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Comparing to outsourcing or, even less fitting, immigration is a terrible analogy. Those jobs and their income go to other humans. Other humans who will consume

Comparing to outsourcing or, even less fitting, immigration is a terrible analogy. Those jobs and their income go to other humans. Other humans who will consume goods and services, this is especially true for immigration. I'd also argue that offshoring is morally positive because it moves the work and associated income to where people need it more, that's why the labor is cheaper there Both automation and global movement of goods and workers increase productivity which is highly desired. However, automation allows for the owner of the goods of production to retain much more of the value created. This leads to higher wealth concentration. I'm fine with some people being super rich, but I'm worried about there floor. IMO, we need something like UBI to raise the floor. Leaving AI assignment concerns aside, I'd be incredibly excited if the productivity gains from AI were to somehow be used to raise the floor for everyone on the planet. Instead I'm worried that we'll see more unemployment or more low-payed gig/service work on which, in the US, people might struggle to afford basic things like health care, housing and education for their children. Edit: This also carries a high risk of getting some form of violent revolution, or more push towards a too extreme solution like communism. After all communism was born as a response to the automation of the industrial revolution.

dahart 4y ago
Okay, it’s not a perfect analogy, but from the perspective of a business owner, the choice is to put money into something expensive like local human labor, or something cheaper whether it’s remote labor or automation of some kind. Lots of tools have been accused of stealing jobs over the years, from factory machines to vehicles to computers. In that sense, I’m only borrowing an analogy with a long rich tradition. The wealth concentration difference between labor and machines is one of the systemic outcomes, it’s one of the consequences that business owners don’t necessarily intend to cause, it’s just an emergent property of certain choices, right? This is precisely one of the reasons we need to recognize that this is a choice, because the consequences of the choice will matter.
- fnimick 4y ago
  Who's making the choice though? There's no one person or even one group of people in charge, short of political regulation. If AI is less expensive than humans, then anyone who doesn't use AI will get outcompeted by those who do. That's the unfortunate reality of markets. Wealth always becomes more and more concentrated until a democratic initiative opposes it.
  - dahart 4y ago
    It’s a good & important question to ask who’s making the choices, and who’s subject to the consequences of the choices. That’s very much one of the reasons I think it’s healthy to view this as a choice. Not necessarily one you and I are making, but it is one being made by someone somewhere, and it will affect us. In the context of “stealing jobs”, the choice is being made by the people who have jobs to offer, the business owners. In the context of building AI, the choice is in the hands of the researchers and engineers, and the businesses investing in AI. Some of the choice is being made by all of us, via interest in AI, discussion, clicks, Google searching, curiosity. > If AI is less expensive than humans, then anyone who doesn’t use AI will get outcompeted by those who do. That’s the unfortunate reality of markets. Generally true, I agree. Though we can and do exercise choices to prevent negative social and economic outcomes. Children, for example, are cheaper to employ than adults, but we don’t legally allow it. We can, similarly, choose whether and what AI we want to allow, if we’re sufficiently motivated, right? The choice in this case is in the hands of the populace and the government.
- weatherlite 4y ago
  What do you mean when you say choice? Who is choosing? No one asked me or you or most of the people, this is barely on anyone's political platform. Sanders talked about it a bit but he is not influential and even he has more important agenda than A.I. Deciding about this 5-10 years from now will be too little too late imo, something should have been done years ago. This tech is already everywhere, companies will be able to "offshore" expensive labor to A.I running in cheap countries. We can try taxing these things, or creating some kind of UBI but that's about it regarding "choice".
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- rob74 4y ago
  Why don't we first automate the jobs that need to be done, but nobody wants to do anymore? One example: sorting mixed garbage and filtering out recyclable plastics (of various types), cans, paper etc. would be a great application for AI, wouldn't take away anyone's job (at least not in developed countries), and would be good for the environment.
  - throwaway22032 4y ago
    People do want to do them. That's why they do them. They simply don't ask for more money than the AI would require yet. Once there's a sufficient margin in it, not exactly at the cut-off but perhaps at 150-200%, they're gone.
    - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
      > People do want to do them. That's why they do them. Incredibly naive. Very few people enjoy their jobs. I imagine job satisfaction of anything dealing with garbage is low. The only reason people stick to it is because it pays decently, plus maybe some sort of factor intrinsic to the job like not having to deal with people. But generally, people do their job because they have to do them in order to put a roof over their head and food on the table.
      - throwaway22032 4y ago
        I am not interested in convincing you that people do indeed choose their jobs so we'll have to agree to disagree on this.
      - rented_mule 4y ago
        In middle school (in 1981), my buddy and I took an elective called Custodial Services. We were helpers for the school janitor. That often meant picking up garbage and cleaning things. We like it a lot. We were almost always outside getting exercise, but it also gave us lots of time to think. We talked a lot about whether that was the right career for us. I went on to get a degree in math and become a software engineer. That buddy is a high school janitor. We've often talked about who picked a better career. Mine has clearly been better financially. But, in terms of fulfillment, it's less clear and probably leans towards his choice. When the movie Good Will Hunting came out, we were quite amused.
golergka 4y ago
> However, automation allows for the owner of the goods of production to retain much more of the value created. Owners of means of productions are typically american people with 401k or other pensions funds. There's nothing wrong to provide good returns for regular people.
- fnimick 4y ago
  You can't be serious. The vast majority of the "means of production" are owned by the top 1-5% of the country. Sure, I have a 401k, I have 0.000001% of Amazon, that doesn't make me an owner.
  - baremetal 4y ago
    You are very likely in the top 5% of earners. Top 5% of Earners $342,987[1] [1]https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/how-much-income-puts-you-top-1-5-10/ https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/how-much-incom...
    - klodolph 4y ago
      For some reason, that’s the average earnings that put you in the top 5%, which is weird.
    - fnimick 4y ago
      No, I'm not. I'm not even in the top 10%. Also, we can be concerned for people less fortunate than us. "You're probably wealthy so why do you care" is such a stupid argument.
      - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
        I will add even more to this point. If anything, people who are more fortunate have an actual incentive to ensure some level of care for those less fortunate even if it is just for purely selfish reasons. Hungry people are angry people and the moment there is a lot of hungry, angry people, being top 10% is unlikely to keep you or your wealth safe. There are obviously non-pragmatic considerations, but I am trying to appeal to self-preservation instinct. Sure. Some don't care, but I sometimes wonder if those people understand that living in society means some level of acceptable balance to all.
klodolph 4y ago
I don’t think policing analogies is serving the conversation well. Someone whose job disappears in a puff of smoke doesn’t have a reason to care about whether the job was automated or whether it was moved overseas—in both cases, the economic activity is still there (or more likely, it’s increased), but the workers who trained for it are no longer getting compensated, and our concerns are for the welfare of these workers. Social consequences and all that. Manufacturing jobs face both outsourcing and automation. The resulting productivity gains have certainly not been “swallowed”—consumer goods are just so damn cheap and plentiful these days—but the overall impact on local economies is sometimes disastrous. If you take a look at the US manufacturing sector, the output is higher than ever (maybe minus a dent from COVID), and the resulting benefits are spread across the US population (better access to manufactured goods), but the relative power of labor and capital is diverging—and both automation and outsourcing are making that possible. They both allow capital owners to create goods with lower labor costs. That’s the whole point, and the analogy makes a lot of sense. IMO, a big part of the problem is that capital owners are so effectively able to externalize risk.
- baremetal 4y ago
  >If you take a look at the US manufacturing sector, the output is higher than ever You are incorrect. S&P Global US Manufacturing PMI Final March 49.2, down from flash print at 49.3, but up from the 47.3 in Feb - that is the 5th straight month of contraction (sub-50) ISM Manufacturing March dropped to 46.3, from 47.7, and below 47.5 expectations - that is the 5th straight monthly contraction to the lowest since May 2020
  - whatshisface 4y ago
    They're talking about outsourcing and offshoring, which is a process that takes place over decades, so you should be looking at statistics to match that. Over decades, it is indeed higher than ever. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/manufacturing-output https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/manu...
  - syzarian 4y ago
    I think parent is saying we manufacture more today in the U.S. than we did 30 years or so ago with fewer people.
luckylion 4y ago
> However, automation allows for the owner of the goods of production to retain much more of the value created. It also massively lowers the cost of the product in general, and makes it a commodity. Yeah, automation might allow some company to keep more of each sale, but unless they're a monopoly, the price will plummet. Consider buying a pair of handmade leather shoes vs buying some factory made leather shoes. The factory might have a higher margin than the craftsman, but suddenly leather shoes are very affordable.

dahart 4y ago

Okay, it’s not a perfect analogy, but from the perspective of a business owner, the choice is to put money into something expensive like local human labor, or something cheaper whether it’s remote labor or automation of some kind. Lots of tools have been accused of stealing jobs over the years, from factory machines to vehicles to computers. In that sense, I’m only borrowing an analogy with a long rich tradition. The wealth concentration difference between labor and machines is one of the systemic outcomes, it’s one of the consequences that business owners don’t necessarily intend to cause, it’s just an emergent property of certain choices, right? This is precisely one of the reasons we need to recognize that this is a choice, because the consequences of the choice will matter.

fnimick 4y ago
Who's making the choice though? There's no one person or even one group of people in charge, short of political regulation. If AI is less expensive than humans, then anyone who doesn't use AI will get outcompeted by those who do. That's the unfortunate reality of markets. Wealth always becomes more and more concentrated until a democratic initiative opposes it.
- dahart 4y ago
  It’s a good & important question to ask who’s making the choices, and who’s subject to the consequences of the choices. That’s very much one of the reasons I think it’s healthy to view this as a choice. Not necessarily one you and I are making, but it is one being made by someone somewhere, and it will affect us. In the context of “stealing jobs”, the choice is being made by the people who have jobs to offer, the business owners. In the context of building AI, the choice is in the hands of the researchers and engineers, and the businesses investing in AI. Some of the choice is being made by all of us, via interest in AI, discussion, clicks, Google searching, curiosity. > If AI is less expensive than humans, then anyone who doesn’t use AI will get outcompeted by those who do. That’s the unfortunate reality of markets. Generally true, I agree. Though we can and do exercise choices to prevent negative social and economic outcomes. Children, for example, are cheaper to employ than adults, but we don’t legally allow it. We can, similarly, choose whether and what AI we want to allow, if we’re sufficiently motivated, right? The choice in this case is in the hands of the populace and the government.
weatherlite 4y ago
What do you mean when you say choice? Who is choosing? No one asked me or you or most of the people, this is barely on anyone's political platform. Sanders talked about it a bit but he is not influential and even he has more important agenda than A.I. Deciding about this 5-10 years from now will be too little too late imo, something should have been done years ago. This tech is already everywhere, companies will be able to "offshore" expensive labor to A.I running in cheap countries. We can try taxing these things, or creating some kind of UBI but that's about it regarding "choice".
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rob74 4y ago
Why don't we first automate the jobs that need to be done, but nobody wants to do anymore? One example: sorting mixed garbage and filtering out recyclable plastics (of various types), cans, paper etc. would be a great application for AI, wouldn't take away anyone's job (at least not in developed countries), and would be good for the environment.
- throwaway22032 4y ago
  People do want to do them. That's why they do them. They simply don't ask for more money than the AI would require yet. Once there's a sufficient margin in it, not exactly at the cut-off but perhaps at 150-200%, they're gone.
  - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
    > People do want to do them. That's why they do them. Incredibly naive. Very few people enjoy their jobs. I imagine job satisfaction of anything dealing with garbage is low. The only reason people stick to it is because it pays decently, plus maybe some sort of factor intrinsic to the job like not having to deal with people. But generally, people do their job because they have to do them in order to put a roof over their head and food on the table.
    - throwaway22032 4y ago
      I am not interested in convincing you that people do indeed choose their jobs so we'll have to agree to disagree on this.
    - rented_mule 4y ago
      In middle school (in 1981), my buddy and I took an elective called Custodial Services. We were helpers for the school janitor. That often meant picking up garbage and cleaning things. We like it a lot. We were almost always outside getting exercise, but it also gave us lots of time to think. We talked a lot about whether that was the right career for us. I went on to get a degree in math and become a software engineer. That buddy is a high school janitor. We've often talked about who picked a better career. Mine has clearly been better financially. But, in terms of fulfillment, it's less clear and probably leans towards his choice. When the movie Good Will Hunting came out, we were quite amused.

golergka 4y ago

> However, automation allows for the owner of the goods of production to retain much more of the value created. Owners of means of productions are typically american people with 401k or other pensions funds. There's nothing wrong to provide good returns for regular people.

fnimick 4y ago
You can't be serious. The vast majority of the "means of production" are owned by the top 1-5% of the country. Sure, I have a 401k, I have 0.000001% of Amazon, that doesn't make me an owner.
- baremetal 4y ago
  You are very likely in the top 5% of earners. Top 5% of Earners $342,987[1] [1]https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/how-much-income-puts-you-top-1-5-10/ https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/how-much-incom...
  - klodolph 4y ago
    For some reason, that’s the average earnings that put you in the top 5%, which is weird.
  - fnimick 4y ago
    No, I'm not. I'm not even in the top 10%. Also, we can be concerned for people less fortunate than us. "You're probably wealthy so why do you care" is such a stupid argument.
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
      I will add even more to this point. If anything, people who are more fortunate have an actual incentive to ensure some level of care for those less fortunate even if it is just for purely selfish reasons. Hungry people are angry people and the moment there is a lot of hungry, angry people, being top 10% is unlikely to keep you or your wealth safe. There are obviously non-pragmatic considerations, but I am trying to appeal to self-preservation instinct. Sure. Some don't care, but I sometimes wonder if those people understand that living in society means some level of acceptable balance to all.

klodolph 4y ago

I don’t think policing analogies is serving the conversation well. Someone whose job disappears in a puff of smoke doesn’t have a reason to care about whether the job was automated or whether it was moved overseas—in both cases, the economic activity is still there (or more likely, it’s increased), but the workers who trained for it are no longer getting compensated, and our concerns are for the welfare of these workers. Social consequences and all that. Manufacturing jobs face both outsourcing and automation. The resulting productivity gains have certainly not been “swallowed”—consumer goods are just so damn cheap and plentiful these days—but the overall impact on local economies is sometimes disastrous. If you take a look at the US manufacturing sector, the output is higher than ever (maybe minus a dent from COVID), and the resulting benefits are spread across the US population (better access to manufactured goods), but the relative power of labor and capital is diverging—and both automation and outsourcing are making that possible. They both allow capital owners to create goods with lower labor costs. That’s the whole point, and the analogy makes a lot of sense. IMO, a big part of the problem is that capital owners are so effectively able to externalize risk.

baremetal 4y ago
>If you take a look at the US manufacturing sector, the output is higher than ever You are incorrect. S&P Global US Manufacturing PMI Final March 49.2, down from flash print at 49.3, but up from the 47.3 in Feb - that is the 5th straight month of contraction (sub-50) ISM Manufacturing March dropped to 46.3, from 47.7, and below 47.5 expectations - that is the 5th straight monthly contraction to the lowest since May 2020
- whatshisface 4y ago
  They're talking about outsourcing and offshoring, which is a process that takes place over decades, so you should be looking at statistics to match that. Over decades, it is indeed higher than ever. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/manufacturing-output https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/manu...
- syzarian 4y ago
  I think parent is saying we manufacture more today in the U.S. than we did 30 years or so ago with fewer people.

luckylion 4y ago

> However, automation allows for the owner of the goods of production to retain much more of the value created. It also massively lowers the cost of the product in general, and makes it a commodity. Yeah, automation might allow some company to keep more of each sale, but unless they're a monopoly, the price will plummet. Consider buying a pair of handmade leather shoes vs buying some factory made leather shoes. The factory might have a higher margin than the craftsman, but suddenly leather shoes are very affordable.