If it takes 1 year to re-train a person to the level of employability in a new profession, and every year 2% of jobs are automated out of existence, then you’ll get a minimum of 2% unemployment.
If it takes 4 years to re-train a person to the level of employability in a new profession, and every year 2% of jobs are automated out of existence, then you’ll get a minimum of 8% unemployment.
If it takes 4 years to re-train a person to the level of employability in a new profession, and every year 5% of jobs are automated out of existence, then you’ll get a minimum of 20% unemployment.
It isn’t so much the progress, as the rate of progress.
Yudkowsky mentions that there is a near unlimited demand for low skill personal service jobs, such as cleaning floors, and that the ‘problem’ of unemployment could be seen as people being unwilling to work such jobs at the wages supply-and-demand rate them as being worth. But I think that’s wrong. If a person can’t earn enough money to survive upon, by working all the hours of a week that they’re awake at a particular job, then effectively that job doesn’t exist. There may be a near unlimited numbers of families willing to pay a $0.50 an hour for someone to clean floors in their home, but there are only a limited number who’re willing to offer a living wage for doing so.
If it takes 1 year to re-train a person to the level of employability in a new profession, and every year 2% of jobs are automated out of existence, then you’ll get a minimum of 2% unemployment.
If it takes 4 years to re-train a person to the level of employability in a new profession, and every year 2% of jobs are automated out of existence, then you’ll get a minimum of 8% unemployment.
If it takes 4 years to re-train a person to the level of employability in a new profession, and every year 5% of jobs are automated out of existence, then you’ll get a minimum of 20% unemployment.
It isn’t so much the progress, as the rate of progress.
Yudkowsky mentions that there is a near unlimited demand for low skill personal service jobs, such as cleaning floors, and that the ‘problem’ of unemployment could be seen as people being unwilling to work such jobs at the wages supply-and-demand rate them as being worth. But I think that’s wrong. If a person can’t earn enough money to survive upon, by working all the hours of a week that they’re awake at a particular job, then effectively that job doesn’t exist. There may be a near unlimited numbers of families willing to pay a $0.50 an hour for someone to clean floors in their home, but there are only a limited number who’re willing to offer a living wage for doing so.
In the Western world you don’t need to earn any money to physically survive.
Your life may not be particularly pleasant but you will not starve to death in a ditch.