[pg_bot]

Another article claiming that there is a coming AI jobpocalypse based on the fact that "this time it is different". Every author focuses on the negative impacts of a new technology instead of what it will enable us to do. In order to believe the doomsayers, you have to ignore the entire history of the industrialized world. I do not find their arguments very convincing.

[Barrin92]

>In order to believe the doomsayers, you have to ignore the entire history of the industrialized world

The first consequence of major technological revolution, the post industrial era enabled the biggest wars human history had yet seen because our societies where technologically advanced but spiritually depraved. Modernity gave us amazing technology but also totalitarianism we had never seen before.

Yes, doomsayers are always numerous but just because people are crying wolf a lot doesn't mean that wolves aren't real. The image of a society in which hundreds of millions of people are devoid of purpose, live on subsistence social welfare and are at best employed to keep them occupied is a very scary one. And it might very well happen.

[jacquesm]

But this time it will be different. We're not talking about a shift from one class of employment to another, we're talking about a shift from employment to unemployment for a very large chunk of the population and we don't have the foggiest idea of where we will find the money to pay for that and we haven't got a clue on how we will keep these people from feeling worthless and depressed.

It's an illusion to think that everybody will be happy being pensioned off at 23, especially if that means that they will be without income.

This shift will move a lot of wealth to the top 5% or so and will leave the remainder in serious trouble.

[pg_bot]

You are making the same mistake as the author. People are endlessly creative and will find productive uses for their labor. I'm not ignoring the fact that people won't face disruption in the labor market, however it is very naive to assume that all of the work that will ever need to be done can be done by AI. People will not be pensioned off at 23 they will just be doing jobs that were not possible before, just like they did with every other major invention of the past 250 years.

"everything that can be invented has been invented." - Charles H Duell 1899.

[jacquesm]

You really should study the history of the industrial revolution a bit more. It's not that as a species we did not manage to accommodate it, it's just that untold millions of individuals were made obsolete and they did not adapt.

The naivety is in assuming that there are simple limits to what AGI will and will not be able to do.

It's not an evolutionary change, it is a revolutionary change where the world as you see it today will have very little resemblance to the world the way it will be afterwards. If that change happens too fast there will be a lot of blood spilled.

Ignoring all this is one surefire way to bring about one of the worst variations on the theme - assuming it is inevitable, which the jury is still out on but the first steps on the ladder are being taken as we speak.

There was a good article on here a while ago about how safe your job is:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14443606

Now zoom out to the rest of the world, take a decade or two as the timeframe and multiply by the likelihood.

[pg_bot]

"manage to accommodate" is vastly underselling the societal effects of industrializing. Of course there are winners and losers as there is with any sort of disruption. However, the positives vastly outweigh the negatives. Longer lifespans, higher quality of living, increased wages, more productive and interesting work. We should expect more of the same with advancements in AI, to think otherwise is foolish IMHO.

[projektir]

> In order to believe the doomsayers, you have to ignore the entire history of the industrialized world.

Why do you say this? Plenty of unpleasant experiences have occurred via industrialization in the past. Industrialization can be good for society overall and result in new jobs over time, but for a given set of workers today, they're looking at losing the jobs they have no and seeing no replacement for it, as it is unlikely that any of the newly created jobs would be willing to take them in.