[StanislavPetrov]

This piece is utter trash founded on baseless assumptions.

>Arntz, et al. argue that the estimated share of “jobs at risk” must not be equated with actual or expected employment losses from technological advances for three reasons.

So in other words, the title is false. Actual employment loss is what is at issue here.

>The utilisation of new technologies is a slow process, due to economic, legal and societal hurdles, so that technological substitution often does not take place as expected.

The first ridiculous assertion. Jobs wont be destroyed because it will take a long time to destroy them!

>Even if new technologies are introduced, workers can adjust to changing technological endowments by switching tasks, thus preventing technological unemployment.

Asinine assertion #2. People will just get new jobs when robots take their jobs! (of course what new jobs will be available is left unsaid).

>Technological change also generates additional jobs through demand for new technologies and through higher competitiveness.

Asinine assertion #3, virtually the same as #2. What new jobs will be created by the automated vehicles that put tens of millions of drivers out of work?

This article reads very much like the tripe offered by those who continue to argue that NAFTA and related "free trade deals" are actually good for workers.

[Bartweiss]

It's a tedious and unproductive article.

There's real, interesting stuff to be said about automation and substitution effects - it is not to be found here. Yet another piece parroting the claim that displaced workers find new jobs adds nothing to the conversation. Look up any of the Tech Review debates, or if you're truly interested check out the pieces the OECD incorrectly claims to debunk.

'Asinine' is exactly the word, although I might choose "assuming the consequent" if I'm allowed to use a phrase. When the entire debate is over whether this time is different, whether new jobs will actually become available, it's impressively dull-witted to dismiss the argument by assuming the desired result.

[resu_nimda]

I don't think the assertions are that ridiculous. Look at all the automation that we've already developed. "In 1870, almost 50 percent of the US population was employed in agriculture.[16] As of 2008, less than 2 percent of the population is directly employed in agriculture."

Does anyone today feel as though we've lost half of our jobs to mechanized farming? Not really, it allowed other industries like entertainment to flourish. Now that less of us have to do X, we can do more Y. I think it's absolutely a valid point to say "job loss will be slow enough that people will be able to adapt."

I honestly don't get the "robots will take our jobs" thing. It's sort of like "with more technology people will work less" - which has thus far proven to not be the case. People will always find more work to do, more ways to convince other people to spend money (and since the sales of X are now supporting less people, more money is freed up for Y).

The number of "jobs" available to a given population isn't really a function of the level of automation. It's a function of who is in control of capital/wealth and how that wealth flows between entities. Thanks to the automation we've already developed, we can already technically afford to provide everyone (in the US) with a basic income for the "job" of simply existing. Or we could place a high(er) tax on top earners and use that to double the minimum wage and split those jobs in half. Boom, look at all those new jobs created simply by a policy change. We just have collectively not chosen to do those things. Jobs are a red herring. We don't "need jobs" that are being destroyed by automation. The automation is adding value, not destroying it. We just have a setup where a small number of people are capturing most of that value. What we need are socioeconomic policies that even out that distribution.

[Nadya]

>Does anyone today feel as though we've lost half of our jobs to mechanized farming, those jobs were "destroyed?" Not really, it allowed other industries like entertainment to flourish. Now that less of us have to do X, we can do more Y. I think it's absolutely a valid point to say "job loss will be slow enough that people will be able to adapt."

Someone else phrased it best, I read it from an HN user but they may have been using someone else's argument. Paraphrasing here:

"Machines made physical labor easier, requiring fewer people to do physical labor. Those people moved to doing mental labor. Now machines are replacing mental tasks too. Where can people go when fewer of them are needed for mental tasks?"

The last remaining type of labor would be creative labor. Writing, music, performance. Things machines either still struggle at or won't be able to perform until we have humanoids that move fluidly. Even then, humans seem to prefer humans performing "artsy" things - based on criticisms I've seen of robots who create art (mostly music and drawings).

Art also, notoriously, doesn't pay very well for all but a small fraction of artists. What happens when this market is over-saturated because it is the only job left for large parts of the population?

[resu_nimda]

The underlying point is that not everyone needs a job. "Everyone has a job" is not an important fundamental requirement of functioning society. Everyone needs food, water, and shelter. In the early days, everyone needed a job because that's what it took to provide those basic needs. As we develop automation that allows those things to be provided to more people with less human labor, we shouldn't say "oh shit, we're running out of jobs, and people need jobs!" We should say, "how can we run a society where less human labor is necessary?"

What happens when this market is over-saturated because it is the only job left for large parts of the population?

I don't know, what happens? We've reached the endgame, we've fully automated all of the work required to keep people's needs taken care of, but we have some sort of problem because not everyone has a "job"? It's like some kind of dark comedy..."let's break all these robots that are growing food and building houses for us, we need jobs god dammit!" We just need to get away from the idea that "having a job" is a necessary goal in and of itself.

[Nadya]

>The underlying point is that not everyone needs a job. "Everyone has a job" is not an important fundamental requirement of functioning society.

The discussion was about whether or not jobs have been lost. Not whether or not jobs will be or are necessary. For the time being, jobs are both being lost and necessary. At least for most people and people who don't enjoy being homeless.

[resu_nimda]

In 1870, nearly half of the workforce worked in agriculture. Almost all of those "jobs" were "lost" over the next century. Did that have a meaningful correlation with unemployment rate?

There is not some fixed amount of "work that needs to be done" that in turn creates a fixed (and steadily diminishing) pool of jobs to draw from. The amount of jobs available is a purely socioeconomic function of who is willing to pay whom for what.

Take Facebook. Do the jobs there carve out some section of the total amount of work that needs to be done today? Not really, a guy made a thing, and convinced people to give him an arbitrary amount of money, and decided to give an arbitrary number of people arbitrary amounts of that money to help him out. A certain number of jobs were created because of the way people decided to distribute their money. Not because they took some of the limited "available job" slots.

[marcosdumay]

> Asinine assertion #2. People will just get new jobs when robots take their jobs!

There's something to be said about this.

If there is unmet demand for something those people can do [1], and automation makes them more productive, and does not completely replace them; then reducing the price of those people work (by increased productivity) will make more jobs appear.

Note there are 3 "if"s there. I doubt many workers will see those three met for them.

[1] That means, people want more of it. Economists normally take this fact from granted, but it is not.

[snowwrestler]

The hard question is not whether certain jobs will get automated out of existence--they will.

The hard question is why that automation will not result in the creation of new industries, which themselves will create new jobs. This has happened throughout human history. To say that won't happen anymore is a high bar.

That's why the pace of change does matter. If jobs are destroyed much faster than they are created, then there might be social unrest in the lag.

[Florin_Andrei]

There's only so many times you can retrain a human. Plus, the "re-trainability" rate decreases dramatically with age.

In a decade or two there will be a heck of a lot of middle-age people hopelessly outpaced by the rate of change. 10 years after that, even young people won't be able to keep up.

[jrapdx3]

While there are age-related declines in certain cognitive abilities, in the absence of conditions like neuro-degenerative disease, it doesn't mean that older individuals are incapable of learning new tasks and skills.

Differences among age groups are greatest comparing people in their 20's vs. 60's (or beyond). Even then, differences are modest.

See this article for more explanation: Clark R, Freedberg M, Hazeltine E, Voss MW. "Are There Age-Related Differences in the Ability to Learn Configural Responses?" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26317773

There's also evidence of alterations in "learning style" with age but that's yet another consideration.

[Pica_soO]

Why should this new industry's be save from automation? Yes, there is a tendency to create more "unique" handcrafted items - aka AI cant do unique Art like humans want- but the moment the demand for one piece surges, robotics will be there to take over replication.