[phkahler]

>> >95% of people used to work in agriculture. The machines took the AG jobs, and we're on net far better off.

That kind of argument is getting really old. It's not a given that there is always something else for people to do when a job is automated, and when there is it's generally not something of equal or higher value (hint, they would have already been doing it).

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Like when people were working in private equity, marketing, law, finance, etc before the machines took AG jobs?

Those jobs didn't really exist yet, because everyone was too busy trying to get enough to eat.

~50% of the people on the planet live in pretty miserable conditions. We do not live in the age of abundance. Contrary to popular opinion, if we just split up Bill Gates's money, it would not be enough for everyone to have a nice life. On net, we will benefit massively from freeing up labor to do other things - beside mundane things that could be automated but currently cost too much to automate with current methods for it to make sense to automate them.

[coldtea]

>Like when people were working in private equity, marketing, law, finance, etc before the machines took AG jobs?

We could do with fewer "marketing, law, finance, etc" jobs.

[JumpCrisscross]

> We could do with fewer "marketing, law, finance, etc" jobs

We can say this about almost any job category. For those perceived as useless, good riddance. For those seen as essential, they’re essential—wouldn’t it be nice if doctors could spend as much time as they wanted with every patient because a machine was doing the boring bits?

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Or because we didn't need X profession, so those people could be doctors instead...

[NemoNobody]

I'm not sure it's 50% of the planet that's living in miserable conditions - we really do live in an age of abundance. The United States supplies 25% of the global food supply - that's a single country.

Human Beings have been forced to survive most of our existence - I believe when we lift ourselves out of the necessity of work, that we finally actually be human for the first time.

We are supposed to exist above it all as we are the only life that we are aware that could ever do that.

[kjkjadksj]

Its almost like a law of nature that if there is spare labor capacity, capital will invent a use for it.

[coldtea]

I'm sure hundreds of millions living in slums, with no jobs or prospects, but capable of plenty of spare labor, would be glad to hear about this new law of nature!

[kjkjadksj]

Poor people don’t just kick dirt all day they usually have jobs too you know

[coldtea]

Poor people in Delhi, Lagos, Mexico City, Cairo, and all around the world where there are such slums, literally "kick dirt all day" - and beg, steal, live with what they can get their hands on, do some ocassional odd gig and try to survive on that, and so on.

We're not talking about working class poor people.

[ElevenLathe]

There is always something to do that could improve the lot of our fellow humans, even if that just means hanging out with lonely people (of which there are many). The problem is finding anyone to pay someone to do these things, so that they can continue to be housed, clothed, fed, and entertained while they are.

Even short of abolishing capitalism (or at least UBI, or a decent social safety net) though, the most likely answer is that people will find work doing stuff that capital wants, and which AI can't yet do (sex work? meaningful art?), or that capital for some reason doesn't want AI to do (intelligence work? domestic servants?). I don't know what those professions will be, but it's likely some of them don't even exist yet.