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It's only a matter of time until automation replaces humans with normal IQ in a way that they're permanently out of jobs.

throwaway473825 4y ago
So far automation has only created more jobs. Why would this suddenly change?
- langitbiru 4y ago
  "No model, regardless of size, outperformed the best-performing human on any task. However, for some tasks, the best-performing model beat the average human." https://read.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/issue-150/ https://read.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/issue-150/ To be fair, it's hard to predict the future.
- ycombiredd 4y ago
  I don’t disagree at all. The point is I never really stopped to consider those folks who really will have a hard time moving up to better things, or even laterally. The video I linked, a commercial about a human doing the very job the AI/robotics project aims to do so instead. It’s short. I hope all commenters take 30 seconds to watch it, and maybe within the discussion in this thread, someone will make a salient point that explains away the nuance I referred to for this exact specific instance. It just gave me pause, and opened my eyes to that the issue - and my beliefs - can be more nuanced, in light of such things as the PSA from the 80’s I linked in my original post. What’s that guy supposed to do? He Eve said he learned it slowly but now he’s good at it. When all the sun-menial tasks are automated, what becomes of them? For the record I am a cynical technophile by any measure. I have been called callous (and much worse) for statements like “starvation is a self-solving problem. Eventually there will be enough food for all, as the population decreases”… don’t think me anti-automation; this edge case is a thing that makes me go “hmmm…”
  - suby 4y ago
    I agree that it's generally been true up until now that we've invented new jobs to replace those which we've automated away, but I don't think that is the whole story. Going back to at least the industrial revolution with for example handloom weavers, people who have had their jobs automated away were often impoverished for the rest of their lives. I don't have any statistics to back this up, but I'd argue that this will be true for most displaced workers today -- any career change later in life will put you behind the curve, and it's not like someone working as a coal miner is likely to learn how to code or whatever. My thought is that these new high-tech jobs we invent have been and will be performed by new generations leaving the displaced to suffer. I also don't think this trend of inventing new jobs will hold true forever. To the poster who asked why this would suddenly change, it's because we now have algorithms which can learn. We may be long dead (though perhaps not), but I am absolutely convinced that eventually we will invent machines which are able to perform any given task at or exceeding normal human ability. When that happens, and when we deploy it in mass across the economy, I think we'll have to face an existential crisis as a species. Today we want everyone to have a job because we want everyone to have a means of independently supporting themselves. We want each of us to contribute to society, to not be a burden. We want people to have a job because it often provides a sense of dignity and a sense of purpose. My thought is that, just as you say that normal people will find another job as automation advances, the attitude we will need to adopt instead will be that people in general disabled or not will need to find another means of providing meaning in their life. Because honestly, my thought when watching that commercial was not, "oh how nice that this individual is working." My thought was that the job looked terrible, is probably not good for health, and that it's not a job that human beings should even be doing. I generally think this about most jobs, but especially so about jobs where you're sorting through waste. Real people will suffer from automation, but I think the process is inevitable, and personally wished I existed in a time where automation freed all of us to pursue what we were interested in rather than serving the purposes of making the economic machine spin round. Let it spin on its own.
    - soco 4y ago
      The wealth produced by those robotic replacements will not go to the replaced humans, or it will go in small pieces as social services, doubling down on the frustration. This sounds volatile to me.
- adrianN 4y ago
  Because eventually all the tasks that a normal human can do can be done cheaper by a machine. Whenever more automation enabled economic growth in the past, a (large) part of the new economic activity had to be done by humans. We were lucky that the growth was big enough that more new jobs were created than old jobs were lost. In the near future the fraction of new tasks that can be done by humans will shrink. It is plausible that economic growth as a whole will shrink too. And of course there are the short term effects to consider too. If truck driving is automated, a fifty year old truck driver is unlikely to find a similar job. Changing careers gets progressively harder as you grow older. Many people will be unemployed for the rest of their lives despite other new jobs being created.

throwaway473825 4y ago

So far automation has only created more jobs. Why would this suddenly change?

langitbiru 4y ago
"No model, regardless of size, outperformed the best-performing human on any task. However, for some tasks, the best-performing model beat the average human." https://read.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/issue-150/ https://read.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/issue-150/ To be fair, it's hard to predict the future.
ycombiredd 4y ago
I don’t disagree at all. The point is I never really stopped to consider those folks who really will have a hard time moving up to better things, or even laterally. The video I linked, a commercial about a human doing the very job the AI/robotics project aims to do so instead. It’s short. I hope all commenters take 30 seconds to watch it, and maybe within the discussion in this thread, someone will make a salient point that explains away the nuance I referred to for this exact specific instance. It just gave me pause, and opened my eyes to that the issue - and my beliefs - can be more nuanced, in light of such things as the PSA from the 80’s I linked in my original post. What’s that guy supposed to do? He Eve said he learned it slowly but now he’s good at it. When all the sun-menial tasks are automated, what becomes of them? For the record I am a cynical technophile by any measure. I have been called callous (and much worse) for statements like “starvation is a self-solving problem. Eventually there will be enough food for all, as the population decreases”… don’t think me anti-automation; this edge case is a thing that makes me go “hmmm…”
- suby 4y ago
  I agree that it's generally been true up until now that we've invented new jobs to replace those which we've automated away, but I don't think that is the whole story. Going back to at least the industrial revolution with for example handloom weavers, people who have had their jobs automated away were often impoverished for the rest of their lives. I don't have any statistics to back this up, but I'd argue that this will be true for most displaced workers today -- any career change later in life will put you behind the curve, and it's not like someone working as a coal miner is likely to learn how to code or whatever. My thought is that these new high-tech jobs we invent have been and will be performed by new generations leaving the displaced to suffer. I also don't think this trend of inventing new jobs will hold true forever. To the poster who asked why this would suddenly change, it's because we now have algorithms which can learn. We may be long dead (though perhaps not), but I am absolutely convinced that eventually we will invent machines which are able to perform any given task at or exceeding normal human ability. When that happens, and when we deploy it in mass across the economy, I think we'll have to face an existential crisis as a species. Today we want everyone to have a job because we want everyone to have a means of independently supporting themselves. We want each of us to contribute to society, to not be a burden. We want people to have a job because it often provides a sense of dignity and a sense of purpose. My thought is that, just as you say that normal people will find another job as automation advances, the attitude we will need to adopt instead will be that people in general disabled or not will need to find another means of providing meaning in their life. Because honestly, my thought when watching that commercial was not, "oh how nice that this individual is working." My thought was that the job looked terrible, is probably not good for health, and that it's not a job that human beings should even be doing. I generally think this about most jobs, but especially so about jobs where you're sorting through waste. Real people will suffer from automation, but I think the process is inevitable, and personally wished I existed in a time where automation freed all of us to pursue what we were interested in rather than serving the purposes of making the economic machine spin round. Let it spin on its own.
  - soco 4y ago
    The wealth produced by those robotic replacements will not go to the replaced humans, or it will go in small pieces as social services, doubling down on the frustration. This sounds volatile to me.
adrianN 4y ago
Because eventually all the tasks that a normal human can do can be done cheaper by a machine. Whenever more automation enabled economic growth in the past, a (large) part of the new economic activity had to be done by humans. We were lucky that the growth was big enough that more new jobs were created than old jobs were lost. In the near future the fraction of new tasks that can be done by humans will shrink. It is plausible that economic growth as a whole will shrink too. And of course there are the short term effects to consider too. If truck driving is automated, a fifty year old truck driver is unlikely to find a similar job. Changing careers gets progressively harder as you grow older. Many people will be unemployed for the rest of their lives despite other new jobs being created.