Let’s follow the AI and automation craze to its eventual conclusion - automations everywhere, humans are either employed in automation industry, or are unemployed at a massive scale.
Stable jobs are replaced by ever-optimized gig economy for some, and chronic poverty for others. For there to even be economy - the massive underemployed population subsists on government welfare.
Cynic in me thinks that all of the wealth generated by enormous productivity gains resulting from automation will not find its way towards population displaced by it. Those cashiers, toll booth, and warehouse workers did not find themselves in much more lucrative careers - I don’t see why it will be any different for truck and cab drivers who will be joining them in the near future.
If you see a future where these people who suddenly found all this extra leisure time o. Their hands and no income - are somehow blossoming in creative directions and realizing their own potential - I’d like to have it painted for me, as it all looks pretty bleak to me. Just not quiet sure of the timeline.
Best I can come up with is an emergence of some kind of counter-cultural protest market where people buy and sell “made by humans” products, and are continuously attacked by various regulations originating from mega corporations who captured the government.
> Cynic in me thinks that all of the wealth generated by enormous productivity gains resulting from automation will not find its way towards population displaced by it.
Empirically, that's not true.
Unemployment was at an all-time low after most of those jobs were eliminated, and wages after adjusting for inflation continued to rise in real terms.
I am inclined to doubt the sources of these empirical observations. Statistics are funny like that, “average patient temperature in the hospital” effect and frequent inability to correctly attribute confounding factors outside of observed window.
Equally bad is anecdotal evidence, but I’ll drop some anyway. For a while now I am observing a crisis thats, admittedly subjectively, easy to see - but is somehow absent in those empirical sources citing economic accomplishments. An indirect evidence of what I am talking about - is crushing defeat of democrats/establishment in last election, following among other reasons, quite a backlash for boasting about said accomplishments.
But rather than picking issue with one of my points - I still would like someone to describe the counterpoint to my dystopian expectations - where, for example, would all those professional drivers I mentioned earlier go?
Ps. Oh speaking of statistics - remember Greenspan’s “there’s no real estate bubble, there’s froth in individual markets” right before 2008 financial crisis? It be funny like that, sometimes much derided common sense is all you need /shrug.
> where, for example, would all those professional drivers I mentioned earlier go?
Wherever all the cashiers, toll booth operators, and farmers went after automation took their jobs.
New jobs are created, the people displaced have to migrate to them.
Is it fun for them? No.
Is it how the world works? Yes.
Technology thus far has a VERY VERY long and established role of creating more jobs than it eliminates.
See >95% of the population being employed in agriculture for tens of thousands of years and being reduced to about 5% over the course of 100 years (and civilization being FAR FAR better off for it).
Will that trend one day end? Probably.
Will it be doomsday for the plebs? Who knows.
Is it happening within a timeframe worth worrying about? Unlikely.
Let’s follow the AI and automation craze to its eventual conclusion - automations everywhere, humans are either employed in automation industry, or are unemployed at a massive scale.
Stable jobs are replaced by ever-optimized gig economy for some, and chronic poverty for others. For there to even be economy - the massive underemployed population subsists on government welfare.
Cynic in me thinks that all of the wealth generated by enormous productivity gains resulting from automation will not find its way towards population displaced by it. Those cashiers, toll booth, and warehouse workers did not find themselves in much more lucrative careers - I don’t see why it will be any different for truck and cab drivers who will be joining them in the near future.
If you see a future where these people who suddenly found all this extra leisure time o. Their hands and no income - are somehow blossoming in creative directions and realizing their own potential - I’d like to have it painted for me, as it all looks pretty bleak to me. Just not quiet sure of the timeline.
Best I can come up with is an emergence of some kind of counter-cultural protest market where people buy and sell “made by humans” products, and are continuously attacked by various regulations originating from mega corporations who captured the government.