I think the view that automation is now destroying jobs, the view that the economy always re-allocates the workforce appropriately and the views defended in this anti-FAQ all rest on a faulty generalisation. The industrial revolution and the early phases of computerisation produced jobs for specific reasons. Factories required workers and computers required data entry. It wasn’t a consequence of a general law of economics, it was a fortuitous consequence of the technology. We are now seeing the end of those specific reasons, but not because of a general trend to automation, but because our new technologies do not have the same fortuitous consequences. Namely, modern robotics do not create factory jobs and the end-to-end ubiquity of the Internet means data entry is done by the end-user. General intelligence doesn’t come into it; there has never been mass employment of general intelligence.
I think the view that automation is now destroying jobs, the view that the economy always re-allocates the workforce appropriately and the views defended in this anti-FAQ all rest on a faulty generalisation. The industrial revolution and the early phases of computerisation produced jobs for specific reasons. Factories required workers and computers required data entry. It wasn’t a consequence of a general law of economics, it was a fortuitous consequence of the technology. We are now seeing the end of those specific reasons, but not because of a general trend to automation, but because our new technologies do not have the same fortuitous consequences. Namely, modern robotics do not create factory jobs and the end-to-end ubiquity of the Internet means data entry is done by the end-user. General intelligence doesn’t come into it; there has never been mass employment of general intelligence.