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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."
The robots are finally coming for the rich fuckers and their jobs, that is so funny. It is good to know that the 3% will get fucked by the 1% too. :D
The once proud cultures of China and India were reduced to abject poverty these academics did not even notice it. When job loss reduced large swaths of land to permanent internecine wars, they did not care.
Finally automation threatens educated middle class of affluent nations (mostly white) suddenly these guys wake up and talk about robocalypse.
All that could be true and still they could be right about the dangers of automation. I am not denying that. But if they would show some remorse about the casual way they waved away the job losses of blue collar workers, and the devastation caused by industrialization to Asia they would get some sympathy. Else we will be arguing about it, while the "Free Market" and the "Invisible hand" will transfer more wealth from bottom 995 permill to top 5 permill. (percent, cent=100, permill mill=1000) .
To some extent most of us in the 990 permill to 995 permill thought we are immune. Till the top 5 permill bastards betrayed us and started taking from us too.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
If you have money, someone *may* accept it in exchange for a surplus of something they have. But they don't *owe* you anything and in particular aren't required to deprive themselves to satisfy any debt to your hoard of cash.
Money is a surrogate for excess energy, it acts as a store of value only as long as excess goods and services are available. If we used joules for currency (as was proposed by the technocrats in the 1930s) there would be no inflation since they directly embody the excess energy.
And that's what's wrong with AI, robots, bitcoin...they all require an external energy input to keep them going. Pull the plug and they are nothing.
The whole reason money exists is that the economy and people's needs have long been so complex that we realized thousands of years ago that it's way more efficient to use a common measure of value for trade instead of bartering.
Money is a highly useful mechanism which we should not get rid of even though the ways people acquire money will change drastically as full-time employment becomes less and less common with increasing automation.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
You might want to watch this. Perhaps that will change your perspective on the things bound to happen in the near future.
I skimmed it, and the only thing that changed was my opinion of you, which has sunk considerably. It actually used the horse example. Horses are only around because we find them to be pleasurable slaves. If you think we're supposed to find that cheering, think again.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It strikes me that it's less about the job loss and more about the wealth concentration.
In theory, the high level of automation should result in the long-predicted elimination of want and/or the predicted leisure-time lifestyle that even Keynes predicted 75-odd years ago.
The corollary to automation, though, seems to be an increasing amount of wealth concentration in the hands of people who seem to validate that there's no such thing as "enough". Their wealth hoarding stands as an impediment to elimination of want and the leisure-time lifestyle -- they'd rather pay for mercenaries to keep people down than to feed and house them.
And of course they have nothing but contempt for the middle class, a group they think is overpaid and under worked and whose own education and consumption habits undermine the sense of exclusivity and prestige meant to be the exclusive domain of the truly rich.
Whether we drift back into a feudal/manorial economic and political structure or turn the corner on a world of abundance kind of depends on whether the political system is capable of responding to change for just the economic elite or whether it is capable of responding to change for the masses.
Whether we drift back into a feudal/manorial economic and political structure or turn the corner on a world of abundance kind of depends on whether the political system is capable of responding to change for just the economic elite or whether it is capable of responding to change for the masses.
It actually depends almost entirely on whether they build enough robots to defend themselves before we wake up. History shows us that the rich will not share their wealth with the poor until the poor share their poverty with them.
Tear down the white house gates, build a bridge across the washington monument pool with them, put a guillotine at the other end, and start using it. Nothing but mimicking the French is going to get the attention of the ultra-wealthy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
RFID - you'll just walk out with your stuff and be billed accordingly. Not even a need for security to make sure you scan stuff. Those jobs will go the way of the telephone operator.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I disagree, I see labour shortage due to the black death and the subsequent rise in political power of the lower classes which they never relinquished again as the end of feudalism.
The value of most labour is dropping into the mud again, putting all the power back with the property owners. Democracy could in theory balance that, but the owners have some strategies to combat that. On the one hand multiculturalism and mass immigration, to make the masses an internally divided mess easily manipulated by the media they own. On the other locking down their power with international foreign investment protection treaties (aka trade treatues) and with foreign investor protection courts (aka ISDS).
Until they can build their robot armies and dispense with all that cloak and dagger staff.
Isn't this just trading one elite class for another?
As the other respondent pointed out, the Black Death created labor shortages which raised wages and shifted wealth into a broader base, which in turn created a merchant and skilled labor class which gained a claim on political power.
We're nearing the terminus of that cycle, though, where the merchant class is nearly as consolidated and economically dominant as the feudal lords. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Better to be gassed by the civilized in the interest of advancing civilization than to starve to death at the hands of the barbarians and parasites who've wrecked it due to their inability to function in an advanced civilization.
Ah yes, blame the people failed by the public education system designed to make them tractable factory workers, and an economic system designed to keep them running around in circles. Surely everything is their fault, and not the fault of the people who designed the systems by making the rules.
If a child doesn't understand that walking into the street is dangerous, you don't put a tailpipe in their mouth. You teach them about cars in some other fashion, preferably with more education and less carbon monoxide.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Indeed. Knee-jerk cynicism about the future on a website billing itself as news for nerds has always struck me as ridiculous.
But what do I know? I'm just distracting my dumb brain with sex and drugs in this brave new world and the rest of my energy is spent trying to scrounge up some soylent green.
The future is always bleak. I guess no one wants to risk being accused of being naive when they suggest the future might be better instead of worse. Diseases have fallen to unthinkable levels, worldwide poverty is steadily going down, the population is showing signs of coming to a manageable steady state, people are living longer as a result of easier lives, violent crime is dropping, democracy is increasing... but no, it's all going to hell in a handbasket because robots gonna take all out jerbs!
The Amish don't need money
You haven't been around many Amish, have you? They're all about money; more of them are millionaires than you would guess.
It's not a desire for mind-numbing work, it's a concern that the structure of our society will not be modified in time to reflect changes in the economy. If we were to just leave everything evolve freely, we'd see a massive number of jobs get automated, throwing millions into unemployment (and potentially a substantial fraction of those being outright unemployable in other jobs), which would then sabotage the economy itself by removing too many consumers from the equation.
In order to move towards a new paradigm, be it just a leisure society where money has lost all meaning ala Star Trek, or a research society where most people are scientists or explorers, we're going to need concerted action and real, massive changes to our policies, laws and regulations. Even brief contact with a politician will make you doubt that this will realistically happen.
you'll be relegated to being a janitor?
I believe that the point is that you won't get to be a janitor even if you wanted to. Or at least that there will be thousands of applicants for every night janitor position. The society has to put away its puritan class society ideas and start employing and re-educating people according to their actual abilities instead of denying employment based on work, criminal or personal history.
If the productivity and economic gains of the last 50 years had been distributed as they had previous to that date, we would all be working 1-1/2 day weeks, and there would be more than enough work to go around for everyone.
Only if we were content with the standard of living we had 50 years ago.
Nonsense. When we can produce better cheaper, there is no way we're going to be producing obsolete products like tube TVs, etc.
New cars used to become rust-buckets within 3 years. Expected lifespan for a 4-cylinder was 40,000 miles. Suspensions used to have to be greased ever 3 months, oil every 3 months or 3,000 miles, oil filter every second oil change, rad flush and coolant replacement every 2 years ... gas mileage was shit. Tune-ups? Cars routinely go for years without changing spark plugs. Used to be every 6,000 miles - 10,000 miles was pushing it. Distributor cap every 2 years. Points and condenser every 6,000 miles unless you were comfortable pushing them until they failed and then filing and adjusting them on the side of the road so you could get back home.
Remember those 26" TVs? Go weigh one of them from 40 years ago, then weigh a 52" today. The older one, even though it is far smaller, weighs more, showing that it uses more resources. We're producing 8 gigs of ram for less than 64k of old slow ram cost back then. Food productivity has also gone through the roof.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.