem absurd 20-40 ago ,for someone.with an eye into.the future , say a science fiction writer?
  - paulpauper 9y ago
    There are people who make money with ASMR videos, people making money eating old military rations, etc and posting it on YouTube. I am not saying these are viable career options, but are examples of 'jobs' that seem absurd but exist because of recent technology Web design, coding, app design, site reliability engineers , debugging, user interface testing, so many new jobs
  - cr0sh 9y ago
    While I am pretty certain there were analogues of it 40 years ago (1977), the idea of a "lifestyle coach" and similar professions would seem a bit out there back then.
  - bduerst 9y ago
    SEO specialist, Mobile App Developer, Etsy artist, Drop shipper, additive manufacturing engineer, HFT quant, Lyft driver, etc.
- s73ver 9y ago
  Except there are going to be far, far fewer of those positions than there are people displaced by automation.
  - bduerst 9y ago
    > the demand for labor is a function of supply
Chathamization 9y ago
> The problem comes when robots begin to perform these higher order tasks. What happens to individuals when they have no "higher" place to move into? That hasn't happened though. We have no indication that such a question is more relevant now than it was 200 years ago. And it's worth pointing out that we're currently in a period of fairly low productivity growth.

bduerst 9y ago

Jobs are not zero sum - the demand for labor is a function of supply. People will begin to fill more niche and variable-demand jobs where capital investments don't make sense, i.e. a shift towards a consultant economy. Keep in mind that the specifics of this is very hard to predict. A large number of the jobs we have today would have seemed absurd 20-40 years ago, but to us they feel like they were inevitable.

petra 9y ago
What popular jobs.that we have today would seem absurd 20-40 ago ,for someone.with an eye into.the future , say a science fiction writer?
- paulpauper 9y ago
  There are people who make money with ASMR videos, people making money eating old military rations, etc and posting it on YouTube. I am not saying these are viable career options, but are examples of 'jobs' that seem absurd but exist because of recent technology Web design, coding, app design, site reliability engineers , debugging, user interface testing, so many new jobs
- cr0sh 9y ago
  While I am pretty certain there were analogues of it 40 years ago (1977), the idea of a "lifestyle coach" and similar professions would seem a bit out there back then.
- bduerst 9y ago
  SEO specialist, Mobile App Developer, Etsy artist, Drop shipper, additive manufacturing engineer, HFT quant, Lyft driver, etc.
s73ver 9y ago
Except there are going to be far, far fewer of those positions than there are people displaced by automation.
- bduerst 9y ago
  > the demand for labor is a function of supply

Chathamization 9y ago

> The problem comes when robots begin to perform these higher order tasks. What happens to individuals when they have no "higher" place to move into? That hasn't happened though. We have no indication that such a question is more relevant now than it was 200 years ago. And it's worth pointing out that we're currently in a period of fairly low productivity growth.