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Sigh. "...We (programmers) all are, on some level or another; we’re taking mundane repetitive tasks and automating them with code..." Yes, and no. I have been

Sigh. "...We (programmers) all are, on some level or another; we’re taking mundane repetitive tasks and automating them with code..." Yes, and no. I have been programming or improving things all my life. That means, if you don't look too deeply, yes, I am a jobs destroyer. But if you're not going to look too deeply, just don't bother looking at all. We programmers take inefficient things and make them efficient. Old, bloated code gets streamlined. What used to take a person an hour takes five minutes. You'd think -- if you kind of squinted your eyes the right way -- that eventually we'd just make the entire universe efficient and there would be no more jobs. You'd think something and it would come into existence. Many people are able to think this far ahead, and it scares them. Along, presumably, with many other things. The problem is that such simple-minded projections of the future never pan out that way. Over and over again we make something more efficient, take away entire categories of jobs, and still people have more to do than ever. Why? There's a book in that response, but let's just say in deference to Jurassic Park, "jobs find a way". An economy is a complex system where people are always wanting something -- even when they're fed, clothed, housed, and taken care of -- and other people are always providing it. They trade, and it's this species-programmed pattern of trading that led us out of the Savannah and onto the moon. This is the nth article along the same lines -- the future is devoid of jobs. I'm very sorry that our educational system in many western countries is ill-preparing many for work, and they face long periods of unemployment made worse by debt. It's a travesty and a scandal and we need to fix it. But don't extrapolate current unfortunate structural unemployment with the end of life, the universe, and everything. Don't flatter yourself. You are not a jobs destroyer. You're just some schmuck doing his job like the rest of us.

yairchu 14y ago
That's because we haven't yet produced a general-purpose quality AI which can do everything humans can do and more cost effectively than they do it. But when this happens, pretty much everything, even creative work like graphical design - everything will be cloudsourced.
- DanielBMarkham 14y ago
  You are confusing things with value. Most commenters seem to confuse needs with value. They think that once we are all fed and housed there will be no more jobs. At least you've taken it to the next step -- tangible things. Congrats. You need to ask yourself a question: why do rich people create things for each other? A millionaire grandmother may make a scarf for her grandchild. A middle-aged man may take time to create a scrapbook for a friend that is retiring. A billionaire may go to yard sales and haggle over the price of a toaster. It's not about needs, and it's not about things. It's about trade, creation, giving, social interaction. These things are not going anywhere, no matter how many AIs there are. In another 100 years we're just all going to be the equivalent of today's billionaires. That means having purpose and creating things, ie, continuing in some form of semi-structured creation and trade process. Look at it this way. Describe the life of an early 21st century person to somebody from 1000BC. They will have no idea why you work. Guaranteed meals every now and then? Communicate with anybody on the planet? Water, sewage, and light for the dark -- all without effort? We live in an incredible far-fetched place beyond dreams. There's no point in working. From their perspective. But that's not the way things panned out.
  - randallsquared 14y ago
    Giving and social interaction (of at least some kinds) are not immediately at risk. What's at risk is the participation of some large groups of people in trade. Ultimately the value of a person's labor depends on scarcity, just as the trade value of things or experiences do, and we've seen how lack of scarcity makes trade value crash. (The value of the Humble Bundle and Cory Doctorow's books depends on "giving" more than "trade", and the latter at all only due to information asymmetry.) The storm coming is that when we have duplicable, cheap, general AI, the value of any act of production will plummet to the cost of copying a mind and running it. Actually, that's already the case, but the cost of producing a new mind is quite high, now. :) When people talk about automating everything we now do (or can do), pro-automation people often say "well, comparative advantage means that there will always be something for humans to do to live", but comparative advantage depends on scarcity of productive agents. If copying and running an AI to solve a problem is cheaper than employing an already existing human, humans are in trouble, economically. Dunno what to do about it, though.
mcgwiz 14y ago
I agree overall, but I don't think the basic mechanism of why we have more work than ever is "jobs finding a way." That characterizes the process as jobs self-replicating, mutating, and adapting. It's more that improvements in information processing generally (over the long-term) raise all boats, and do not fundamentally alter capitalism's competitive essence. Increasingly complex information processing can be automated, but that just moves the competition to a different playing field (er, boat pond). Until computers can create optimal, marketable solutions to novel problems, competition will always provide jobs for humans. They will just be different jobs.

yairchu 14y ago

That's because we haven't yet produced a general-purpose quality AI which can do everything humans can do and more cost effectively than they do it. But when this happens, pretty much everything, even creative work like graphical design - everything will be cloudsourced.

DanielBMarkham 14y ago
You are confusing things with value. Most commenters seem to confuse needs with value. They think that once we are all fed and housed there will be no more jobs. At least you've taken it to the next step -- tangible things. Congrats. You need to ask yourself a question: why do rich people create things for each other? A millionaire grandmother may make a scarf for her grandchild. A middle-aged man may take time to create a scrapbook for a friend that is retiring. A billionaire may go to yard sales and haggle over the price of a toaster. It's not about needs, and it's not about things. It's about trade, creation, giving, social interaction. These things are not going anywhere, no matter how many AIs there are. In another 100 years we're just all going to be the equivalent of today's billionaires. That means having purpose and creating things, ie, continuing in some form of semi-structured creation and trade process. Look at it this way. Describe the life of an early 21st century person to somebody from 1000BC. They will have no idea why you work. Guaranteed meals every now and then? Communicate with anybody on the planet? Water, sewage, and light for the dark -- all without effort? We live in an incredible far-fetched place beyond dreams. There's no point in working. From their perspective. But that's not the way things panned out.
- randallsquared 14y ago
  Giving and social interaction (of at least some kinds) are not immediately at risk. What's at risk is the participation of some large groups of people in trade. Ultimately the value of a person's labor depends on scarcity, just as the trade value of things or experiences do, and we've seen how lack of scarcity makes trade value crash. (The value of the Humble Bundle and Cory Doctorow's books depends on "giving" more than "trade", and the latter at all only due to information asymmetry.) The storm coming is that when we have duplicable, cheap, general AI, the value of any act of production will plummet to the cost of copying a mind and running it. Actually, that's already the case, but the cost of producing a new mind is quite high, now. :) When people talk about automating everything we now do (or can do), pro-automation people often say "well, comparative advantage means that there will always be something for humans to do to live", but comparative advantage depends on scarcity of productive agents. If copying and running an AI to solve a problem is cheaper than employing an already existing human, humans are in trouble, economically. Dunno what to do about it, though.

mcgwiz 14y ago

I agree overall, but I don't think the basic mechanism of why we have more work than ever is "jobs finding a way." That characterizes the process as jobs self-replicating, mutating, and adapting. It's more that improvements in information processing generally (over the long-term) raise all boats, and do not fundamentally alter capitalism's competitive essence. Increasingly complex information processing can be automated, but that just moves the competition to a different playing field (er, boat pond). Until computers can create optimal, marketable solutions to novel problems, competition will always provide jobs for humans. They will just be different jobs.