You don’t end up permanently irrevocably unemployed until all the work you can do has been automated away.
And in a world where all work CAN be automated, human service can still exist side-by-side. A robot might be able to cut my hair, but I’d pay a premium to have a person do it because I enjoy the experience (I sometimes pay for barber shaves before job interviews rather than do it myself). Similarly, I’d probably pay a premium for an actual bartender over a barmonkey type robot in many settings. I pay a premium over Amazon at the nearby bookstore because I enjoy the old medieval history phd who runs the shop and his conversations/recommendations,etc. I can imagine a world full of robots where face-to-face service becomes the luxury item.
That is very plausibly a world in which unemployment is massively higher than today, if sentiment is the only remaining reason to employ humans at anything; and a world in which a few capital-holders are the only ones who can afford to employ all these premium human hairdressers etcetera. If this is how things end up, then I would call my thesis falsified, and admit that the view I criticized was correct.
If this happens, then some of the robots will start to look and behave exactly like humans. Robot prostitutes would look like human supermodels. This’ll cause more unemployment.
Don’t underestimate humans’ desire for authenticity. As an example, note that even nowadays, some people do pay extra for handcrafted knickknacks and such like. You can say its a silly desire, but it’s what they want. If you said to them “Hey, want to buy this factory made knickknack? It looks just like a handmade one.” they would for the most part, just turn you down. For better or worse, the desire for authenticity seems to be a deep part of humanity’s utility function.
Or look at the well known thought experiment of the transporter device. You step in, it scans your body, disintegrates your body, sends the message of what your body was like to the destination transporter, which then reconstructs you, exactly like you were before. Most humans express serious misgivings about going through one of those. They feel it wouldn’t be “the real them” anymore. Is that silly? Yes. But it reflects our human desire for “authenticity”.
And in a world where all work CAN be automated, human service can still exist side-by-side. A robot might be able to cut my hair, but I’d pay a premium to have a person do it because I enjoy the experience (I sometimes pay for barber shaves before job interviews rather than do it myself). Similarly, I’d probably pay a premium for an actual bartender over a barmonkey type robot in many settings. I pay a premium over Amazon at the nearby bookstore because I enjoy the old medieval history phd who runs the shop and his conversations/recommendations,etc. I can imagine a world full of robots where face-to-face service becomes the luxury item.
That is very plausibly a world in which unemployment is massively higher than today, if sentiment is the only remaining reason to employ humans at anything; and a world in which a few capital-holders are the only ones who can afford to employ all these premium human hairdressers etcetera. If this is how things end up, then I would call my thesis falsified, and admit that the view I criticized was correct.
If this happens, then some of the robots will start to look and behave exactly like humans. Robot prostitutes would look like human supermodels. This’ll cause more unemployment.
Don’t underestimate humans’ desire for authenticity. As an example, note that even nowadays, some people do pay extra for handcrafted knickknacks and such like. You can say its a silly desire, but it’s what they want. If you said to them “Hey, want to buy this factory made knickknack? It looks just like a handmade one.” they would for the most part, just turn you down. For better or worse, the desire for authenticity seems to be a deep part of humanity’s utility function.
Or look at the well known thought experiment of the transporter device. You step in, it scans your body, disintegrates your body, sends the message of what your body was like to the destination transporter, which then reconstructs you, exactly like you were before. Most humans express serious misgivings about going through one of those. They feel it wouldn’t be “the real them” anymore. Is that silly? Yes. But it reflects our human desire for “authenticity”.