Slashdot Mirror
Instead of Slowing Down Innovation To Protect Few People, Policymakers Should Focus On Helping Displaced Workers Transition Into New Jobs, ITIF Suggests (itif.org)
A recently published report by Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) argues that rather than slow
down change to protect a small number of workers at the expense of the vast majority, policymakers should focus on doing significantly more to help workers transition easily into new jobs and new occupations [PDF]. From a report: There has been growing speculation that a coming wave of innovation -- indeed, a tsunami -- powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, will disrupt labor markets, generate mass unemployment, and shift the few jobs that remain into the insecure "gig economy." Kneejerk "solutions" from such technology Cassandras include ideas like taxing "robots" and implementing universal basic income for everyone, employed or not. The first would slow needed productivity growth, employed or not; the second would reduce worker opportunity.
The truth is these technologies will provide a desperately needed boost to productivity and wages, but that does not mean no one will be hurt. There are always winners and losers in major economic transitions. But rather than slow down change to protect a modest number of workers at the expense of the vast majority, policymakers should focus on doing significantly more to help those who are dislocated transition easily into new jobs and new occupations. Improving policies to help workers navigate what is likely to be a more turbulent labor market is not something that should be done just out of fairness, although it is certainly fair to help workers who are either hurt by change or at risk of being hurt. But absent better labor market transition policies, there is a real risk that public and elite sentiment will turn staunchly against technological change, seeing it as fundamentally destructive and unfair.
The truth is these technologies will provide a desperately needed boost to productivity and wages, but that does not mean no one will be hurt. There are always winners and losers in major economic transitions. But rather than slow down change to protect a modest number of workers at the expense of the vast majority, policymakers should focus on doing significantly more to help those who are dislocated transition easily into new jobs and new occupations. Improving policies to help workers navigate what is likely to be a more turbulent labor market is not something that should be done just out of fairness, although it is certainly fair to help workers who are either hurt by change or at risk of being hurt. But absent better labor market transition policies, there is a real risk that public and elite sentiment will turn staunchly against technological change, seeing it as fundamentally destructive and unfair.
So, in this postulated future, we have general purpose AI and highly advanced robotics.
What, exactly, do all those humans transition to?
The agricultural revolution greatly reduced the number of people working in the fields. Those people could transition to jobs in manufacturing, and the industrial revolution happened.
Computers become cheap, widespread and widely-integrated into businesses. Many of the displaced workers are able to transition to jobs supporting information technologies in many ways.
General purpose AI and advanced robotics are able to replace everything a human can do. So what jobs do the humans transition to? Build robots? No, that can be done by robots and AI in this scenario, so it's not going to be able to support the displaced humans.
That's the glaring hole in this paper: the assumption that there will be some job for the human to transition to.
Unless they expect us to all be fashion models:
But they appear to significantly overstate this number by including occupations that have little
chance of automation, such as fashion modeling
Btw, this is insanely stupid of a claim. Fashion designers want a particular size and shape of model and for her to walk down a particular stretch of runway at a particular pace and be as non-human as possible - the point is to show off the clothes......golly, that sounds like a fantastic opportunity for robotics.
But that's OK, because rich people will still have money to spend!
The 4th industrialists’ third mistake is that this “nowhere left to run” argument is absurd
on its face because global productivity could increase by a factor of 50 without people
running out of things to buy. Just look at what people with higher incomes spend their
money on: nicer vacations, larger homes, luxury items, more restaurant meals, more
entertainment like concerts and plays, and more personal services
It doesn't seem to occur to them that the poor folks still gotta eat. And if they have no food to eat, they will eat the rich.
A lot of people really do lack the intelligence, memory, mental agility, and so forth that are needed to learn, compete for, and perform the new generation of jobs. As manual labor is phased out these people are being left to collect welfare and die of malnutrition-related diseases.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
This idea that artificial *intelligence* isn't a threat to people who's market offering is based on their *intelligence* just isn't true. My bet is some of the lowest paid more miserable jobs like nursing home caregiver will be some of the hardest to replace with bots, while information processing jobs will be much easier.
-The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.