4 ms·

http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/humans-need-not-apply http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/humans-need-not-apply > This time is different

SolarNet 9y ago
To expand/paraphrase, the industrial Revolution was about improving the productivity of human labor. Automation and AI is about replacing human labor entirely. If economists said that as a rule, automation improvements lead to better jobs for horses you would call them crazy. But when they say it as a rule for humans it suddenly makes total sense. Horses were replaced by cars. Humans can be replaced by AI.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  > Automation and AI is about replacing human labor entirely. Is it? What happened in the past was that people stopped being handy with a scythe and started getting handy fixing tractors. That's "replacing human labor entirely" in the exact same way that replacing a welder with someone who can program a welding robot is. How is this different? The supposed AI which is better than every human at every task is sci-fi. If we're talking about real AIs and real robots we're just not there, and strides in that direction continue to be spotty, as they have been for the last 30 years.
  - philipkglass 9y ago
    The concern is that automated systems will become better-than-human at enough tasks of economic importance that involuntary joblessness will significantly increase. The usual counter-argument is "human wants are infinite," implying that there will always be sufficient demand for new kinds of or additional quantities of paid human employment to counterbalance labor saving techniques. But that argument neglects time to reach a new equilibrium. It neglects that people displaced from old industries may not be able to fill newer jobs even if they had years to retrain. It neglects that a major human want is leisure time, and leisure time not spent consuming or producing does not contribute to paid employment.
  - ori_b 9y ago
    > What happened in the past was that people stopped being handy with a scythe and started getting handy fixing tractors What happened is that people stopped being farmers. The number of farmers per capita dropped by something like 95%, compared to a century ago.
  - SolarNet 9y ago
    Something like 20% of jobs are moving stuff around. Drivers, warehouse workers, truckers. What happens with self driving vehicles doing that? (the great depression was 25% unemployment). People stopped being farmers and were able to pursue other industries. But there were still farmers, and a whole support economy of new jobs to support the new method of farming. AI is going to be the farmer driving the tractor, the person who repairs the tractor, the system that manufactures new tractor parts, the person that drives it, a large amount of the support designing new tractors (even if there were 100 competing brands of tractors there are a limited number of people required for research and design and maintenance of the automation (not enough to replace 2.1 million farmers, let alone the millions of factory workers, mechanics, and delivery people), and the AI can even do most of that themselves too soon).
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
soberhoff 9y ago
To me this entire argument "woe us if we run out of work to do" is directly self-contradictory. If people are miserable because they don't have the necessities of life, then, by definition, there's work left to do. On the other hand if there really is no work left to do, then everybody should be perfectly content with their material wealth.
- milcron 9y ago
  I think this was more true when America had an open frontier, and anyone unhappy with their lot in life could strike out West and homestead. Today, if I have no modern job, where can I procure food? The land is all spoken for. I can't just start a farm in someone's backyard.
- drabiega 9y ago
  There's plenty of work left to do, but almost all of it requires labor to be combined with other resources which are scarce.
- smelterdemon 9y ago
  The problem is automation could conceivably create a (sufficiently) closed system wherein a capitalist class can fulfil their desires for material wealth with minimal need for labor, while the masses lack access to the means of creating wealth (i.e. the tools of automation) or even fulfilling the basic necessities of life.
  - soberhoff 9y ago
    What's to stop the masses from working for each other?
    - milcron 9y ago
      Creating food how?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]

SolarNet 9y ago

To expand/paraphrase, the industrial Revolution was about improving the productivity of human labor. Automation and AI is about replacing human labor entirely. If economists said that as a rule, automation improvements lead to better jobs for horses you would call them crazy. But when they say it as a rule for humans it suddenly makes total sense. Horses were replaced by cars. Humans can be replaced by AI.

erikpukinskis 9y ago
> Automation and AI is about replacing human labor entirely. Is it? What happened in the past was that people stopped being handy with a scythe and started getting handy fixing tractors. That's "replacing human labor entirely" in the exact same way that replacing a welder with someone who can program a welding robot is. How is this different? The supposed AI which is better than every human at every task is sci-fi. If we're talking about real AIs and real robots we're just not there, and strides in that direction continue to be spotty, as they have been for the last 30 years.
- philipkglass 9y ago
  The concern is that automated systems will become better-than-human at enough tasks of economic importance that involuntary joblessness will significantly increase. The usual counter-argument is "human wants are infinite," implying that there will always be sufficient demand for new kinds of or additional quantities of paid human employment to counterbalance labor saving techniques. But that argument neglects time to reach a new equilibrium. It neglects that people displaced from old industries may not be able to fill newer jobs even if they had years to retrain. It neglects that a major human want is leisure time, and leisure time not spent consuming or producing does not contribute to paid employment.
- ori_b 9y ago
  > What happened in the past was that people stopped being handy with a scythe and started getting handy fixing tractors What happened is that people stopped being farmers. The number of farmers per capita dropped by something like 95%, compared to a century ago.
- SolarNet 9y ago
  Something like 20% of jobs are moving stuff around. Drivers, warehouse workers, truckers. What happens with self driving vehicles doing that? (the great depression was 25% unemployment). People stopped being farmers and were able to pursue other industries. But there were still farmers, and a whole support economy of new jobs to support the new method of farming. AI is going to be the farmer driving the tractor, the person who repairs the tractor, the system that manufactures new tractor parts, the person that drives it, a large amount of the support designing new tractors (even if there were 100 competing brands of tractors there are a limited number of people required for research and design and maintenance of the automation (not enough to replace 2.1 million farmers, let alone the millions of factory workers, mechanics, and delivery people), and the AI can even do most of that themselves too soon).
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

soberhoff 9y ago

To me this entire argument "woe us if we run out of work to do" is directly self-contradictory. If people are miserable because they don't have the necessities of life, then, by definition, there's work left to do. On the other hand if there really is no work left to do, then everybody should be perfectly content with their material wealth.

milcron 9y ago
I think this was more true when America had an open frontier, and anyone unhappy with their lot in life could strike out West and homestead. Today, if I have no modern job, where can I procure food? The land is all spoken for. I can't just start a farm in someone's backyard.
drabiega 9y ago
There's plenty of work left to do, but almost all of it requires labor to be combined with other resources which are scarce.
smelterdemon 9y ago
The problem is automation could conceivably create a (sufficiently) closed system wherein a capitalist class can fulfil their desires for material wealth with minimal need for labor, while the masses lack access to the means of creating wealth (i.e. the tools of automation) or even fulfilling the basic necessities of life.
- soberhoff 9y ago
  What's to stop the masses from working for each other?
  - milcron 9y ago
    Creating food how?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]