6 ms·

A friend and I debate this topic all the time Is this time really different? Pro: 1) Automation and Ai is replacing white collar work this time. There could

by rakkhi 6y ago

A friend and I debate this topic all the time Is this time really different? Pro: 1) Automation and Ai is replacing white collar work this time. There could truly be insufficient job creation as we see already with the gig economy 2) As Charles Murray wrote preciently in the 90s a great spoil of the wealth goes to people of higher intelligence. People in these walled gardens (literally sometimes) cannot relate to life on the outside. E.g. article today on front page about more Americans than working 2 jobs and the top comments there [A]. Also seen with the increasing wealth gap and increasing in wealth for the uber rich after covid and 08. There is no catching up especially with fed policies that reward existing asset owners 3) There may come a time where there is no marginal use for labour at a living wage 4) The ubi has already started and will now just accelerate. E.g. earth as portrayed in the expanse Con: 5) Libertarian argument: this has all happened before. Human wants and needs are unlimited. Labour is a scarce and valuable resource. There will always be jobs maybe at lower nominal wages but higher real wages if govts stop controlling interest rates and let prices fall I'm on the con side of the argument but I can't think of anything more compelling Hope this article becomes popular as I look forward to expanding my horizons via the educated hacker News crowd [A] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26184012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26184012

fbn79 6y ago
"Automation and Ai is replacing white collar work this time." I think that If your daily work can be truly replaced by a graphic card running pattern matching software you should find a better way to invest your life.
- rakkhi 6y ago
  Till they come for your job :) Ive seen a lot of jobs that have been automated that are not pattern matching even in IT security. Even where the job is not fully automated like firewall admin it is greatly reduced and the labour is not replaced. E.g 10 years ago at an Aussie bank we had 40 people performing firewall changes and 30 security designers writing and reviewing the rules nedded. Algosec came along, we did software defined networking , things moved to AWS and there are zero dedicated firewall admins anymore and all the designers were absorbed into the architecture and consulting teams and eventually returned to its original size of 20 i.e those 30 security design jobs disappeared
- watt 6y ago
  Point is, you can't find not just a better way, but you can't find any way. You either own the CPU farm, or you're out.
  - rakkhi 6y ago
    Yeah this is the Charles Murray point. We can't all be AI repair or developers. A lot is capped by intelligence. A greater proportion of the gains go to those with the most intelligence and everyone on the bottom gets left behind. That is the real outcome of automation this time. You can see it in the shrinking middle class in the developed world. In the smaller proportion of productivity gains going to labour in the last 60 year ala Piketty
    - ilaksh 6y ago
      You are conflating things. The gains go to people who have privilege. For example, developers in less-wealthy countries can earn a fraction of what those in richer countries earn. Or those born to wealthy parents who don't really need to work and so go into business rather than engineering. Also, in general the idea that greater intelligence means higher income is false. And the assumption many scientists and engineers make is that within a certain number of generations, maybe one, maybe ten, is that we will have AI much smarter than humans. That means smarter than you, and much better at your job than you (whether its "AI repair" or anything else). Smart guy.
      - cbozeman 6y ago
        > Also, in general the idea that greater intelligence means higher income is false. No it isn't. This is only one study of dozens, possibly even hundreds, that have been conducted over the years: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289607000219#:~:text=The%20numbers%20suggest%20that%20IQ,income%20is%203.6%20times%20lower https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602.... The findings are always the same... the more IQ you have, the better off you end up doing, once you control for every other variable. But I get why no one on HN wants to hear that. IQ is something you didn't earn. It's not yours. It was given to you, and not only was it given to you, you're not allowed to refuse it either. You either have it or you don't. And what's worse, even if you want to be smarter, that's almost nothing you can do that'll raise IQ by a few points - at best. Someone with a 100 IQ will never be able to study enough or learn enough to match someone with a 160 IQ. Its a lifelong, glaring, undeniable reminder that the Universe is not fucking fair and does not fucking care about anyone. And I've known enough people that are the demographic of HN to know that, not only does this intrinsically eat at their core because you can't deny it or evade it, but it also shatters their utopian ideals - that if we just eliminate all <insert social justice term of the zeitgeist here> that we can lift everyone up. Well you can't. And you won't. Life's not fair and there's literally nothing you can do about it right now.
- lm28469 6y ago
  Most people can't, and more and more people are thrown in these jobs. This is a direct consequence of automation... and this is why we're in for a bad time unless we rethink our concept or work
  - rakkhi 6y ago
    Thus the Expanse. The only palatable solution for government is print money (ie. tax everyone's purchasing power) and pay it in increased welfare. E.g 1400 cheques and more coming. As long as everyone prints there is no debasement of currencies.
    - cbozeman 6y ago
      Well look, if all this is becoming The Expanse, I'd like to make my way to the Ring Gate to a new world sooner rather than later. I find the idea of exploring strange new worlds far more enticing than getting my 1400 credits, or even worse, my €$ Eurodollars.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      If everyone prints, there is no relative debasement across currencies. There’s a massive debasement against hard/productive assets.
- i_am_proteus 6y ago
  Some people have spent decades investing in skills and careers that become obviated in a matter of years by new technology. It's easy to see today which lines of work can be better done by computers than by humans-- today. What's less obvious is which lines of work will be automated in two decades. Having your job description written out of the economy by software is a non-event when you're 26, rough when you're 36, and a disaster when you're 46.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    The problem is that company funded training is dead. There are some leftover countries like Germany that do formal apprenticeships with reduced pay and they tend to have lower youth unemployment but they are the exception. I know some people who just did an apprenticeship in their 30s and got a new job that way. The alternative would be to have a government mandated long term unemployment insurance program that funds education. It would be a general solution to career loss of any kind. I personally dislike that coal worker communities are being protected by the government. If there was an effective program that helped these people get better jobs we wouldn't even have to worry about protectionism. The big unsolved problem is people who are 10 years away from retirement. They can't just spend 3-5 years retraining without delaying their retirement.
- hansor 6y ago
  Programming, remote surgery, judging(law), farming. Hardly "bad investment" from society point of view! It is well known bias(supported by numerous studies) that 90% people with your "attitude" are certain that THEIR job is somehow special and immune to automatization.
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    It's the same old shit, hansor... no one considers a problem to be "their" problem, right up until it becomes their problem.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- superbcarrot 6y ago
  I think that it's okay to say this to yourself and look for a different type of work. Saying this to other people misses a couple of important points. - If you can reskill, you're very fortunate. Not everyone is in the same position. - It doesn't scale to large numbers. The demand in the market for people with skills that can't yet be automated isn't necessarily enough to absorb all the people who are losing their jobs to automation.
- agumonkey 6y ago
  I spent 3 months at a small court room last summer. 99% of what was ~done (or not done depending on how you see it) could fit on a laptop. The whole service, if in digital form would require near zero human intervention. These people are mostly trying to navigate bad software, bad bosses, bad archives and bad workflow. Oh and angry users of course. The computational needs are not even GPU worthy. I'm not advocating a digital future[1], but a humongous amount of tasks at the service layer are really nil. [1] humanly and sociologically I'd be much more happier keeping most of the system, people contributing to society together, but with better tools and better team spirit (achievable through a little cultural shift), I don't see value in replacing all tasks and letting people idle or live 100 years of leisure, I don't even think it's mentally sane.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
  Computer was once a job title. People used to get paid to shine shoes and press clothes everyday. Banks used to employee hundreds of people to staff their operations. The DMV is a sprawling human operated date entry firm fronting for a database and camera. Paralegals and research assistants are being replaced by the dozens. Entire factory campuses that employed towns are now operated by mere dozens. Fields that took dozens to manage can now be handled by a few people and traveling farm hands. Hedge funds are out performed by indexes. Many are cooking their books. Self driving cars will happen and displace millions of jobs over what, a decade? Two or three max? I'll bet my current retirement that it happens within the century. Jobs like shelf stocking, burger flipping, and the like could be automated today if the displaced employees wouldn't lead a violent revolution. That's the political reality. How the fuck do you keep 200 million working people happy without repressing them or inciting a revolution?
  - DebtDeflation 6y ago
    >The DMV is a sprawling human operated date entry firm fronting for a database and camera This one really hit home. I went to the DMV a few months ago for the first time in over a decade to upgrade my drivers license to a Real ID (must be done in person, previous renewals were done by mail). The entire process was unchanged from when I first got my license almost 30 years ago. Stand in one line to check in. Sit down. Wait for your name to be called to stand in a second line to have them manually keypunch the paper form you have to fill out into their computer system. Sit down. Wait for your name to be called to stand in a third line to get your picture taken. Sit down. Wait for your name to be called to stand in a fourth line to pay (slight change here in that they now accept credit cards, up until a few years ago it was cash or checks only). Sit down. Wait for your name to be called to stand in a fifth line to pick up your new license. Leave after several hours. This whole transaction could have been accomplished with kiosks, 1/10th the number of employees, and 1/4 the amount of floor space in 5 minutes or less.
    - Tarsul 6y ago
      sounds a little like an experience out of another time, like a live museum with actors.
toyg 6y ago
> a great spoil of the wealth goes to people of higher intelligence. I think you mistyped "people born into greater wealth and connections, whose outcomes can be amplified through better education".
- rakkhi 6y ago
  No I typed higher intelligence :) Yes higher starting wealth helps but these days you can't get one of these higher paying jobs E.g most people here without higher intelligence. This is by far the majority benefiting from automation and speeding its adoption not those who inherited their wealth
  - lm28469 6y ago
    > This is by far the majority benefiting for automation and speeding its adoption not those who inherited their wealth Can you elaborate ?
    - rakkhi 6y ago
      I can't do a better job than the much maligned Charles Murray. To not be accused of being racist in this book he only looked at white Americans: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_Apart_(book) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_Apart_(book)
      - lm28469 6y ago
        Either I misunderstood you or I'm missing something because it seems to support the opposite of your point. The "majority" doesn't benefit from automation, they're thrown into more and more meaningless jobs at the bottom of the ladder while the people working on automation and the companies implementing automation are thriving. Wealth inequalities being at an all time high would agree with that > Meanwhile, real family income for families in the middle was flat. Just about all of the benefits of economic growth from 1970-2010 went to people in the upper half of the income distribution. https://alexandbooks.com/archive/coming-apart-by-charles-murray https://alexandbooks.com/archive/coming-apart-by-charles-mur...
jimbokun 6y ago
Comes down to whether you think computers will surpass humans in intelligence across the board in the near future. You can make the libertarian argument, if you believe there will still be jobs for which humans are better suited than machines. But that breaks down, when the machines are better at everything.
imtringued 6y ago
>Human wants and needs are unlimited. Before someone gets the funny idea that they aren't. It's literally government policy to hit at least 2% CPI inflation. CPI inflation measures the ratio between demand of consumer goods and services versus its supply. 2% inflation means there a tiny bit more demand for economic activity than can actually be supported by the economy. This means there is an incentive for companies to grow and try to max out the production capacity of the entire country. This is especially important since production capacity cannot be saved in the literal sense. Money is just a piece of paper that says someone owes you a certain share of their production capacity. If you don't make sure the production capacity exists by the time you retire your money is worthless, which is why deflation is generally considered a death sentence for economies. Low demand causes companies to reduce their production capacity, which reduces employment and lowers demand in a vicious circle. Demand side inflation through government stimulus can be effective way of accelerating the recovery of an economy with high underemployment. By doing pointless busy work like investing into better internet, upgrading the electric grid, building out renewables or even building public housing you can make sure that there is a baseline of employment. Since this work is funded through government debt it is increasing the supply of money. As I already have said. Inflation is what happens when you exceed the production capacity of your nation it tends to accelerate during full employment. Once there is enough work for everyone people get to choose their employers and they obviously pick the highest paying ones. Governments raise interest rates to make sure that only the most productive companies get funding. Inflation goes down and hits the 2% target again. The big question is why does the central bank engage in ineffective policy? Why would it keep dropping interest rates when most corporations are already well funded and their biggest problem is that there isn't enough demand for their products? You need to give money to people but if they aren't credit worthy how isn't this just a central bank driven pump and dump since you're only giving money to those who don't need it?

by rakkhi 6y ago

fbn79 6y ago

"Automation and Ai is replacing white collar work this time." I think that If your daily work can be truly replaced by a graphic card running pattern matching software you should find a better way to invest your life.

rakkhi 6y ago
Till they come for your job :) Ive seen a lot of jobs that have been automated that are not pattern matching even in IT security. Even where the job is not fully automated like firewall admin it is greatly reduced and the labour is not replaced. E.g 10 years ago at an Aussie bank we had 40 people performing firewall changes and 30 security designers writing and reviewing the rules nedded. Algosec came along, we did software defined networking , things moved to AWS and there are zero dedicated firewall admins anymore and all the designers were absorbed into the architecture and consulting teams and eventually returned to its original size of 20 i.e those 30 security design jobs disappeared
watt 6y ago
Point is, you can't find not just a better way, but you can't find any way. You either own the CPU farm, or you're out.
- rakkhi 6y ago
  Yeah this is the Charles Murray point. We can't all be AI repair or developers. A lot is capped by intelligence. A greater proportion of the gains go to those with the most intelligence and everyone on the bottom gets left behind. That is the real outcome of automation this time. You can see it in the shrinking middle class in the developed world. In the smaller proportion of productivity gains going to labour in the last 60 year ala Piketty
  - ilaksh 6y ago
    You are conflating things. The gains go to people who have privilege. For example, developers in less-wealthy countries can earn a fraction of what those in richer countries earn. Or those born to wealthy parents who don't really need to work and so go into business rather than engineering. Also, in general the idea that greater intelligence means higher income is false. And the assumption many scientists and engineers make is that within a certain number of generations, maybe one, maybe ten, is that we will have AI much smarter than humans. That means smarter than you, and much better at your job than you (whether its "AI repair" or anything else). Smart guy.
    - cbozeman 6y ago
      > Also, in general the idea that greater intelligence means higher income is false. No it isn't. This is only one study of dozens, possibly even hundreds, that have been conducted over the years: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289607000219#:~:text=The%20numbers%20suggest%20that%20IQ,income%20is%203.6%20times%20lower https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602.... The findings are always the same... the more IQ you have, the better off you end up doing, once you control for every other variable. But I get why no one on HN wants to hear that. IQ is something you didn't earn. It's not yours. It was given to you, and not only was it given to you, you're not allowed to refuse it either. You either have it or you don't. And what's worse, even if you want to be smarter, that's almost nothing you can do that'll raise IQ by a few points - at best. Someone with a 100 IQ will never be able to study enough or learn enough to match someone with a 160 IQ. Its a lifelong, glaring, undeniable reminder that the Universe is not fucking fair and does not fucking care about anyone. And I've known enough people that are the demographic of HN to know that, not only does this intrinsically eat at their core because you can't deny it or evade it, but it also shatters their utopian ideals - that if we just eliminate all <insert social justice term of the zeitgeist here> that we can lift everyone up. Well you can't. And you won't. Life's not fair and there's literally nothing you can do about it right now.
lm28469 6y ago
Most people can't, and more and more people are thrown in these jobs. This is a direct consequence of automation... and this is why we're in for a bad time unless we rethink our concept or work
- rakkhi 6y ago
  Thus the Expanse. The only palatable solution for government is print money (ie. tax everyone's purchasing power) and pay it in increased welfare. E.g 1400 cheques and more coming. As long as everyone prints there is no debasement of currencies.
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    Well look, if all this is becoming The Expanse, I'd like to make my way to the Ring Gate to a new world sooner rather than later. I find the idea of exploring strange new worlds far more enticing than getting my 1400 credits, or even worse, my €$ Eurodollars.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    If everyone prints, there is no relative debasement across currencies. There’s a massive debasement against hard/productive assets.
i_am_proteus 6y ago
Some people have spent decades investing in skills and careers that become obviated in a matter of years by new technology. It's easy to see today which lines of work can be better done by computers than by humans-- today. What's less obvious is which lines of work will be automated in two decades. Having your job description written out of the economy by software is a non-event when you're 26, rough when you're 36, and a disaster when you're 46.
- imtringued 6y ago
  The problem is that company funded training is dead. There are some leftover countries like Germany that do formal apprenticeships with reduced pay and they tend to have lower youth unemployment but they are the exception. I know some people who just did an apprenticeship in their 30s and got a new job that way. The alternative would be to have a government mandated long term unemployment insurance program that funds education. It would be a general solution to career loss of any kind. I personally dislike that coal worker communities are being protected by the government. If there was an effective program that helped these people get better jobs we wouldn't even have to worry about protectionism. The big unsolved problem is people who are 10 years away from retirement. They can't just spend 3-5 years retraining without delaying their retirement.
hansor 6y ago
Programming, remote surgery, judging(law), farming. Hardly "bad investment" from society point of view! It is well known bias(supported by numerous studies) that 90% people with your "attitude" are certain that THEIR job is somehow special and immune to automatization.
- cbozeman 6y ago
  It's the same old shit, hansor... no one considers a problem to be "their" problem, right up until it becomes their problem.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
superbcarrot 6y ago
I think that it's okay to say this to yourself and look for a different type of work. Saying this to other people misses a couple of important points. - If you can reskill, you're very fortunate. Not everyone is in the same position. - It doesn't scale to large numbers. The demand in the market for people with skills that can't yet be automated isn't necessarily enough to absorb all the people who are losing their jobs to automation.
agumonkey 6y ago
I spent 3 months at a small court room last summer. 99% of what was ~done (or not done depending on how you see it) could fit on a laptop. The whole service, if in digital form would require near zero human intervention. These people are mostly trying to navigate bad software, bad bosses, bad archives and bad workflow. Oh and angry users of course. The computational needs are not even GPU worthy. I'm not advocating a digital future[1], but a humongous amount of tasks at the service layer are really nil. [1] humanly and sociologically I'd be much more happier keeping most of the system, people contributing to society together, but with better tools and better team spirit (achievable through a little cultural shift), I don't see value in replacing all tasks and letting people idle or live 100 years of leisure, I don't even think it's mentally sane.
Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
Computer was once a job title. People used to get paid to shine shoes and press clothes everyday. Banks used to employee hundreds of people to staff their operations. The DMV is a sprawling human operated date entry firm fronting for a database and camera. Paralegals and research assistants are being replaced by the dozens. Entire factory campuses that employed towns are now operated by mere dozens. Fields that took dozens to manage can now be handled by a few people and traveling farm hands. Hedge funds are out performed by indexes. Many are cooking their books. Self driving cars will happen and displace millions of jobs over what, a decade? Two or three max? I'll bet my current retirement that it happens within the century. Jobs like shelf stocking, burger flipping, and the like could be automated today if the displaced employees wouldn't lead a violent revolution. That's the political reality. How the fuck do you keep 200 million working people happy without repressing them or inciting a revolution?
- DebtDeflation 6y ago
  >The DMV is a sprawling human operated date entry firm fronting for a database and camera This one really hit home. I went to the DMV a few months ago for the first time in over a decade to upgrade my drivers license to a Real ID (must be done in person, previous renewals were done by mail). The entire process was unchanged from when I first got my license almost 30 years ago. Stand in one line to check in. Sit down. Wait for your name to be called to stand in a second line to have them manually keypunch the paper form you have to fill out into their computer system. Sit down. Wait for your name to be called to stand in a third line to get your picture taken. Sit down. Wait for your name to be called to stand in a fourth line to pay (slight change here in that they now accept credit cards, up until a few years ago it was cash or checks only). Sit down. Wait for your name to be called to stand in a fifth line to pick up your new license. Leave after several hours. This whole transaction could have been accomplished with kiosks, 1/10th the number of employees, and 1/4 the amount of floor space in 5 minutes or less.
  - Tarsul 6y ago
    sounds a little like an experience out of another time, like a live museum with actors.

toyg 6y ago

> a great spoil of the wealth goes to people of higher intelligence. I think you mistyped "people born into greater wealth and connections, whose outcomes can be amplified through better education".

rakkhi 6y ago
No I typed higher intelligence :) Yes higher starting wealth helps but these days you can't get one of these higher paying jobs E.g most people here without higher intelligence. This is by far the majority benefiting from automation and speeding its adoption not those who inherited their wealth
- lm28469 6y ago
  > This is by far the majority benefiting for automation and speeding its adoption not those who inherited their wealth Can you elaborate ?
  - rakkhi 6y ago
    I can't do a better job than the much maligned Charles Murray. To not be accused of being racist in this book he only looked at white Americans: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_Apart_(book) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_Apart_(book)
    - lm28469 6y ago
      Either I misunderstood you or I'm missing something because it seems to support the opposite of your point. The "majority" doesn't benefit from automation, they're thrown into more and more meaningless jobs at the bottom of the ladder while the people working on automation and the companies implementing automation are thriving. Wealth inequalities being at an all time high would agree with that > Meanwhile, real family income for families in the middle was flat. Just about all of the benefits of economic growth from 1970-2010 went to people in the upper half of the income distribution. https://alexandbooks.com/archive/coming-apart-by-charles-murray https://alexandbooks.com/archive/coming-apart-by-charles-mur...

jimbokun 6y ago

Comes down to whether you think computers will surpass humans in intelligence across the board in the near future. You can make the libertarian argument, if you believe there will still be jobs for which humans are better suited than machines. But that breaks down, when the machines are better at everything.

imtringued 6y ago

>Human wants and needs are unlimited. Before someone gets the funny idea that they aren't. It's literally government policy to hit at least 2% CPI inflation. CPI inflation measures the ratio between demand of consumer goods and services versus its supply. 2% inflation means there a tiny bit more demand for economic activity than can actually be supported by the economy. This means there is an incentive for companies to grow and try to max out the production capacity of the entire country. This is especially important since production capacity cannot be saved in the literal sense. Money is just a piece of paper that says someone owes you a certain share of their production capacity. If you don't make sure the production capacity exists by the time you retire your money is worthless, which is why deflation is generally considered a death sentence for economies. Low demand causes companies to reduce their production capacity, which reduces employment and lowers demand in a vicious circle. Demand side inflation through government stimulus can be effective way of accelerating the recovery of an economy with high underemployment. By doing pointless busy work like investing into better internet, upgrading the electric grid, building out renewables or even building public housing you can make sure that there is a baseline of employment. Since this work is funded through government debt it is increasing the supply of money. As I already have said. Inflation is what happens when you exceed the production capacity of your nation it tends to accelerate during full employment. Once there is enough work for everyone people get to choose their employers and they obviously pick the highest paying ones. Governments raise interest rates to make sure that only the most productive companies get funding. Inflation goes down and hits the 2% target again. The big question is why does the central bank engage in ineffective policy? Why would it keep dropping interest rates when most corporations are already well funded and their biggest problem is that there isn't enough demand for their products? You need to give money to people but if they aren't credit worthy how isn't this just a central bank driven pump and dump since you're only giving money to those who don't need it?