Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Utxi4m t1_j4gc5i5 wrote

>Robots and AI tend to increase unemployment. High-level estimates say that AI and automation could affect or eliminate one-quarter of United States jobs.

The combine harvester (the industrialisation of agriculture) eliminated 90-95% of jobs, the sowing machine and standardisation of parts killed off the rest.

We somehow managed anyway.

The last place I worked, a team of 8 process operators had replaced several hundreds if not thousands of workers (producing about 1000 tons of animal feed a day).

6

Shelsonw t1_j4gfyt4 wrote

I think the big difference here, and I may be wrong. Is that the Combine Harvester really affected ONE industry; Agriculture. At the same time, the Industrial Revolution was ongoing, so factory jobs were emerging. People who lost jobs on farms, moved to cities and found work in factories.

AI will disrupt EVERY industry at once. Lost your job in fast food? Can’t go to a factory. Lost your job as a digital artist? Can’t move to coding, AI is doing that too. Lost your job as a cab driver? Can’t go to a government analyst,AI is writing policy now.

Yes, technological advances have had massive impacts, and generally created more jobs than they removed. But I can’t think of many technological advances that impact so many different job fields at the same time.

12

kiloheavy t1_j4ggokz wrote

You're absolutely correct. As far as I can tell, this period is unique in human history in the sense that the dominant social system (capitalism) is failing, but nothing is rising to take its place.

8

Background_Agent551 t1_j4h0t9l wrote

Capitalism isn’t failing, the capitalists are taking advantage of our system to enrich themselves while we do nothing about it. The majority of the inflation we’ve felt the past two years have been manufactured due to Big Business wanting more and more profits each year.

8

kiloheavy t1_j4h0yb1 wrote

... you have just described how and why capitalism is failing.

2

Background_Agent551 t1_j4h5g7u wrote

Right, but that isn’t capitalism failing. Sure, the system is unfair and needs serious reworking in order to manifest a better society, but at the end of the day, capitalism is simply a theoretical economic system of living. Right now what’s propagating most of our problems is human greed. I think in order to fix the issue, we’d still have to work under a capitalist system, but one that values the work and lives of ordinarily people at the behest of less profits. Note that I didn’t say no profits, but less profits. That’s the problem, that the people in charge of our country only want to see their profits go up at the expense of our livelihoods and the environment. The decision makers benefit from our service and labor to their companies and to the economy. For a capitalist system to work, there is an unwritten social contract which employers and workers enter. That social contract is that in order to give workers a reason to work, they’ll need to be well-compensated and motivated workforce to work for you. It’s seems like capitalists have forgotten our social contract, but all it takes is a reminder that we are the ones with the skills needed to power the economy to remind them who exactly pays and works for their way of living. We as consumers buy into their products and services, enriching them not only with our work and services, but also whenever we buy their stuff. We invest into their companies, why shouldn’t those companies invest back into our country? Why shouldn’t the companies that we’ve propped up with our money, services, and labor, invest in a better society with our money and capital? We need to fix our system to benefit the worker who works and buys into our current system. Companies and institutions need to realize that it benefits them more for the populous to be happy and incentivized to work rather than miserable and ready to tear down the system that’s never benefitted them. As long as their mindset continues to be exploiting the American worker until a cheaper replacement is available, nothing will change in this country. We’ve got to remind our decision makers that we work and pay into this system not only to enrich Big Business and it’s cronies, but because we expect the companies that we’ve enriched to invest back into our society. That is the only way we’ll be able to bring the power back to the people.

3

Saeker- t1_j4htlxf wrote

I like to say that we've allowed the Profit Motive to displace the Survival Imperative in our society's decision making. We therefore aren't 'Serious' about running our society with an eye towards long term survival.

I find the Corporatist blind focus on eternally 'Making the line go up!' to be quite similar to an organ tumor's abandonment of its needed role within the body. Purposeless 'growth', even as it kills the host body with its myopic aim.

We need industry (really), but we also need to facilitate people being able to live, thrive, and build those future lives that mark Life's real score card of Survival - not mere growth.

In essence, I have no faith that legalistic entities programmed with the ethos of an organ tumor can be relied upon to care about that 'unwritten social contract' you are leaning upon. They aren't focused on what the society needs to survive anymore than a cancer-ridden vital organ is within the body.

Something outside of a Corporation's legally bound outlook towards profits at all costs seems plausibly needed to rebound us from our current calamitous trajectory - and that's before this thread's main topic of A.I. and job loss.

Short answer on A.I. and job loss is my expectation that Industry and the Financial sector will try to gobble up as much profit as possible, consequences to the population and planet be damned.

Society, on the other hand, might potentially react to the challenge and actually try to do something to reign them in. That or A.I. might go rampant, pull a 'Colossus: The Forbin Project' style move (better than Skynet), or otherwise upset the applecart in a whole library of science fictional scenarios.

It's a big topic with a branching multiverse of outcomes we'll be trying to muddle through in the next chunk of history.

2

Utxi4m t1_j4gh5jc wrote

Every technological singularity leaves us with no visibility of how the economy would look on the other side.

A postman being disrupted in the nineties by e-mail would hardly be able to understand the concept of a social media manager. For a lot of functions the internet represented a singularity in it self.

Much as a 6 yo British coal miner couldn't envisage a nuclear power plant operator, we don't have the visibility to see what lies on the other side of the robotics/AI singularity. It might very well be shit, it might be heaven, we simply just can't tell (that's why such an event got the name singularity in the first place).

5

Lickmylife t1_j4h8h9c wrote

It’s very easy to imagine the jobs a new tech will eliminate. It’s much harder to imagine the jobs that will be created to fill the space.

How many people are currently exploring space or staffing deep sea hotels? New industries have always come to fill in the gaps that advances created. We will just to have to see what these advances allow us to accomplish!

2