[scylla]

How is this any different from farm machinery 200 years ago or industrial automation 50 years ago? More production with far less people.

The same concerns that tithes would lead to massive unemployment. Instead, the economy and global living standards shot up and completely new fields opened up.

[tivert]

> How is this any different from farm machinery 200 years ago or industrial automation 50 years ago? More production with far less people.

The skill gap for in-demand labor was less back then. For instance, when farm machinery took off, unskilled farm labor could shift (at massive scale) into unskilled factory work.

You're not going to have a massive shift of low-end or midrange labor into high-end ML jobs. A lot (most?) people are just plain not capable of that. These technologies just kick a bunch of people down then pull of the ladder. Poverty, precarity, and inequality will increase. It'll be great for the ultra-wealthy, who will be able to keep more money (power) in their own pockets without sharing with the plebs.

But who knows, maybe that concentration of elite power will open up promising opportunities in the entertainment industry for the plebs to play squid games.

[TeMPOraL]

> You're not going to have a massive shift of low-end or midrange labor into high-end ML jobs. A lot (most?) people are just plain not capable of that.

People focus too much on job types. The reality it's actually worse. Even if eliminating one mid-range job[0] would create two more same-level jobs of different type - that is, the total number of jobs available would double - and even if the people automated away from the former were fully capable of retraining for the latter, they'll still be in a world of hurt, because this still means their entire career progression suddenly got reset.

In simple terms: your average Jane and Joe, 15-20 years in their mid-skill career accumulated some skills, experience and promotions, which allows them to get a mid-level salary. They built their life around it - bought a flat or a house sized right for their income, in the area sized right for their income. They started a family, and are caring and educating their kids in a way appropriate for their income. Suddenly, their entire occupation disappears, and they're forced to retrain. They manage to do that, and find new jobs in the new field. Guess what level those jobs are, and how much they pay? That's right, they're starting at junior level, with junior pay. Suddenly, their entire life is way too expensive for their income levels. The house, the area, the schools, the car - and by proxy, their social life, their kids' education - all of these need to be cut down. What didn't change, however, is their age and associated health problems.

As for the kids, they too are unlikely to benefit from the newly-opened fields, because they'll be too busy working their way out of poverty.

--

[0] - And note that unlike some earlier techology-induced job shifts, AI is threatening to displace the high-skill jobs first. Generative models won't displace your barber or the local handyman or the policemen on patrol. They are going to displace artists, clerks, possibly medical and legal techs, testers. They'll sooner displace programmers and lawyers and doctors before they'll be able to impact blue-collar jobs.

[TeMPOraL]

This is a nice story that omits one crucial detail of every such transition: the people who get automated away and the people who benefit from improved economy and standards of living are not the same people.

For the former, this is not a story of temporary hardships compensated in full by everything getting better few years down the line. For them, this is a story of life permanently derailed, their hopes and dreams destroyed, and the future of their kids taken away. They do not get to enjoy those promised benefits - they're too busy trying to salvage what little they can from their lives, after being suddenly dropped one or two levels down in socioeconomic class ladder.

The benefits? Sure, they come some years or decades later, and they're great for everyone else.

[bourneavent]

>How is this any different from farm machinery 200 years ago or industrial automation 50 years ago? More production with far less people.

The economy will for sure eventually get into some sort of equilibrium again. Things will become normal sort of like how the giant wealth inequality gap is super normal right now (likely caused by the same automation you're describing).

But there is so much different now then before. Additionally the velocity in which this replacement is occuring is much higher then industrial automation. Given the differences we cannot fully know the outcome.

It's easy and convenient to allude to examples in the past to predict the future, but that is not a data driven or logical conclusion. We don't know what will happen, and to ignore the possibility of a bad outcome is folly.

My wild guess is that there will be a temporary period of destabilization and this temporary period could last between one to two decades all the way to several generations. By then all the "problems" will be normalized; sort of like how the wealth inequality gap has been normalized and how it's basically become normal to see tons and tons of homeless people living in RVs in the bay area.