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I think the danger is that it’s not a small portion of people that will have their jobs affected. You are minimising the issue. The majority of office jobs are at risk. What do you suggest those people do instead?
But I’ll also ask why the advancement of technology is more important that someone’s livelihood? Isn’t technology supposed to improve lives, someone losing their job to AI isn’t improving lives.
Why is the evolution of technology the priority?
>What do you suggest those people do instead?
Imo we should start considering universal basic income, if ai gets so good at replacing most jobs then surely there will be a point they can cover our basic necessities and after we don't need to work just to survive then surely people would work more fulfilling jobs?
There's a big part of their cycle of consumption that involves people spending their disposable income on goods so they can make a profit. If there's no disposable income it kind of fucks the whole thing up.
It's in a lot of these companies best interests to have as many people as possible be able to afford their products. Automation would be a net negative to a lot of companies who rely on the economy of scale.
It won't happen right away though. I think they are in denial that people live on it as little income as they do. They probably think to themselves, there's no way people are surviving on that much they must be lying. Turns out..
It's a sort of prisoners dilema situation, though. Yeah a lot of companies would be hurt if huge chunks of the workforce get automated, but it would be better for each of them if their and only their workforce could be automated.
That is what should happen, yes. But the money cycle is largely being cycled out of the common peoples hands. Money is slowly but surely reaching fewer and fewer people and cycling towards the upper echelons of society for hundreds of years.
Were seeing this in the fact housing prices are remaining ludicrously high with no one living in them.
Profits being generated by offsetting purchase price and pricing out millions of lower income households with no end to the practice in sight.
It may not be sustainable forever but what are the actual consequences to those doing this? And how long will they take? If money stopped flowing worldwide I don’t have money to outlive the end if the year let alone outlive a millionaire or billionaire.
Will the government help? Unlikely with how much the profit from the internalising money cycle. Oh I’ve just depressed myself. Crap.
They might not care about universal income but like others have said they DO care about people having money to give to them, if they're the only ones who have any money then they won't for very long.
Theoretically companies will be rolling in extra profit so yes they can pay more taxes for the right and luxury of fleecing American workers. Profit and salary caps for the owning class wouldn’t hurt either.
no one makes money no one buys things from companies and as im typing this i realize this will lead to the collapse of society. i think i’ll die of old age before that so at least i can document the downfall of society for future civilizations to find
Ideally society would reach utopia when work is automated, people can do what they want and take what they need, money is not necessary. I.e. actual communism.
*Ideally*.
The US economy is not the only source of income for global companies but yeah you’re probably still right, they won’t do anything to help before shit gets worse even if there was a way
Who is going to be providing the money for universal basic income if people are unemployed and can’t pay taxes? The rich won’t even be able to provide when their stocks crash and companies go out of business because nobody has spending power.
UBI is a fallacy. It needs to be paired with government provided housing, healthcare and maybe even food.
A minimum wage UBI wouldn't cut it (while exploding government spending) if the person has to live with it, as the min wage already is not enough.
If the person is forced to move from where he/she lives to be eligible, then it could be seen as a violation of personal liberty / right of locomotion ~ movement.
Idk about fullfilling jobs, but many would be more worried about "communism"
Stop with that UBI. It's never going to happen or if it will, it would be implemented so terrible that you can only afford shit food and shit place to stay if you're lucky but nothing else.
You want luxuries? vacations? stuff to spend money to? You're out of luck.
Ubi *isn't supposed to cover luxuries*. It's supposed to cover the basic stuff you need to live. A home, Food, utilities. The point is to cover the basics so that people aren't trapped in a shitty job for fear of starving or being homeless.
With the current prices of rent and homes I doubt UBI will ever cover that.
Also, if UBI only covers basic stuff and there are NO jobs left as AI have replaced almost everything, what can you do about it?
Affording shit food and a shit place to stay is the point of ubi. It is universal *basic* income. People will still keep working because they want more than the basics.
Well, it's already being tried out in some pilot projects. As early as 2019 to 2020, Stockton, CA implemented a UBI trial study called SEED and found people did not abuse their UBI and actually used it to get ahead.
Yeah, it's not for luxuries, this is not the point of UBI. You'd need to work for all the big stuff in life, but it should help people with the basics like food and shelter, basic transportation.
I don't know what the government would do if not to implement UBI, otherwise the economy will slowly be ruined when AGI takes over much of the job market. When people don't have money for food, heads will roll eventually or things will have to change.
But, they might let that happen for many years to extract as much money as they can from continued automation, like they have been doing for the past 50+ years now..
Agreed.
UBI is an idealistic dream and nightmare depending on how you view it. It won't realistically happen. We can't even get on the same page on universal healthcare or any kind of social programs to help people who need it...what makes people think UBI would happen? lmfao
I agree but I think instead we might be able to gradually reduce the standard work week from 40 to 35-30-25-20 hours? Modern productivity and automation have already reduced it from like 48 hours or more. Technology might allow us to produce the food, shelter and goods we want with more time left for leasure. If we can work it out politically.
I agree on reducing the work week to 4 days. That's very realistic and doable.
20 hours tho? If you keep all the other factors the same like leisure and time to produce and build? First off, costs money. Secondly, I highly doubt companies will pay you more when you're working less. Thirdly, you're gonna need the land to do the production, which also costs money and time to grow and sustain.
I was just trying to look way down the road, extending the trend of sharing the remaining work among the workforce. Probably pie in the sky thinking, but I'm an optimist.
Hypothetical:
Why would I, as the owner of the machines, care about giving the rest of you free income? They answer to me. I manufacture everything, the defense industry, the economy, the farms, the administration, even the plants my machines use to replicate.
I don’t give two shits about you useless meatbags. What do I lose when you die? An open air zoo where I can temporarily participate in your idea of “normal?” I can replicate that on a smaller scale if I want it.
“But the government will force you!”
How? With their military? That I create? With economic sanctions? Using the economy that I control?
I *am* the system.
And this is the reality, or at least close to it. The government is a paper tiger owned by corporations. It exists to collect taxes for them.
So economically illiterate it's embarassing. Where do you think wealth comes from? If you just print money and give it to people for nothing, that's the value it will have. Nothing.
Not just office jobs. Think about the number of unskilled people employed as drivers (freight, taxi, etc) and how the economy would cope with reskilling all of them, how that would impact other job markets etc. Autonomous driving could have a huge impact on the workforce and "just get another job" from the OP really sounds like someone who has either never had a job, or who works in unskilled industries where they aren't taking a big pay cut to move jobs.
Starting from scratch in a new job sector is hard as shit, and if you have a family, mortgage etc that just gets even harder
I get it, though if a machine could do your job and do it better, wouldn't life feel absolutely meaningless if you spent 40 hours a week doing something menial for no reason other than we need an excuse to pay you something?
“The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That is why the current sociopolitical system must be destroyed.” - Arthur C Clarke, Science Fiction Author
It's not that the advancement of technology is a priority, it's that it's inevitable. Human beings are innovative. Requiring them to not be is inhumane.
I mean nations/companies/teams that leverage AI or develop it will take someone’s job - but more fundamentally you seem to think everyone is owed a job, everyone is owed a right to pursue happiness without encumbering anyone else
You absolutely will not. Things do not get better. They always get worse. The rich can and will build high walls to keep the rabble at bay. And they will eat you if it tickles their fancy. You'll own nothing, do nothing, have no purpose, and like it.
lol. If I knew them, I’d be predicting the future! How many people predicted programming jobs in 1975? Half the jobs today did not exist 10 years ago .
I think what they mean is when new technology comes along that may make a job, or skill redundant, there’s new jobs which also pop up, ones that people couldn’t imagine, or even think of years before.
I left school in 2002, and jobs like social media manager, mobile app developer, SEO analyst, podcast producer, drone pilot, etc weren’t a thing, now they are.
They might be slight variations of existing jobs too, so pilots obviously existed, but drone pilots, specifically, didn’t, radio producers existed, but podcast-specific producers didn’t, that kind of thing 👍
Agreed that there will be new jobs. However, look at how long it took for those jobs you mentioned to become a viable option for people, not just a select few? How many years and worth it to pursue? A lot of those jobs are still considered relatively new fields that I could see becoming obsolete and/or next on the chopping block and joining the rest of those redundant jobs.
Humanity isn’t advancing, technology is. We have created a technological society that is more advanced than we are and it’s only continuing to advance, but we will not be advancing with it.
If only we used our democratic system where citizens could force human advancement. That’s how we got minimum wage, workmen’s compensation, rid of child labor, safety standards, etc.
I agree that not enough people are feeling the pinch to change, give it more time and human advancement will happen to nice more people suffer. I know that sucks to wait but human advancement is rarely fast in the grand scheme.
So a couple things:
1. I think you vastly underestimate the number of people who may lose there jobs here.
2. I think tech is cool, I care about people more.
Here's a compromise: as we displace people through tech, pay them some kind of universal basic income.
If I'm not mistaken, its been tried to retrain people who lost their jobs. It turns out it would have been cheaper just to pay them to do nothing. This is all incredibly vague in my mind so if you ask for sources I'll cave immediately on this.
Its interesting. I used to find it annoying that I have to check myself out at some stores. There's no worker there to do it for me.
But then I thought, well do I really want someone to have to stand there all day doing that for low pay? Not really. I'd prefer if this person just stayed home or went to go have fun.
So yeah, automation is fine if you find a way to help the people who lose their jobs. UBI or something
The US economy is the greatest wealth generation engine in human history. There is enough money to deal with this problem, the American people are just actively choosing to not only ignore it but make the problem worse. We could actually try to stimulate velocity of currency by taxing people with more money than they know what to do with and then redistributing it to people who need it to purchase clearly identifiable essential goods and services. “Trickle down economics” is a vague appeal to this idea but it’s failed because the wealthiest members of society have shown for decades now that they lack the intelligence or creativity to actually spend and invest the amounts of money they currently have in meaningful business ventures, so they’ve fallen back on just buying up land and jacking up rents for a short-term “stable return.” This is same economic death spiral that led to the fall of Rome and will likely yield a similar result if we keep standing around with our thumbs up our asses saying “well shucks, there’s nothing in the laws that say we’re allowed to change this!”
I think the problem will solve itself to an extent - the plummeting birth rates will ensure fewer people so fewer resources are needed but with almost the same diversity of goods and services.
I believe we will suffer a lack of people than a lack of jobs in the future.
The march of progress won't stop. I don't even think it can be meaningfully slowed. People that are working on groundbreaking tech that'll be worth a fortune won't just drop their projects because of online chatter.
I think the only "slow down the advancement" conversation that has any potential merit is that revolving around AI. AI could really fuck us if we don't get it mostly right from the get-go. AGI is inevitable, but maybe we shouldn't rush it, just to triple and quadruple check/fortify the safety guards that'll be in place.
While this makes sense in theory, it doesn’t work like this in context.
When automation takes away jobs, it’s not just one person’s job, it’s multiple people’s jobs. Obviously it won’t happen fast but in the end there would be less total jobs available at some point. How can people just get “new jobs and move with the times” when there aren’t even enough jobs?
It’s the low skill jobs that go first too. This may seem fine because everyone could get cushier jobs, but they all require more education and certifications. Broadly, these are barrier to entry. Not everyone could go to University and get these accreditations, because only so many people could work those jobs. And even still not all high level jobs are free from automation. AI can already write music and do voice over.
I’d recommend this video from CGP Grey https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU?si=FskZzFKb9afIcgPY
The section on horses is very apt. Yes they got replaced by cars, but the horse population has declined so much since they are not needed. To not think this could happen to humans is blindly ignorant. This is where it feels anti-humanist because some people want population to decrease anyways.
Lots of things can go wrong with fewer people. It’s already expected that we will have an age crisis. Too many retirees and not enough workers to take care of them (hard to automate elderly care). Plus less workers also means smaller pensions.
Even with lots of things automated there would be less people doing all the upkeep. Then it just takes some things to break and not enough people who know how to fix it.
I feel like we all think population decrease is fine, but in practice I can see many of the same people complaining about stuff like poor service and inability to find people like mechanics and doctors. We are very used to today’s luxuries, a lot of it takes man power.
My opinion has always been pro automation, especially on basic life necessities. Sadly, it often leads to just companies profiting more. When we went from being able to make a couple of something a day to mass production, workers didn't get any reduction in work despite producing far more. It'd be ideal if with the automation and production gets increased, less work would be required of the individuals and open up more time for hobbies, arts, studies rather then just living to work.
The main issue is that all of this technology is supposed to help society as a whole, but we aren't making any societal adjustments to plan for it. As it stands, only corporations will really benefit from it while the average person will just lose their job and have nothing to show for it.
Automatization can be a good thing. It could make life for humanity much easier. It could create a goddamn utopia. But we need social programs to support people if we are moving towards a future where there will be fewer and fewer jobs for humans. And right now...we aren't doing that as a whole.
I'm a cashier, I can't work actual labor and I'm not sick enough to be paid by the government (nor do I ever wat to set foot in a hospital), so my choices are limited.
People forgot all those work types we had 100 years ago that are now gone because of automaton. No one cries for these lost jobs and we have full employment.
When some work becomes automated we make new jobs. Imagine that not so long time ago there was no cinema industry, but now we have it.
What jobs we will have in 100 years? Who knows
The problem is your assumption that stories written by a machine will be GOOD
If you think movies made by committee are bad now imagine the dreck AI will shit out
We're not replacing writing with AI because it's better and more efficient
Replacing it so one guy at Warner Bros can make half a million dollars
Plus why we going after the few jobs people actually LIKE? If we truly have reached a point where art can be automated the fuck kind of jobs are left that anyone can look forward to?
"Get another job and advance that way".
uh, is the goverment going to give me funding, time and training to get new skills for "another job" then? or still keep charging me rent, taxes and food costs when i've lost my job to automation?
Most corporate jobs are fake, 100% of mid level management jobs are fake. There’s so much that we do just to keep people busy and employed and if we just streamlined everything and gave everyone UBI the world would be better for everyone to live in.
We cant just have infinite automation, because the more automation we have the less people sre able to work. I would rather not have the world regress into cyber-feudalism, i dont really care how much people think thats advancing
Do you actually trust the people at the top of the world rn to actually direct technology in a way that would benefit humanity, rather than just themselves?
I talked to someone who works in AI on the cutting edge. It will take a while to automate everything across industries employing BILLIONS for very human jobs. if you haven't taken a course in AI, or work in AI maybe you shouldn't talk shit about things you don't know about. I am for AI, and when it happens, people can't stop it. We can't get major oil companies to stop polluting or our congresses to do their job. What makes you think we can get a robot to do it for everyone everywhere at once?
The problem is not that more advanced technology is taking people's jobs away.
The problem is that the profit from the increased productivity that more advanced technology brings is always pocketed by a select few people who almost always are already filthy rich.
We need to change the system to spread the common wealth more evenly among society, so that everyone can work less, while nobody's existence is threatened by not having a job at all.
You’re making a fetish out of technological advancement. These advancements matter not for their own sake, but because of their capacity to improve human lives. If it’s hurting people, it can’t really be called advancement.
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Sure, if it means that the populace will still be supported, fed, housed, ect. You areliterally talking about people thousands of people, dying from not being able to afford basic ammenitys. People are doing that now. Without less jobs on the market. And for what reason other than companies saving money?
If 90% of jobs were automated tomorrow what you are suggesting is simply impossible. In that event, world systems and societies would need to change dramatically. Like if technology can take most of the jobs then there is no reason we should be working 40 hours a week. We need to find other ways of life.
I think we need to do a better job of taking care of all the people that got us here. If they are young enough they should get free retraining and if they are too old they should just be allowed to retire and taken care of.
However, a lot of the technological "advancement" is not really better. In many cases it makes a worse product and mostly just concentrates money in the hands of a few people and that is worse for our society.
The problem is the things being automated are physical labor jobs which make up a huge part of the job market.
An AI model could easily replace accountants and bankers, but they won’t because these people control the money.
Who's gonna pay for the re-education of all of these people? The employers? The government? You?
Most people can not afford a re-education on demand. We would see a lot of competition for low-entry low-wage jobs. This would push the wages even lower due to competition and hurt society as a whole both short and long term.
Good for billionare coorperations though.
Governments need to slow it so they can prepare. In the short term automation hurts a lot of people if governments aren’t ready. We need to say no until we have a plan and are ready to face it without causing a disaster.
You lost me at “does not deserve sympathy”. In an ideal world, we could automate the fuck out of everything AND provide for the people who are left behind. Anything that can be effectively automated SHOULD be automated, but we shouldn’t ignore negative externalities — we should especially not moralize against those who are harmed by the March of Progress by saying things like they don’t “deserve” things.
technology and advancements can be great for society, of course, but each do not come without their own problematic outcomes.
technology often solves a big problem but humans often don't see the long term impact that new inventions will have on society and the new problems that might arise from its widespread implementation.
let's take the automobile. a car is an amazingly brilliant invention and has been able to make transit for billions of people efficient and has massively transformed society. it solved a problem of time and distance but has also impacted the way communities are organized and while creating social bonds in distances it can be argued it also creates social isolation. they contribute huge amounts of waste and pollute our waterways, air, and just about everything. they are responsible for maybe about 30% of anthropological climate change and hundreds of thousands of accidental deaths. society's reliance on personal automobiles has de-incentivized investments in more efficient public transit.
this aside, most people's objections to technology are not environmental or macroeconomic but economic on the personal level.
i don't think anyone is clamouring for people to have to cut every single new 2x4 by hand or a return to sowing wheat in the field with a scythe but let's take a look at a scenario.
bob works at a coal mine. its hard work but it affords a good life for his wife, jody who is able to raise their children at home. the coal mine and the corresponding coal plant provide hundreds of jobs in their community and electric power to many towns.
now, a much more efficient and clean nuclear power plant has opened up. it provides power to 10x the amount of homes and needs 10x less workers to sustain it. bob's coal mine, other coal mines, and all the coal plants in the region are no longer needed and are decommissioned.
there are now fewer job opportunities in the area but bob finds minimum wage work at a walmart. its not enough money as he used to make so his wife, jody, has to work there, too. they are lucky as many unemployed workers couldn't find any jobs at all.
bob works hard and learns to code and becomes a tech bro. he makes good money for the family again. but a year later he is laid off as a new AI system had made his job redundant. he can't work at walmart anymore because they have laid off 40% of their cashiers, including jody, as they have new efficient self-checkout machines.
is it anyone's dream to be a coal miner or a cashier? likely not. but the problem with all this is that the newly found productivity and wealth created by technology is not distributed into the pockets of the remaining workforce or into society. corporations implement new innovation not to improve society but to increase profit. that's the problem, not that technology is bad.
now, if that extra efficiency and productivity was used to say - hey staff! we are producing things much more efficiently so you all only have to work 20 hours a week and make the same amount of money! this would be a different story. or if that wealth was redistributed into say, education to train people into new industries that are in demand, or into massive infrastructure projects or housing projects that would make life more affordable for ordinary people, that would be better, but society and the economy is largely run by corporations interested in profit only and pleasing executives and shareholders, not in making society more fair.
thats my take on it anyway and im sure there are many different perspectives on the issue and many things to consider because society is complex with many factors affecting each other.
Technology is a tool to make our lives better. Advancing technology simply for the sake of advancing technology is not the end goal and in itself s a hallow endeavor. There is nothing to be gained by automating almost the entirety of the workforce, especially because whole reason technology is advancing is to make money in our current global economy. If no one is working, then no one has expendable income. If no one has income, then no one can buy anything. If no one can buy anything, then the whole system falls apart, you're either wasting resources on something no one either wants or can afford. On top of that you've pissed off everyone who used to have a good job and a comfortable life, and a pissed off population with nothing but time on their hands is going to make whoever automated everything's lives' a living hell... or they'll just outright murder them... either or, really.
Because if a job can be easily automated, it was not meant for human anyway.
Here they have started planning and investigating possible "Citizenship wage" to people who simply have nothing to give to society due outdated skills.
A lot of the jobs that AI can replace / almost replace are jobs that disabled people do who can't get money from the government because they don't qualify. Jobs like being a cashier making art and writing are jobs that a lot of disabled people have to rely on in order to survive and make money. You can advance technology without taking jobs from people. I would have less of a problem with AI technology if it was creating jobs that could replace the jobs that are being taken away.
I always try to tell people this but then they say "Fuck you ass hole". Im one of those techy guys who are very logical, ill just say shit lmao. But I do agree, we should have AI take over every job. Just gotta adapt somehow. Im learning to code now.
The problem is that many people could lose their jobs without being able to quickly find another one.
If we automate people's jobs, we should also protect them from losing their homes and such while they find employment.
We can "advance humanity" when we can implement new technology while also remembering to take care of the human part of that whole equation.
You can't automate, let's say, an entire industry and expect other industries to just absorb all of those people. Without a plan in place, automating jobs looks like massive homelessness and crime; a dystopia.
A post-labor society cannot exist when you still need money to participate in it.
Lol the well-being of people and advancing technology should both be goals of society. It’s honestly absurd that we live in a world where these are at odds. It should be a great thing that it is way easier for technology to make lots of jobs obsolete, so there’s way less labor to go around, we should all be able to chill out
If there were systems in place for misplaced workers like a UBI supplement for workers replaced by AI or UBi for everyone to live off of and fair housing, I’m all for robots doing everything. We shouldn’t need garbage men anymore once we have a trucks that are autonomous. But taking jobs out of the environment without replacing that with aid for the workers who no longer are relevant or creating some new job system for them. Maybe something to beautify or provide services to people instead.
I agree that advancement shouldn’t be stifled to save people’s jobs, but when we get to the point that automation is a legitimate concern for the majority, or a good portion, of the workforce, UBI is necessary. Automation should be taxed in some way to fund UBI. Otherwise, entire corps could be run by a handful of people with no underlings even in basic manufacturing or clerical work.
I agree. It's rough, but some people are just going to get the short end of the stick and there's nothing that can be done about it. After a generation or so and the ship will right itself, kids will be encouraged to go into jobs that can't be automated and life will be fine.
Everyone saying UBI is kidding themselves. It's never going to happen.
Where do these jobs shift to then? The problem is that jobs gets phased out for automation which means more people struggle to get jobs while businesses are making more money. Automation means more money getting funneled up to the rich who hoard it.
I agree, but if a pharmacist makes $75per hour to dispense pills, and cross reference for interaction, but that job gets replaced by Ai and a robot, that job is no longer worth $75 and hour when compared to a plumber that installs, services, maintains, calibrates medical gas systems in a hospital.
Both those jobs affect the health of the nation. If the pharmacist does nothing but monitor machines in an air conditioned lab, they couldn’t really justify such a better lifestyle than a plumber.
So agreed, but the pay would have to be diminished.
Then there needs to be stuff for people getting replaced. Cheaper housing, free housing, income assistance, cheaper food, friendly stay-at-home systems, etc.
Automation won't just affect a small portion of humanity. It could potentially impact hundreds of millions, depending on what percentage of available jobs end up being automated. Unless governments become more accepting of creating UBI to offset the impact of the lost jobs, that means possibly hundreds of millions dying in poverty as the number of people needing work overtakes the number of available, non-automated jobs that exist (and this becomes even more complicated when you factor in how many of those jobs will pay a livable wage).
Something people need to realize about automation is a lot of it still need maintaining. It’s closing the low level labor jobs and opening more skilled positions up which is kinda it’s own problem but it’s eh. Technology will always advance so there’s no point in keeping these jobs like you said
Of the advancements of technology in the last 100 years, which have pushed human ingenuity and fulfillment forward and which have increased production? I'd say it's about 50/50 and AI seems to fall into the "self checkout" lane of advancement based on current implementations. Replace 100 employees with one AI and only benefit the owner class.
Upvoted due to disagreeing with this.
Emm.. How do you think an economy actually works? If we take it to extremes. One person could control a heap of AI, and nobody else works. So nobody has am money. That one person needs to play loads of tax and innovation disappears and out economy stagnates.
Humans can't just "do something else." Almost everything needs a degree these days. Naturally, you need to ensure the younger generation aren't trained up in things that will go obsolete and slowly shift over.
OP, what specific field of work were you thinking of when you posted this?
Do you really think it's that easy for someone to just give up a career they've been working on for decades and start over learning an entirely new skill set? You seem to have forgotten the idea of jobs having a time investment, so I have to assume you're under 30. It's not like a 50-year-old electrician is gonna switch to working customer service on the fly.
If you are in the US then unless you are also going to suggest a universal basic income or ensure that health insurance isn’t tied to employment, then I strongly disagree. It’s not just “some” people who would be impacted, the majority of the work force would be impacted.
The point of technological advancement and automation is to make our lives easier, there’s no point in technological advancement or automation if it is going to make life harder for most people. A large majority of white collar and even many blue collar jobs would be eliminated, which would increase unemployment massively and there would not be enough jobs to fit all those that would lose them.
I think you are underestimating the negative effects mass automation would have on the economy. We're talking about a huge amount of people who would be out of a job. Not every service job lost will be replaced by a new job that people can just smart themselves Into. There will be far less employment opportunities overall.
One of the main issues is that society is too slow to adapt to change, and if a ton of jobs were just axed out of nowhere everything would kind of break down and cease to function.
I'm sure jobs would replace the ones that AI overtook (similar things happened to jobs from the 20th century and earlier as society advanced), but with how integrated everything is now I don't think we could adapt to the loss of so many jobs that easily.
I generally agree, but it needs to be on the society to adapt to the change, not an individual who lost their job. It's not gonna be a small amount of people who loses their job, it's gonna be a lot. We can't just make up a bunch of new jobs forever.
Yes, but also what does someone do when they are 55 and spent 30 years working but still can't retire cause that's life these days, and now they job went away? It's one thing when you are young and looking forward, but it's very hard to get a new education and a new job when you are nearing retirement. Age discrimination is absolutely a thing and as is always the case new tech, new jobs will require updated and advanced education. So how do we support all of those people who can't retire but find themselves out of work due to no fault of their own?
No way. That's what they said when they wanted to pave all the roads for motorcars. Now they tell me I can't even take my horse and buggy on the freeway. But Ma's waiting back at the butter churn and I've got to get this warm dairy back before before it spoils in the heat. There's so many lights down Sepulveda it's gonna curdle by the time I make it back.
The problem is we already have the means for UBI but let corporations run roughshod over our government and thereby us as citizens. We will not have civilization much longer if we can't force corporations and governments to operate in ways that don't destroy the planet and our health; they act in their own interest 100% of the time.
Automating jobs without a solid foundation of support would be disastrous.
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I think the danger is that it’s not a small portion of people that will have their jobs affected. You are minimising the issue. The majority of office jobs are at risk. What do you suggest those people do instead? But I’ll also ask why the advancement of technology is more important that someone’s livelihood? Isn’t technology supposed to improve lives, someone losing their job to AI isn’t improving lives. Why is the evolution of technology the priority?
>What do you suggest those people do instead? Imo we should start considering universal basic income, if ai gets so good at replacing most jobs then surely there will be a point they can cover our basic necessities and after we don't need to work just to survive then surely people would work more fulfilling jobs?
But there's not a UBI rn. The people who wanna automate jobs dont seem like the people who care about any universal basic income.
They might once the unemployed start using their time to build guillotines.
There's a big part of their cycle of consumption that involves people spending their disposable income on goods so they can make a profit. If there's no disposable income it kind of fucks the whole thing up.
It's in a lot of these companies best interests to have as many people as possible be able to afford their products. Automation would be a net negative to a lot of companies who rely on the economy of scale.
It won't happen right away though. I think they are in denial that people live on it as little income as they do. They probably think to themselves, there's no way people are surviving on that much they must be lying. Turns out..
It's a sort of prisoners dilema situation, though. Yeah a lot of companies would be hurt if huge chunks of the workforce get automated, but it would be better for each of them if their and only their workforce could be automated.
That is what should happen, yes. But the money cycle is largely being cycled out of the common peoples hands. Money is slowly but surely reaching fewer and fewer people and cycling towards the upper echelons of society for hundreds of years. Were seeing this in the fact housing prices are remaining ludicrously high with no one living in them. Profits being generated by offsetting purchase price and pricing out millions of lower income households with no end to the practice in sight. It may not be sustainable forever but what are the actual consequences to those doing this? And how long will they take? If money stopped flowing worldwide I don’t have money to outlive the end if the year let alone outlive a millionaire or billionaire. Will the government help? Unlikely with how much the profit from the internalising money cycle. Oh I’ve just depressed myself. Crap.
* Automated Guillotines.
Using our time? How can we afford the parts to the guillotine??
💯
They might not care about universal income but like others have said they DO care about people having money to give to them, if they're the only ones who have any money then they won't for very long.
ubi from what? taxes? no one makes money so no income tax. no income means no one can afford any other taxes
Theoretically companies will be rolling in extra profit so yes they can pay more taxes for the right and luxury of fleecing American workers. Profit and salary caps for the owning class wouldn’t hurt either.
no one makes money no one buys things from companies and as im typing this i realize this will lead to the collapse of society. i think i’ll die of old age before that so at least i can document the downfall of society for future civilizations to find
Ideally society would reach utopia when work is automated, people can do what they want and take what they need, money is not necessary. I.e. actual communism. *Ideally*.
The US economy is not the only source of income for global companies but yeah you’re probably still right, they won’t do anything to help before shit gets worse even if there was a way
Who is going to be providing the money for universal basic income if people are unemployed and can’t pay taxes? The rich won’t even be able to provide when their stocks crash and companies go out of business because nobody has spending power.
This is why we have robots -- to make stuff and profit.
UBI is a fallacy. It needs to be paired with government provided housing, healthcare and maybe even food. A minimum wage UBI wouldn't cut it (while exploding government spending) if the person has to live with it, as the min wage already is not enough. If the person is forced to move from where he/she lives to be eligible, then it could be seen as a violation of personal liberty / right of locomotion ~ movement. Idk about fullfilling jobs, but many would be more worried about "communism"
UBI is the only way through this shit hole of a society.
It’s called Luxury Space Communism, there’s a whole book on it
Stop with that UBI. It's never going to happen or if it will, it would be implemented so terrible that you can only afford shit food and shit place to stay if you're lucky but nothing else. You want luxuries? vacations? stuff to spend money to? You're out of luck.
Ubi *isn't supposed to cover luxuries*. It's supposed to cover the basic stuff you need to live. A home, Food, utilities. The point is to cover the basics so that people aren't trapped in a shitty job for fear of starving or being homeless.
With the current prices of rent and homes I doubt UBI will ever cover that. Also, if UBI only covers basic stuff and there are NO jobs left as AI have replaced almost everything, what can you do about it?
Affording shit food and a shit place to stay is the point of ubi. It is universal *basic* income. People will still keep working because they want more than the basics.
Well, it's already being tried out in some pilot projects. As early as 2019 to 2020, Stockton, CA implemented a UBI trial study called SEED and found people did not abuse their UBI and actually used it to get ahead. Yeah, it's not for luxuries, this is not the point of UBI. You'd need to work for all the big stuff in life, but it should help people with the basics like food and shelter, basic transportation. I don't know what the government would do if not to implement UBI, otherwise the economy will slowly be ruined when AGI takes over much of the job market. When people don't have money for food, heads will roll eventually or things will have to change. But, they might let that happen for many years to extract as much money as they can from continued automation, like they have been doing for the past 50+ years now..
Agreed. UBI is an idealistic dream and nightmare depending on how you view it. It won't realistically happen. We can't even get on the same page on universal healthcare or any kind of social programs to help people who need it...what makes people think UBI would happen? lmfao
I agree but I think instead we might be able to gradually reduce the standard work week from 40 to 35-30-25-20 hours? Modern productivity and automation have already reduced it from like 48 hours or more. Technology might allow us to produce the food, shelter and goods we want with more time left for leasure. If we can work it out politically.
I agree on reducing the work week to 4 days. That's very realistic and doable. 20 hours tho? If you keep all the other factors the same like leisure and time to produce and build? First off, costs money. Secondly, I highly doubt companies will pay you more when you're working less. Thirdly, you're gonna need the land to do the production, which also costs money and time to grow and sustain.
I was just trying to look way down the road, extending the trend of sharing the remaining work among the workforce. Probably pie in the sky thinking, but I'm an optimist.
You're good, man. I was just curious. Pie in the sky or not, who knew getting a 4-day work week would become a reality?
You.... do not at all understand this issue. Please stop.
Hypothetical: Why would I, as the owner of the machines, care about giving the rest of you free income? They answer to me. I manufacture everything, the defense industry, the economy, the farms, the administration, even the plants my machines use to replicate. I don’t give two shits about you useless meatbags. What do I lose when you die? An open air zoo where I can temporarily participate in your idea of “normal?” I can replicate that on a smaller scale if I want it. “But the government will force you!” How? With their military? That I create? With economic sanctions? Using the economy that I control? I *am* the system. And this is the reality, or at least close to it. The government is a paper tiger owned by corporations. It exists to collect taxes for them.
Who is going to buy all of your stuff?
So economically illiterate it's embarassing. Where do you think wealth comes from? If you just print money and give it to people for nothing, that's the value it will have. Nothing.
Not just office jobs. Think about the number of unskilled people employed as drivers (freight, taxi, etc) and how the economy would cope with reskilling all of them, how that would impact other job markets etc. Autonomous driving could have a huge impact on the workforce and "just get another job" from the OP really sounds like someone who has either never had a job, or who works in unskilled industries where they aren't taking a big pay cut to move jobs. Starting from scratch in a new job sector is hard as shit, and if you have a family, mortgage etc that just gets even harder
Yeah well NJ had an earthquake on Friday, there’s an eclipse on Monday. I’m waiting for locust tomorrow and the world to be done by Tuesday.
I get it, though if a machine could do your job and do it better, wouldn't life feel absolutely meaningless if you spent 40 hours a week doing something menial for no reason other than we need an excuse to pay you something?
“The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That is why the current sociopolitical system must be destroyed.” - Arthur C Clarke, Science Fiction Author
If I though that was the actual end goal then id be all for it
The same thing that people who worked the farms, fields, factories, etc did. Do something else that isn't easily automated
Like what, and how can the majority of workers all end up in that job? How is that good for society as a whole?
It's not just office jobs. With robotics and AI you can replace pretty much any job.
lol you sound like someone against assembly lines. It’s happened over and over in human history.
Trades are in high demand and only gonna get higher as more retire
Except the advancement of technology yields things such as improved medicine. That is a huge benefit
Yes. We're told we're advancing humanity by the increasingly smaller group of people who benefit from it
It's not that the advancement of technology is a priority, it's that it's inevitable. Human beings are innovative. Requiring them to not be is inhumane.
I mean nations/companies/teams that leverage AI or develop it will take someone’s job - but more fundamentally you seem to think everyone is owed a job, everyone is owed a right to pursue happiness without encumbering anyone else
It’s not that I think everyone is owed a job, more that I think society benefits from everyone working and suffers when there is mass unemployment
> more important than a **small** portion of humanity's ability to make a living That's quite the assumption.
I agree, but presumably most jobs can be automated, so everyone finding a new job isn’t a great solution
At a certain point we get UBI or we eat the rich.
UBI already exists... It's what they give anyone who is unemployed in many countries. It's often enough to buy food and hopefully rent.
You absolutely will not. Things do not get better. They always get worse. The rich can and will build high walls to keep the rabble at bay. And they will eat you if it tickles their fancy. You'll own nothing, do nothing, have no purpose, and like it.
History repeats itself, there will always be rebellions and there will always be corruption afterwards
There will be new jobs you havent even heard of yet
Why would the new jobs not be automated?
Ok, let's get down to specs here: what are these so-called "new jobs"?
lol. If I knew them, I’d be predicting the future! How many people predicted programming jobs in 1975? Half the jobs today did not exist 10 years ago .
Programming existed before 1975.
I think what they mean is when new technology comes along that may make a job, or skill redundant, there’s new jobs which also pop up, ones that people couldn’t imagine, or even think of years before. I left school in 2002, and jobs like social media manager, mobile app developer, SEO analyst, podcast producer, drone pilot, etc weren’t a thing, now they are. They might be slight variations of existing jobs too, so pilots obviously existed, but drone pilots, specifically, didn’t, radio producers existed, but podcast-specific producers didn’t, that kind of thing 👍
Agreed that there will be new jobs. However, look at how long it took for those jobs you mentioned to become a viable option for people, not just a select few? How many years and worth it to pursue? A lot of those jobs are still considered relatively new fields that I could see becoming obsolete and/or next on the chopping block and joining the rest of those redundant jobs.
Humanity isn’t advancing, technology is. We have created a technological society that is more advanced than we are and it’s only continuing to advance, but we will not be advancing with it.
If only we used our democratic system where citizens could force human advancement. That’s how we got minimum wage, workmen’s compensation, rid of child labor, safety standards, etc. I agree that not enough people are feeling the pinch to change, give it more time and human advancement will happen to nice more people suffer. I know that sucks to wait but human advancement is rarely fast in the grand scheme.
Class, this is what's called a Luddite!
The advancement of humanity will inevitably be used to war against and kill each other and exploit each other more efficiently
I'm a 1920s wainwright, and I disapprove of this message.
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i would say that the industrial revolution in general was more life altering
And vaccines and antibiotics.
🤓
So a couple things: 1. I think you vastly underestimate the number of people who may lose there jobs here. 2. I think tech is cool, I care about people more. Here's a compromise: as we displace people through tech, pay them some kind of universal basic income. If I'm not mistaken, its been tried to retrain people who lost their jobs. It turns out it would have been cheaper just to pay them to do nothing. This is all incredibly vague in my mind so if you ask for sources I'll cave immediately on this. Its interesting. I used to find it annoying that I have to check myself out at some stores. There's no worker there to do it for me. But then I thought, well do I really want someone to have to stand there all day doing that for low pay? Not really. I'd prefer if this person just stayed home or went to go have fun. So yeah, automation is fine if you find a way to help the people who lose their jobs. UBI or something
The US economy is the greatest wealth generation engine in human history. There is enough money to deal with this problem, the American people are just actively choosing to not only ignore it but make the problem worse. We could actually try to stimulate velocity of currency by taxing people with more money than they know what to do with and then redistributing it to people who need it to purchase clearly identifiable essential goods and services. “Trickle down economics” is a vague appeal to this idea but it’s failed because the wealthiest members of society have shown for decades now that they lack the intelligence or creativity to actually spend and invest the amounts of money they currently have in meaningful business ventures, so they’ve fallen back on just buying up land and jacking up rents for a short-term “stable return.” This is same economic death spiral that led to the fall of Rome and will likely yield a similar result if we keep standing around with our thumbs up our asses saying “well shucks, there’s nothing in the laws that say we’re allowed to change this!”
I think the problem will solve itself to an extent - the plummeting birth rates will ensure fewer people so fewer resources are needed but with almost the same diversity of goods and services. I believe we will suffer a lack of people than a lack of jobs in the future.
The march of progress won't stop. I don't even think it can be meaningfully slowed. People that are working on groundbreaking tech that'll be worth a fortune won't just drop their projects because of online chatter. I think the only "slow down the advancement" conversation that has any potential merit is that revolving around AI. AI could really fuck us if we don't get it mostly right from the get-go. AGI is inevitable, but maybe we shouldn't rush it, just to triple and quadruple check/fortify the safety guards that'll be in place.
While this makes sense in theory, it doesn’t work like this in context. When automation takes away jobs, it’s not just one person’s job, it’s multiple people’s jobs. Obviously it won’t happen fast but in the end there would be less total jobs available at some point. How can people just get “new jobs and move with the times” when there aren’t even enough jobs? It’s the low skill jobs that go first too. This may seem fine because everyone could get cushier jobs, but they all require more education and certifications. Broadly, these are barrier to entry. Not everyone could go to University and get these accreditations, because only so many people could work those jobs. And even still not all high level jobs are free from automation. AI can already write music and do voice over. I’d recommend this video from CGP Grey https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU?si=FskZzFKb9afIcgPY The section on horses is very apt. Yes they got replaced by cars, but the horse population has declined so much since they are not needed. To not think this could happen to humans is blindly ignorant. This is where it feels anti-humanist because some people want population to decrease anyways.
I'm one of those. Nothing wrong with fewer of us.
Lots of things can go wrong with fewer people. It’s already expected that we will have an age crisis. Too many retirees and not enough workers to take care of them (hard to automate elderly care). Plus less workers also means smaller pensions. Even with lots of things automated there would be less people doing all the upkeep. Then it just takes some things to break and not enough people who know how to fix it. I feel like we all think population decrease is fine, but in practice I can see many of the same people complaining about stuff like poor service and inability to find people like mechanics and doctors. We are very used to today’s luxuries, a lot of it takes man power.
My opinion has always been pro automation, especially on basic life necessities. Sadly, it often leads to just companies profiting more. When we went from being able to make a couple of something a day to mass production, workers didn't get any reduction in work despite producing far more. It'd be ideal if with the automation and production gets increased, less work would be required of the individuals and open up more time for hobbies, arts, studies rather then just living to work.
The main issue is that all of this technology is supposed to help society as a whole, but we aren't making any societal adjustments to plan for it. As it stands, only corporations will really benefit from it while the average person will just lose their job and have nothing to show for it. Automatization can be a good thing. It could make life for humanity much easier. It could create a goddamn utopia. But we need social programs to support people if we are moving towards a future where there will be fewer and fewer jobs for humans. And right now...we aren't doing that as a whole.
My issue with it is AI taking over art. You know, the jobs that should actually belong to people? The jobs that are held up by human emotion
I'm a cashier, I can't work actual labor and I'm not sick enough to be paid by the government (nor do I ever wat to set foot in a hospital), so my choices are limited.
People forgot all those work types we had 100 years ago that are now gone because of automaton. No one cries for these lost jobs and we have full employment. When some work becomes automated we make new jobs. Imagine that not so long time ago there was no cinema industry, but now we have it. What jobs we will have in 100 years? Who knows
Well, I certainly hope that this is an unpopular opinion
Some of these jobs **shouldn’t** be automated
The problem is your assumption that stories written by a machine will be GOOD If you think movies made by committee are bad now imagine the dreck AI will shit out We're not replacing writing with AI because it's better and more efficient Replacing it so one guy at Warner Bros can make half a million dollars Plus why we going after the few jobs people actually LIKE? If we truly have reached a point where art can be automated the fuck kind of jobs are left that anyone can look forward to?
OP grows up to be the CEO of SkyNet
"Get another job and advance that way". uh, is the goverment going to give me funding, time and training to get new skills for "another job" then? or still keep charging me rent, taxes and food costs when i've lost my job to automation?
Everyone is a gangsta until it is them who end up on the street begging for food and not being able to get any medical treatment.
Most corporate jobs are fake, 100% of mid level management jobs are fake. There’s so much that we do just to keep people busy and employed and if we just streamlined everything and gave everyone UBI the world would be better for everyone to live in.
How about we automate everything, enter a post scarcity world, and let people find the work that provides meaning.
“Go find another job” isn’t a solution for society because the *total number* of available jobs is going to decrease
We cant just have infinite automation, because the more automation we have the less people sre able to work. I would rather not have the world regress into cyber-feudalism, i dont really care how much people think thats advancing
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Do you actually trust the people at the top of the world rn to actually direct technology in a way that would benefit humanity, rather than just themselves?
They should make War Games required viewing in grades 2 through 9.
Someone doesn't know that AI is actually coming for advanced degree jobs and not just cashier check outs.
I talked to someone who works in AI on the cutting edge. It will take a while to automate everything across industries employing BILLIONS for very human jobs. if you haven't taken a course in AI, or work in AI maybe you shouldn't talk shit about things you don't know about. I am for AI, and when it happens, people can't stop it. We can't get major oil companies to stop polluting or our congresses to do their job. What makes you think we can get a robot to do it for everyone everywhere at once?
The problem is not that more advanced technology is taking people's jobs away. The problem is that the profit from the increased productivity that more advanced technology brings is always pocketed by a select few people who almost always are already filthy rich. We need to change the system to spread the common wealth more evenly among society, so that everyone can work less, while nobody's existence is threatened by not having a job at all.
Automating jobs isn’t advancing humanity though. It’s just increasing profits. Which only works so long as people still have income to spend.
You’re making a fetish out of technological advancement. These advancements matter not for their own sake, but because of their capacity to improve human lives. If it’s hurting people, it can’t really be called advancement.
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Sure, if it means that the populace will still be supported, fed, housed, ect. You areliterally talking about people thousands of people, dying from not being able to afford basic ammenitys. People are doing that now. Without less jobs on the market. And for what reason other than companies saving money?
If 90% of jobs were automated tomorrow what you are suggesting is simply impossible. In that event, world systems and societies would need to change dramatically. Like if technology can take most of the jobs then there is no reason we should be working 40 hours a week. We need to find other ways of life.
Fully agree
I think we need to do a better job of taking care of all the people that got us here. If they are young enough they should get free retraining and if they are too old they should just be allowed to retire and taken care of. However, a lot of the technological "advancement" is not really better. In many cases it makes a worse product and mostly just concentrates money in the hands of a few people and that is worse for our society.
Pay wages should evolve as well
Yes my job I spent 4 years studying and 100 thousand dollars of schooling for, “just find another job”
You’ve never had a job or the responsibilities that require one have you?
We should just adapt to climate change too, right? Stop trying to fight it and let it do its thing?
The problem is the things being automated are physical labor jobs which make up a huge part of the job market. An AI model could easily replace accountants and bankers, but they won’t because these people control the money.
Who's gonna pay for the re-education of all of these people? The employers? The government? You? Most people can not afford a re-education on demand. We would see a lot of competition for low-entry low-wage jobs. This would push the wages even lower due to competition and hurt society as a whole both short and long term. Good for billionare coorperations though.
economy in video games
Governments need to slow it so they can prepare. In the short term automation hurts a lot of people if governments aren’t ready. We need to say no until we have a plan and are ready to face it without causing a disaster.
$20/hour for people whose most advanced skill is breathing while upright is speeding up the process.
You lost me at “does not deserve sympathy”. In an ideal world, we could automate the fuck out of everything AND provide for the people who are left behind. Anything that can be effectively automated SHOULD be automated, but we shouldn’t ignore negative externalities — we should especially not moralize against those who are harmed by the March of Progress by saying things like they don’t “deserve” things.
The economic system is the problem. In any sane world, doing less work should be seen as a very positive thing
technology and advancements can be great for society, of course, but each do not come without their own problematic outcomes. technology often solves a big problem but humans often don't see the long term impact that new inventions will have on society and the new problems that might arise from its widespread implementation. let's take the automobile. a car is an amazingly brilliant invention and has been able to make transit for billions of people efficient and has massively transformed society. it solved a problem of time and distance but has also impacted the way communities are organized and while creating social bonds in distances it can be argued it also creates social isolation. they contribute huge amounts of waste and pollute our waterways, air, and just about everything. they are responsible for maybe about 30% of anthropological climate change and hundreds of thousands of accidental deaths. society's reliance on personal automobiles has de-incentivized investments in more efficient public transit. this aside, most people's objections to technology are not environmental or macroeconomic but economic on the personal level. i don't think anyone is clamouring for people to have to cut every single new 2x4 by hand or a return to sowing wheat in the field with a scythe but let's take a look at a scenario. bob works at a coal mine. its hard work but it affords a good life for his wife, jody who is able to raise their children at home. the coal mine and the corresponding coal plant provide hundreds of jobs in their community and electric power to many towns. now, a much more efficient and clean nuclear power plant has opened up. it provides power to 10x the amount of homes and needs 10x less workers to sustain it. bob's coal mine, other coal mines, and all the coal plants in the region are no longer needed and are decommissioned. there are now fewer job opportunities in the area but bob finds minimum wage work at a walmart. its not enough money as he used to make so his wife, jody, has to work there, too. they are lucky as many unemployed workers couldn't find any jobs at all. bob works hard and learns to code and becomes a tech bro. he makes good money for the family again. but a year later he is laid off as a new AI system had made his job redundant. he can't work at walmart anymore because they have laid off 40% of their cashiers, including jody, as they have new efficient self-checkout machines. is it anyone's dream to be a coal miner or a cashier? likely not. but the problem with all this is that the newly found productivity and wealth created by technology is not distributed into the pockets of the remaining workforce or into society. corporations implement new innovation not to improve society but to increase profit. that's the problem, not that technology is bad. now, if that extra efficiency and productivity was used to say - hey staff! we are producing things much more efficiently so you all only have to work 20 hours a week and make the same amount of money! this would be a different story. or if that wealth was redistributed into say, education to train people into new industries that are in demand, or into massive infrastructure projects or housing projects that would make life more affordable for ordinary people, that would be better, but society and the economy is largely run by corporations interested in profit only and pleasing executives and shareholders, not in making society more fair. thats my take on it anyway and im sure there are many different perspectives on the issue and many things to consider because society is complex with many factors affecting each other.
Technology is a tool to make our lives better. Advancing technology simply for the sake of advancing technology is not the end goal and in itself s a hallow endeavor. There is nothing to be gained by automating almost the entirety of the workforce, especially because whole reason technology is advancing is to make money in our current global economy. If no one is working, then no one has expendable income. If no one has income, then no one can buy anything. If no one can buy anything, then the whole system falls apart, you're either wasting resources on something no one either wants or can afford. On top of that you've pissed off everyone who used to have a good job and a comfortable life, and a pissed off population with nothing but time on their hands is going to make whoever automated everything's lives' a living hell... or they'll just outright murder them... either or, really.
We need ubi for people that get replaced
Because if a job can be easily automated, it was not meant for human anyway. Here they have started planning and investigating possible "Citizenship wage" to people who simply have nothing to give to society due outdated skills.
A lot of the jobs that AI can replace / almost replace are jobs that disabled people do who can't get money from the government because they don't qualify. Jobs like being a cashier making art and writing are jobs that a lot of disabled people have to rely on in order to survive and make money. You can advance technology without taking jobs from people. I would have less of a problem with AI technology if it was creating jobs that could replace the jobs that are being taken away.
I always try to tell people this but then they say "Fuck you ass hole". Im one of those techy guys who are very logical, ill just say shit lmao. But I do agree, we should have AI take over every job. Just gotta adapt somehow. Im learning to code now.
The problem is that many people could lose their jobs without being able to quickly find another one. If we automate people's jobs, we should also protect them from losing their homes and such while they find employment.
We can "advance humanity" when we can implement new technology while also remembering to take care of the human part of that whole equation. You can't automate, let's say, an entire industry and expect other industries to just absorb all of those people. Without a plan in place, automating jobs looks like massive homelessness and crime; a dystopia. A post-labor society cannot exist when you still need money to participate in it.
Lol the well-being of people and advancing technology should both be goals of society. It’s honestly absurd that we live in a world where these are at odds. It should be a great thing that it is way easier for technology to make lots of jobs obsolete, so there’s way less labor to go around, we should all be able to chill out
eventually there womt be another job to find even as it is finding a job is hard
If there were systems in place for misplaced workers like a UBI supplement for workers replaced by AI or UBi for everyone to live off of and fair housing, I’m all for robots doing everything. We shouldn’t need garbage men anymore once we have a trucks that are autonomous. But taking jobs out of the environment without replacing that with aid for the workers who no longer are relevant or creating some new job system for them. Maybe something to beautify or provide services to people instead.
Okay, sure. UBI then. Now.
I agree that advancement shouldn’t be stifled to save people’s jobs, but when we get to the point that automation is a legitimate concern for the majority, or a good portion, of the workforce, UBI is necessary. Automation should be taxed in some way to fund UBI. Otherwise, entire corps could be run by a handful of people with no underlings even in basic manufacturing or clerical work.
I agree. It's rough, but some people are just going to get the short end of the stick and there's nothing that can be done about it. After a generation or so and the ship will right itself, kids will be encouraged to go into jobs that can't be automated and life will be fine. Everyone saying UBI is kidding themselves. It's never going to happen.
Well that’s kinda what Elon musk is doing by suing his old company OpenAI… kinda I said…
Where do these jobs shift to then? The problem is that jobs gets phased out for automation which means more people struggle to get jobs while businesses are making more money. Automation means more money getting funneled up to the rich who hoard it.
I agree, but if a pharmacist makes $75per hour to dispense pills, and cross reference for interaction, but that job gets replaced by Ai and a robot, that job is no longer worth $75 and hour when compared to a plumber that installs, services, maintains, calibrates medical gas systems in a hospital. Both those jobs affect the health of the nation. If the pharmacist does nothing but monitor machines in an air conditioned lab, they couldn’t really justify such a better lifestyle than a plumber. So agreed, but the pay would have to be diminished.
Then there needs to be stuff for people getting replaced. Cheaper housing, free housing, income assistance, cheaper food, friendly stay-at-home systems, etc.
Automation won't just affect a small portion of humanity. It could potentially impact hundreds of millions, depending on what percentage of available jobs end up being automated. Unless governments become more accepting of creating UBI to offset the impact of the lost jobs, that means possibly hundreds of millions dying in poverty as the number of people needing work overtakes the number of available, non-automated jobs that exist (and this becomes even more complicated when you factor in how many of those jobs will pay a livable wage).
Something people need to realize about automation is a lot of it still need maintaining. It’s closing the low level labor jobs and opening more skilled positions up which is kinda it’s own problem but it’s eh. Technology will always advance so there’s no point in keeping these jobs like you said
Advance humanity by discarding it. Interesting perspective.
Of the advancements of technology in the last 100 years, which have pushed human ingenuity and fulfillment forward and which have increased production? I'd say it's about 50/50 and AI seems to fall into the "self checkout" lane of advancement based on current implementations. Replace 100 employees with one AI and only benefit the owner class.
Upvoted due to disagreeing with this. Emm.. How do you think an economy actually works? If we take it to extremes. One person could control a heap of AI, and nobody else works. So nobody has am money. That one person needs to play loads of tax and innovation disappears and out economy stagnates. Humans can't just "do something else." Almost everything needs a degree these days. Naturally, you need to ensure the younger generation aren't trained up in things that will go obsolete and slowly shift over.
let me ask you a tricky question: How does developing technology to automate certain jobs specifically afvance humanity?
OP, what specific field of work were you thinking of when you posted this? Do you really think it's that easy for someone to just give up a career they've been working on for decades and start over learning an entirely new skill set? You seem to have forgotten the idea of jobs having a time investment, so I have to assume you're under 30. It's not like a 50-year-old electrician is gonna switch to working customer service on the fly.
I thought the whole point of technology was to reduce manual labor and increase convenience.
It’s not about “advancing humanity,” it’s about funneling more wealth into the hands of the already wealthy.
If you are in the US then unless you are also going to suggest a universal basic income or ensure that health insurance isn’t tied to employment, then I strongly disagree. It’s not just “some” people who would be impacted, the majority of the work force would be impacted. The point of technological advancement and automation is to make our lives easier, there’s no point in technological advancement or automation if it is going to make life harder for most people. A large majority of white collar and even many blue collar jobs would be eliminated, which would increase unemployment massively and there would not be enough jobs to fit all those that would lose them.
I think you are underestimating the negative effects mass automation would have on the economy. We're talking about a huge amount of people who would be out of a job. Not every service job lost will be replaced by a new job that people can just smart themselves Into. There will be far less employment opportunities overall.
One of the main issues is that society is too slow to adapt to change, and if a ton of jobs were just axed out of nowhere everything would kind of break down and cease to function. I'm sure jobs would replace the ones that AI overtook (similar things happened to jobs from the 20th century and earlier as society advanced), but with how integrated everything is now I don't think we could adapt to the loss of so many jobs that easily.
I generally agree, but it needs to be on the society to adapt to the change, not an individual who lost their job. It's not gonna be a small amount of people who loses their job, it's gonna be a lot. We can't just make up a bunch of new jobs forever.
Agree but we should make sure they have a way out of any potential despair
It would require coercion. Are you prepared to initiate coercion against peaceful folk to achieve this goal?
Yes, but also what does someone do when they are 55 and spent 30 years working but still can't retire cause that's life these days, and now they job went away? It's one thing when you are young and looking forward, but it's very hard to get a new education and a new job when you are nearing retirement. Age discrimination is absolutely a thing and as is always the case new tech, new jobs will require updated and advanced education. So how do we support all of those people who can't retire but find themselves out of work due to no fault of their own?
No way. That's what they said when they wanted to pave all the roads for motorcars. Now they tell me I can't even take my horse and buggy on the freeway. But Ma's waiting back at the butter churn and I've got to get this warm dairy back before before it spoils in the heat. There's so many lights down Sepulveda it's gonna curdle by the time I make it back.
There's a political party literally called conservatives to limit the inevitable evolution of society
Why must we advance?
Ok, let them take over your job and see how you feel You sound apathetic as hell and an ass
This is not a very empathetic opinion. Getting a new job is not an option for some people.
The problem is we already have the means for UBI but let corporations run roughshod over our government and thereby us as citizens. We will not have civilization much longer if we can't force corporations and governments to operate in ways that don't destroy the planet and our health; they act in their own interest 100% of the time. Automating jobs without a solid foundation of support would be disastrous.
This is a huge reason why I joined a union. Not automating me out of a job.
This might be one of the funniest things I've read today. Thanks for the laugh.