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We’re a long way away in technology time but not in society time. We might be as far away from this world as we are from the creation of the Web — but society i

We’re a long way away in technology time but not in society time. We might be as far away from this world as we are from the creation of the Web — but society isn’t ready to have 10x the number of unemployed people in 25 years. Political/economic/social systems will not survive — the hope is that they get replaced nonviolently rather than in a bloodbath.

wpasc 8y ago
Very much agreed with this comment. When people compare today's technological displacement of people and say "yeah but it happened in the industrial revolution, people will as always find new work", I truly think this time is VERY VERY different because of the pace at which technological gains are increasing. I do not think our society which has recently (and ongoingly) had someone work in one job function (often at one company) for 30+ years is ready for the fast paced change of needing to change jobs every few years. Look at the rate of displacement in tech of technologies and frameworks. Try being an Angular developer for 20 years... I think people in software have come to expect rapid change because its the nature of the game, but that rate of change is unreasonable to be endured by every industry everywhere.
- pizza234 8y ago
  > I truly think this time is VERY VERY different because of the pace at which technological gains are increasing. The pace is not increasing. There have been radical changes, as much as in the last few hundred years. Two "poster children" of technological advancements (AI and nuclear) are always behind the corner, but never here. Even if they were here, there would be no catastrophe, as much as there hadn't been with green energy, and transistors. > Look at the rate of displacement in tech of technologies and frameworks. Try being an Angular developer for 20 years... This is irrelevant; Angular or not, the software engineering market is evergreen, even with poorly skilled software engineers (I do know some). This example is actually a counterargument to the thesis: displacement of technologies in this field did not lead to displacement of jobs.
nradov 8y ago
There is no hard evidence that unemployment will increase by 10×. This is pure speculation. Meanwhile we have real non-imaginary problems to focus on.
- 3pt14159 8y ago
  I agree. Mass unemployment is not a concern we can start to address because we do not know the nature of the coming unemployment. We're talking about 20 or 40 years away. Meanwhile, we have real fucking problems right now: 1. Sky high housing prices. 2. Extreme wealth disparity. 3. Environmental degradation. 4. Cybersecurity failures everywhere, just as everything goes autonomous or otherwise cyberphysical. 5. Information operations threaten both democracy and the openness of the internet. You can still make $100k a year editing English. The demand for talent is sky high, it's investments in education and society that will help us, not fretting over how AI will take away jobs long before we can do anything about it.
  - falcor84 8y ago
    I agreed with everything in your comment until you mentioned the investment in education. To handle education well, we do need to do everything we can to understand the changing demand in the upcoming decades.
    - nradov 8y ago
      Most government attempts to provide targeted education based on expected future demand haven't worked. Educators and bureaucrats are terrible at predicting the future (and HN users aren't any better).
  - eezurr 8y ago
    Perhaps mass unemployment and extreme wealth disparity are the same problem. It's known that the productivity gains we've had from computers has mostly accumulated at the top. Workers are more productive, but their pay does not reflect that. Wealth is moving around less because we don't need to spend (i.e. distribute) as much as we have in the past to generate more wealth. So, I think wealth disparity is a strong predictor for unemployment. I also think unemployment is the wrong word because it paints a false dichotomy. There's a not a huge lifestyle difference between making $20,000 a year and $0 a year (since the government steps in), compared to making $20,000 and $80,000 a year; and then $80,000 and $200,000. One reason housing prices are so high right now is because people (mistakenly IMO) view houses as an investment. NO one wants to lose money on a sale. Another reason (for some areas) is probably because of the productivity gains. Since we need to distribute less to make more wealth, we've further centralized our economy into smaller pockets of land (i.e. cities). So again, I think it's the same problem.
pizza234 8y ago
> society isn’t ready to have 10x the number of unemployed people in 25 years Nobody can predict those numbers; any number about unemployment is essentially made up. And fallacious as well, according to the lump of labour fallacy. In the meanwhile, the industrial revolution (of whom automation is part of), in its 200+ years, hasn't caused any death of political/economic/social systems.
- wpasc 8y ago
  I think this time is different because the rate at which technology can improve is growing increasingly fast and society/people's ability to change is not increasing at a commensurate rate.
  - nradov 8y ago
    You can't extrapolate the rate of technology improvement based on current trends. It may slow down in the future. For example we're already hitting serious obstacles in basic physics when it comes to semiconductors.
  - losteric 8y ago
    The change is also changing. The first waves of automation reduced demand for brute and repetitive physical labor - almost everyone impacted was eligible for the less physical jobs made available by automation. This move towards automating thinking will not follow the same trend.
- theevilsharpie 8y ago
  > In the meanwhile, the industrial revolution (of whom automation is part of), in its 200+ years, hasn't caused any death of political/economic/social systems. Communism was a direct response to the wealth inequality of the industrial revolution. That was one of the most disruptive political/economic/social upheavals of all time.
- TheCoelacanth 8y ago
  > In the meanwhile, the industrial revolution (of whom automation is part of), in its 200+ years, hasn't caused any death of political/economic/social systems. Hasn't it? It completely killed off mercantilism and mostly killed off monarchism.
rayiner 8y ago
In 25 years (which is like late 1990s) technology has made disappointing progress even in well defined areas like speech recognition. We may be decades away from breakthrough, we may be centuries away.
- ubersoldat2k7 8y ago
  Exactly! It all seems so special now, but IBM was selling a voice processing software that supposedly helped you write a Word document. This is not possible even today, and voice recognition is one of the biggest obstacles AI has to go through before being really effective. For example, can Siri or Alexa delete an specific phone number from a contact? Like "ok Google, delete home number from X" is not possible right now.

wpasc 8y ago

Very much agreed with this comment. When people compare today's technological displacement of people and say "yeah but it happened in the industrial revolution, people will as always find new work", I truly think this time is VERY VERY different because of the pace at which technological gains are increasing. I do not think our society which has recently (and ongoingly) had someone work in one job function (often at one company) for 30+ years is ready for the fast paced change of needing to change jobs every few years. Look at the rate of displacement in tech of technologies and frameworks. Try being an Angular developer for 20 years... I think people in software have come to expect rapid change because its the nature of the game, but that rate of change is unreasonable to be endured by every industry everywhere.

pizza234 8y ago
> I truly think this time is VERY VERY different because of the pace at which technological gains are increasing. The pace is not increasing. There have been radical changes, as much as in the last few hundred years. Two "poster children" of technological advancements (AI and nuclear) are always behind the corner, but never here. Even if they were here, there would be no catastrophe, as much as there hadn't been with green energy, and transistors. > Look at the rate of displacement in tech of technologies and frameworks. Try being an Angular developer for 20 years... This is irrelevant; Angular or not, the software engineering market is evergreen, even with poorly skilled software engineers (I do know some). This example is actually a counterargument to the thesis: displacement of technologies in this field did not lead to displacement of jobs.

nradov 8y ago

There is no hard evidence that unemployment will increase by 10×. This is pure speculation. Meanwhile we have real non-imaginary problems to focus on.

3pt14159 8y ago
I agree. Mass unemployment is not a concern we can start to address because we do not know the nature of the coming unemployment. We're talking about 20 or 40 years away. Meanwhile, we have real fucking problems right now: 1. Sky high housing prices. 2. Extreme wealth disparity. 3. Environmental degradation. 4. Cybersecurity failures everywhere, just as everything goes autonomous or otherwise cyberphysical. 5. Information operations threaten both democracy and the openness of the internet. You can still make $100k a year editing English. The demand for talent is sky high, it's investments in education and society that will help us, not fretting over how AI will take away jobs long before we can do anything about it.
- falcor84 8y ago
  I agreed with everything in your comment until you mentioned the investment in education. To handle education well, we do need to do everything we can to understand the changing demand in the upcoming decades.
  - nradov 8y ago
    Most government attempts to provide targeted education based on expected future demand haven't worked. Educators and bureaucrats are terrible at predicting the future (and HN users aren't any better).
- eezurr 8y ago
  Perhaps mass unemployment and extreme wealth disparity are the same problem. It's known that the productivity gains we've had from computers has mostly accumulated at the top. Workers are more productive, but their pay does not reflect that. Wealth is moving around less because we don't need to spend (i.e. distribute) as much as we have in the past to generate more wealth. So, I think wealth disparity is a strong predictor for unemployment. I also think unemployment is the wrong word because it paints a false dichotomy. There's a not a huge lifestyle difference between making $20,000 a year and $0 a year (since the government steps in), compared to making $20,000 and $80,000 a year; and then $80,000 and $200,000. One reason housing prices are so high right now is because people (mistakenly IMO) view houses as an investment. NO one wants to lose money on a sale. Another reason (for some areas) is probably because of the productivity gains. Since we need to distribute less to make more wealth, we've further centralized our economy into smaller pockets of land (i.e. cities). So again, I think it's the same problem.

pizza234 8y ago

> society isn’t ready to have 10x the number of unemployed people in 25 years Nobody can predict those numbers; any number about unemployment is essentially made up. And fallacious as well, according to the lump of labour fallacy. In the meanwhile, the industrial revolution (of whom automation is part of), in its 200+ years, hasn't caused any death of political/economic/social systems.

wpasc 8y ago
I think this time is different because the rate at which technology can improve is growing increasingly fast and society/people's ability to change is not increasing at a commensurate rate.
- nradov 8y ago
  You can't extrapolate the rate of technology improvement based on current trends. It may slow down in the future. For example we're already hitting serious obstacles in basic physics when it comes to semiconductors.
- losteric 8y ago
  The change is also changing. The first waves of automation reduced demand for brute and repetitive physical labor - almost everyone impacted was eligible for the less physical jobs made available by automation. This move towards automating thinking will not follow the same trend.
theevilsharpie 8y ago
> In the meanwhile, the industrial revolution (of whom automation is part of), in its 200+ years, hasn't caused any death of political/economic/social systems. Communism was a direct response to the wealth inequality of the industrial revolution. That was one of the most disruptive political/economic/social upheavals of all time.
TheCoelacanth 8y ago
> In the meanwhile, the industrial revolution (of whom automation is part of), in its 200+ years, hasn't caused any death of political/economic/social systems. Hasn't it? It completely killed off mercantilism and mostly killed off monarchism.

rayiner 8y ago

In 25 years (which is like late 1990s) technology has made disappointing progress even in well defined areas like speech recognition. We may be decades away from breakthrough, we may be centuries away.

ubersoldat2k7 8y ago
Exactly! It all seems so special now, but IBM was selling a voice processing software that supposedly helped you write a Word document. This is not possible even today, and voice recognition is one of the biggest obstacles AI has to go through before being really effective. For example, can Siri or Alexa delete an specific phone number from a contact? Like "ok Google, delete home number from X" is not possible right now.