Because it wasn’t possible to replace all the people. Jobs went obsolete, not people. AI promises to make people themselves obsolete, something that’s never happened in history so bringing up history is largely pointless.
And society is run for the benefit of the less-than-one-percent at the top, who fear, hate and despise the rest of us. Once we aren’t needed anymore they’ll kill us all, without a shred of remorse.
Which is why we need to kill them first. Not by firing squad, but with something like a 100% tax / forfeiture of all wealth above, say, 50 Million USD (adjusted annually for inflation). Once they aren’t so special our own survival will be more sure.
I’d support that. Politically impossible but a good idea. I’ve no absolute objection to some people being wealthier than others, but not to the point they warp all of society around them.
Which is still true. We’re talking about AI eliminating jobs.
That’s just silly, man, and you still don’t understand that more jobs will be created. You still don’t understand why it is almost all jobs have been eliminated by machines and tech, but people still have jobs. Let’s return to reality.
I’m all for bringing the Musks and Bezoses back to earth but you’re not going far enough. They need to start with enforcing the law on large corporations, which they currently do not do. Antitrust law is basocally being ignored.
But that doesn’t change technology replacing jobs. That happens anyway. Sorry, but taxing Elon Musk will not affect that at all. Not one bit.
It won’t matter since all of those jobs will be taken by AI as well. Eliminating human employment is the point.
Will AI cause massive unemployment? Unclear. Kevin Drum has been worried about this for over a decade. Here he presents another possibility suggested by the economist Noah Smith.
We’re going to make a 2 part distinction, followed by a 4 part distinction. Technology can be a substitute for human labor and it can also be a complement. Those who look back to the past where the complementary effect has predominated (so job gains exceed job losses) need to look harder. Consider the employment of horses. Via the law of comparative advantage, they still could have persisted for a while once cars were introduced - though cars were better at any job (they had absolute advantage) it made sense to use cars for their most productive uses in a world with scarce resources. So horses could have been shuttled to lower productive jobs, even if cars were better at everything. Instead horses were shipped to the glue factory.
Noah Smith adapts acclaimed economist Daron Acemoglu’s 4 part taxonomy of the world we’re heading to in this article (sub req beyond the first 11 interesting paragraphs):
- AI could replace human jobs . This is the one everyone tends to focus on. Acemoglu singles out “simple writing, translation and classification tasks as well as somewhat more complex tasks related to customer service and information provision” as candidates for job elimination.
- AI could make humans more productive at their current jobs . For example, GitHub Copilot helps people code. This might either create or destroy jobs, depending on demand.2
- AI could improve existing automation . Acemoglu suggests examples like “IT security, automated control of inventories, and better automated quality control.” This would raise productivity without taking away jobs (since those tasks are already automated).
- AI can create new tasks for humans to do . In a policy memo with David Autor3 and Simon Johnson, Acemoglu speculates on what some of these might be. They suggest that with the aid of AI, teachers could teach more subjects, and doctors could treat more health problems. They also suggest that “modern craft workers” could use AI to make a bunch of cool products, do a bunch of maintenance tasks, and so on. (As I’ll discuss later, it’s actually very hard to imagine what new tasks a technology might create, which is one big problem with discussions about new technologies.)
Number 1 and 2 get most of the attention. Number 4 is probably the most important. When a dramatically different technology like electricity or the internet is introduced, business typically tries to keep doing what they did before, only faster and better. That doesn’t work, and those efforts are abandoned. Replacing a steam engine with a dynamo will just cost you more. The benefits come when you disperse electric motors around your factory, but that involves a wholesale reshaping of the production process. More recently, Xerox invented the PC, but got stuck on the concept of the paperless office. Same office, just without paper. That’s not how things work.
Most AI discussions are based on the Data character in Star Trek. He’s a little nerdy, but generally speaking you can just slot him in. If artificial intelligence is like that, I’m guessing we’re screwed (though as Noah Smith pointed out last Spring, that’s not necessarily the case).[1] But if ChatGPT-AI is more like a Lovecraftian alien intelligence, then it will be different, and the technology is more likely to complement human skills. Then we’re in good shape. Probably. For now. So oppose Data and support different intelligences like the Terminator.
Anyway, what greedy capitalists want is secondary. Some of this is embedded in the technology, though understanding the world of #4 is probably not possible now.
[1] If AI does everything better, but requires massive amounts of electricity, then humans will be shunted into lower productive tasks, but will still have a job. Because it’s better to have AI doing important things like model the weather and build nuclear bombs than to be customer service reps. If we live in that world, then the key policy would be to put a cap on the electricity that data centers can use. That’s all that would be needed. Maybe “All data center and crypto electricity must be nuclear, solar, or wind and the local grid must be reliable,” would do the trick.
Here’s a great use of AI: Wasting scammers’ time. Meet Daisy:
(Good until the scammers develop their own AI technology as a counter…)
The latest generation of LLMs all exhibit “scheming” behaviour.
Basically, if you give them a long-term goal, and then place obstacles in their way, the AIs can not only take actions against their developers and users, but also lie about what they’re doing.
Summary in link below and also the paper is here.
Wrong again! That’s simply not how life has ever, or will ever, worked. No matter what tech you introduce, jobs above it will be created. You need to study the history to understand the present and the future.
Eliminating jobs as an overall concept is never the point.
That’s just elevating the present economic system into a matter of faith. “As it has always been, so shall it always be”. It makes no sense at all, there’s no magical force that will create jobs for humans when there’s no need for such jobs.
And “eliminating jobs as an overall concept” is always the point. Businesses hate their employees and hate having any. They want as few employees as possible, treated and paid as poorly as possible. Both to save money and to punish them for being “parasites”. Give any business the ability to do so without collapsing and they’d fire every last person but the CEO; or if they’re feeling generous, the board of directors.
It’s not about the PRESENT economic system. It’s about all of them.
Irrational outbursts aren’t an argument or evidence. Get serious. And the thing is, it wouldn’t matter.
It’s not about “all of them”, it’s about ours. This is the standard thing where someone denies that a new technology could ever possibly do anything that will change the basic structure of our society, and that therefore until the end of time the future will be at most a basically identical version of our society with shinier gadgets. And so you’re are completely ignoring the question of if an AI can do any job a human can, where would those supposed new jobs magically come from? And why?
And I am serious. Just read the news, look at how businesses act and how their management talks. If anything my position is less extreme than the “we’ll live in a bunker and put bomb collars on the security guys” proposals of these people.
Some jobs will be created, others destroyed. That’s what history says. The latter so far has always exceeded the former, but that may not be the case moving forwards. Technology such as the cotton gin, the iron plow, the McCormick reaper, the combine tended to increase equine employment until around 1920. Some of the technology substituted for horse-power (ha!), some of it complemented it, and all of it lowered costs. Steam tractors were introduced in 1862, not substantially affecting overall demand for horses until developments in the internal combustion engine and federal farm aid led to the number of horses in the US dropping 90% between 1920 and 1970. Mules and burrows had it worse.
Was eliminating equine employment the point? Well, not quite. Horses are more manageable than hominini after all.
ETA1: Der: Yeah, I was wryly implying that.
ETA2: Der: If AI is an alien intelligence and becomes great in producing tons of verbiage quickly with 70% reliability (much better than it is now) then we’ll be fine. Human and LLM intelligence will complement each other. If you can just slot in LLM intelligence - we might still be fine if LLM is limited to high productive uses, like the steam engine was in the late 1800s. It’s when LLM is a good substitute for HI (human intelligence) and it is cheap that we’d get mass unemployment. Even then, universal basic income (UBI) could change the tendencies, though it would be a tough lift politically until it isn’t.
Also there was never the same fear and hatred for horses that there is for employees among the upper class. Nobody thought that horses were evil parasites who deserved punishment. Or worried that they were going to unionize or adopt Communism, for that matter.
@Der_Trihs You are severely underestimating the usefulness of humans 
Worst case scenario, the uber rich will want human slaves to serve them. lots of them. Just like back in the day. Humans are way more agile, flexible, capable, energy efficient than robots. Like way, way, WAYYYYYY more. Our flesh muscles are a hundred times better than the shitty servos robots like Boston Dynamic’s Atlas use. And those are the state of the art.
The sad, boring reality is that robots will not catch up anytime soon. You and me will likely be long dead before it happens. I don’t like this! I wish we lived in Asimov’s predicted future with proper good robots but that ain’t reality. No flying cars. No good robots. That’s our reality.
In fact, there is a movement amongst the rich to make people have more babies to reverse population decline. Elon Musk is a big fan, having 200 kids (I’m exaggerating) himself apparently. I think it’s called pro-natalist movement or something. Here is an article about one such couple:
So if you have to worry about something, worry about enslavement of humanity, not its extinction. That’s just sci-fi. Robots suck too much. Period. Instead of Robbie from “I, Robot”, I got a shitty Roomba.
The hypothetical being contemplated presumes that AI and robots are at least human-equivalent. I do agree that the present-day versions are nowhere close, which is why I often call it “AI” with quotes.
I think the important piece to not forget is: why do jobs exist?
Jobs exist because humans have needs and desires. They are not granted by benevolent “job creators”.
So AI eliminates all jobs? Great, that means we’re all living on some kind of basic income and having AI care for our every need. Or if no-one can afford AI goods and services? Great, then the economy continues as is; you repair my leaky roof, I’ll help you do your tax return.
None of this to say that there aren’t epic problems ahead, particularly since this particular technological revolution may hit high-skilled, high-status jobs harder. But I think looking at this from the perspective of unemployment is the wrong focus.
I don’t know why you’re surprised that your robot sucks, since it’s a vacuum cleaner.
In our society? To benefit the wealthy and the corporations because they can’t do without the rest of us, no matter how much they hate it. Which is why we wouldn’t see a basic income if human employment was eliminated; we’d be left to starve (at best), and it would be regarded as a just punishment for our parasitic nature upon the Real People who own the world. If there’s no jobs then we are no longer useful and necessary to the wealthy and therefore can be condemned like the enemies of God and Nature we are in their eyes.
Well, that was horrifying.
She has fertility issues because of her eating disorder, so all her kids are in vitro?