Slashdot Mirror
Futurist Predicts AI Will Take Jobs, Benefiting the Rich But Not Workers (venturebeat.com)
Citing "significant" new corporate investments in AI technology, futurist Gary Grossman argues that AI "may be the fastest paradigm shift in the history of technology -- and warns there's a counter-argument to the theory that AI will create as many jobs as its displaces.
"The other view is that this time is different, that we are not just automating labor but also cognition and many fewer people will be needed by industry."
KPMG claims more than half of business executives plan to implement some form of AI within the next 12 months... The disruption is already beginning, with fully 75% of the organizations KPMG surveyed expecting intelligent automation to significantly impact 10 to 50% of their employees in the next two years. A Citigroup executive told Bloomberg that better AI could reduce headcount at the bank by 30%. In the face of all this change, many companies publicly state that AI will eliminate some dull and repetitive jobs and make it possible for people to do higher-order work. However, as a prominent venture capitalist relayed to me recently on this topic: "most displaced call center workers don't become Java programmers." It is not only low-skilled jobs that are at risk. Gartner analysts recently reported that AI will eliminate 80% of project management tasks....
A New York Times article noted that while many company executives pay public lip service to "human-centered AI" and the need to provide a safety net for those who lose their jobs, they privately talk about racing to automate their workforces "to stay ahead of the competition, with little regard for the impact on workers." The article also cites a Deloitte survey from 2017 that found 53% of companies had already started to use machines to perform tasks previously done by humans. The figure is expected to climb to 72% by next year.... The net of this dynamic is that workers are not a major factor in the economic calculus of the business drive to adopt AI, despite so many public statements to the contrary.
So perhaps it's not a surprise when the Edelman 2019 AI survey shows a widely held view that AI will lead to short-term job losses with the potential for societal disruption and that AI will benefit the rich and hurt the poor.
He also shares a sobering quote from historian, philosopher, and bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari on why Silicon Valley supports Universal Basic Incomes.
"The message is: 'We don't need you. But we are nice, so we'll take care of you.'"
A New York Times article noted that while many company executives pay public lip service to "human-centered AI" and the need to provide a safety net for those who lose their jobs, they privately talk about racing to automate their workforces "to stay ahead of the competition, with little regard for the impact on workers." The article also cites a Deloitte survey from 2017 that found 53% of companies had already started to use machines to perform tasks previously done by humans. The figure is expected to climb to 72% by next year.... The net of this dynamic is that workers are not a major factor in the economic calculus of the business drive to adopt AI, despite so many public statements to the contrary.
So perhaps it's not a surprise when the Edelman 2019 AI survey shows a widely held view that AI will lead to short-term job losses with the potential for societal disruption and that AI will benefit the rich and hurt the poor.
He also shares a sobering quote from historian, philosopher, and bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari on why Silicon Valley supports Universal Basic Incomes.
"The message is: 'We don't need you. But we are nice, so we'll take care of you.'"
> Dad, why do some people want socialism if it doesn't work?
> Because they also don't work, son.
I improved your headline.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
They'll only need a few million bodyguards.
Wow. We are nice. There's a howler. The Big Lie, say something outrageous. Silicon Valley, the home of intolerance, is telling us deplorables that it's nice and will care for us? Show of hands, who believes this?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
rich
It is obvious that deploying AI has nothing to do with deploying robots in factories. This is just a software deployment !
The previous automation revolution, ie robots in factories at least required robots be built. The AI revolution only requires someone at Google or Amazon to push the deployment button and could wipe by this single action loads of jobs.
As such is unlikely we can consider the AI revolution as something that will replace old jobs with new jobs, It will simply destroy them. End of story. A very small team of engineers and data scientists could actually wipe a whole type of job... worldwide.
It's not like the AI they're talking about will have any use for rich people. Seriously, what do "the rich" bring to the table that "AI" needs?
Other than the plot of yet another Terminator movie, of course....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
It is arguable all previous labour automation technologies have also been automating cognition. We've been able to automatically apply raw force without the use of humans for millennia. Doing it in a controlled/reactive way is much more difficult. There was a time when weaving fabric was a very cognitively demanding job. Also there seems to be a fallacy here that past automation had created jobs in the same industries that it removed them from. This has never been true. As always, the rate at which automation will replace all the jobs is being overstated by people who are least familiar with the actual capabilities of AI. Until researchers manage to develop general artificial intelligence, I suspect this cycle will continue to repeat.
The article also cites a Deloitte survey from 2017 that found 53% of companies had already started to use machines to perform tasks previously done by humans.
I'd say it's closer to 100%. Do you still have switchboard operators? Elevator operators? Calculators (it used to be a person, not an object)? No? Then you've already replaced humans with machines. Ever send an e-mail or fax? Then you've replaced the postman and the telegraph operator, too...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Too many people are in touch with the content of computers, cyberspace, without knowing what is being held in their hand. The key to freedom starts with true human cognition of one's immediate, physical environment. Like Magrite's Pipe is just paint on a canvas, our computing devices are physical, programmable hardware. Complicated telegraph wiring. That's where true computer literacy begins. Richard Stallman and his Free Software Foundation keep the lantern on illuminating the stack up from there. This is where the free citizen's power against the machinery is grounded.
Futurist predicts $RANDOMTECH will benefit the rich not the poor.
There you go. I just built the first AI based title generator about AI and obvious facts...
Video of some good progressive thrash music
Tractors benefited land owners who could buy them, not farmers using them.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
You are aware that the futurists grew into the Italian fascists?
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Much talked about by pundits. Understood by practically nobody. Many benefits suggested. Very little experience or facts to back up any claims. Suggested as a panacea (but without anyone saying for what problems).
And then, some years later
After the "bust", many companies discover it isn't all it's cracked up to be. Has many "I told you so" disadvantages. Doesn't deliver as promised. Companies dislike the loss of control. Turns out to be costly and unreliable.
And is this the same direction as cloud computing is going now?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
If you don't slave, er, um, work I mean, you're not entitled. There's no constitutional right to life. And we don't know what inalienable means. But I'm sure God doesn't endow people with rights. Rights come from the legal system. Duh!
They need lots of people to buy whatever crap it is they are selling, yet they don't want to have to pay people enough to be able to afford their crap. So once they finally get rid of all or most of the workers no one is going to be able to buy their crap and then what? Ford had the right idea.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
I think they mean "this time it's different" - the phrase "this time is different" has never been written in the English language before, but then, you're American, and therefore grammar isn't your strong point. Cretins.
We will need them to kill off the rich once they steal everything else.
Social media companies will fund a UBI, so that we can stay alive to gossip with each other, and be served ads to click on?
This doesn't sound like a sustainable business model ....
Tractors benefited land owners who could buy them, not farmers using them.
Massive numbers of slaves benefitted large land owners, not the common wage workers of Rome who became welfare cases on a Universal Basic Income.
... or does it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The slave-ification of the Roman economy was a process that in many ways was similar to automation since it was a massive infusion of extremely cheap un paid labour so here are historical precedents indicating that this is not guaranteed to end the way you predict. UBI in Rome was simply a mechanism the wealthy slave owners used to keep the masses from arming themselves and coming for them. This was an ever-present danger since many of Rome's free citizenry were veterans of Rome's constant wars to secure resources and pre-emptively neutralise potential competitors which was one of the few career options still open to those who wanted something more out of life than just subsisting on a UBI. That last part about constant wars over resources of course has no parallels in post WWII US history
Employees training their AI replacements as a requirement to receive their termination pay. (Hint: you don't have to train them right...)
Strangely enough, it seems like management jobs would be easiest to replace with software.
Or are they going to build AI consumers as well?
Solaria on Earth
When they got rid of the receptionist in the office and gave me part of her work did my salary go up? No. When they got rid of local HR and gave me an email address I could use, did my salary go up? No. When I started to do three times as much work because technology got better, did my salary go up? No. . If I applied for a job in a different company that had already done these things would they pay me more? No.
What would lead anyone to believe the workers will get anything out of automation but more work to do for the same pay and just to be thankful for a job.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I predict that once enough people have been fired, politicians notice that there is a market for lobbying for AI/automation restriction.
"The Hamptons is not a defensible position." - 4:00 minute mark.
Mark Blyth on the Brexit vote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Yes, the change spells doom for many (most?), but as true as this is, it cannot be stopped. The thin spread of responsibility that the capitalist system promulges (I will only care about my own ass) will ensure that. Fairness is not built into the system.
As a consequence of pervasive automation, a new class of poor is being created: those whose skills will not be in high demand, and that are too old to learn something new and complicated. They will be forced to work for peanuts or thrown out of the market completely.
How will those people survive? The answer to this question is critical. If they are to be subsidized by the governments, then the burden supported by middle classes (the ones paying the bulk of taxes) is going to skyrocket. If it is going to be paid by corporations, then costs are going to increase, and any competitive improvement gained by automation will go down the drain. If ignored, then the most probable outcome is social revolts.
What else can we do?
"The message is: 'We don't need you. But we are nice, so we'll take care of you.'"
but they do need us, who else is going to buy all their products/services?
a bit like when factories used to own the house you lived in, and all the stores and pubs in town were owned by the factory. you got your paycheck, but you spend (almost) everything on the services that the factory provided in your town.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
As I sit here waiting in Florida to finally travel back to civilization, Iâ€(TM)ve seen a huge effect of automation and centralization while on this visit.
The US is way ahead of anywhere else in the world with regards to killing jobs. To be honest, Iâ€(TM)m envious. Due to vast amounts of cheap and untrained labor, the US has made incredible progress towards to a Wall-E like society. People like me have no need to go to the mall or the grocery store or pretty much anywhere else since you can order anything online and get it quickly.
The malls are replacing retail shops with services and entertainment. The roads are littered with abandoned retail shops except those catering purely to poor people lacking credit cards or novelty. The decline is very obvious to an outsider.
Automation and centralization has made it so the people are forced to work in almost entirely service oriented jobs.
America is the logistics powerhouse of the western world. The country is famous for its ability to move things from place to place efficiently. This is glorious to watch. Compared to Europe, America is years ahead with regards to killing off jobs because in Europe, logistics companies are not yet able to offer dirt cheap delivery options. This is because outside of England, there arenâ€(TM)t enough uneducated people in Western Europe to handle all the logistical tasks manually for slave labor wages. We need the machines.
That said, once logistics is automated, both Europe and America will face a huge problem. The issue will be that if products can be delivered by drone or self-driving vehicles or whatever else, a HUGE number of jobs will disappear.
This will cause governments around the world to place many people on unemployment or social welfare because unless people open massive numbers of vanity oriented services like theme restaurants and eyebrow plucking shops, there simply will be no jobs to go around.
As the governments dilute their currencies via deficits, the value of their money will plummet. The ripple effect through the world will be that eventually companies will no longer see a clear path to profitability by manufacturing, distributing and marketing useless shit.
The people will focus on purchasing necessities rather than novelties therefore collapsing markets for endlessly disposable crap. This will hurt financial markets as well as the general import/export markets. Unions like the EU will become a matter of survival and will make it so as the market adjust, the governmentâ€(TM)s will be able to balance their deficits (not reduce, but increase systematically) until people are still being fed and kept healthy but with far less purchasing power than before.
The rich will be hurt because the vast majority of their sources of income will dissolve. The mass dilution of currency will mean that everyone will move progressively towards the middle or many will die because governments dependent primarily on manufacturing will lack the resources to balance their deficits as their exports will become unimportant.
The end result will be somewhat chaotic. Countries will unite to mega corporations who no longer see the financial benefit of producing and distributing necessities. Companies like Amazon will become more similar to a welfare system.
This of course is a doomsday scenario and if I were to write five more pages, I would add predictions that would include the one month work year which will make a big difference. But the point is that rich people are only rich because their money is perceived to have purchasing power. As that perception erodes, so will their wealth.
#YangGang2020
A while back, there was a story about this where a erson become "property of the state" as he owed them so much. He was then "Rescued" to Australia, I believe,
Anybody have the URL to that story? It is a great read an higly on-topic. I could go into more details, but do not want to set of any spoilles.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Took all the way until the end of the post for what this was really all about.
The end-goal will be neat, the path going there will be ugly. And hurt.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
If people are going to give their savings to companies to invest (i.e. buy stock in) they will expect a return on their money. Companies will only spend money on a project if it is going to produce a return on that investment. Because sometimes companies win big as a result of the risk they take, they are encouraged to take risks that benefit all of us. The alternative is state capitalism where only the state is allowed to invest - and does so badly because it's risking the taxpayers' money. So don't knock profits per se - but do ensure that there's plenty of competition.
The usa needs single payer healthcare or Medicare For All
We have the people to fill the logistic jobs because we are importing them from elsewhere in Europe. We're doing the logistics thing because on the whole our unions are weaker. OTOH it's remarkable how often my Amazon packages come from elsewhere in Europe, so I'm not sure your perception is valid at all.
This rant at the Economist argues that most of the West is facing a labour shortage. Then we hear this. Someone's going to end up with egg on their face... https://www.economist.com/fina...
'people' who only do things for profit don't care about other people. Who knew?
What would stop us from building an AI that could process the same material as the task force and producing the legal foundation for prosecuting tax fraud by the ultra-wealthy. There are lots of other wonderful targets one could work on while whiling away the hours on UBI
Automation could be used reduce the amount, danger, or unpleasantness of the work we do for the same benefits to us. That is how it should be. To make this happen, the economy needs to be structured to incentivise the well-being of people.
Instead, the economy is structured such that employees are a necessary evil that, on the first opportunity, will be eliminated. For an individual company, it makes sense to do away with one's employees, when possible. However for society, that is self-destructive. Who will then be able to buy your products and services?
To solve this, law must be formulated to incentivize the well-being of people. That is, a company's profits should be based on factors such as reasonable working hours, good pay, and good health of it's employees as much as the satisfaction of its customers. Today more and more, it seems they are curtailing both. Customer service is sometimes even intentionally made difficult to wear down complainers.
Like all disruptive industry technologies, It will generate new sources of wealth and make services that used to be expensive and labor intensive cheaper and more accessible.
Firstly, the opinion of a 'futurist' is just that - an opinion informed to various degrees. It isn't prognostication. Secondly, as with other revolutions in automation, perhaps, for a time, but the rest of life isn't going to stand still and stop evolving, either. The moment people stop discussing 'AI' with misnomered terms like 'intelligence' (it isn't. It's just software executing code, and if you think that's a description of smarts you are actually the one that's about to get left behind) is the moment an actual conversation about this can occur. Yaaaaawn.
Well Jew or not, we need to acknowledge the capitalists have taken over our earth and are now trying to figure out how to get rid of us, while using our own labor to dig our own graves.
They only say that so we don’t say; “we aren’t hungry, so we won’t eat you.”
The problem with unwashed masses is that there are masses of them.
I wonder if the universal basic income will come with incentives to remain childless?
Except your god Trump hasn't made anyone better off except a few of his rich buddies. And you clearly don't know what a marginal tax rate is or how it works, so maybe you should just STFU?
Very few products are designed for robotic manufacture. There is no software out there to help you design products like that .. therefore we will need manufacturing workers.
IANAE (economist), However I see this large deployment of AI and manufacturer reducing cost of everything. These are businesses and need to make money. Once an entire supply chain is managed by AI from mining ores to having a end product say a phone, no labour and unions to deal with, you are left with cost of maintaining such machines. So instead of selling $200 iphone for $2000, and again, that $200 components may drop to few cents and the iPhone ends up costing $20 to manufacture. Then Businesses will be forced to sell these iPhones for $200 or maybe even less.
We have seen with other automation that costs drop, ice is cheap because there is no human delivering it to your door anymore.
So I see no money to be made in products as populace has no money and cost of manufacturing went from $100s to few cents.
Humans will be more free to enjoy their life. Who is to say some philanthropist won't set up auto manufacturing that gives free cars to everyone.
Venezuela is not a socialist country. It is a failed petro-state that would have actually succeeded if:
1. Oil prices didn't collapse.
2. Horrible mismanagement by Maduro and previously by Chavez in his later years.
Saudi Arabia does the same system as they do and they've pulled it off for decades. No one is calling Saudi Arabia "socialist".
This whole Venezuela is an example of how socialism can't work is total horseshit told by people who have an audience of people who can only understand things on a bumper sticker level.
Venezuela's predicament is extremely nuanced and complicated that has nothing to do with socialism. Their problems were decades in the making - waaaay before the "socialism".
Hrm. You don't know how taxation works. Interesting.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Trusting the government to do anything right is quite naive.
They will either fail to pass something like that, or fail to implement something like that.
It probably would be better off to just limit the power the patents have at a point you can actually have some competition in the sector.
Thank you, futurist!
Stopped reading at: "KPMG claims more than ..." If I ever saw a company that was totally incompetent, KPMG was it.
AC for obviuos reasons
Sigh.
This argument will never go anywhere, since different people use the word "socialism" to mean different things.
I blame the libertarians, actually. They started accusing any action where a government does something with the intent to benefit its citizens as being "socialism!", and the word has now almost completely lost the original meaning, "worker ownership and control of the means of production."
If two people don't even have the same idea what the word means, however, it's impossible for them to come to any consensus on the trade-offs of benefits, if any, and costs.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The danger here is allowing technology companies to continue to horde and charge exorbitant prices for the latest technology. Even technology that is ten years old is being horded and only allowed out in small sips instead of the normal capitalist race to the bottom we saw through the 90's and through 2012.
They are hording the most valuable hardware and pieces of this technology and using it internally and not selling to the public. I'm not worried about companies automating everything, I'm worried about companies automating everything to gain control and creating a new ruling class.
We need make a number of critical technologies much much more easily obtainable and cheap. That includes chip fab techniques, there are a number of technologies we've come across that aren't dense enough to compete commercially but would be much cheaper to scale to geek diyer with an oscillioscope in his garage use. This includes the key pieces for a number of biology tools that have been horded such as crisper.
In short, we need to make sure we are in a position such that if and when they win this game and bail we can rebuilt and if they win this game and try to rule us we can simply take it back and dismantle it.
And a few week paid to engineers to maintain them. And engineers are nerds most of the time, they won't care that they're not on top like, say, a military general would, so little to no risk of them overthrowing you.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
To buy his crap. When you already own everything you don't need to buy, sell or trade.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
story telling about 70% tax rate.
As I said before, if a liberal makes a claim that can be truthfully verified, check it. They ALWAYS lie.
Another lie brought to you by a KKK supporting, live baby killing, illegal murderer protecting liberal that wants to make you a criminal if you fly on an airplane.
Is NOT universal income for a large part of the population - we also need jobs for social reasons.
But: make income tax negative for low wage jobs, such you have to work, you can get a work competing against the machines at a very low wage, but keep a decent standard of living.
"The message is: 'We don't need you. But we are nice, so we'll take care of you.'"
I think it goes deeper than that. The people in Silicon Valley understand where we're heading as well as anyone, so they know even their own jobs will eventually be automated. They also tend to be engineers and think like engineers: spot a problem, look for a solution. They see the problem, and conclude UBI is the most straightforward engineering solution to it. When no one has to work, you can't base income on work.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Works 24/7, no complaints, no time off, no 15 dollar an hour "livable" wage, shows up on time. It's a business owners DREAM.
Overthrowing the rich machine owners and abolishing capitalism.
that this is one tech that's not going to "trickle down".
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
This is only a problem for shithole countries with poor health & human services and large volumes of guns.
America's murder rate will quadruple.
That's all this is. Nothing to see here, move along, move along..
Fails to realize that capitalism in man's natural state.
Here. I'll write it so you can understand. Cave man have two stone ax. Other cave man have antelope. First cave man hungry. Want antelope. Second cave man won't give antelope to first cave man. First cave man offers a stone ax for part of antelope. Second cave man agrees. Both eat. Both now have stone ax.
You know what we call that, bright eyes? Capitalism.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Keep their tummies full and their internet connections up, give 'em a few toys. They won't revolt. It takes a lot to get to that point.
Indeed, more robots means less need to pay employees. That advantageous the rich, from a selfish point of view. However, it also destroy their markets to sell to. But the "rich" have almost always taken the selfish route.. One's own advantage over others... and they will fight each other over the scraps, as the markets at large dry up..
But this is not necessary. If markets are incentivized for the benefit of of employees and consumers then this can all be a very good thing. One thing is sure -- this is going to get ugly before it gets better... but it might get better.. That's what we have to hope for and work toward.
Trusting corporations to do anything right is even more naive. But that's the fucked up USA for you. That's why you have the shithole you have now. Stupid AF.
Their nature is to fight for one's own benefit even at the detriment of the larger markets. They will fight each other over the scraps, as fewer and fewer employees have money to buy anything. And finally, the masses of unemployed will revolt (in one way or another) and change the system.
It could be that we make industries work for the benefit of the people or it could be that we ban robots (hopefully the first).
... will be available and affordable when they are really needed.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
That way you don't condemn your children to poverty and deprive the rich of poor people to abuse, if that's what you think the rich do.
It's one of those trifling reasons I don't like government at the beckoning call of financial institutions. We saw its purloined consequences lead to The Great Recession during Bush 43's reign, and again when Obama bailed out the rich at the expense of everybody else.
My god, this article is so 1811. Are all the automated milling machines going to replace human workers now? Shall we throw our shoes into them and break them?
How do I get to be a futurist? Is there some kind of application process? Because if it has good benefits, I'd like to sit around all day long and make predictions about the future, also without understanding the technologies that will constitute it.
Those of us who actually do AI stuff for a living, know far better than this.
Name a single tech advancement that has not widened the gap between the rich and the poor.
But it did not work that way. It is well known that primitive societies' economy mainly worked on the basis of gifts. I have meat, I share it with everyone so people are more positively inclined toward me. I made an axe, I give it too.
Are we sure this is from a "futurist"? People were saying the exact same thing about industrialization 200 years ago.
Well, both sides of this "discussion" have beautifully illustrated and reminded me of what happened to this site and why I left.
The only difference on a healthy country is that there's competition between the corporations, so they try to do above the average.
But the US is not a healthy country, so whatever is a monopolistic corporation or the government, you will not get a good service as they're basically the same thing
But on the other hand, if you have a public service but it is not the only service, the government ends counting up like a competitor and most likely improve the things around greatly.
Actually probably one of easiest job to replace by AI is te job of business executives themselves. Which they have power to oppose. But the companies owners will realize where to look for real cuts eventually or they will become obsolete and replaced by startups.
At some point it was even calculated that to command troops in full scale battle in modern war you need a computer with the size of brain of the bee. Which is not hard to build nowadays. I doubt you need more for most of executives. And its not them who adds up a value to the company but creative employees.
Has NO ONE studied history? If you make 50% of the poorest, gun-toting folk unemployed, there won't be any rich folk (or AI) for very long.
Do you want Sky-Net? Cause THIS is how you get Sky-Net!!
That just means that social capital was the primal currency for that society. Which makes sense. It works pretty well for groups small enough so that everyone knows everyone.
Well, with progressive enough tax rates, this would be right. But with flat or frankly regressive taxation, we have massive wealth redistribution from the bottom 99% or so to the top 1% or so.
Just impose/increase Wealth tax
https://www.change.org/p/13002...
Casteism
As others have noted, what you suggest was rare in primitive societies. In some cases it could be characterised as from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs but this would gloss over the fact that needs then might not align to what we'd consider needs now and needs could include those of various spirit beings.
Trade did start becoming important, but probably not until agriculture. And for all the talk of gold being the real and original money, records from the first glimmerings of recorded history indicate that it was ledgers and records of debt, not gold, that were first. Many early clay tablets are records of trade or debt.