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Think about what happened when we got advances in agriculture. We have gone from something like 90% of people employed growing food to something in the single
by drdec 1y ago
Think about what happened when we got advances in agriculture.
We have gone from something like 90% of people employed growing food to something in the single digits (I'm too lazy at the moment to get exact figures, but this is close enough for my point).
Did all those advances in agriculture create jobs? I would say yes and no.
For the specific industry the advances happened in? No, definitely not. There are way fewer jobs in agriculture now.
But what did happen is that people were freed up to do different things. Those jobs were indirectly created by the fact that people did not need to spend so much time growing food. That allowed people to do other things to create value and improve our lives. Without those agriculture advances, we wouldn't have AI right now.
I suspect AI will be similar. We aren't going to have more jobs in the technology section because of AI. But that guy who hears "Code Monkey" for the first time and marvels that someone wrote a song about his life? He won't be a code monkey anymore he will be doing something else. If he's lucky something more personally fulfilling.
- tcfhgj 1y agowhat is this "something else" in this case?
- morkalork 1y agoI keep thinking of that investment disclaimer whenever people cite the - 100 year old - example of mechanization of agriculture: "Past performance is no guarantee of future results" Anyways, if I put my cynnical hat on after looking at this: https://blog.waldrn.com/p/american-boys-have-become-less-supportive https://blog.waldrn.com/p/american-boys-have-become-less-sup... The next generation of children is already being conditioned for women leaving the workplace and society reverting to a pre-WW2 social structure. That's a solution. Jobs are lost forever, women are out of the workforce and the number of workers is halved. We all live in a trad-conservative paradise.
- BurningFrog 1y agoYou never know beforehand. Before they existed, few would have believed the disappearing jobs would be replaced by web designers, uber drivers, youtubers, drone pilots etc.
- tcfhgj 1y agoso if you don't know beforehand, can you even be sure that "something else" exists?
- BurningFrog 1y agoStrictly speaking, you can't be sure the sun will rise tomorrow, and you should be even less sure about this. But the sensible thing is to expect strong trends to continue.
- tcfhgj 1y agothe sun "rising" tomorrow is backed by scientific knowledge about the solar system - more jobs by AI - so far - not more than wishful thinking, like many other AI promises (such as saving is from climate change).
- tempodox 1y agoSomeone will have to clean up the mess that AI usage leaves in its wake.
- tcfhgj 1y agosaving is -> saving us
- BurningFrog 1y agoThe science of Economics has good, empirically based explanations for how new jobs get created when technology makes older jobs unnecessary. And yes, it is a real science!
- tcfhgj 1y agojust explanations, i.e. with hindsight? astrology can do this as well ;) what about rules/laws which allow predictions?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- hattmall 1y agoInterestingly, even in western countries there is basically unlimited demand for agricultural work, and it pays well. The issue is that it's hard work and to get into the higher payment tiers you must take on some risks. Even in small rural areas the demand for locally produced sustainable and consciously produced agricultural products is largely unmet.
- Lu2025 1y ago>> Without those agriculture advances Funny thing is, it wasn't agricultural advances, at least initially. It was chemistry and mechanics. Haber-Bosch process of ammonia synthesis created cheap fertilizer, mechanization dramatically increased productivity. New plant varieties with higher yields came later.
- ahartmetz 1y agoSynthetic fertilizer and mechanization are commonly seen as agricultural advances in the same way that quantum computing is an advance in the field of computer science even though much of the implementation is physics.
- tim333 1y agoYeah, it's not the ag-tech that created new jobs, it's that human's like to be useful and get paid so they'll come up with new things like web dev or instagram influencer. Come AGI people will still probably come up with things to do. The wages and payment bit will likely need to be modified along the UBI or to each according to their needs lines.