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Dystopia is when white collar workers are no longer secure in the labor force. Basic economics is when blue collar workers are no longer secure in the labor for

Dystopia is when white collar workers are no longer secure in the labor force. Basic economics is when blue collar workers are no longer secure in the labor force

ExoticPearTree 3y ago
You are never secure in your job. Its just that it happens less often to white collar work. You know, for other people you are the other people that things happen to.
- novagameco 3y ago
  Nobody is ever secure in their particular job, but white collar workers used to be secure in the economy. Now, AI threatens to upend a lot of white collar work without creating any new kinds of jobs to replace them. Anybody who says that AI will create more jobs than it replaces is just divining the future based on the impact of totally unrelated technologies (steam engine, electric motors) on the economy hundreds of years ago
  - ExoticPearTree 3y ago
    Used to, just as I imagine some other jobs were secure in the economy 100 years ago. I personally don’t know what impact AI will have on the job market, but is is not going to be an overnight revolution.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    I'd look at this from a different perspective. Why does one hire a janitor? Is it because you're incapable of cleaning a bathroom, mopping, or sweeping? No, it's because you have different priorities for your own time. Even if software capable of creating software, flawlessly to specification, was created - software developers would still have a job. Creating those specifications (and handling ambiguities), integrating the resultant product, dealing with ever-changing specifications, and a zillion other things will still be around, and probably always will be. If anything, software based solutions (LLMs or perhaps something more domain specific and accurate, eventually) will just broaden the labor pool for software. So you'll see more people enter the field which will depress wages, but there will also probably consequently be more jobs.
    - shortrounddev2 3y ago
      I can't see how this creates more jobs
      - somenameforme 3y ago
        With lower wages, companies become able to hire more people for the same cost, it reduces the cost of startups, and so on. If janitors cost $100k+/year, you'd be seeing far fewer of them around!
        shortrounddev2 3y ago
        It seems like the jobs would then be much lower quality then. That we're creating a system where the owners of the companies become richer while the employees become poorer But I'm still not convinced that it would result in more jobs. If you saved money by automating away labor, why spend the savings on labor?
        jasode 3y ago
        >But I'm still not convinced that it would result in more jobs. If you saved money by automating away labor, why spend the savings on labor? The proponents argue the savings would be spent on laborers doing other (possibly new) jobs that are not yet automated and hired by different companies. EDIT reply to: >I can't see what new jobs would be created, especially high value ones. Yes, I agree about not being able to see new jobs. However, history has shown we (society) have always failed to imagine what the new jobs would be that takes the place of old jobs automated away. Farmers and field workers replaced by tractors and harvesting combines. Human telephone switchboard operators replaced by automatic digital relay circuits. Travel agents replaced by website airline ticket bookings. [Thousands of other examples...] And yet the total # of people employed still keep going up instead of society dealing with massive 95% unemployment. The paradox happens because the farmers and switchboard operators that were disrupted can't possibly envision new types of jobs that exist in the future. Understandably, the displaced farmer can't imagine there would be a job where somebody ... presses keys all day on a "typewriter like mechanism" that sends instructions to an "interactive tv". That basically describes what today's programmer does at his computer the entire day. So, the new AI could usher a new wave of jobs. (Something more unpredictable than the immediate memes of ChatGPT "prompt engineers"). As we're living in the moment, we're also "blind to the future possibilities" like those farmers. If one could go back in time and tell that farmer in 1920s driving a Model T that there would be new and different jobs replacing farm work, you wouldn't be able to convince him. In the world that he's familiar with, our attempted descriptions would all just be speculative science fiction. Likewise for those of us today that's pessimistic about AI affecting jobs, is there really anything anyone could say that would change our minds? It's just predictions that we'd just dismiss. The counterpoint to AI optimism is that _this_ new type of automation with powerful AI is unlike the tractors/microchips/websites in the past that replaced people and much more disruptive.
cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
Yeah, it threatens the livelihoods of the people who are moreso ‘in charge’ of what is classified dystopian vs basic economics. Go figure.
kurthr 3y ago
There was a time in the 80 and then 00s when this was the case, when big steel/auto was laying off, but it hasn't really seemed like that for decades. That was globalization (Japan then China and the rest of Asia), but now it feels like a trope. What happens to a plumber, electrician, or welder/machinist that loses their job? They get another one. They are in demand. Heck, even truckers are in demand. Does it take time to train, yeah... but it's not $100k for a degree. Are you gonna become a billionaire? Probably not unless that coin/lottery pans out. Unions are stronger than the last 40 years especially at auto/medical/trucking. Likely, deglobalization is going to bring some production home, but really the question is, why dismiss or even relish worker insecurity and inefficiency?

Dystopia is when white collar workers are no longer secure in the labor force. Basic economics is when blue collar workers are no longer secure in the labor force

ExoticPearTree 3y ago

You are never secure in your job. Its just that it happens less often to white collar work. You know, for other people you are the other people that things happen to.

novagameco 3y ago
Nobody is ever secure in their particular job, but white collar workers used to be secure in the economy. Now, AI threatens to upend a lot of white collar work without creating any new kinds of jobs to replace them. Anybody who says that AI will create more jobs than it replaces is just divining the future based on the impact of totally unrelated technologies (steam engine, electric motors) on the economy hundreds of years ago
- ExoticPearTree 3y ago
  Used to, just as I imagine some other jobs were secure in the economy 100 years ago. I personally don’t know what impact AI will have on the job market, but is is not going to be an overnight revolution.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  I'd look at this from a different perspective. Why does one hire a janitor? Is it because you're incapable of cleaning a bathroom, mopping, or sweeping? No, it's because you have different priorities for your own time. Even if software capable of creating software, flawlessly to specification, was created - software developers would still have a job. Creating those specifications (and handling ambiguities), integrating the resultant product, dealing with ever-changing specifications, and a zillion other things will still be around, and probably always will be. If anything, software based solutions (LLMs or perhaps something more domain specific and accurate, eventually) will just broaden the labor pool for software. So you'll see more people enter the field which will depress wages, but there will also probably consequently be more jobs.
  - shortrounddev2 3y ago
    I can't see how this creates more jobs
    - somenameforme 3y ago
      With lower wages, companies become able to hire more people for the same cost, it reduces the cost of startups, and so on. If janitors cost $100k+/year, you'd be seeing far fewer of them around!
      - shortrounddev2 3y ago
        It seems like the jobs would then be much lower quality then. That we're creating a system where the owners of the companies become richer while the employees become poorer But I'm still not convinced that it would result in more jobs. If you saved money by automating away labor, why spend the savings on labor?
        jasode 3y ago
        >But I'm still not convinced that it would result in more jobs. If you saved money by automating away labor, why spend the savings on labor? The proponents argue the savings would be spent on laborers doing other (possibly new) jobs that are not yet automated and hired by different companies. EDIT reply to: >I can't see what new jobs would be created, especially high value ones. Yes, I agree about not being able to see new jobs. However, history has shown we (society) have always failed to imagine what the new jobs would be that takes the place of old jobs automated away. Farmers and field workers replaced by tractors and harvesting combines. Human telephone switchboard operators replaced by automatic digital relay circuits. Travel agents replaced by website airline ticket bookings. [Thousands of other examples...] And yet the total # of people employed still keep going up instead of society dealing with massive 95% unemployment. The paradox happens because the farmers and switchboard operators that were disrupted can't possibly envision new types of jobs that exist in the future. Understandably, the displaced farmer can't imagine there would be a job where somebody ... presses keys all day on a "typewriter like mechanism" that sends instructions to an "interactive tv". That basically describes what today's programmer does at his computer the entire day. So, the new AI could usher a new wave of jobs. (Something more unpredictable than the immediate memes of ChatGPT "prompt engineers"). As we're living in the moment, we're also "blind to the future possibilities" like those farmers. If one could go back in time and tell that farmer in 1920s driving a Model T that there would be new and different jobs replacing farm work, you wouldn't be able to convince him. In the world that he's familiar with, our attempted descriptions would all just be speculative science fiction. Likewise for those of us today that's pessimistic about AI affecting jobs, is there really anything anyone could say that would change our minds? It's just predictions that we'd just dismiss. The counterpoint to AI optimism is that _this_ new type of automation with powerful AI is unlike the tractors/microchips/websites in the past that replaced people and much more disruptive.

cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago

Yeah, it threatens the livelihoods of the people who are moreso ‘in charge’ of what is classified dystopian vs basic economics. Go figure.

kurthr 3y ago

There was a time in the 80 and then 00s when this was the case, when big steel/auto was laying off, but it hasn't really seemed like that for decades. That was globalization (Japan then China and the rest of Asia), but now it feels like a trope. What happens to a plumber, electrician, or welder/machinist that loses their job? They get another one. They are in demand. Heck, even truckers are in demand. Does it take time to train, yeah... but it's not $100k for a degree. Are you gonna become a billionaire? Probably not unless that coin/lottery pans out. Unions are stronger than the last 40 years especially at auto/medical/trucking. Likely, deglobalization is going to bring some production home, but really the question is, why dismiss or even relish worker insecurity and inefficiency?