Jobs creating wagon wheels are a limited resource.
As humans are able to automate activities that span the creation of everything we find valuable, from resource collection to manufacture to transportation to design to art, that necessarily limits the economic efficiency of using humans for labor. The last 3 years have demonstrated that creative tasks are highly susceptible to automation, with most artistic automation approaching or exceeding human performance as proofs of concept. The next decades will see an ever decreasing landscape of activities where humans are more effective than software.
Jobs are endeavors defined around the exchange of money for labor. It does not make sense to pay more money for less effective labor - i.e. if I can pay $30k usd for a burger flipper robot, I won't have to pay for 2 full time burger flipper jobs. It makes no sense to hire people for labor that can be automated.
We're a long ways away from being able to automate everything, but the trend is clear. Jobs don't make sense under our current technological path. We either have to eliminate progress in that direction and artificially enforce a human preference job efficiency limit so as to maintain a "sufficient" number of jobs, or start exploring new economic models that let us transition to post-scarcity economics.
We are, however, going to see a time where anything humans can do, machines will do better. Using humans will be inefficient, and companies will be out competed if they don't automate. We can either prepare for that and try to make things fair, or assume new jobs will arise that will make meaningful enterprises available to people through innovation and novel opportunities that haven't yet been conceived. It seems clear to me that the latter is basically invention of make work, and we need to prepare for post scarcity.
We don't need agi. We have Moore's law and "good enough" algorithms to achieve human parity performance. We should figure out a better measure of the value of human time than jobs and employment.
As humans are able to automate activities that span the creation of everything we find valuable, from resource collection to manufacture to transportation to design to art, that necessarily limits the economic efficiency of using humans for labor. The last 3 years have demonstrated that creative tasks are highly susceptible to automation, with most artistic automation approaching or exceeding human performance as proofs of concept. The next decades will see an ever decreasing landscape of activities where humans are more effective than software.
Jobs are endeavors defined around the exchange of money for labor. It does not make sense to pay more money for less effective labor - i.e. if I can pay $30k usd for a burger flipper robot, I won't have to pay for 2 full time burger flipper jobs. It makes no sense to hire people for labor that can be automated.
We're a long ways away from being able to automate everything, but the trend is clear. Jobs don't make sense under our current technological path. We either have to eliminate progress in that direction and artificially enforce a human preference job efficiency limit so as to maintain a "sufficient" number of jobs, or start exploring new economic models that let us transition to post-scarcity economics.
We are, however, going to see a time where anything humans can do, machines will do better. Using humans will be inefficient, and companies will be out competed if they don't automate. We can either prepare for that and try to make things fair, or assume new jobs will arise that will make meaningful enterprises available to people through innovation and novel opportunities that haven't yet been conceived. It seems clear to me that the latter is basically invention of make work, and we need to prepare for post scarcity.
We don't need agi. We have Moore's law and "good enough" algorithms to achieve human parity performance. We should figure out a better measure of the value of human time than jobs and employment.