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It is what has underpinned all of human progress towards automation. It isn't a bad thing. Every time we automate something the luddites cry out about the comin

It is what has underpinned all of human progress towards automation. It isn't a bad thing. Every time we automate something the luddites cry out about the coming mass unemployment. It has never happened.

vlovich123 10mo ago
Except all the manufacturing jobs got shipped overseas and now those people are Walmart greeters or similar unskilled labor. Having a shit job isn’t unemployment but it’s not a huge step up
- loeg 10mo ago
  That isn't what happened. American jobs are more productive than ever. Americans are richer than ever. The modern luddites dramatically underestimate how bad the past was.
  - vlovich123 10mo ago
    > Americans are richer than ever. By what metric? One way is to look at the Gini coefficient - that’s worse than ever. The bottom 20% has 2-3% of total net worth in the US. The middle 40% has seen a decline from 36% in 1989 to 28% in 2020. The top 0.1% has seen their net worth capture double from 7% in 1989 to 14% today. The subtle thing that net worth ignores of course is inflation from growth in costs, so actually it’s harder for most people than in 1989, unless you’re talking about the ease of buying a TV or phone. Technology is more available and cheaper than ever but food and medicine is more expensive than ever.
    - loeg 10mo ago
      The numbers you cite are about zero sum redistribution. They don't capture that a rising tide lifts all boats. You're also wrong about costs -- people are wealthier today than in 1989 in constant, inflation-adjusted terms. It's true that some good are more expensive; but others are less expensive, and quality has increased significantly across most categories.
JeremyNT 10mo ago
The promise is to automate the drudge work, freeing people to pursue their passions. Like, you know... creating art.
- tekne 10mo ago
  I mean... There's the concept, and then there's the painting. AI slop from a generic prompt is not the same as "using AI to get my concept in physical form faster." Imagine, for example, a one-man animated movie. But, like, with a huge amount of work put into good, artistic, key-frames; what would previously have been a manga. That's possible, soon, and I think that's huge and actual art.
  - throwaway613745 10mo ago
    > what would previously have been a manga Completely out of touch to downplay the entire manga industry as "skill issue". Akira Toriyama totally created Dragonball as a manga because he was just wasn't good enough to make an animated movie! Berserk is a book because Kentaro Miura just had skill issue! Only imagine if Tolkien wanted to create the Lord of the Rings if he had AI! As if a medium only artistic merit because sufficiently advanced technology just didn't exist yet. groooaaaaan
    - tekne 10mo ago
      That's an uncharitable interpretation. Let's say it takes 10 units of work to build a house, and 200 units of resources to build a skyscraper; on average. Let's further assume, after a point, that skill tends to increase quality by a lot more than it decreases resource consumption, so this is "about the best you can do". A very skilled craftsman/artist can build an amazing house with 10 units. A low quality bargain barrel contractor will build a skyscraper for 200, but it's not going to be pretty. If new technology means you can now build a skyscrapers for 10, that means that many more exciting and experimental concepts can be tested by building a skyscraper right away, whereas previously they could only be built as a house. - Some concepts are just better as a house. Even with infinite resources, people will still make houses to this concept; it's not like houses are devalued or less useful or less nice. - Some concepts would be better as a skyscraper, but are very niche, so they were built as houses as a compromise. These can now be skyscrapers. This is no comment at all on the skill of the builder, only on the resources available to them (time, money, etc.) I never said: - houses are worse (or better) - building houses is a skill issue I merely said: - the choice of what to build is not 100% based on artistic merit; resource constraints must also be taken into account And hence concluded: - if it becomes cheaper to build things, the choice of what to build depends more on artistic merit now And speculated: - since there are all kinds of things that are really cool but really expensive, meaning we often (due to resource reasons) need to substitute a cheaper thing (which can be just as good or even superior for other concepts, just not the particular concept in question), we will likely see a lot more of Really Cool Thing now that it's cheap. In short, thinking photography will enable a new mass market of images whereas previously paintings were really expensive and difficult to make, while still respecting that: - a master photographer can be just as skilled as a master painter - a master painter's work is not necessarily devalued by the existence of photography And yet noting that - some paintings might be better as photographs, or would never be made at all because there simply wasn't enough money to paint them even if they in fact would be better as paintings Think, for example, realistic war photography. Or realistic photography of non-privileged people and cultures. That's just... not painted very often. Cheap is good for diversity of expression. It does not devalue what used to be expensive, except insamuch as the value was simply a shallow status signal about burning resources rather than real human expression. Ok, /rant
pchangr 10mo ago
It has happened. There is a related term we use which is related to a historical fact .. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
- loeg 10mo ago
  GP is saying mass unemployment caused by technology hasn't happened, not that the Luddites weren't a real historical group.
  - pchangr 10mo ago
    Correct, and I am saying the Luddites were a group of people that suffered mass unemployment following a technological change. Specifically, the luddites were a group of 19th century textile workers that were left out of work due to the introduction of automated machinery in the textile industry. In other words, they are a perfect example of what GP claims hasn’t happened.
    - loeg 10mo ago
      A small group is not "mass unemployment" -- that's the point. > In a British textile industry that employed a million people, the [Luddite] movement’s numbers never rose above a couple of thousand. https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/rage-against-the-machine https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/rage-against-the-machine
      - coldtea 10mo ago
        The "never rose above a couple of thousand" small group refers to the number of activist Luddites. It doesn't refer to the people working in the textile industry in general - which was a big group, and which was heavily affected.
        loeg 10mo ago
        Even "all textile workers" was never a large fraction of "all workers."
malnourish 10mo ago
What other automations have been hyped to automate and replace so many different types of jobs at once? Whether or not it comes to fruition, it's making large portions of society feel uneasy, and not just programmers, or artists, or teachers.
- pchangr 10mo ago
  The steam engine, for example
  - elictronic 10mo ago
    Not finding a lot of sears and roebuck ads for steam engine driven girlfriends.
    - dullcrisp 10mo ago
      You’re got the wrong catalog.
coldtea 10mo ago
>Every time we automate something the luddites cry out about the coming mass unemployment. It has never happened It has happened each and every time, it just haven't affected you personally. Starting of course with the original luddites - they didn't complain out of some philosophical opposition to automation. Each time in changes like this a huge number of people lost their jobs and took big hits in their quality of life. The "new jobs", when they arrive, arrive for others. This includes the post 1990s switch to service and digital economies and outsourcing, which obliterated countless factory towns in the US - and those people didn't magically turn to coders and creatives. At best they took unemployment, big decreases in job prospects, shitty "gig" economy jobs, or, well, worse, including alcohol and opiods. With AI it's even worse, since it has the capacity to replace jobs without adding new ones, or a tiny handful at a hugely smaller rate.
- tim333 10mo ago
  Strictly speaking outsourcing to cheap labour isn't automation.
  - coldtea 10mo ago
    Strickly speaking yes, I say the "switch to service and digital economies and outsourcing" though, which also includes lots of automation, but also because it's not just automation where people say removes jobs and others say it's fine, but also switches to different kinds of economy (which see the same arguments). For the purposes of the discussion, even considering automation and outsourcing alone, the effect is the same though: the human job dissapears from the local market, but the company still gets the thing made.
array_key_first 10mo ago
It literally happens every single time - people DO lose jobs. They might get new jobs, but they definitely lose their old ones. And not everyone gets new jobs, because usually the new job is fundamentally different and might not be compatible with the person or their original desire out of their employment.
- stavros 10mo ago
  The problem isn't so much automation, but that the benefits of automation are invariably reaped by a few tech CEOs. It's not society in general that benefits, it's that the rich get richer, and the rest of us barely scrape by. If wealth were evenly distributed, nobody would bat an eyelid at AI. AI is not the problem. Late-stage capitalism and wealth disparity is.
throwaway613745 10mo ago
> Every time we automate something the luddites cry out about the coming mass unemployment. It has never happened. It has happened every single time.

vlovich123 10mo ago

Except all the manufacturing jobs got shipped overseas and now those people are Walmart greeters or similar unskilled labor. Having a shit job isn’t unemployment but it’s not a huge step up

loeg 10mo ago
That isn't what happened. American jobs are more productive than ever. Americans are richer than ever. The modern luddites dramatically underestimate how bad the past was.
- vlovich123 10mo ago
  > Americans are richer than ever. By what metric? One way is to look at the Gini coefficient - that’s worse than ever. The bottom 20% has 2-3% of total net worth in the US. The middle 40% has seen a decline from 36% in 1989 to 28% in 2020. The top 0.1% has seen their net worth capture double from 7% in 1989 to 14% today. The subtle thing that net worth ignores of course is inflation from growth in costs, so actually it’s harder for most people than in 1989, unless you’re talking about the ease of buying a TV or phone. Technology is more available and cheaper than ever but food and medicine is more expensive than ever.
  - loeg 10mo ago
    The numbers you cite are about zero sum redistribution. They don't capture that a rising tide lifts all boats. You're also wrong about costs -- people are wealthier today than in 1989 in constant, inflation-adjusted terms. It's true that some good are more expensive; but others are less expensive, and quality has increased significantly across most categories.

JeremyNT 10mo ago

The promise is to automate the drudge work, freeing people to pursue their passions. Like, you know... creating art.

tekne 10mo ago
I mean... There's the concept, and then there's the painting. AI slop from a generic prompt is not the same as "using AI to get my concept in physical form faster." Imagine, for example, a one-man animated movie. But, like, with a huge amount of work put into good, artistic, key-frames; what would previously have been a manga. That's possible, soon, and I think that's huge and actual art.
- throwaway613745 10mo ago
  > what would previously have been a manga Completely out of touch to downplay the entire manga industry as "skill issue". Akira Toriyama totally created Dragonball as a manga because he was just wasn't good enough to make an animated movie! Berserk is a book because Kentaro Miura just had skill issue! Only imagine if Tolkien wanted to create the Lord of the Rings if he had AI! As if a medium only artistic merit because sufficiently advanced technology just didn't exist yet. groooaaaaan
  - tekne 10mo ago
    That's an uncharitable interpretation. Let's say it takes 10 units of work to build a house, and 200 units of resources to build a skyscraper; on average. Let's further assume, after a point, that skill tends to increase quality by a lot more than it decreases resource consumption, so this is "about the best you can do". A very skilled craftsman/artist can build an amazing house with 10 units. A low quality bargain barrel contractor will build a skyscraper for 200, but it's not going to be pretty. If new technology means you can now build a skyscrapers for 10, that means that many more exciting and experimental concepts can be tested by building a skyscraper right away, whereas previously they could only be built as a house. - Some concepts are just better as a house. Even with infinite resources, people will still make houses to this concept; it's not like houses are devalued or less useful or less nice. - Some concepts would be better as a skyscraper, but are very niche, so they were built as houses as a compromise. These can now be skyscrapers. This is no comment at all on the skill of the builder, only on the resources available to them (time, money, etc.) I never said: - houses are worse (or better) - building houses is a skill issue I merely said: - the choice of what to build is not 100% based on artistic merit; resource constraints must also be taken into account And hence concluded: - if it becomes cheaper to build things, the choice of what to build depends more on artistic merit now And speculated: - since there are all kinds of things that are really cool but really expensive, meaning we often (due to resource reasons) need to substitute a cheaper thing (which can be just as good or even superior for other concepts, just not the particular concept in question), we will likely see a lot more of Really Cool Thing now that it's cheap. In short, thinking photography will enable a new mass market of images whereas previously paintings were really expensive and difficult to make, while still respecting that: - a master photographer can be just as skilled as a master painter - a master painter's work is not necessarily devalued by the existence of photography And yet noting that - some paintings might be better as photographs, or would never be made at all because there simply wasn't enough money to paint them even if they in fact would be better as paintings Think, for example, realistic war photography. Or realistic photography of non-privileged people and cultures. That's just... not painted very often. Cheap is good for diversity of expression. It does not devalue what used to be expensive, except insamuch as the value was simply a shallow status signal about burning resources rather than real human expression. Ok, /rant

pchangr 10mo ago

It has happened. There is a related term we use which is related to a historical fact .. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

loeg 10mo ago
GP is saying mass unemployment caused by technology hasn't happened, not that the Luddites weren't a real historical group.
- pchangr 10mo ago
  Correct, and I am saying the Luddites were a group of people that suffered mass unemployment following a technological change. Specifically, the luddites were a group of 19th century textile workers that were left out of work due to the introduction of automated machinery in the textile industry. In other words, they are a perfect example of what GP claims hasn’t happened.
  - loeg 10mo ago
    A small group is not "mass unemployment" -- that's the point. > In a British textile industry that employed a million people, the [Luddite] movement’s numbers never rose above a couple of thousand. https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/rage-against-the-machine https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/rage-against-the-machine
    - coldtea 10mo ago
      The "never rose above a couple of thousand" small group refers to the number of activist Luddites. It doesn't refer to the people working in the textile industry in general - which was a big group, and which was heavily affected.
      - loeg 10mo ago
        Even "all textile workers" was never a large fraction of "all workers."

malnourish 10mo ago

What other automations have been hyped to automate and replace so many different types of jobs at once? Whether or not it comes to fruition, it's making large portions of society feel uneasy, and not just programmers, or artists, or teachers.

pchangr 10mo ago
The steam engine, for example
- elictronic 10mo ago
  Not finding a lot of sears and roebuck ads for steam engine driven girlfriends.
  - dullcrisp 10mo ago
    You’re got the wrong catalog.

coldtea 10mo ago

>Every time we automate something the luddites cry out about the coming mass unemployment. It has never happened It has happened each and every time, it just haven't affected you personally. Starting of course with the original luddites - they didn't complain out of some philosophical opposition to automation. Each time in changes like this a huge number of people lost their jobs and took big hits in their quality of life. The "new jobs", when they arrive, arrive for others. This includes the post 1990s switch to service and digital economies and outsourcing, which obliterated countless factory towns in the US - and those people didn't magically turn to coders and creatives. At best they took unemployment, big decreases in job prospects, shitty "gig" economy jobs, or, well, worse, including alcohol and opiods. With AI it's even worse, since it has the capacity to replace jobs without adding new ones, or a tiny handful at a hugely smaller rate.

tim333 10mo ago
Strictly speaking outsourcing to cheap labour isn't automation.
- coldtea 10mo ago
  Strickly speaking yes, I say the "switch to service and digital economies and outsourcing" though, which also includes lots of automation, but also because it's not just automation where people say removes jobs and others say it's fine, but also switches to different kinds of economy (which see the same arguments). For the purposes of the discussion, even considering automation and outsourcing alone, the effect is the same though: the human job dissapears from the local market, but the company still gets the thing made.

array_key_first 10mo ago

It literally happens every single time - people DO lose jobs. They might get new jobs, but they definitely lose their old ones. And not everyone gets new jobs, because usually the new job is fundamentally different and might not be compatible with the person or their original desire out of their employment.

stavros 10mo ago
The problem isn't so much automation, but that the benefits of automation are invariably reaped by a few tech CEOs. It's not society in general that benefits, it's that the rich get richer, and the rest of us barely scrape by. If wealth were evenly distributed, nobody would bat an eyelid at AI. AI is not the problem. Late-stage capitalism and wealth disparity is.

throwaway613745 10mo ago

> Every time we automate something the luddites cry out about the coming mass unemployment. It has never happened. It has happened every single time.