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And then industrial revolution didn't take out jobs, rather created more. So did computers in the 80s and 90s. I remember typesetters in our locality were prot

And then industrial revolution didn't take out jobs, rather created more. So did computers in the 80s and 90s. I remember typesetters in our locality were protesting in the 80s that computers were taking off their jobs. They started something like "burn the computers" movement. More people were later employed as composers than there were typesetters.

TeMPOraL 4y ago
Those typesetters were likely right, tho. Sure, Industrial Revolution and computer revolution ended up creating more jobs than they took out - but what everyone conveniently doesn't mention is, those new jobs went to different people. These kinds of transitions are large scale wealth redistribution. Your random typesetter 20 years into their career, with experience, good pay, and whole life built around economic conditions they spent those decades working hard to achieve, is not going to jump into a role of senior offset printer specialist, or DTP team manager. They're going to become a junior designer at best, most likely fall out of industry and into a junior whatever role. With commensurate drop in salary. If you're over 30, imagine dropping down to whatever you earned when you were 20, and tell me that people protesting automation don't have an argument. And remember: it's only your career that resets; your health and obligations and remaining years to live do not.
Xenoamorphous 4y ago
Sure, as a whole the industrial revolution might have created more jobs. But what about individuals? Are we expecting some dude in his fifties whose job is going to be taken away by AI to switch careers just like that? That stuff is hard enough when someone is in their thirties. And in my country the unemployment rate is already 13%, there’s hundreds of candidates for any decent job opening.
- lezojeda 4y ago
  To those who are in our 20s and 30s they just answer "be a capitalist, become an entrepeneur, use GPT to build a business". Never have seen what the answer to people in 40s and 50s with family who can't do a career reset. I guess they'll just have to take a huge pay cut and deal with it, I don't know.
AmericanChopper 4y ago
Ludditism has been around since at least the 18th century, probably much longer than that, and that’s exactly what this is. It’s not even the hyperbolic “grandpa doesn’t like iPads” type of ludditism, it’s the literal raging against technological innovation because you’re scared it’s going to take your job type of ludditism. The guy in the OP didn’t even have his job taken, he just had to use a new tool that made his work far more efficient.
- elforce002 4y ago
  The thing is that if AI matches the hype around it, there won't be any more jobs left. The economy depends on the middle class working, earning a living, buying things. The government collect taxes from businesses and its citizens. At risk and low-income people depend on the government to assist them with basic things. If AI destroys the middle class, then the whole system collapses. No middle class = no spending = less businesses = more low-income and at risk people, and the cycle continues. We'll basically create a neofeudalist society where the rich will control everything and the people will work for them (food, housing, etc...). It seems crazy, etc... but not improbable. I'm not a conspiracy person, but I can't stop thinking about this: These advancements align with "You'll own nothing, and you'll be happy" sentence from the WEF.
  - AmericanChopper 4y ago
    Yes I’m sure AI will be the very first technology to match its own hype. The technology that destroys the middle class has finally arrived. The days of falsely prophesying that a technology is about to destroy the middle class are over.
    - elforce002 4y ago
      C'mon man. It's not that far fetched. I'm not saying that this will happen tomorrow but if ai gets "there", we don't want to see desperation on a global scale.
      - 4y ago
grumbel 4y ago
> And then industrial revolution didn't take out jobs It absolutely did take jobs. It's just that the job loss in one area was compensated by the growth in other areas. However hoping that it'll be the same with AI is incredible naive. The job shift in the industrial revolution was possible since there were still lots of tasks left that the machines couldn't do. The areas that can't be done by a machine now are dramatically shrinking with advanced AI. There is not much area left where jobs can shift too. The creative jobs can be automated just the same as everything dealing with digital data. Skilled trades, carpenter, plumbers and electricians might still be safe for some years, as robots still struggle with climbing a ladder or even just stairs, but those are areas that don't seem to be destined for rapid growth. Whatever new job you can think of, will probably be automated away before a human ever get a chance to touch it. The most impressive part with ChatGPT and friends after all isn't just that they are reasonably good at what they are doing, but how universal they are. ChatGPT didn't need to be meticulously programmed to do the things it does, it learned most of that by itself just from the data feed into it. Meaning there really isn't any domain that you can't automate with AI in the long run. What's left for humans? No idea.
- elforce002 4y ago
  > What's left for humans? No idea. Exactly. The ramifications of this tech will brake the current system for sure. Why someone will spend 15 years of his/her life studying medicine if by that time AI will replace him/her? The more we keep going down the rabbit hole, the more we can see there's no utopia at the end of the tunnel. This is no hyperbole, we don't know what to expect if you automate everything. Just look for some answers here: - "Blue collar jobs are safe". Really? What happens when everyone is an electrician, plumber, taxi driver, etc...? - "I use it to amplify my productivity". What happens when AI is so good that it can literally swap you - "Just create a business around it". There's no competitive edge anymore. Everyone can do "everything" and won't need any expertise at all when AI gets "there". I'm a SWE but I'm trying to purchase land and invest in things that AI can't replace, like food production, hehe. Agriculture will make a strong comeback this decade. Forget airbnb, a farm is where the $$$$$ is going to be, if not, ask Gates why is he buying land and becoming the biggest "farmer" in the US. I'm not a conspiracy person, but I can see the "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy" getting dangerously close to reality.
kajaktum 4y ago
Created more jobs, sure but what kind of jobs? More complicated, mind draining jobs that many, many people are simply not capable of. The general human intelligent cannot catch up with the rate that the market is asking for.
Macha 4y ago
Industrial revolution cities were famously a meat grinder though. Disease, poor quality accomodation, reckless safety considerations in early factories meant a lot of those displaced from rural artisan jobs to work in the cities literally died as a result. Many of the new jobs' employees were from population growth, people that lived in the countryside thanks to the growth in food production that otherwise wouldn't have, then moved to the cities, etc, as sanitation improved a general fall in the death rate prior to the fall in the birth rate (but later than the initial migration to cities). Nor was the city standard of living equivalent as people move from rural households (admittedly often multi generational ones, so more crowded than modern ones) to overcrowded tenements. So the story people gloss over is that all the rural cobblers went to the city and became factory workers and everything is fine. But while it might be a reassuring story that _society_ survives and evolves, it's not at all clear that individuals did as well.
iainctduncan 4y ago
The fact that one change produced a given result is no guarantee that a different change will have the same effect.
lowbloodsugar 4y ago
>And then industrial revolution didn't take out jobs, rather created more. This is your thinking: "Because all previous technological revolutions created more jobs, it follows that the AI technological revolution will create more jobs." However there is an obvious difference between all previous revolutions and this one: previous revolutions replaced labor. The AI revolution replaces thought. Even the computer revolution replaced labor, such as "typing things onto paper" or "updating a ledger". For me, the whole ChatGPT debacle just showed me that 99% (or 100%) of humans are, themselves, just autocompletion generators, with the training model being a religious text, a political manifesto or propaganda masquerading as a school system.

TeMPOraL 4y ago

Those typesetters were likely right, tho. Sure, Industrial Revolution and computer revolution ended up creating more jobs than they took out - but what everyone conveniently doesn't mention is, those new jobs went to different people. These kinds of transitions are large scale wealth redistribution. Your random typesetter 20 years into their career, with experience, good pay, and whole life built around economic conditions they spent those decades working hard to achieve, is not going to jump into a role of senior offset printer specialist, or DTP team manager. They're going to become a junior designer at best, most likely fall out of industry and into a junior whatever role. With commensurate drop in salary. If you're over 30, imagine dropping down to whatever you earned when you were 20, and tell me that people protesting automation don't have an argument. And remember: it's only your career that resets; your health and obligations and remaining years to live do not.

Xenoamorphous 4y ago

Sure, as a whole the industrial revolution might have created more jobs. But what about individuals? Are we expecting some dude in his fifties whose job is going to be taken away by AI to switch careers just like that? That stuff is hard enough when someone is in their thirties. And in my country the unemployment rate is already 13%, there’s hundreds of candidates for any decent job opening.

lezojeda 4y ago
To those who are in our 20s and 30s they just answer "be a capitalist, become an entrepeneur, use GPT to build a business". Never have seen what the answer to people in 40s and 50s with family who can't do a career reset. I guess they'll just have to take a huge pay cut and deal with it, I don't know.

AmericanChopper 4y ago

Ludditism has been around since at least the 18th century, probably much longer than that, and that’s exactly what this is. It’s not even the hyperbolic “grandpa doesn’t like iPads” type of ludditism, it’s the literal raging against technological innovation because you’re scared it’s going to take your job type of ludditism. The guy in the OP didn’t even have his job taken, he just had to use a new tool that made his work far more efficient.

elforce002 4y ago
The thing is that if AI matches the hype around it, there won't be any more jobs left. The economy depends on the middle class working, earning a living, buying things. The government collect taxes from businesses and its citizens. At risk and low-income people depend on the government to assist them with basic things. If AI destroys the middle class, then the whole system collapses. No middle class = no spending = less businesses = more low-income and at risk people, and the cycle continues. We'll basically create a neofeudalist society where the rich will control everything and the people will work for them (food, housing, etc...). It seems crazy, etc... but not improbable. I'm not a conspiracy person, but I can't stop thinking about this: These advancements align with "You'll own nothing, and you'll be happy" sentence from the WEF.
- AmericanChopper 4y ago
  Yes I’m sure AI will be the very first technology to match its own hype. The technology that destroys the middle class has finally arrived. The days of falsely prophesying that a technology is about to destroy the middle class are over.
  - elforce002 4y ago
    C'mon man. It's not that far fetched. I'm not saying that this will happen tomorrow but if ai gets "there", we don't want to see desperation on a global scale.
    - 4y ago

grumbel 4y ago

> And then industrial revolution didn't take out jobs It absolutely did take jobs. It's just that the job loss in one area was compensated by the growth in other areas. However hoping that it'll be the same with AI is incredible naive. The job shift in the industrial revolution was possible since there were still lots of tasks left that the machines couldn't do. The areas that can't be done by a machine now are dramatically shrinking with advanced AI. There is not much area left where jobs can shift too. The creative jobs can be automated just the same as everything dealing with digital data. Skilled trades, carpenter, plumbers and electricians might still be safe for some years, as robots still struggle with climbing a ladder or even just stairs, but those are areas that don't seem to be destined for rapid growth. Whatever new job you can think of, will probably be automated away before a human ever get a chance to touch it. The most impressive part with ChatGPT and friends after all isn't just that they are reasonably good at what they are doing, but how universal they are. ChatGPT didn't need to be meticulously programmed to do the things it does, it learned most of that by itself just from the data feed into it. Meaning there really isn't any domain that you can't automate with AI in the long run. What's left for humans? No idea.

elforce002 4y ago
> What's left for humans? No idea. Exactly. The ramifications of this tech will brake the current system for sure. Why someone will spend 15 years of his/her life studying medicine if by that time AI will replace him/her? The more we keep going down the rabbit hole, the more we can see there's no utopia at the end of the tunnel. This is no hyperbole, we don't know what to expect if you automate everything. Just look for some answers here: - "Blue collar jobs are safe". Really? What happens when everyone is an electrician, plumber, taxi driver, etc...? - "I use it to amplify my productivity". What happens when AI is so good that it can literally swap you - "Just create a business around it". There's no competitive edge anymore. Everyone can do "everything" and won't need any expertise at all when AI gets "there". I'm a SWE but I'm trying to purchase land and invest in things that AI can't replace, like food production, hehe. Agriculture will make a strong comeback this decade. Forget airbnb, a farm is where the $$$$$ is going to be, if not, ask Gates why is he buying land and becoming the biggest "farmer" in the US. I'm not a conspiracy person, but I can see the "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy" getting dangerously close to reality.

kajaktum 4y ago

Created more jobs, sure but what kind of jobs? More complicated, mind draining jobs that many, many people are simply not capable of. The general human intelligent cannot catch up with the rate that the market is asking for.

Macha 4y ago

Industrial revolution cities were famously a meat grinder though. Disease, poor quality accomodation, reckless safety considerations in early factories meant a lot of those displaced from rural artisan jobs to work in the cities literally died as a result. Many of the new jobs' employees were from population growth, people that lived in the countryside thanks to the growth in food production that otherwise wouldn't have, then moved to the cities, etc, as sanitation improved a general fall in the death rate prior to the fall in the birth rate (but later than the initial migration to cities). Nor was the city standard of living equivalent as people move from rural households (admittedly often multi generational ones, so more crowded than modern ones) to overcrowded tenements. So the story people gloss over is that all the rural cobblers went to the city and became factory workers and everything is fine. But while it might be a reassuring story that _society_ survives and evolves, it's not at all clear that individuals did as well.

iainctduncan 4y ago

The fact that one change produced a given result is no guarantee that a different change will have the same effect.

lowbloodsugar 4y ago

>And then industrial revolution didn't take out jobs, rather created more. This is your thinking: "Because all previous technological revolutions created more jobs, it follows that the AI technological revolution will create more jobs." However there is an obvious difference between all previous revolutions and this one: previous revolutions replaced labor. The AI revolution replaces thought. Even the computer revolution replaced labor, such as "typing things onto paper" or "updating a ledger". For me, the whole ChatGPT debacle just showed me that 99% (or 100%) of humans are, themselves, just autocompletion generators, with the training model being a religious text, a political manifesto or propaganda masquerading as a school system.