[nutjob2]

This isn't correct. The deal is that the poor countries get development and increased employment, and the rich countries get lower prices. Generally speaking both types of countries get richer.

That some workers lost their jobs is a symptom of any change. I don't know why people always get upset people losing their jobs. It's like death, if no one died relatively few people would be born. If you resist job losses you reduce overall employment and economic development.

[chromacity]

Are you serious? People get upset about losing jobs because they need jobs to pay their bills. Further, we often build our life identities around work; if you're a good car mechanic or a successful restaurant owner, you're proud of that. It's a part of you.

Having to repeatedly restart your career is risky, painful, and demoralizing. I have no problem seeing why people don't like that and why it can lead to populist backlash or even violent revolutions (as it did in the past).

By the way, to address your closing comment: people don't like dying either and tend to get upset when others die?

[shafoshaf]

I don't think the point is that the transition isn't difficult. It is that there is an overall benefit that outweighs the challenges of the transition.

The sad part is that industrializing societies have not been very good at reconciling the benefits with the costs. The benefits first go to a select few and have seeped out to the masses slowly. Railroads in the US are a good example. The wealth accumulated by the Vanderbilts, Hills and Harrimans, did not get redistributed in any kind of equitable manner. However, everyday people did eventually gain a lot of benefit form of those railroads through economic expansion. (None of which address the loss of the native Americans, whose losses should also be part of the equation.)

[layer8]

My impression is that the transition is such an open-ended process that you can’t really call it that. It’s unclear if and when the challenges will be overcome.

[chromacity]

> I don't think the point is that the transition isn't difficult. It is that there is an overall benefit that outweighs the challenges of the transition.

In the abstract, sure. But not when you're on the receiving end. It's like with NIMBYism: we all roll our eyes at NIMBYs until it's actually our own backyard. You're not going to convince a coal miner that they're better off learning to code. You're not going to convince a software engineer that they're better off in the mines.

[nutjob2]

You're missing my point. Job losses are a fact of life, just like death. Why should people get upset about the fact that someone might lose their job, or die? It's not amoral. These things happen constantly to millions of people, we'd we worn out. We happily send young healthy people to their death fighting in wars so we don't have to. I don't see people weeping because the armed forces exist.

Or is this just some sort of PC bullshit, that we can't talk about this sort of progress without carefully lamenting job losses? If you're not useful doing a job, why should you be employed in it? That's the bottom line.

[km3r]

Society is better if we sacrifice one horse and buggy driver job for two engineering jobs. The drivers suffer from that, but the net win for society is so plainly obvious that it's a better investment to retrain the driver or just pay the off rather than support a job that dying anyways.

[palmotea]

> Society is better if we sacrifice one horse and buggy driver job for two engineering jobs.

That's a "statistic" you're pulling out of your butt, and it's doing a lot of work. No one ever knows if something like that will actually happen.

It could actually turn out that AI sacrifices 100 engineering jobs for 10 low-level service or prostitution jobs and a crap-ton of wealth to those already rich.

> The drivers suffer from that, but the net win for society is so plainly obvious that it's a better investment to retrain the driver or just pay the off rather than support a job that dying anyways.

But what actually happens is our free-market society doesn't give a shit. No meaningful retraining happens, no meaningful effort goes into cushioning the blow for the "horse and buggy driver." Our society (or more accurately, the elites in charge) go tell those harmed to fuck off and deal with it.

[esafak]

> It could actually turn out that AI sacrifices 100 engineering jobs for 10 low-level service or prostitution jobs and a crap-ton of wealth to those already rich.

That's where wealth redistribution (Taxation) comes in. The USA is not good at progressive taxation, but everyone could be better off if it were implemented properly.

[Izikiel43]

> The USA is not good at progressive taxation

The top 10 percent of incomes pay 76% of all income taxes, the top 5% pays around 55% of all income tax.

I would say it’s pretty progressive.

[palmotea]

> The top 10 percent of incomes pay 76% of all income taxes, the top 5% pays around 55% of all income tax.

> I would say it’s pretty progressive.

That's a lesson in misleading statistics. Inequality has risen to absurd levels, and just keeps getting worse. It's not "pretty progressive."

[nutjob2]

> But what actually happens is our free-market society doesn't give a shit.

Maybe in the US, but in other countries those things actually happen. It's a political issue, not a moral issue with technology.

[qsera]

It would be ok if people lost jobs, and the products and services become cheap correspondingly.

But it would be a problem if people lost jobs and all the product and services keep costing the same as before, and get costlier over time as before...