Why are you so convinced that it's not happening ? Each time something, which used to be done by humans, is done by a machine, that time spent doing that somet

Why are you so convinced that it's not happening ? Each time something, which used to be done by humans, is done by a machine, that time spent doing that something is no longer payed to a human and only a fraction goes to the makers of the machine - that's the whole point of automation - reduce costs and increase productivity. It doesn't lead to [more] humans being payed more money. I think intuitively it makes sense, but coming up with undeniable proof is quite hard in the globalized economy - the effects of automation often happen further away in the supply-chain graph. The 'modernized' company just stops importing or paying for X, because they can now do it 'in-house' for a fraction of what it cost them before. The effect of that is that someone somewhere on the other side of the planet might not be able to find a job doing X as easily as they did before. Or their company goes bankrupt. Is it because of automation ? Could be. It might create new opportunities, but those require newer and 'higher-level' skills - and as these opportunities arise, someone somewhere is already hacking away trying to automate them. And we're getting better and better at this, so the new opportunities are only available for a short period of time, until someone comes up with a brilliant new way of doing things. The software world is a great example. I personally think it's very real and being in denial the way that many people in SV are, does not improve matters. We (the technologists) should at least ponder upon these questions and figure out solutions - otherwise we're leaving that in the hands of politicians, which serves as zero comfort to me.