The Software Revolution

An anonymous reader writes: Y Combinator president Sam Altman writes about how the third great technological revolution — which he calls the software revolution — is affecting the world economy. He says, "It appears that the software revolution will do what technology usually does—create wealth but destroy jobs. Of course, we will probably find new things to do to satisfy limitless human demand. But we should stop pretending that the software revolution, by itself, is going to be good for median wages.

Trying to hold on to worthless jobs is a terrible but popular idea. Trying to find new jobs for billions of people is a good idea but obviously very hard because whatever the new jobs are, they will probably be so fundamentally different from anything that exists today that meaningful planning is almost impossible. ... The second major challenge of the software revolution is the concentration of power in small groups. ... I think the best strategy is to try to legislate sensible safeguards but work very hard to make sure the edge we get from technology on the good side is stronger than the edge that bad actors get."

Comments

Wrong perpetrator

[msobkow]

The problem is not the technology itself.

The problem is the banks and corporations that siphon off billions by leaving prices artificially high instead of passing along the cost-savings of technology to consumers.

Seriously. What is Apple doing except sitting on billions it's siphoned off? It's not even paying it's fair share of taxes on that money! Or the big banks, who get levied huge fines for their outrageously illegal behaviour, but just bill the consumer for the expense and see none of their executive or board members put behind bars.

Unless and until we resolve those problems, technological advances will just be a convenient red-herring scapegoat for distracting us all from those real problems.