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Central Bankers Warned Of Possible Economic 'Robocalypse' (seattletimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Seattle Times:
At an exclusive gathering at a golf resort near Lisbon, the big minds of monetary policy were seriously discussing the risk that artificial intelligence could eliminate jobs on a scale that would dwarf previous waves of technological change. "There is no question we are in an era of people asking, 'Is the Robocalpyse upon us?'" David Autor, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told an audience Tuesday that included Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and dozens of other top central bankers and economists... [A]long with the optimism is a fear that the economic expansion might bypass large swaths of the population, in part because a growing number of jobs could be replaced by computers capable of learning -- artificial intelligence.
Policymakers and economists conceded that they have not paid enough attention to how much technology has hurt the earning power of some segments of society, or planned to address the concerns of those who have lost out... In the past, technical advances caused temporary disruptions but ultimately improved living standards, creating new categories of employment along the way... But artificial intelligence threatens broad categories of jobs previously seen as safe from automation, such as legal assistants, corporate auditors and investment managers. Large groups of people could become obsolete, suffering the same fate as plow horses after the invention of the tractor. "More and more, we are seeing economists saying, 'This time could be different,'âS" said Autor, who presented a paper on the subject that he wrote with Anna Salomons, an associate professor at the Utrecht University School of Economics in the Netherlands.
Ultimately we'll just have to wait and see, Autor concluded. "I say not Robocalpyse now. Perhaps Robocalpyse later."
Policymakers and economists conceded that they have not paid enough attention to how much technology has hurt the earning power of some segments of society, or planned to address the concerns of those who have lost out... In the past, technical advances caused temporary disruptions but ultimately improved living standards, creating new categories of employment along the way... But artificial intelligence threatens broad categories of jobs previously seen as safe from automation, such as legal assistants, corporate auditors and investment managers. Large groups of people could become obsolete, suffering the same fate as plow horses after the invention of the tractor. "More and more, we are seeing economists saying, 'This time could be different,'âS" said Autor, who presented a paper on the subject that he wrote with Anna Salomons, an associate professor at the Utrecht University School of Economics in the Netherlands.
Ultimately we'll just have to wait and see, Autor concluded. "I say not Robocalpyse now. Perhaps Robocalpyse later."
You might want to watch this. Perhaps that will change your perspective on the things bound to happen in the near future.
You're welcome.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Now, you might say, what if a few really wealthy people buy all the land and all the mines and all the natural resources. That's possible, but unlikely
Wake up. They already have.
Especially when posting a link to a video you should include a _summary_. That video is actually pretty good, based on the responses here I expected something much worse.
About the video:
Statistics: ~9 million views, 191,330 upvotes vs. 3,585 downvotes
The video is in support of the point raised in this story, "this time it's different", and they raise a few good points in support.
After watching the video I don't understand the response by drinkypoo about the horses, it does not seem to fit with what is said in the video _at all_.
The video comes with a link to a reddit trhead about it: http://www.reddit.com/r/CGPGre...
All other paradigm shifts in working environment that have displaced people opened up new opportunities. Farm hands that got obsolete when farming was automated were needed by the emerging industries in the towns.
Each of these two sentences makes a point that, while not entirely wrong, is quite misleading.
Most important is the first claim that all other iterations of mechanization (the apparent meaning of "paradigm shifts in working environment") have opened up new opportunities.
In the very first iteration of this, the First Industrial Revolution (FIR) starting about 1770, this did not happen for 70 years. Massive job losses in textile making started around 1770, putting 20% of Britain's entire work force out of work and rendering them paupers. The economy did not finally provide enough alternative employment until about 1840.
This horrendous slums of Dickens, the imprisonment of up to 10% of Britain's population in prisons or workhouses for the destitute, was a situation lasting for generations. People who lost their livelihoods when the FIR hit never got re-employed, nor did their children, or even grand-children.
The Cybernetics Revolution now underway is likely to have the same immediate effect as the FIR, massive job elimination far faster than any natural evolution of the economy can accommodate.
Farm hands that got obsolete when farming was automated were needed by the emerging industries in the towns.
This is a story that puts the plow before the plow horse.
Quick question for the reader - when do you think farming automation started a large drop in farm employment? 1900? 1910? 1920? 1930?
The answer is 1950.
In 1900 there were 12 million people employed on farms, with a farm family population of 30 million.
In 1950 there 10 million people employed on farms with farm family population of 30 million.
But in 1960 there only 7 million farm jobs, and 15 million people living on farms.
By 1970 it was down to 4 million farm jobs (at which point it leveled out), and the farm population was 8 million.
The elimination of jobs in farm employment occurred almost entirely between 1950-1970, long after there were "emerging industries" in towns. In fact the exodus from farm employment began the same year that U.S. manufacturing as a share of U.S. employment began its steady decline. One does not usually think of the decade of the 1960s with the Vietnam War and the Moon landing as one where there were "emerging industries" in towns.
Most people have the idea that there was a large loss of farm employment some time early in the 20th Century, inspired by graphs like this one where it looks like a steady drop in farm jobs from 1840 to the present. Employment as a fraction of total U.S. jobs combines two different effects though, the total number of agricultural jobs, and the total U.S. population. Until 1950 the drop in agricultural employment was due almost entirely to the rise in U.S. total population alone.
Now there were people leaving the farm to get work in the cities from 1900 to 1950, about 600,000 a year. But they were simply the excess population on farms due to the large average farm family size producing 2% surplus each year that could not be absorbed by the stable level of farm employment.
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