On the other side, I’m frustrated by people failing to understand that technological progress creates new jobs in the process of destroying old ones, and that this is a net good, even though the people losing their jobs are the most visible.
Is this thing still considered obvious these days? The problem with it is that the new jobs that still need people to do them are getting more difficult. We seem to have actually viable self-driving cars now, which hints that just needing to do hand-eye coordination in diverse environments no longer guarantees that a job needs a human to do it.
If we ever get automated natural language interfaces to be actually good, that’s another massive sector of human labor, customer service, who just got replacable with a bunch of $10 microprocessors and a software license. So, do we now assure everyone that good natural language interfaces will never happen, even though self-driving cars obviously were never going to work in the real world either, except that now they appear to do?
At least the people in high abstraction knowledge work can be at peace knowing that if automation ever gets around to doing their jobs better than them, they probably don’t need to worry very long about unemployment on the account of everybody probably ending up dead.
There’s a lot of status quo bias here. Once upon a time, elevators and telephones had operators, but no longer.
The problem with it is that the new jobs that still need people to do them are getting more difficult.
This is an important fact, if true. There are obvious lock-in effects. For example, unemployed auto workers have skills that are no longer valued in the market because of automation. But the claim that replacement jobs are systematically more difficult, so that newly unemployed lack the capacity to learn the new jobs, is a much stronger claim.
But the claim that replacement jobs are systematically more difficult, so that newly unemployed lack the capacity to learn the new jobs, is a much stronger claim.
Yes. It’s obviously true that useful things that are easier to automate will get automated more, so the job loss should grow from the easily automated end. The open question is how much do human skill distributions and the human notion of ‘difficulty’ match up with the easier to automate thing. It’s obviously not a complete match, as a human job, bookkeeping is considered to require more skill than warehouse work, but bookkeeping is much more easily automated than warehouse work.
Human labor in basic production, farming, mining, manufacturing, basically relies on humans coming with built-in hand-eye coordination and situation awareness that has been impossible to automate satisfactorily so far. Human labor in these areas mostly consists of following instructions though, so get a good enough machine solutions for hand-eye coordination and situation awareness in the real world, and most just-following-orders, dealing-with-dumb-matter human labor is toast.
Then there’s the simpler service labor where you deal with other humans and need to model humans successfully. This is probably more difficult, AI-wise. Then again, these jobs are also less essential, people don’t seem to miss the telephone and elevator operators much. Human service personnel are an obvious status signal, but if the automated solution is 100x cheaper, actual human service personnel is going to end up a luxury good, and the nearby grocery store and fast food restaurant probably won’t be hiring human servers if they can make do with a clunky automated order and billing system. In addition to being more scarce, high-grade customer service jobs at status-conscious organizations are going to require more skills than a random grocery store cashier job.
This leaves us mostly with various types of abstract knowledge work, which are generally considered the types of job that require the most skill. Also, one dealing with people job sector where the above argument of replacing humans with automated systems that aren’t full AIs won’t work are various security professions. You can’t do away with modeling other humans very well and being very good at social situation awareness there.
Human service personnel are an obvious status signal, but if the automated solution is 100x cheaper, actual human service personnel is going to end up a luxury good
On the other hand, the wealth said automated solutions will generate means that luxury goods are a lot more affordable.
Edit: The downside is that this means that most jobs will essentially consist of playing status games, I believe the common word for this is decadence.
Is this thing still considered obvious these days? The problem with it is that the new jobs that still need people to do them are getting more difficult. We seem to have actually viable self-driving cars now, which hints that just needing to do hand-eye coordination in diverse environments no longer guarantees that a job needs a human to do it.
If we ever get automated natural language interfaces to be actually good, that’s another massive sector of human labor, customer service, who just got replacable with a bunch of $10 microprocessors and a software license. So, do we now assure everyone that good natural language interfaces will never happen, even though self-driving cars obviously were never going to work in the real world either, except that now they appear to do?
At least the people in high abstraction knowledge work can be at peace knowing that if automation ever gets around to doing their jobs better than them, they probably don’t need to worry very long about unemployment on the account of everybody probably ending up dead.
There’s a lot of status quo bias here. Once upon a time, elevators and telephones had operators, but no longer.
This is an important fact, if true. There are obvious lock-in effects. For example, unemployed auto workers have skills that are no longer valued in the market because of automation. But the claim that replacement jobs are systematically more difficult, so that newly unemployed lack the capacity to learn the new jobs, is a much stronger claim.
Yes. It’s obviously true that useful things that are easier to automate will get automated more, so the job loss should grow from the easily automated end. The open question is how much do human skill distributions and the human notion of ‘difficulty’ match up with the easier to automate thing. It’s obviously not a complete match, as a human job, bookkeeping is considered to require more skill than warehouse work, but bookkeeping is much more easily automated than warehouse work.
Human labor in basic production, farming, mining, manufacturing, basically relies on humans coming with built-in hand-eye coordination and situation awareness that has been impossible to automate satisfactorily so far. Human labor in these areas mostly consists of following instructions though, so get a good enough machine solutions for hand-eye coordination and situation awareness in the real world, and most just-following-orders, dealing-with-dumb-matter human labor is toast.
Then there’s the simpler service labor where you deal with other humans and need to model humans successfully. This is probably more difficult, AI-wise. Then again, these jobs are also less essential, people don’t seem to miss the telephone and elevator operators much. Human service personnel are an obvious status signal, but if the automated solution is 100x cheaper, actual human service personnel is going to end up a luxury good, and the nearby grocery store and fast food restaurant probably won’t be hiring human servers if they can make do with a clunky automated order and billing system. In addition to being more scarce, high-grade customer service jobs at status-conscious organizations are going to require more skills than a random grocery store cashier job.
This leaves us mostly with various types of abstract knowledge work, which are generally considered the types of job that require the most skill. Also, one dealing with people job sector where the above argument of replacing humans with automated systems that aren’t full AIs won’t work are various security professions. You can’t do away with modeling other humans very well and being very good at social situation awareness there.
On the other hand, the wealth said automated solutions will generate means that luxury goods are a lot more affordable.
Edit: The downside is that this means that most jobs will essentially consist of playing status games, I believe the common word for this is decadence.