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How is the AI revolution different from the industrial revolution(s)? A farmer in 1700 would have seen the 1880 machine and said « We’ll all lose our jobs »...

How is the AI revolution different from the industrial revolution(s)? A farmer in 1700 would have seen the 1880 machine and said « We’ll all lose our jobs »... and he’d be right. Also « and money will be centralized in the hands of the factory owner ». He’d be right too. « We’ll never be able to make everyone learn ti read and work in a desk job ». Right again. We just raised everyone’s education, and also raised everyone’s IQ in levels that would seem impossible to a 1700 farmer. We’ve also have the underside: poverty for those who can’t get office jobs and socialism to try level the field. Similarly it seems to us like we’ll all lose our jobs to AI, wealth will be concentrated by 99% more and we’ll never be clever enough to make each of us an AI scientist. That’s what it seems today. You can call to regulate but it’s hard to know in which direction. After all, we had to spend 2 centuries of wars and famines till we figured a merely stable system, and even today, we wouldn’t stand upright if we didn’t rely on Chinese workers being poor. So all the regulation in the world didn’t suppress any problem, we just put it out of sight. I see no difference between the scale of the AI revolution and the scale of the industrial revolution.

tryitnow 7y ago
I assume the counter-argument is that this time change is happening faster since it's driven by intangibles like code. It took a long time for the effects of the first industrial revolution to spread out because transportation was slower, the world's communication infrastructure was not as developed, etc. But honestly, I could see both sides of the argument here.
petra 7y ago
>> You can call to regulate but it’s hard to know in which direction. Sure, there are risks in everything. So we'll take no responsibility and just wait to see what the worst that can happens ? You know, historians believe that the two world wars are deeply connected to the industrial revolution?
mdorazio 7y ago
The difference is three fold: 1) Speed. The industrial revolution took place relatively slowly, over the course of 60-80 years (2-3 entire generations). Once a tipping point in automation is reached, it will very likely happen extremely quickly in our connected, easy-capital, globally competitive economy. 2) Reach. The industrial revolution primarily impacted manufacturing and to some extent farming. Today's automation is attacking almost every single major industry on the planet at the same time. Farming, manufacturing, finance, construction, food service, you name it. If your warehouse picker job gets automated away it's unlikely you'll be able to go get a job at Burger King because those jobs will be automating at about the same time. 3) New economies. The Industrial Revolution led to the industrial economy, which enabled the service/information economy. It's unclear what new economy is waiting beyond automation for the workers who lose out. Entertainment economy? Personal servant economy? What's left if most of the manual labor jobs and a good chunk of white collar jobs all go away within a generation?
ben_w 7y ago
> How is the AI revolution different from the industrial revolution(s)? Just to add to what everyone else is saying, the first industrial revolution led to one tiny island conquering a 24% of the planet while simultaneously their historical enemy and immediate neighbours controlled an additional 7.7%, and then a newly unified and industrialised nation [1] managed to drag both of those two into a war that killed 16 million people and which stalemated against those two superpower empires for a few years until America joined in, so even if the AI revolution is basically equivalent to the industrial revolution, I’d still say it’s not going to be fun for quite a lot of people. [1] I know, I’m simplifying it :)

tryitnow 7y ago

I assume the counter-argument is that this time change is happening faster since it's driven by intangibles like code. It took a long time for the effects of the first industrial revolution to spread out because transportation was slower, the world's communication infrastructure was not as developed, etc. But honestly, I could see both sides of the argument here.

petra 7y ago

>> You can call to regulate but it’s hard to know in which direction. Sure, there are risks in everything. So we'll take no responsibility and just wait to see what the worst that can happens ? You know, historians believe that the two world wars are deeply connected to the industrial revolution?

mdorazio 7y ago

The difference is three fold: 1) Speed. The industrial revolution took place relatively slowly, over the course of 60-80 years (2-3 entire generations). Once a tipping point in automation is reached, it will very likely happen extremely quickly in our connected, easy-capital, globally competitive economy. 2) Reach. The industrial revolution primarily impacted manufacturing and to some extent farming. Today's automation is attacking almost every single major industry on the planet at the same time. Farming, manufacturing, finance, construction, food service, you name it. If your warehouse picker job gets automated away it's unlikely you'll be able to go get a job at Burger King because those jobs will be automating at about the same time. 3) New economies. The Industrial Revolution led to the industrial economy, which enabled the service/information economy. It's unclear what new economy is waiting beyond automation for the workers who lose out. Entertainment economy? Personal servant economy? What's left if most of the manual labor jobs and a good chunk of white collar jobs all go away within a generation?

ben_w 7y ago

> How is the AI revolution different from the industrial revolution(s)? Just to add to what everyone else is saying, the first industrial revolution led to one tiny island conquering a 24% of the planet while simultaneously their historical enemy and immediate neighbours controlled an additional 7.7%, and then a newly unified and industrialised nation [1] managed to drag both of those two into a war that killed 16 million people and which stalemated against those two superpower empires for a few years until America joined in, so even if the AI revolution is basically equivalent to the industrial revolution, I’d still say it’s not going to be fun for quite a lot of people. [1] I know, I’m simplifying it :)