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From a historical perspective your reservation is totally fair. But I think the issue is a lot more complex than just looking at the impact automation has had in the past. Here are a few points worth mulling over: 1. Automation in the past has been good at increasing worker productivity, and making new avenues of work possible. This is true going forward too. But each new generation of technology isn't "something we've seen before", it's a new thing with new consequences. Technological development isn't cyclical, so estimating the impact a new technology will have on the impact previous technologies have had is a poor model. This isn't to say the consequences will be bad, just that they're hard to anticipate. For the most part, the historical perspective is probably right though. 2. Automation in the past has been very effective in improving worker productivity, but developments in AI and robotics are looking at ways to supplant workers (i.e. electric cars don't improve our ability to drive, it removes our need for drivers). While in the broad sense this trend is good, and people will over time shift into new industries, it is going to be disruptive. Timelines will have a big impact on the shock. New industries won't spring up over night. 3. The timeline for this level of automation is much shorter than previous automation trends. The shift in agriculture happened over generations. The shift caused by driverless cars will likely happen in less than a decade. Add to that the efficiency of market pressures we have today - once one business is able to shift entirely to an autonomous fleet and save money over their competitors, all their competitors will have to follow suite to remain competitive. Entire industries could be displaced, and those workers will need to move somewhere. 4. This is more hypothetical and longer term, but it gets at what I think is the general fear around automation. Imagine we develop the ability to automate any unskilled job (whether through broad automation improvements or development of an actual general-purpose automaton). The primary factor in whether a business would choose to employ that automaton over a human is cost. The automaton is a once-off fixed cost, whereas a human is an ongoing cost. Once the cost of the automation is lower than paying a salary, humans will no longer be employed in that role. 5. Following from this, if it's the unskilled jobs that get automated, where do those workers go? At this stage, even if automation is creating new lines of work, why wouldn't that work also be automated? Basically, once we automate unskilled work, we never need unskilled workers again. In order to find work they'll need to skill up, which takes time and money. And if it takes a year to train a worker to a level that they're a net benefit, why not invest that money instead into automating the skilled work too? |