[jacquesm]

Pardon the harshness, but it is ridiculous to extrapolate from a small series of events to one that arguably will affect the job market like nothing that has ever happened before. We are not talking about a transfer of jobs from one phase of tech to another, we are talking about the wholesale disappearance of jobs with nothing to replace them.

If you just take the first step - self driving cars - and remove all the jobs that currently have a driving license as a marketable skill away from people that only have that particular marketable skill (and that's quite a few of them) then 100's of millions of people the world over will instantly be unemployable.

And that's just one step. That does not translate into 'they'll go and do something else', quite a few of them will end up in poverty, commit suicide or worse because they've been ingrained with a mentality that tells them that if they are not able to contribute that they are a drain on society, and that's for those societies that actually have a safety net. For societies that do not a life of crime or begging is pretty much their only option.

For all the smarts that the HN crowd possesses quite a few of us are categorically incapable to see the world through the eyes of the people whose lives are affected in a very harsh and direct way by our creations.

Just stating that 'people will find a way to stay busy' is easy for someone who never has enough time in a day to read all the books they want to read, build all the stuff they still want to build and who probably scores in the top 5% income wise. Which makes it very well possible that you'll end up in the bucket of the haves rather than the have nots.

The rest of the world will likely not be that lucky. And as one of the haves it should worry you. See also: the French Revolution.

[T2_t2]

Your advice from your first sentence holds true, and extrapolating too wildly is unwise.

MAYBE driverless cars become a reality and quickly at that. MAYBE that makes drivers in the west redundant just as fast. But worldwide? I think people underestimate how inexpensive labour is in places like Bali, let alone Kenya.

No one knows what will happen, or what new industries will be formed as a result of these changes, and the warnings are all good and well, but there is much doubt in all directions, and crazy policy implemented to avert a disaster may be just as bad as doing nothing.

That's why this whole new level of automation is so scary: no body has any clear idea what will happen, and the policy shift is really, really unclear.

[jacquesm]

Bali and Kenya don't manufacture cars. They import leftovers from the first world after they are at the end of their economic lifespan. So even if the effects will arrive a little later there they will arrive, and in the worst scenario the new cars won't work on their roads.

> No one knows what will happen, or what new industries will be formed as a result of these changes

No, but we can make some pretty good educated guesses:

Anything that does not require a skill that can't be automated will eventually go away. How long the transition will take will be a major factor in whether or not it will be a smooth one or a terrible one. I hope it will be a century or more, I fear it will be a decade or less once the keys to AGI are unlocked. Worst case it will be shorter than that. In the last two cases: buckle up.

> and the warnings are all good and well, but there is much doubt in all directions, and crazy policy implemented to avert a disaster may be just as bad as doing nothing.

That sounds like a global warming piece.

> That's why this whole new level of automation is so scary: no body has any clear idea what will happen, and the policy shift is really, really unclear.

Yes it is. As far as shocks are concerned this will be one of the biggest that humanity has had to endure so far.