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Economists Say Newest AI Technology Destroys More Jobs Than It Creates
HughPickens.com writes: Claire Cain Miller notes at the NY Times that economists long argued that, just as buggy-makers gave way to car factories, technology used to create as many jobs as it destroyed. But now there is deep uncertainty about whether the pattern will continue, as two trends are interacting. First, artificial intelligence has become vastly more sophisticated in a short time, with machines now able to learn, not just follow programmed instructions, and to respond to human language and movement. At the same time, the American work force has gained skills at a slower rate than in the past — and at a slower rate than in many other countries. Self-driving vehicles are an example of the crosscurrents. Autonomous cars could put truck and taxi drivers out of work — or they could enable drivers to be more productive during the time they used to spend driving, which could earn them more money. But for the happier outcome to happen, the drivers would need the skills to do new types of jobs.
When the University of Chicago asked a panel of leading economists about automation, 76 percent agreed that it had not historically decreased employment. But when asked about the more recent past, they were less sanguine. About 33 percent said technology was a central reason that median wages had been stagnant over the past decade, 20 percent said it was not and 29 percent were unsure. Perhaps the most worrisome development is how poorly the job market is already functioning for many workers. More than 16 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 54 are not working, up from 5 percent in the late 1960s; 30 percent of women in this age group are not working, up from 25 percent in the late 1990s. For those who are working, wage growth has been weak, while corporate profits have surged. "We're going to enter a world in which there's more wealth and less need to work," says Erik Brynjolfsson. "That should be good news. But if we just put it on autopilot, there's no guarantee this will work out."
When the University of Chicago asked a panel of leading economists about automation, 76 percent agreed that it had not historically decreased employment. But when asked about the more recent past, they were less sanguine. About 33 percent said technology was a central reason that median wages had been stagnant over the past decade, 20 percent said it was not and 29 percent were unsure. Perhaps the most worrisome development is how poorly the job market is already functioning for many workers. More than 16 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 54 are not working, up from 5 percent in the late 1960s; 30 percent of women in this age group are not working, up from 25 percent in the late 1990s. For those who are working, wage growth has been weak, while corporate profits have surged. "We're going to enter a world in which there's more wealth and less need to work," says Erik Brynjolfsson. "That should be good news. But if we just put it on autopilot, there's no guarantee this will work out."
... over the short term jobs may be lost. They were after every previous advancement. But then the market found a place for the labor that was freed up in the process.
What happened to all the men that used to clear wheat fields? At one time over 80 percent of the labor force was concerned with agriculture. Today it is less then 5 percent. What happened to all those men? Do you think they got jobs immediately? Look back to the industrial revolution. Look at the starvation, poverty, etc. What was going on there? They didn't have work or had to take subsistence labor. It took a generation at least to adapt.
And then conditions improved as the labor force adapted to the new job market. Think back to the child labor... children working in the factories... they grew up in those places and they learned. These were people that in many cases had no experience with machines prior to that generation. They had tools on the farm but not what modern people would call machines.
The lessons are hard and painful sometimes but... necessary. We can't go back. Anyone that disagrees with me can go back to clearing wheat fields any time.
I won't go back.
The agricultural revolution ate the hunter gathers and fenced off their nomadic world. It took from them the only way they knew how to live. They could either take up farming or die.
The industrial revolution made the farms so efficient that only a tiny fraction of the population could make a living on them. The rest were forced into cities to work in the factories.
The information revolution is making the factories so efficient that only a tiny fraction of the population can make a living working in them. And the same is carrying through the rest of our labor market.
The question will be... what does the labor market of the future offer for the common person? I couldn't say. But it will be something. It is always something.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I know you are being tongue and cheek, but very recent history is starting to show companies can make plenty of money just catering to the upper middle class. The richest company in the world (Apple) makes products that are only intended for a very small percentage of even a wealthy nation's population (46.3% of households with iPads have income over $100k). While rapid economic growth does need a sizable consumer class, I don't believe it necessarily needs a robust middle class. A much smaller but still sizable upper middle class will probably do just as well.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Back in the 60s and 70s they used to say that computerisation would give increased leisure time, with many of us working a 4 day week with a 7 hour day. I read that the predicted reduction in employment happened. The only problem is that it is shared out in such a way that some people can't get work or have to work on "zero hours" contracts for whatever time is available. The rest are over-worked and spend even longer in the office than they did in the 60s and 70s.
...very recent history is starting to show companies can make plenty of money just catering to the upper middle class...
It always was ever thus. Companies like Rolls Royce, Gucci and most of the retailers in the West End of London make money only from the affluent. The same could be said for owners of cruise liners, managers of hunting estates and wealth fund managers. In fact, most of the economy works by supplying goods and services to the rich.
On the other hand, many people make a living from the poor. Developers of social housing, discount retailers and energy companies are just a few examples of very large businesses that make a tidy living from selling stuff to people who are lower down the income scale.
In fact, we may be experiencing this trend right now. Economic growth is not needed anymore by the elites to increase their wellbeing, where it used to be neccesary.
The elites used to need an army of servants to clean their clothes, cooke their food, keep their houses, drive them around, manage their wealth and most of all, work on their factories... This is all being automated, and the new luxury is not based on people laboring for the elite, but on technology and resources available to the elite. The fact that labor was needed, and the unionization of workers, forced some redistribution of wealth during the past century. But it may be that in the history of humanity the past century is an exception and the "natural" state of society is to have a higher concentration of wealth than what we had in the sixties.
This would allow the elites to escape the general economy. They will build their luxury cars on automated factories, clean their houses with robots, be driven by robots (when they feel like not driving), manage their wealth with software and highly automated consultancy, shop on the internet... so what it matters that the economy is contracting as long as the luxury part of the economy grows? they don't need the goods made by the general economy as much as they used to. They will only need the highly skilled workers that produce new technologies, lay out new automated factories, build new medical procedures, manage their wealth, entertain them and teach their children.
They can be wealthy without having to spend a dime on other people, just on technology. This leaves the door open to a split in society where the wealthy people achieves "escape velocity" and they become a different class, or even a different species. The can manage the underclasses with the very powerful media and manipulation tools they have. They have all of the details about each one of us and the analytical tools to process them so they will be able to find the soft spots that can be used to convince a statistically sufficient part of the rest of us that "this is the only way it can be".
And we may be seing the beginning of this already...
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
Who said something about going back?
The question is, if labour becomes less and less necessary, how do we go FORWARD?
You don't go forward while looking back, as you did in your whole post, missing the points in the main article entirely.
Human population is expected to PEAK at 13-15 billion people. We can only hope that as technology matures, it will allow us to gracefully scale back the human population and have more meaningful and sustainable numbers on this planet, say max 1 billion people. Right now, the planet is going through an entirely new extinction period. Maybe we can prevent that?
It's too late to save the rainforests and genuine eco-systems on this planet. However, we can preserve what we can and even rebuild much of it..
I don't think this is right. While some people no doubt feel this way, as a society we rarely complain that some people have tons of possessions and status having done relatively little work. Lots of people inherit fortunes and we don't say its undeserved.
What we do think is that people who put in a lot of effort should be compensated, and we do that with possessions and status. Which becomes a problem if nobody wants your effort anymore and you don't have possessions and status already how can you obtain them?
Technology has always been in the business of reducing labor. The upshot has always been there has been more worth doing and society's wealth has increased. Once you don't have to have everyone hunting and gather constantly it frees time up, farming produces more food with less laybor resources so you start writing. Once you discover printing writing and copying takes less time, meaning more people can start reading; and it all snowballs. Fewer people are need to produce food, they produce other things.
The last area where technology has not saved labor is thinking. Once humans are freed from having to do all the thinking there is very real possibility the machines will solve the automation of the last hard to automate physical tasks which exist. At that point labor will no longer have any value, in trade. Now individuals might take personal satisfaction in doing something by hand but nothing produced that way will be marketable.
Trying to answer how society will function if it comes to pass that only capital is valuable and there is no value in labor and little in ideas is an interesting question. We are not there yet, not by a long stretch but the potential for it is looking less science fiction like all the time.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.
I'm a robotics and artificial intelligence researcher, and I have zero confidence that AI is much more capable of replacing human labor this year than it was 5 years ago.
The economy is in the toilet, but it's not because computers are taking people's jobs. If AI were progressing to a point where it could replace human labor, the cost of production would plummet and those of us who are working would have very low-cost consumer goods. Trust me, we will be happy for every advancement that AI and robotics brings us.
But who's going to do the 10% of the work that can't be done by machines? If the system is set up to distribute the wealth, and nobody has to work, who's going to do the 10% of the jobs that still require humans. Sure, some of them will be interesting jobs, and you might find people lining up to do them, just to keep their lives interesting. But there's still going to be jobs that nobody wants to do. These kinds of jobs exist already, but people do them because they need money, and they don't have a lot of other choices.
And that's at 10% of people working. Problems will become apparent in the current system way before that. Once you have 40-50% of people not working, it becomes essential that there's a system to redistribute the wealth such that people can live their lives. But then there's still 50% of people who need to work just to keep that going. And it's going to be very hard to convince people to go to work day in and day out when they can have a comfortable life doing whatever they please.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
This describes completely what most people would do if they had the option. Even myself, given the option that I could have a house, food, and all essential bills covered (heat, electricity, water), I would probably do pretty close to nothing. I probably wouldn't sit on the couch all day, but most of the time I definitely wouldn't be producing anything of value. Wake up, go for a bike ride in the morning, spend time with friends, play all those video games I've always wanted to play. I might take up hobbies and actually produce something, but I wouldn't be adherent to any kind of schedule and whether or not I could produce any item worth exchange for money.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Who wants jobs?
Seriously, who wants to commute 5 days a week and work 8+ hours a day doing something they'd rather not?
Let AI take all the jobs it can. As it does so, shorten the work week, provide more benefits to the people, and before long we're living in a utopia where more time is ours to work on our hobbies and spend time with our families and friends. Of course, we'd have to prevent private industry from owning all the robots and AI, less they become the de facto new government.
My thoughts on this is that an arrangement could be made where private industry has to pay a monthly fee to the government - what amounts to a small salary - which goes towards benefits/income to the masses. Private industry gets work done through AI and robots at less than what it would cost to employ someone, and that money goes to the benefit of the people.
Of course, it's more complicated than that, and that's just one possible scenario that could work. But the point is - the goal isn't more jobs, but a better life.
Who cleans the toilets on the starship Enterprise?
I also always wondered about the waiters at restaurants on Star Trek. Nobody needs to work. There's free energy and free food. I totally get the idea that some people would choose to submit to a military hierarchy for a chance to explore the galaxy and conduct research, treat the sick, engineer great things. Give me free everything and I'd still write code. I enjoy it. I'd do more, not less!
But you still see people do shit jobs on Star Trek. I understand perhaps the barber on the Enterprise, or the waiters in Ten Forward. You want a ride on the starship, but you're not smart enough to get through the academy, so you sign on as a waiter. But there were still people doing this kind of shit on earth. Like at Sisko's dad's restaurant. Who the hell, given the wonders of the future, free of want and worry, says "I'm going to go wait tables for 8 hours at a stretch!"
Maybe they get paid a lot. Maybe that's the answer to the "10% of people working" thing. Those people are paid a shit-ton. They get way more resources than everybody else. And they're the ones doing the worst jobs. Perhaps the janitor really will be the highest paid employee at the company.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
40-50%?!? Really?!?
All it will take is about 20%-25% unemployment for social order in the US to break down. The "thinkers" in govt, business and academia know this. The increasing militarization of the police, the complete disregard for the Constitution, the NSA monitoring everything, etc is getting ready for this. The canard of islamic terrorism was a good ploy and it has worked very well.
As much as I love the idea of robots creating a paradise on earth for humans to live out their fantasies and do what they all really ever wanted to do, without the need for working,etc; I just don't see that happening. Greed will win out. It always has.
Again I will reccomend the following good read on this subject: Manna by Marshall Brain.
So again, the question remains, and will continue to for the foreseeable future, what are the millions of soon to be unemployed going to do? Who will feed them, house them, etc?
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
But who's going to do the 10% of the work that can't be done by machines? If the system is set up to distribute the wealth, and nobody has to work, who's going to do the 10% of the jobs that still require humans. Sure, some of them will be interesting jobs, and you might find people lining up to do them, just to keep their lives interesting. But there's still going to be jobs that nobody wants to do. These kinds of jobs exist already, but people do them because they need money, and they don't have a lot of other choices.
And that's at 10% of people working. Problems will become apparent in the current system way before that. Once you have 40-50% of people not working, it becomes essential that there's a system to redistribute the wealth such that people can live their lives. But then there's still 50% of people who need to work just to keep that going. And it's going to be very hard to convince people to go to work day in and day out when they can have a comfortable life doing whatever they please.
Automation was suppose to produce a 10 hour work week. That never materialized yet but that's probably the better direction to go.
If most of the crap jobs disappear and there are more workers than jobs then maybe the solution is to make it illegal to work more that
20 hours a week. Heck, if you just made it illegal to work more than 40 hours a week in the USA, you would instantly create millions of
new jobs.
I actually think we're at the point where we can start to do this. There's enough wealth to give everyone a living-wage stipend without requiring that they have a job. Enough to cover food, shelter, clothing, and health care so no one ever has to worry about starving or freezing to death, but not enough for a lot of luxuries. To get more, a person needs to work at one of the jobs that automation can't yet do. As automation improves and is capable of taking over more, the line between "necessities" and "luxuries" will shift until, at the extreme when automation can do everything, everything will be classified as "necessity".
There will be people who just don't want to work and are satisfied with the basic stipend. That's fine. I think that most people want to do some sort of job, though. They may not want to the job they have, or may not want to work as much as they currently do, but in general I think people like to have a sense that they're doing something useful. People will find a way to make some luxury money with their hobbies and by doing the things they like to do.
But who will do the dirty work? Who will be the garbage collectors, the janitors, etc? I have a feeling that the current wage structure will be turned on its head. If no one has to do the dirty, dangerous jobs in order to eat we'll have to increase the wages to create the incentive. The person who cleans the toilets might end up getting paid more than the middle manager in the cushy office. This extremely socialist society might finally achieve the free-market ideal in the labor market by giving everyone the ability to say, "Screw it. I'm not getting paid enough for this bullshit."
Yeah, the devil's in the details. This scheme has a hell of a lot of details to work out, and even in the best case I can't see any politically feasible way to get from here to there. I anticipate that we're going to have a very nasty time of it as the pool of workers grows and the pool of jobs shrinks, until the culture grows out of the "Why should I work to pay for them to be lazy?" mentality.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.