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."

Comments

Re:Of course bankers are pissing themselves.

[Kiuas]

Only in cases where it isn't practical to trade things.

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.

Less about jobs, more about wealth concentration

[swb]

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.

Re:Less about jobs, more about wealth concentratio

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:I've been saying that for a while now

[BarbaraHudson]

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.

Re:Less about jobs, more about wealth concentratio

[Pinky's Brain]

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.

Re:Less about jobs, more about wealth concentratio

[swb]

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.

Re: I'm preparing for this right now.

[BarbaraHudson]

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.