| Whn it comes to reasoning about AI and automation, and their potential effects on employment I think hjournalism is doing a terrible job. There's a borderline dishonest blurring of the lines between has-happened, is-happening and may-happen. ..automation is eradicating our jobs. But — unlike in the past — new ones aren’t being created to replace them. This is very often written about as if it had already happened or at least halfway there. As of right now, this is still a speculation about a future that may happen, not some known fact about the past or present. This reason that I bring it up here is that this article is specifically about "what if we're wrong about the future." Predicting is hard. Predicting technology, predicting economy, predicting culture... It's all hard and we need to remember that we're speculating. If we travel back to the futures predicted 70 years ago (as he suggests), many of them were wrong. Keynes predicted drastically shortned workweeks. The era was named the "nulcear age" or "Space Age." There were also predictions about the continuation of the mechanisation (a close cousin of automation) trend, which did turn out to be true. Keynes' workweek never happened, even thoug the workforce grew as women joined it. The space & nuclear ages kind of happened, but so far nothing earth shattering has resulted. The continuation of the industrialization-mechanisation trend has resulted in much cheaper durable and consumable goods. Cutlery, soap and such is very cheap. |
He presents no evidence to support this claim, and it is most likely false.
If you remove resources from some sector, and people become unemployed, but total resources were increased due to improved efficiency then those displaced people will more than likely figure out how to get some of those resources rather than starving to death.