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The notion of weak artificial intelligence hurting the economy by taking away jobs is a complete misunderstanding of the situation. To understand why, you need

by maeon3 15y ago

The notion of weak artificial intelligence hurting the economy by taking away jobs is a complete misunderstanding of the situation. To understand why, you need to read and understand the parable of the broken window: http://freedomkeys.com/window.htm http://freedomkeys.com/window.htm The key lies in seeing that when humans no longer have to do mundane repetitive tasks, then they are freed up to do far more powerful and interesting things. The last job to be completely automated is the programmer, engineer and designer. And that too will one day be automated. I like to believe that humans and AI will merge so that together, a human and the machine will always be more powerful/more in control than just the AI.

Permit 15y ago
The problem is that there are not a lot of people capable of doing engineering/programming jobs. It is one thing to make the transition from a farmer to a factory worker, but another entirely to move from a factory worker to an engineer. The learning curve for the jobs that may be created might be too steep for those whose jobs were displaced.
- ericd 15y ago
  True, I think creating high quality, cheap/free reeducation programs are one of the most important challenges facing us today.
  - nkassis 15y ago
    But do you believe everyone is capable of that kind of work? Even with great education some things require talent at a certain level. The higher level the job the more dependent it is on talent in my view.
    - ericd 15y ago
      Not everyone, but for every type of person I can think of, there's a different type of job that makes sense for them. If they're good with their hands, there are many things that will be hard to automate the repair of due to customization. If they're very persuasive, they can probably work in sales. If they're creative or artistic, there's a large need for good visual design. If you find a way to make the marginal cost of educating someone near 0, then many more people might discover things that they're good at that they wouldn't have had the chance to otherwise. I think this requires some socialist-style changes to what the govt. is willing to support, though, since many people can't afford to take time off. If this was bundled with unemployment benefits or welfare, though, I think it could be very powerful. As leverage increases, the wealth disparity will almost certainly grow, just because some people will be able to create much more wealth than others. Not sure how to deal with that.
- maeon3 15y ago
  Yes, the cotton pickers will need to be forced to go to high school and learn something that hasn't been automated. To the argument that this can't be done, take away their food, they will adapt. Mercy can be used in exceptional cases. I don't like the argument: "This human has such an aversion to learning that they must be supported forever like a pet". I suppose you wait for them to die and the problem solves itself. They can learn, they just have been positively reinforced to not learn.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - _delirium 15y ago
    If the only reason a significant portion of society will participate in it is because they will literally die if they don't, i.e. it's a requirement for absolute minimum existence, that's a pretty sad place to have your society. That's basically "3rd-world subsistence farming" level of civilization. For some people, possibly even worse; there are some people who do badly in desk jobs who'd be perfectly capable subsistence farmers (if it were possible for them to acquire any land to farm).
  - Permit 15y ago
    >take away their food, they will adapt. Oh, undoubtedly. But they will go down the path of least resistance which will more than likely be a life of crime. It's also important to recognize that not everyone is cut out for intellectually demanding jobs. There is a wide variety of intelligence levels throughout society.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
  - forensic 15y ago
    I think the human race will reach the apex of its evolution when all the social darwinists die off.
  - bluedanieru 15y ago
_delirium 15y ago
The books the article mentions do know about both that parable, and the Luddite episode, and analyze extensively whether they apply to the current situation; as The Economists notes, some of the books are more optimistic than others. There's a bit of a dynamic aspect to it as well in terms of how the change happens and how human work patterns adapt in response. When people are "freed up to do far more powerful and interesting things", does this result in paid work at the same rate as the freeing-up happens? Or will there be significant lags where, say, 20-30% of the population might be unable to earn income at any given time? And how long-lasting will that be? Also, to the extent that automation running on robots and computers is what produces advances that humans could perhaps symbiotically work with, will everyone have access to the same starting point (software/hardware/etc.) so they can do so, or will there be a rich-get-richer feedback loop where the tools of automation are mainly in the hands of the better-off part of the population? I don't really have a guess myself. I think it depends pretty sensitively on some hard-to-predict parameters; change some rates 2% here and 3% there and technological transitions (and the distribution of labor/wealth that results from them) look much different.
suivix 15y ago
Joe the forklift driver is never going to do powerful and interesting things when he loses his job. It's completely unrealistic.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
Tichy 15y ago
The problem here is not productive output or capacity of the economy, it is distribution of wealth. It's as if everybody was a window manufacturer, and no windows are breaking. Not that I think we are quite at the point were machines can do everything yet...

by maeon3 15y ago

Permit 15y ago

The problem is that there are not a lot of people capable of doing engineering/programming jobs. It is one thing to make the transition from a farmer to a factory worker, but another entirely to move from a factory worker to an engineer. The learning curve for the jobs that may be created might be too steep for those whose jobs were displaced.

ericd 15y ago
True, I think creating high quality, cheap/free reeducation programs are one of the most important challenges facing us today.
- nkassis 15y ago
  But do you believe everyone is capable of that kind of work? Even with great education some things require talent at a certain level. The higher level the job the more dependent it is on talent in my view.
  - ericd 15y ago
    Not everyone, but for every type of person I can think of, there's a different type of job that makes sense for them. If they're good with their hands, there are many things that will be hard to automate the repair of due to customization. If they're very persuasive, they can probably work in sales. If they're creative or artistic, there's a large need for good visual design. If you find a way to make the marginal cost of educating someone near 0, then many more people might discover things that they're good at that they wouldn't have had the chance to otherwise. I think this requires some socialist-style changes to what the govt. is willing to support, though, since many people can't afford to take time off. If this was bundled with unemployment benefits or welfare, though, I think it could be very powerful. As leverage increases, the wealth disparity will almost certainly grow, just because some people will be able to create much more wealth than others. Not sure how to deal with that.
maeon3 15y ago
Yes, the cotton pickers will need to be forced to go to high school and learn something that hasn't been automated. To the argument that this can't be done, take away their food, they will adapt. Mercy can be used in exceptional cases. I don't like the argument: "This human has such an aversion to learning that they must be supported forever like a pet". I suppose you wait for them to die and the problem solves itself. They can learn, they just have been positively reinforced to not learn.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- _delirium 15y ago
  If the only reason a significant portion of society will participate in it is because they will literally die if they don't, i.e. it's a requirement for absolute minimum existence, that's a pretty sad place to have your society. That's basically "3rd-world subsistence farming" level of civilization. For some people, possibly even worse; there are some people who do badly in desk jobs who'd be perfectly capable subsistence farmers (if it were possible for them to acquire any land to farm).
- Permit 15y ago
  >take away their food, they will adapt. Oh, undoubtedly. But they will go down the path of least resistance which will more than likely be a life of crime. It's also important to recognize that not everyone is cut out for intellectually demanding jobs. There is a wide variety of intelligence levels throughout society.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- forensic 15y ago
  I think the human race will reach the apex of its evolution when all the social darwinists die off.
- bluedanieru 15y ago

_delirium 15y ago

The books the article mentions do know about both that parable, and the Luddite episode, and analyze extensively whether they apply to the current situation; as The Economists notes, some of the books are more optimistic than others. There's a bit of a dynamic aspect to it as well in terms of how the change happens and how human work patterns adapt in response. When people are "freed up to do far more powerful and interesting things", does this result in paid work at the same rate as the freeing-up happens? Or will there be significant lags where, say, 20-30% of the population might be unable to earn income at any given time? And how long-lasting will that be? Also, to the extent that automation running on robots and computers is what produces advances that humans could perhaps symbiotically work with, will everyone have access to the same starting point (software/hardware/etc.) so they can do so, or will there be a rich-get-richer feedback loop where the tools of automation are mainly in the hands of the better-off part of the population? I don't really have a guess myself. I think it depends pretty sensitively on some hard-to-predict parameters; change some rates 2% here and 3% there and technological transitions (and the distribution of labor/wealth that results from them) look much different.

suivix 15y ago

Joe the forklift driver is never going to do powerful and interesting things when he loses his job. It's completely unrealistic.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

Tichy 15y ago

The problem here is not productive output or capacity of the economy, it is distribution of wealth. It's as if everybody was a window manufacturer, and no windows are breaking. Not that I think we are quite at the point were machines can do everything yet...