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AI is Rapidly Changing the Types and Location of the Best-Paying Jobs (technologyreview.com)
Artificial intelligence and automation are not likely to cause vast unemployment, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned about the impact on jobs. From a report: "I'm not worried about technological unemployment," said Laura Tyson, a prominent economist at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. "But I am worried about the quality of jobs created and the location where they are created." Speaking this week at EmTech Digital, an annual AI conference organized by MIT Technology Review, Tyson suggested we look the effects of increasing automation over the last 30 years. What we know, says Tyson, is that automation has taken away many routine jobs.
Particularly hard hit have been middle-skill and middle-income jobs, such as those in manufacturing. "We know from the past that the jobs that require low skills are more likely to be automated," said Tyson. "I worry about income inequality." Automation and AI will create new jobs. But, said Tyson, those new jobs might not be in the same parts of the country in which employment has been decreased by automation. And that has created frustrations and concerns in many parts of the US, including the Midwest. Technology advances have greatly changed jobs in the past, of course, most notably during the Industrial Revolution. But, Tyson said, the rate of change is much faster today, and there are some vital questions unanswered. Can we come up with a way to retrain workers? And, asked Tyson, who will pay for that retraining?
Particularly hard hit have been middle-skill and middle-income jobs, such as those in manufacturing. "We know from the past that the jobs that require low skills are more likely to be automated," said Tyson. "I worry about income inequality." Automation and AI will create new jobs. But, said Tyson, those new jobs might not be in the same parts of the country in which employment has been decreased by automation. And that has created frustrations and concerns in many parts of the US, including the Midwest. Technology advances have greatly changed jobs in the past, of course, most notably during the Industrial Revolution. But, Tyson said, the rate of change is much faster today, and there are some vital questions unanswered. Can we come up with a way to retrain workers? And, asked Tyson, who will pay for that retraining?
"We know from the past that the jobs that require low skills are more likely to be automated," said Tyson. "I worry about income inequality."
Just what is wrong with lower skilled people getting less income? Or inversely, what's wrong with paying higher skilled people more? You should be paid based on what you bring to the table. If all you offer is a warm body that's nominally slightly smarter than a chimp, we should pay you slightly more than we would a chimp.
The article neatly outlines the problem. Can you retrain thousands of older, high school educated factory workers to become coders, creative types, etc.? Even if you theoretically could, would they want to, or do we have the systems in place to do it? In the United States at least, worker retraining has not proven that effective. Finally, even if you could retrain them, how can they afford to go where the jobs are? Can a retrained air condition factory worker afford to move to Silicon Valley, New York City, or some other high cost area to leverage those shiny new skills? Even if they get there, would companies even want to hire a middle aged, retrained worker especially with existing age discrimination?
"We know from the past that the jobs that require low skills are more likely to be automated," said Tyson. "I worry about income inequality."
Just what is wrong with lower skilled people getting less income?
The worry is not about lower skilled people getting "less" income; it's about them having zero income and zero prospect of getting income.
Right now, the approach to welfare is to prioritize making anybody on welfare get a job. But what do we do if there are no jobs available, even if they are willing, even desparate, to work?
Of course, you can just take the libertarian approach: let them starve. The problem only exists if we have a society that is unwilling to have people starve to death if they are unable to find a job.
AI and automation will result in a walled corporate cities protected by private security forces surrounded by slums where the remaining 75% of unemployed society will be trying to eek out gig and sustenance living economy.
It is absurd myth that there will be new types of jobs. Just look at laid off coal miners or rust belt manufacturing workers. They are pretty much done for, and for multiple generations. The same will happen to office workers.
That's a good thing. A very good thing. Nobody — no human — likes doing a routine job. We do them because we need the money, but if a machine can do it instead, humanity wins.
Think of it as the revenge of the nerds upon the jocks. If you preferred gym to a Math class, you should be paid less the rest of your life, and have fewer children so that humanity could continue evolving.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Remember all the crap a couple years ago about the Google buses and the resentment? That's the beginning of what's happening.
But in reality in the USA is that unless you picked your parents well and got the genes and nurturing to be big and smart for high paying jobs, you'll be relegated to shit jobs.
See, we were all brought up with the cultural myth that if you just work hard enough, you can achieve anything.
But the reality is that you have to be born in the right family.
The Meritocracy in the USA is a fairy tale and something that the Haves tell themselves when they have no empathy and compassion for the have-nots.
The parent's attitude is why we are going to have a class war. The, we'll see a Venezuela situation instead of a Western European one.