People are worried that AI will take everyone’s jobs. We’ve been here before.
People are worried that AI will take everyone’s jobs. We’ve been here before.
In a 1938 article, MIT’s president argued that technical progress didn’t mean fewer jobs. He’s still right.
In a 1938 article, MIT’s president argued that technical progress didn’t mean fewer jobs. He’s still right.
Compton drew a sharp distinction between the consequences of technological progress on “industry as a whole” and the effects, often painful, on individuals.
For “industry as a whole,” he concluded, “technological unemployment is a myth.” That’s because, he argued, technology "has created so many new industries” and has expanded the market for many items by “lowering the cost of production to make a price within reach of large masses of purchasers.” In short, technological advances had created more jobs overall. The argument—and the question of whether it is still true—remains pertinent in the age of AI.
Then Compton abruptly switched perspectives, acknowledging that for some workers and communities, “technological unemployment may be a very serious social problem, as in a town whose mill has had to shut down, or in a craft which has been superseded by a new art.”
Previous increases in automation and productivity have brought new goods, services, wealth. To be perfectly honest I'm largely done.
The next wave of progress needs to not bring new things but to bring more time off.
The only things I probably want in terms of future tech is medical advances and VR. Everything else fuck it. I'm okay with all the media we got, the Internet, TV games, food, hobbies. I don't have smart anything except a phone. I'm done.
Give me a 4 day work week for what I have now. Then 3 then 2 then 1. I'm done. I don't need more.
Previous results are not sufficient to forecast the future.
The only things I probably want in terms of future tech is
And how would you know? Before cars nobody anticipated them. Same with planes, computers, smartphones... You won't anticipate close to all new tech by extrapolating what we have.
I don't want a car. I don't have one currently. In 1829 Stephenson showed trains were the future and that remains the same today.
I'm not convinced planes and computers have been good for the world. Though I have enjoyed them both tremendously.
But I'm ready to be an old man holding on to old tech. Fuck man. You ever quit your job and travelled the world? Playing poker on a wooden bench with a single light bulb next to the beach, with people you met that day is so much better than the Internet. The shame of it is that most people haven't.
We gave up community and happiness for isolation and sadness.
Also I'm old enough to have seen personal computers change the world. A lot has been lost in the last 2 decades.
that's all very nice but you don't get a vote on how this turns out. very few if any will.
Of course I do.
I can vote for someone to represent me in government. The problem is the voting system is shit that no one will vote to change and that people vote for idiots.
At this point it's the people fault.
There's no new jobs for horses after the combustion engine was invented to do physical labor - why would there be more "intelligence jobs" for humans when intelligence is automated? If it's a pertinent question then such people have not questioned their wishful thinking.
AI today doesn't need to affect all jobs to cause mass disruptions. The biggest industry is transport - what jobs does MIT’s president imagine will be created for 60 year old truckers if they're replaced with autos? Do we get the funny joke where people suggest truckers should learn programming?
what jobs does MIT’s president imagine will be created for 60 year old truckers if they’re replaced with autos? Do we get the funny joke where people suggest truckers should learn programming?
The way it's developing, programmers will be replaced before drivers.
There’s no new jobs for horses after the combustion engine was invented to do physical labor
Bingo. And this time we're the horses.
Did you even read the paragraphs I pulled out, not even the article itself?
Then Compton abruptly switched perspectives, acknowledging that for some workers and communities, “technological unemployment may be a very serious social problem, as in a town whose mill has had to shut down, or in a craft which has been superseded by a new art.”
His whole point was technology does not reduce the amount of employment as a whole, but it can focus pain on particular communities that get displaced by technology. I just don't buy into the tech bro singularity cult that AI will grow at an exponential rate and replace everyone, AI will be a tool like any other - extending human capabilities but not replacing them entirely.
Humans were the best chess players until computers brute forced the solution with uninteligent computational power. Humans were the best at Chinese Go for longer as brute forcing would take too long. Humans were no longer the best at Go when machine learning beat pros consistently. This is one-way, hunans don't win back ground. If we assume AI doesn't get better than this saying "technology does not reduce unemployment" is still short sighted.
The alignment problem should be taken seriously even if wealthy assholes agree, but AI killing humans is a seperate issue.
Someone has to keep the robots in check.
Until we have cylons, I suppose. Then they'll just kill us and be the dominant things on earth.
There’s no new jobs for horses after the combustion engine was invented to do physical labor - why would there be more “intelligence jobs” for humans when intelligence is automated?
Because humans are "general purpose" and horses are "specialized" for example. What other job can a horse do ?
I've heard horses have a social hierarchy and good emotional awareness. Hopefully humans can focus on being social with each other when there isn't enough jobs to go around.
This time is different. If AI were to remain what it is today, the article would be correct, but AI won't. It's a fundamentally new kind of technology, unlike anything else that has ever been created by humans. It only seems like more of the same to some people because it's so very new and primitive compared to what it will be soon. This won't be humans losing their jobs, this will be humanity losing its job. There will be plenty of new industries created but they will be run by AI for AI.
With that said, it won't necessarily be bad. It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
I am surprised how many people don’t see where it’s going and hand wave away the issue. It’s going to become a lot more advanced than it already is in just a few years. This is an entirely different situation than we’ve ever experienced.
Yup. CGPGrey made a video about this 9 years go explaining why AI will be different than previous technological disruptions.
Tldr: in this “revolution” we get to play the part of the horses from the Industrial Revolution.
The last revolution made more and better jobs for horses at the start. Then it made less and zero jobs for horses. This one could be the same for humans.
IT guy here, I am not that worried about AI, I kinda see it in a similar situation as 3D movies, a fad, with a cool core technology, but way overhyped.
Right now AI companies are trying to find their place, and some will, but most will fail.
The main issue woth AI as we see it today is that it is too unreliable, while stating incorrect informstion as if it is completely true.
I tried Bings AI a few times last year, and while cool, it would often lie or if I am asking for a powershell script to do X, it would send me incomplete or broken scripts, I'd have to talk to it and explain what was missing, then baby it through completing the task.
AI as it is now, will not work good enough to be usefull data
I'm also a IT guy, I can see many things like data engineering, document verification, data entry etc being automated. Some jobs won't disappear but the headcount in companies surely will decrease. A lot of these automation stuff don't even need AI, it's just smarter and more efficient softwares we are having nowadays. A lot these high paying jobs won't need experienced high salaried people instead companies will hire freshers or those from developing countries at low wages.
IT guy here, I am not that worried about AI
That's pretty much because you're an IT guy. You're in an industry that AI won't replace any time soon.
If you were a cashier, or a stock clerk, or a busboy, you should be terrified by AI. The speed at which those jobs are already vanishing is astounding. The other day I was at a restaurant, and I never interacted with a human. The ordering was done by touch panel at my table, the food was delivered to the table by a robot and I paid at an automated terminal. I don't know how many staff were on duty but it had to be a fraction of what it would have been a decade ago. I bought clothes last week and there was one employee in the store, overseeing the self-checkout lanes (but really just sitting idly by in case anyone had issues). I read an article yesterday about how robots are now being distributed to convenience stores that can clean, stock, and reorder items, so these shops will pretty soon have only one employee in them.
The gimmicky shit that your browser AI and chatbots can do is nothing compared to how this is already revolutionizing the world.
That's only text generation, but we see AI art everywhere. Just think that every piece of AI art you see could have been comissioned.
Hell, Prince of Persia:The last crown launched with a character that had ai voice over
Is worth mentioning that you only scratched the surface of chat bots. ViewGrabber on Youtube shows how chat bots now can have character cards, a description of the world they live in, their relation with others, a history of every event that happened...
The potential of that is shown in this video of Two Minute Papers which shows a full AI video game company powered by ChatGPT that has made games you can play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zlgkzjndpak
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From what I noticed working tech, there is a pressure to be on the cutting edge at all costs and a lot of stuff gets over hyped to sell things to MBAs. I've seen a few disruptive technologies come in. They are almost never wrong about what the thing is or will be, but they are almost always wrong about the timeline it comes into being in a really mature way.
Are there any technologies that ended up being disruptive, but at the time, you thought "wow, what a load of hot air?. What about the opposite?
For a fizzle, its a little deep in the weeds, but network automation was totally overblown. 10-15 years ago it was said all the network guys would be coders and never touch a physical network device again. Nowadays, most of the services that do this are either jenky and bad, locked to a single vendor, or both, and most of the idea of "coding" is kind of abstracted from it. Some places build their own code infrastructure for networking but it's usually just a few specialized devops guys, supporting a full network team, and making the benign changes that don't require much though. It just never materialized like they predicted it would. It will someday, it's just long been delayed.
For a flash, I'd say cloud services, but it hasn't lead to the mass lay offs of sys admins like was originally predicted. Sys admins traded fussing about wattages and rackspace for build more complicated logical infrastructures for servers they can spin up out of nothing.
If technological develop it's not intended to reduce labor hours and redistribute wealth, what it's intended for? For the rich to being more rich?
Yes. That's all anything is for.
There's a difference between what's intended for, and what is used for.
To increase humanities control over its environment. The form that takes is a secondary concern
They say technology tends to eliminate lower skill jobs. But actually it often transmutes a high skill job into several lower skill jobs. Often without reducing the actual skill required in any way.
Thank you. This was cathertic for my anxiety. I can now go back to just worrying about the Mexicans.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Mechanical switching being adopted by the nation’s telephone network was wiping out the need for local phone operators, one of the most common jobs for young American women in the early 20th century.
Impressive recent breakthroughs in generative AI, smart robots, and driverless cars are again leading many to worry that advanced technologies will replace human workers and decrease the overall demand for labor.
Then Compton abruptly switched perspectives, acknowledging that for some workers and communities, “technological unemployment may be a very serious social problem, as in a town whose mill has had to shut down, or in a craft which has been superseded by a new art.”
Industrial robots had killed off many well-paying manufacturing jobs in places like the Rust Belt, and now AI and other digital technologies were coming after clerical and office jobs—and even, it was feared, truck driving.
In his farewell speech before leaving office in January 2017, President Barack Obama spoke about “the relentless pace of automation that makes a lot of good middle-class jobs obsolete.” By that time, it was clear that Compton’s optimism needed to be rethought.
In an interview late last year with the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, Elon Musk declared there will come a time when “no job is needed,” thanks to an AI “magic genie that can do everything you want.” Musk added that as a result, “we won’t have universal basic income, we’ll have universal high income”—apparently answering Compton’s rhetorical question about whether machines will be “the genii which … supply every need and desire of man.”
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