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There are more people working in telecomms now than there were when we had buildings full of switchers. _That_ is the point being made. Individual roles may go

There are more people working in telecomms now than there were when we had buildings full of switchers. _That_ is the point being made. Individual roles may go by the wayside but technological innovations result in industry-wide growth. Also, to state the obvious, humans aren't horses.

tarkin2 3y ago
In the context of the currently defined job market, then jobs certainly will go down, in the same way the job market for switch operators went down. In the longer term, then there's a fairly good argument more jobs, and specifically more roles in newly defined jobs, will be created. What happens to those currently employed, and I'm not just talking about 23 year olds fresh out of university, in the current job market is the question.
- visarga 3y ago
  Don't worry, this time the new tech wave has human language interface and can even tutor beginners one-on-one.
  - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
    It can tutor them to do what? You do realize, if AI is capable enough to "tutor" someone, it can simply do their job, for 1/1000 the cost.
    - visarga 3y ago
      Humans will still have their advantages to AI. We got different "training".
- rsynnott 3y ago
  I’d read the author’s argument as being, at least narrowly defined for data workers, that this will _not_ happen. Which I think is probably actually generally correct; if data work is cheaper you will do more of it, so, say, a 50% efficiency gain for data workers will not generally mean that you want half the data workers. This has arguably _already happened_; I’d be reasonably confident that there are more people working with data now than there were 100 years ago when the business was rather more filing-cabinet-oriented, say.
3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
In the context of AI attacking the core competence of a human being: natural language communication, associative and rational thought, decision making, design, engineering, art... yes we're horses much like cars attacked the core competency of a horse, and therefore the market for horses collapsed. The horses never recovered. We kept recovering as we kept moving into higher and higher level intellectual work, or natural language work and customer interaction (like sales teams, service reps, store clerks, tech support, call centers). All this is directly replaced by AI now. Low end and high end. We have nowhere to run anymore. The idea we'll all be given god-like AI to wield insane leverage, simply because we're humans, is laughable. Think of the intellectual level of an average human. Think what the average voter is like in your country. Now, as Carlin joked, realize half of them are worse than that. Heck even think of our elite, our politicians, think of Trump, think of our top businessmen like Elon Musk. Most humans barely have the discipline to do the jobs they're doing now, where they can do a lot less damage than if being chimp-with-a-machine-gunned by given an army of AIs and robots to control. We're being obsoleted. And the faster we are the better as we're a danger to ourselves if we actually decide to rule over AI, and we'll be played hard by it (no, AI doesn't have to "want" anything, but drugs also don't want anything and trick people into overdose and death).
- joshuahedlund 3y ago
  > All this is directly replaced by AI now. ChatGTP came out nine months ago and the US has added two million jobs in that time. https://www.deptofnumbers.com/employment/us/ https://www.deptofnumbers.com/employment/us/
  - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
    In the 70s one family had one working member supporting the whole family, currently it's becoming increasingly common for one person to hold multiple jobs and their spouse too. Multiple states are voting back child labor, literally, so add those jobs too, to the count. Working children. The job count is a BS metric at this point and doesn't reflect the quality of the jobs, or the quality of life. It means nothing. Also "9 months" is kinda ridiculous to expect to see the long-term effects of AI. AI may be evolving fast, and it is, but business, laws, healthcare, regulatory agencies and so on are held back by gigantic inertia and some real safety cocnerns. It is still humans who have to integrate AI in their human processes, so the first few iterations will be slow and cautious to occur (after that... eventually AIs will run systems made by AIs so change will accelerate). For example, a startup tried to offer an "AI lawyer app" for traffic tickets, and lawyers sued the startup. Hollywood is starting to use AI as well, and writers and actors went to strike. Obviously things like that will hold AI back for a while. But not forever. AI is inevitable.
allturtles 3y ago
> There are more people working in telecomms now than there were when we had buildings full of switchers. I don't think that's true. This blogpost [0] says there were 1.3m telephone operators in the U.S. in 1950. This BLS data [1] says that there are about half that many people in the entire telecom industry today. [0]: https://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2020/02/telephone-switchboard-operators-rise.html https://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2020/02/telephone-... [1] https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag517.htm https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag517.htm

tarkin2 3y ago

In the context of the currently defined job market, then jobs certainly will go down, in the same way the job market for switch operators went down. In the longer term, then there's a fairly good argument more jobs, and specifically more roles in newly defined jobs, will be created. What happens to those currently employed, and I'm not just talking about 23 year olds fresh out of university, in the current job market is the question.

visarga 3y ago
Don't worry, this time the new tech wave has human language interface and can even tutor beginners one-on-one.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  It can tutor them to do what? You do realize, if AI is capable enough to "tutor" someone, it can simply do their job, for 1/1000 the cost.
  - visarga 3y ago
    Humans will still have their advantages to AI. We got different "training".
rsynnott 3y ago
I’d read the author’s argument as being, at least narrowly defined for data workers, that this will _not_ happen. Which I think is probably actually generally correct; if data work is cheaper you will do more of it, so, say, a 50% efficiency gain for data workers will not generally mean that you want half the data workers. This has arguably _already happened_; I’d be reasonably confident that there are more people working with data now than there were 100 years ago when the business was rather more filing-cabinet-oriented, say.

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago

In the context of AI attacking the core competence of a human being: natural language communication, associative and rational thought, decision making, design, engineering, art... yes we're horses much like cars attacked the core competency of a horse, and therefore the market for horses collapsed. The horses never recovered. We kept recovering as we kept moving into higher and higher level intellectual work, or natural language work and customer interaction (like sales teams, service reps, store clerks, tech support, call centers). All this is directly replaced by AI now. Low end and high end. We have nowhere to run anymore. The idea we'll all be given god-like AI to wield insane leverage, simply because we're humans, is laughable. Think of the intellectual level of an average human. Think what the average voter is like in your country. Now, as Carlin joked, realize half of them are worse than that. Heck even think of our elite, our politicians, think of Trump, think of our top businessmen like Elon Musk. Most humans barely have the discipline to do the jobs they're doing now, where they can do a lot less damage than if being chimp-with-a-machine-gunned by given an army of AIs and robots to control. We're being obsoleted. And the faster we are the better as we're a danger to ourselves if we actually decide to rule over AI, and we'll be played hard by it (no, AI doesn't have to "want" anything, but drugs also don't want anything and trick people into overdose and death).

joshuahedlund 3y ago
> All this is directly replaced by AI now. ChatGTP came out nine months ago and the US has added two million jobs in that time. https://www.deptofnumbers.com/employment/us/ https://www.deptofnumbers.com/employment/us/
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  In the 70s one family had one working member supporting the whole family, currently it's becoming increasingly common for one person to hold multiple jobs and their spouse too. Multiple states are voting back child labor, literally, so add those jobs too, to the count. Working children. The job count is a BS metric at this point and doesn't reflect the quality of the jobs, or the quality of life. It means nothing. Also "9 months" is kinda ridiculous to expect to see the long-term effects of AI. AI may be evolving fast, and it is, but business, laws, healthcare, regulatory agencies and so on are held back by gigantic inertia and some real safety cocnerns. It is still humans who have to integrate AI in their human processes, so the first few iterations will be slow and cautious to occur (after that... eventually AIs will run systems made by AIs so change will accelerate). For example, a startup tried to offer an "AI lawyer app" for traffic tickets, and lawyers sued the startup. Hollywood is starting to use AI as well, and writers and actors went to strike. Obviously things like that will hold AI back for a while. But not forever. AI is inevitable.

allturtles 3y ago

> There are more people working in telecomms now than there were when we had buildings full of switchers. I don't think that's true. This blogpost [0] says there were 1.3m telephone operators in the U.S. in 1950. This BLS data [1] says that there are about half that many people in the entire telecom industry today. [0]: https://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2020/02/telephone-switchboard-operators-rise.html https://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2020/02/telephone-... [1] https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag517.htm https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag517.htm