Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Pingk 205 days ago
Western employment has survived because automating and outsourcing labour has pushed people to take up knowledge/services work.

If AI is somewhat successful at automating knowledge work, what feasible job could exist that doesn't require your mind or body?

Services like healthcare and plumbing aren't going away of course, but there's not enough demand to support an economy on those jobs.

In my opinion the whole economy needs a rethink regarding what our actual goals are as a society, and maybe AI will force that conversation to happen, but I'm sceptical if it'll be a well-considered consensus.
1 comments
saxenaabhi 205 days ago
> If AI is somewhat successful at automating knowledge work, what feasible job could exist that doesn't require your mind or body?

Very few office jobs in bigcos, but it does mean that you'll not need as much capital as before to start a business and compete with existing incumbents.

link
bossyTeacher 205 days ago
In a world where AI automates jobs, arguably any business services you could offer would likely have no customers because those potential customers can automate the services you offer themselves just like AI automates the employment skills employees offer. Not sure why people keep bringing up entrepreneurship as if that couldn't be automated.
link
saxenaabhi 205 days ago
> In a world where AI automates jobs, arguably any business services you could offer would likely have no customers because those potential customers can automate the services you offer themselves just like AI automates the employment skills employees offer

Take the POS market for example. It's relatively trivial to setup your POS system in dbase/foxpro/MS-access. Yet almost every shop uses lightspeed/toast/square because they don't want to take on the additional burden of maintaining it and want support. They also hire web developers/designers to make their website even though framer/square space are super easy to use.

With AI I think what's happening is that more competitors are challenging these incumbents leading to downward pressure on pricing. Which is great for customers!

> Not sure why people keep bringing up entrepreneurship as if that couldn't be automated.

Ah, how would you automate entrepreneurship? This isn't the matrix where AI will suddenly wake up one day and start an entrepreneurship journey.

link
bossyTeacher 205 days ago
> With AI I think what's happening is that more competitors are challenging these incumbents leading to downward pressure on pricing. Which is great for customers!

If AI automates jobs, POS system vendor is using an AI to run the business. You can do that yourself and remove the middle man.

re: "Ah, how would you automate entrepreneurship?"

I meant that every non-physical business need that would be filled by a local business can now be filled by the same AI you have already use to automate half the jobs away.

There is this fantasy where employers can replace workers with AI but businesses cannot replace their software vendors with AI

link