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by hwillis 1064 days ago
> You could have said the same of Industrial Revolution.

Says who? What jobs did the industrial revolution eliminate? Essentially just spinners and weavers, and that caused a violent social uprising by the Luddites.

Textiles were far outweighed by the industrialization of steam power, ironworking, and machine tools. Those three things did not put people out of jobs, they just created huge numbers of new jobs and totally altered society.

I don't think anybody really believes AI will directly create new jobs, in any way comparable to steam or steel. They think it will be like textiles, but everywhere and without the balancing impact of those massive, unrelated new industries.
1 comments
jacquesm 1064 days ago
Not a lot of textile still made in Europe. The Luddites got that one right, they were just a bit off about the timing. But this AI thing, assuming it manages to click the ratchet a few more times has the potential to eliminate a good 50% of all of the remaining blue collar jobs and a sizeable fraction of the rest. That is the sort of economic blow that I highly doubt we are prepared for. The big problem is that I don't see where those jobs will be going to, they are eliminated, not transformed this time around and that is a very serious change in the recipe.
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the_only_law 1064 days ago
> they are eliminated, not transformed this time around and that is a very serious change in the recipe.

Don’t worry. Everyone and their mother will just go into the trades. Years from now we’ll be browsing PlumberNews where we’ll get to hear about how the demand for plumbers is infinite and how “plumbing is eating the world” and not to worry about massive increase of labor supply from people who are working on building plumbing robots.

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jacquesm 1064 days ago
If it weren't serious it would be very funny indeed.

Plumbing really is eating the world, by the way ;)

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