5 ms·

If you will permit me to be more careful: Instead of "we want people to do higher complexity tasks than operate motor vehicles," I would say: Moving humans fr

If you will permit me to be more careful: Instead of "we want people to do higher complexity tasks than operate motor vehicles," I would say: Moving humans from lower to higher complexity tasks generally correlates to increased productivity, higher efficiency, or "getting more with less." Generally, this leads to a wealthier society and other positive things. The above is not true about everything but holds up in general.

bluefirebrand 1y ago
I do not understand what "higher complexity tasks" you think a bunch of unemployed truckers are going to do It is likely that part of the reason they are truckers is because they aren't really suited for higher complexity tasks I'm not trying to be an asshole. I respect the hard work and long hours that truckers do. I don't think they are stupid, and I greatly value the service they provide to society But the reality is trucking is still a relatively low skill job, mostly filled by people who are not really equipped for high skill jobs At some point if we automate all of the low skill jobs, we're going to have to deal with the fact that a ton of people who aren't cut out for complex work are now unemployed (and probably poor, and pissed off)
- djoldman 1y ago
  I'm not trying to be an asshole either when I ask: what we do with all the former farmers made redundant by modern farming technology or furniture makers made redundant by the increased productivity of manufacturing processes? I think the answer is and has always been education and retraining for different occupations.
  - i80and 1y ago
    People have been talking about "education and retraining" to make up for jobs lost to technology since I was young. It's a nice idea, but I'm curious if that actually happens at scale rather than in isolated pockets. Retraining is hard, expensive, and risky. My general experience is that people tend to fall backwards into either lower-quality work or permanent semi-unemployment, but I could be mistaken about that.
    - Esophagus4 1y ago
      No, you’re right. Ultimately, after large-scale technological innovation that leads to societal change like worker displacement (like happened after agricultural innovations displaced farm workers in the American South, or manufacturing innovations displaced American factory workers, or unemployment during the Great Depression) you end up with societal unrest (like organized protest and political action) that leads to increased societal safety nets and welfare benefits… temporarily and if the unrest is big enough. But eventually, as markets adjust and other types of employment opportunities pop up or as the capital class gets annoyed at rising labor costs, the welfare roles contract to encourage people back into the workforce (in American society, I’m talking about. I’m not sure how other countries handle this.) There’s a thorough and well-researched (though very dense) book called Regulating the Poor if you want to see more along those lines. But job retraining tends not to have much of an effect.
      - FeloniousHam 1y ago
        I wonder how much of "markets adjust and other types of employment opportunities pop up" is just the aging out through retirement and death of the redundant workers. Basically, the labor theory of Planck's principle: '"A great scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it", Planck once wrote.'
        Esophagus4 1y ago
        Yeah, I could certainly see that being an outcome where there is just a group of displaced workers never to be employed again. I also wonder how many “new employment opportunities” are generally worse off for the displaced (gig economy etc) and what that means for society.
  - Braxton1980 1y ago
    >I think the answer is and has always been education and retraining for different occupations. How well did this work for the previous globalization of manufacturing? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_Belt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_Belt
    - djoldman 1y ago
      Pretty well in some ways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knox_Mine_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knox_Mine_disaster https://www.sitesofnj.com/Bethlehemsteel/BethlehemsteelMemorial.html https://www.sitesofnj.com/Bethlehemsteel/BethlehemsteelMemor... https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/08/02/State-officials-Monday-began-an-investigation-into-the-deaths/7474397108800/ https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/08/02/State-officials-Mond...
  - salawat 1y ago
    Cool. Are you paying for it for them? Everyone loves that answer, but no one wants to pony up for the retraining, or if they do, they insist the retraining meets their sensibilities. Next time you run through that line of logic, think about that.
  - rurp 1y ago
    What happens most often is that populations whose careers get widely disrupted by technology become relatively impoverished for generations. The parts of the US where tech replaced a lot of farming, factory, and similar jobs are basically a map of the poorest areas in the country. So just saying "do what we've done before" is an extremely unsatisfyig answer. That's how we end up with half the country happily cheerleading the destruction of countless institutions and rights.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    We leave a lot of those people behind, forced into a life of poverty. We can educate truck drivers probably, but not all. But the concept as a whole has issues. Can we re-educate and engineer to be a 10x engineer? How many of them? So, what happens when you must be a 10x engineer? People have limits. It varies person to person, but we all have limits and as we go higher "up" the rate of hitting limits increases. We can cut out low hanging fruit like, say, literacy. But I can't be Einstein, and neither can you. So, let us both pray we won't need to become Einstein.
  - josh_s 1y ago
    At a national and global scale, farmers moved to the cities to get work in factories operating the new machinery of industrialisation. And some were, or their children were, educated to become clerks based on a systemic development of education, ie RWr+aR. These clerks were critical to help account for all the widgets being created by industrialisation. Point being, it was not accidental what happened to farmers during industrialisation of food production. they had a path. they were not left with nothing. so back to you. what next for out of work drivers or their children?
    - danaris 1y ago
      > they were not left with nothing But many of them were. It's easy, at this distance, to look back and see that a large number of former farmers were able to find work in the new industrial factories and the like, and to simply ignore the fact that many of them did not. Many of them saw their income dry up, and failed to pay back the loans they had taken out in the spring to be able to plant, and had their farms repossessed. Many died. Without some kind of comprehensive, structured program to provide jobs and/or retraining to people being put out of work by a major technological advancement, yes, some of those people are still going to do OK, but many if not most will struggle, suffer, and die. And right now, the government is actively slashing and burning structured programs to help people. So I'd say the burden of proof lies on those who posit that "something will happen" to ensure that truckers being put out of work by self-driving trucks aren't just left destitute.
      - josh_s 1y ago
        We are in agreement with the burden. Perhaps my point was not well made: At the time farmers were being made destitute by industrialization we also invented the modern education system. This was a massive societal investment to compensate for the reduced number of farmers needed. There needs to be a similar level of commitment to establishing a viable future for those displaced by AI. So see no indication that this investment will happen.
- infecto 1y ago
  You’re not wrong but your assumptions are incredibly over optimistic. Humans are still in the loop but ideally taking out the relatively boring middle parts, long haul interstate driving. You still have paperwork, city driving, hooking up trailers. But yes the reality is that net jobs will probably be lost. Some will transition into the new role of the truck driver, some go into different industries and some will get lost through the transition. The real truth is that it is incredibly hard to make everyone whole.
close04 1y ago
> Moving humans from lower to higher complexity tasks generally correlates to increased productivity, higher efficiency, or "getting more with less." Generally, this leads to a wealthier society and other positive things. This is the idealistic take. What's your practical take for moving hundreds of thousands if not millions of people from truck driving jobs to higher complexity tasks? Do those jobs exist today and truckers just refuse to take the step up? Are we creating new jobs that are just the right amount of "more complex" to be realistic for a truck driver? In a world where AI is doing away exactly with the lower complexity jobs, how are we bridging the gap between the average skill level and expertise of a trucker compared to high enough complexity job that keeps them safe from being replaced by AI in 5 years? What's the reskilling or upskilling plan for these people's skills and career to advance at a faster pace than AI is catching up?
- djoldman 1y ago
  Some will retire early. Some will take on more and more of the much more complex logistics jobs like delicate loads, large loads, etc. Some will switch professions. Some will go to school to switch professions. Some new professions will open up exactly because it will become cheaper to move stuff by truck. For example, if a business can now afford to move X to their location, now they can do more business. Perhaps that business hires former truck drivers.
  - close04 1y ago
    At the risk of repeating myself, this is the idealistic take and even that only until you give it the slightest bit of though. Standing by this take after the realistic questions were asked also makes it an ignorant take. 3 million truckers in the US alone. Retire early? To live on what, the wealth accumulated in not even a full lifetime of trucking? Go to school? Who pays for it, who supports the person/family while they go to school, and what are the odds that the skill set increases so drastically that AI/automation won't just catch up with them in a couple of years? "Just" switch professions? If there was a better one they would have done it already, so they can only switch for the worse.
Braxton1980 1y ago
Are there sufficient jobs that have these higher complexity tasks The highest priority is being employed.
mousethatroared 1y ago
If they can do the higher skilled jobs. Otherwise by friend, a driver with spotless driving record and very poor English, is unemployable with two kids to feed. AI cant savage the laptop class fast enough.
- ty6853 1y ago
  CDL drivers have insanely high attrition. Probably higher attrition than the phase in of driverless vehicles.
  - _heimdall 1y ago
    I'd be interested to see how attrition compares with new CDL drivers and those with say 3+ years of experience. I know a few long haul drivers that did it for decades, one only stopped because a car accident then motorcycle accident damaged his back too much to sit in a cab all day.
    - ty6853 1y ago
      We know from most other industries that when a downturn comes, those with the most experience shift into the entry level jobs/pay and the newcomers get gutted.
      - _heimdall 1y ago
        Sure, but I thought the prior comment was talking about attrition in general rather than job loss during a downturn. In my experience, all bets are off when an industry downturn hits. People jump ship or are thrown overboard. Usually those that handle it best keep a steadier hand and don't react as emotionally, it wouldn't surprise me if that group is more often those with the most experience.
        ty6853 1y ago
        Yes you have to put two and two together. If the attrition of newcomers is high enough, and oldtimers fill newcomer positions (or just their wages) in rough times, then if the high attrition of newcomers is high enough to overcome the phase-in rate of automation then the old timers will more or less stay employed just likely at the shit wages that newcomers get.
_heimdall 1y ago
This is where free will comes in for me. I have never seen economics or wealth as a goal in and of itself. Economics is a view of past performance and only really interesting to compare against other periods in the past or other countries/economies. In my opinion people should do exactly the job they want to do and the economics of that will shake out however they shake out. People should be enjoying what they do, but more importantly they should be making whatever decision is best for them at the time. This may just circle back to the question of central planning - I don't think we are ever better off in the long rum trying to plan the entire system rather than trusting every individual to do what's best for them (and trusting that decision to often include what is best for their community).
- fragmede 1y ago
  Why whould a private equity investor who just wants a return care about what's best for a community a thousand miles away full of people they've never met? Looking at problems caused by bad private equity deals made public, sans regulation, that doesn't seem to have worked out well for the average American. Housing is too expensive and food prices have gone way up. Never mind the cost of healthcare, the level of service is no good.
  - _heimdall 1y ago
    I'm not sure that I follow you here. I wasn't talking about what private equity should do at all, they can gamble money however they want. I was responding to the idea that we intentionally want to put drivers out of work because we want them in higher complexity roles.
    - fragmede 1y ago
      I was responding to > trusting every individual to do what's best for them (and trusting that decision to often include what is best for their community) which hasn't, in my view, panned out, because of the reasons I outlined in my comment. Between trusting individuals to be altruistic and centralized planning of everything, it seems there's a lot of room for some central authority to decide we need more eg housing and to provide incentives for that, without becoming eg Soviet Russia.

bluefirebrand 1y ago

I do not understand what "higher complexity tasks" you think a bunch of unemployed truckers are going to do It is likely that part of the reason they are truckers is because they aren't really suited for higher complexity tasks I'm not trying to be an asshole. I respect the hard work and long hours that truckers do. I don't think they are stupid, and I greatly value the service they provide to society But the reality is trucking is still a relatively low skill job, mostly filled by people who are not really equipped for high skill jobs At some point if we automate all of the low skill jobs, we're going to have to deal with the fact that a ton of people who aren't cut out for complex work are now unemployed (and probably poor, and pissed off)

djoldman 1y ago
I'm not trying to be an asshole either when I ask: what we do with all the former farmers made redundant by modern farming technology or furniture makers made redundant by the increased productivity of manufacturing processes? I think the answer is and has always been education and retraining for different occupations.
- i80and 1y ago
  People have been talking about "education and retraining" to make up for jobs lost to technology since I was young. It's a nice idea, but I'm curious if that actually happens at scale rather than in isolated pockets. Retraining is hard, expensive, and risky. My general experience is that people tend to fall backwards into either lower-quality work or permanent semi-unemployment, but I could be mistaken about that.
  - Esophagus4 1y ago
    No, you’re right. Ultimately, after large-scale technological innovation that leads to societal change like worker displacement (like happened after agricultural innovations displaced farm workers in the American South, or manufacturing innovations displaced American factory workers, or unemployment during the Great Depression) you end up with societal unrest (like organized protest and political action) that leads to increased societal safety nets and welfare benefits… temporarily and if the unrest is big enough. But eventually, as markets adjust and other types of employment opportunities pop up or as the capital class gets annoyed at rising labor costs, the welfare roles contract to encourage people back into the workforce (in American society, I’m talking about. I’m not sure how other countries handle this.) There’s a thorough and well-researched (though very dense) book called Regulating the Poor if you want to see more along those lines. But job retraining tends not to have much of an effect.
    - FeloniousHam 1y ago
      I wonder how much of "markets adjust and other types of employment opportunities pop up" is just the aging out through retirement and death of the redundant workers. Basically, the labor theory of Planck's principle: '"A great scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it", Planck once wrote.'
      - Esophagus4 1y ago
        Yeah, I could certainly see that being an outcome where there is just a group of displaced workers never to be employed again. I also wonder how many “new employment opportunities” are generally worse off for the displaced (gig economy etc) and what that means for society.
- Braxton1980 1y ago
  >I think the answer is and has always been education and retraining for different occupations. How well did this work for the previous globalization of manufacturing? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_Belt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_Belt
  - djoldman 1y ago
    Pretty well in some ways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knox_Mine_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knox_Mine_disaster https://www.sitesofnj.com/Bethlehemsteel/BethlehemsteelMemorial.html https://www.sitesofnj.com/Bethlehemsteel/BethlehemsteelMemor... https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/08/02/State-officials-Monday-began-an-investigation-into-the-deaths/7474397108800/ https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/08/02/State-officials-Mond...
- salawat 1y ago
  Cool. Are you paying for it for them? Everyone loves that answer, but no one wants to pony up for the retraining, or if they do, they insist the retraining meets their sensibilities. Next time you run through that line of logic, think about that.
- rurp 1y ago
  What happens most often is that populations whose careers get widely disrupted by technology become relatively impoverished for generations. The parts of the US where tech replaced a lot of farming, factory, and similar jobs are basically a map of the poorest areas in the country. So just saying "do what we've done before" is an extremely unsatisfyig answer. That's how we end up with half the country happily cheerleading the destruction of countless institutions and rights.
- const_cast 1y ago
  We leave a lot of those people behind, forced into a life of poverty. We can educate truck drivers probably, but not all. But the concept as a whole has issues. Can we re-educate and engineer to be a 10x engineer? How many of them? So, what happens when you must be a 10x engineer? People have limits. It varies person to person, but we all have limits and as we go higher "up" the rate of hitting limits increases. We can cut out low hanging fruit like, say, literacy. But I can't be Einstein, and neither can you. So, let us both pray we won't need to become Einstein.
- josh_s 1y ago
  At a national and global scale, farmers moved to the cities to get work in factories operating the new machinery of industrialisation. And some were, or their children were, educated to become clerks based on a systemic development of education, ie RWr+aR. These clerks were critical to help account for all the widgets being created by industrialisation. Point being, it was not accidental what happened to farmers during industrialisation of food production. they had a path. they were not left with nothing. so back to you. what next for out of work drivers or their children?
  - danaris 1y ago
    > they were not left with nothing But many of them were. It's easy, at this distance, to look back and see that a large number of former farmers were able to find work in the new industrial factories and the like, and to simply ignore the fact that many of them did not. Many of them saw their income dry up, and failed to pay back the loans they had taken out in the spring to be able to plant, and had their farms repossessed. Many died. Without some kind of comprehensive, structured program to provide jobs and/or retraining to people being put out of work by a major technological advancement, yes, some of those people are still going to do OK, but many if not most will struggle, suffer, and die. And right now, the government is actively slashing and burning structured programs to help people. So I'd say the burden of proof lies on those who posit that "something will happen" to ensure that truckers being put out of work by self-driving trucks aren't just left destitute.
    - josh_s 1y ago
      We are in agreement with the burden. Perhaps my point was not well made: At the time farmers were being made destitute by industrialization we also invented the modern education system. This was a massive societal investment to compensate for the reduced number of farmers needed. There needs to be a similar level of commitment to establishing a viable future for those displaced by AI. So see no indication that this investment will happen.
infecto 1y ago
You’re not wrong but your assumptions are incredibly over optimistic. Humans are still in the loop but ideally taking out the relatively boring middle parts, long haul interstate driving. You still have paperwork, city driving, hooking up trailers. But yes the reality is that net jobs will probably be lost. Some will transition into the new role of the truck driver, some go into different industries and some will get lost through the transition. The real truth is that it is incredibly hard to make everyone whole.

close04 1y ago

> Moving humans from lower to higher complexity tasks generally correlates to increased productivity, higher efficiency, or "getting more with less." Generally, this leads to a wealthier society and other positive things. This is the idealistic take. What's your practical take for moving hundreds of thousands if not millions of people from truck driving jobs to higher complexity tasks? Do those jobs exist today and truckers just refuse to take the step up? Are we creating new jobs that are just the right amount of "more complex" to be realistic for a truck driver? In a world where AI is doing away exactly with the lower complexity jobs, how are we bridging the gap between the average skill level and expertise of a trucker compared to high enough complexity job that keeps them safe from being replaced by AI in 5 years? What's the reskilling or upskilling plan for these people's skills and career to advance at a faster pace than AI is catching up?

djoldman 1y ago
Some will retire early. Some will take on more and more of the much more complex logistics jobs like delicate loads, large loads, etc. Some will switch professions. Some will go to school to switch professions. Some new professions will open up exactly because it will become cheaper to move stuff by truck. For example, if a business can now afford to move X to their location, now they can do more business. Perhaps that business hires former truck drivers.
- close04 1y ago
  At the risk of repeating myself, this is the idealistic take and even that only until you give it the slightest bit of though. Standing by this take after the realistic questions were asked also makes it an ignorant take. 3 million truckers in the US alone. Retire early? To live on what, the wealth accumulated in not even a full lifetime of trucking? Go to school? Who pays for it, who supports the person/family while they go to school, and what are the odds that the skill set increases so drastically that AI/automation won't just catch up with them in a couple of years? "Just" switch professions? If there was a better one they would have done it already, so they can only switch for the worse.

Braxton1980 1y ago

Are there sufficient jobs that have these higher complexity tasks The highest priority is being employed.

mousethatroared 1y ago

If they can do the higher skilled jobs. Otherwise by friend, a driver with spotless driving record and very poor English, is unemployable with two kids to feed. AI cant savage the laptop class fast enough.

ty6853 1y ago
CDL drivers have insanely high attrition. Probably higher attrition than the phase in of driverless vehicles.
- _heimdall 1y ago
  I'd be interested to see how attrition compares with new CDL drivers and those with say 3+ years of experience. I know a few long haul drivers that did it for decades, one only stopped because a car accident then motorcycle accident damaged his back too much to sit in a cab all day.
  - ty6853 1y ago
    We know from most other industries that when a downturn comes, those with the most experience shift into the entry level jobs/pay and the newcomers get gutted.
    - _heimdall 1y ago
      Sure, but I thought the prior comment was talking about attrition in general rather than job loss during a downturn. In my experience, all bets are off when an industry downturn hits. People jump ship or are thrown overboard. Usually those that handle it best keep a steadier hand and don't react as emotionally, it wouldn't surprise me if that group is more often those with the most experience.
      - ty6853 1y ago
        Yes you have to put two and two together. If the attrition of newcomers is high enough, and oldtimers fill newcomer positions (or just their wages) in rough times, then if the high attrition of newcomers is high enough to overcome the phase-in rate of automation then the old timers will more or less stay employed just likely at the shit wages that newcomers get.

_heimdall 1y ago

This is where free will comes in for me. I have never seen economics or wealth as a goal in and of itself. Economics is a view of past performance and only really interesting to compare against other periods in the past or other countries/economies. In my opinion people should do exactly the job they want to do and the economics of that will shake out however they shake out. People should be enjoying what they do, but more importantly they should be making whatever decision is best for them at the time. This may just circle back to the question of central planning - I don't think we are ever better off in the long rum trying to plan the entire system rather than trusting every individual to do what's best for them (and trusting that decision to often include what is best for their community).

fragmede 1y ago
Why whould a private equity investor who just wants a return care about what's best for a community a thousand miles away full of people they've never met? Looking at problems caused by bad private equity deals made public, sans regulation, that doesn't seem to have worked out well for the average American. Housing is too expensive and food prices have gone way up. Never mind the cost of healthcare, the level of service is no good.
- _heimdall 1y ago
  I'm not sure that I follow you here. I wasn't talking about what private equity should do at all, they can gamble money however they want. I was responding to the idea that we intentionally want to put drivers out of work because we want them in higher complexity roles.
  - fragmede 1y ago
    I was responding to > trusting every individual to do what's best for them (and trusting that decision to often include what is best for their community) which hasn't, in my view, panned out, because of the reasons I outlined in my comment. Between trusting individuals to be altruistic and centralized planning of everything, it seems there's a lot of room for some central authority to decide we need more eg housing and to provide incentives for that, without becoming eg Soviet Russia.