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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."
That's what jobs used to be, work, stuff that you don't want to do, hence getting paid to do that stuff. Modern technology is invented by people who think: "That looks boring, dangerous and/or unhealthy. Let's find a way to get rid of that work." Destroying "jobs" is the very purpose of technology. If people find work that was previously unnecessary, then that's essentially a negative side effect (although usually combined with the positive side effect of a higher standard of living through higher total productivity). But still, "creating jobs" has never been the purpose of technology.
We must find an efficient way to destroy this human surplus (families included) in short order.
Be part of the solution then. Jump off of a bridge.
And chicks for free?
Of course, there are already large swaths of people who do little to no useful work and have high social status...
There has always been a small percentage of aristocrats in society who do not have to work because of their amassed wealth. Looking at how they spent their time is probably a decent indicator of how most of the population will spend their time 50-100 years from now. My guess is most people will put far more effort into their hobbies, and many of those hobbies will turn into part time jobs. All basic and even most non-basic needs will be covered by social welfare programs paid for by publicly owned mostly-automated industries. People will only work because they want to, and the very few undesirable jobs that can't be automated will pay excessively well.
At least that is the best possible outcome. Their are plenty of dystopian possibilities as well.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Disclaimer: I've been an industrial automation engineer since the PLC-2 and System 1 were king. I'm still at it, killing jobs wherever possible. Not out of malice, nor with any joy in that, but just doing my job.
TFA may be authored by a fuzzy-headed economist, but the core concept is undeniable. Humankind faces a surplus of employable bodies, and a deficit of employer positions, in the industrialized world. This trend can be compared to the situations in a lot of 3rd World countries. The industrialized nations, once fully built-out with AI and AA (Advanced Automation) will become 3rd world societies too. We're getting close to the tipping point already. There are only so many burgers to be flipped, and consumers with enough money to buy them.
Nature used to auto-correct overpopulation problems, with food supply vs. demand being the major engine. Is that what we're going to see when the whole world becomes third world? All the attendant unrest and upheaval will not be pretty.
My own solution: Enable and reward birth control wherever possible. Not as efficient as famine or genocide, but much less nasty.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
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.
It's not clear that Apple could survive in isolation. A lot of their components are only as cheap as they are because of other lower-margin companies paying a big chunk of the R&D costs. When Apple was using PowerPC processors and were the only customer for IBM or Motorola for a particular chip, they found it very difficult to compete. They're designing their own ARM cores now, but they're benefitting enormously from the thriving ARM software ecosystem.
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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."
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.
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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.
On top of this is the widely reported problem of "shortage of skilled workers" caused by a combination of agism and lack of willingness to pay them to do the job, not an actual shortage of skilled workers.
For example, today's news is that we are importing medical staff from Portugal, because the local people cannot survive on the wages, and the Portuguese cannot imagine how high living costs are here (especially housing and travel).
The jobs market is in need of some serious fixing.
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