I’m mainly wondering how Open Phil, and really anyone who uses fraction of economically-valuable cognitive labor automated / automatable (e.g. the respondents to that 2018 survey; some folks on the forum) as a useful proxy for thinking about takeoff, tracks this proxy as a way to empirically ground their takeoff-related reasoning. If you’re one of them, I’m curious if you’d answer your own question in the affirmative?
I am not one of them—I was wondering the same thing, and was hoping you had a good answer.
If I was trying to answer this question, I would probably try to figure out what fraction of all economically-valuable labor each year was cognitive, the breakdown of which tasks comprise that labor, and the year-on-year productivity increases on those task, then use that to compute the percentage of economically-valuable labor that is being automated that year.
Concretely, to get a number for the US in 1900 I might use a weighted average of productivity increases across cognitive tasks in 1900, in an approach similar to how CPI is computed
Look at the occupations listed in the 1900 census records
Figure out which ones are common, and then sample some common ones and make wild guesses about what those jobs looked like in 1900
Classify those tasks as cognitive or non-cognitive
Come to estimate that record-keeping tasks are around a quarter to a half of all cognitive labor
Notice that typewriters were starting to become more popular - about 100,000 typewriters sold per year
Note that those 100k typewriters were going to the people who would save the most time by using them
As such, estimate 1-2% productivity growth in record-keeping tasks in 1900
Multiply the productivity growth for record-keeping tasks by the fraction of time (technically actually 1-1/productivity increase but when productivity increase is small it’s not a major factor)
Estimate that 0.5% of cognitive labor was automated by specifically typewriters in 1900
Figure that’s about half of all cognitive labor automation in 1900
and thus I would estimate ~1% of all cognitive labor was automated in 1900. By the same methodology I would probably estimate closer to 5% for 2024.
Again, though, I am not associated with Open Phil and am not sure if they think about cognitive task automation in the same way.
Did e.g. a telephone operator in 1910 perform cognitive labor, by the definition we want to use here?
I’m mainly wondering how Open Phil, and really anyone who uses fraction of economically-valuable cognitive labor automated / automatable (e.g. the respondents to that 2018 survey; some folks on the forum) as a useful proxy for thinking about takeoff, tracks this proxy as a way to empirically ground their takeoff-related reasoning. If you’re one of them, I’m curious if you’d answer your own question in the affirmative?
I am not one of them—I was wondering the same thing, and was hoping you had a good answer.
If I was trying to answer this question, I would probably try to figure out what fraction of all economically-valuable labor each year was cognitive, the breakdown of which tasks comprise that labor, and the year-on-year productivity increases on those task, then use that to compute the percentage of economically-valuable labor that is being automated that year.
Concretely, to get a number for the US in 1900 I might use a weighted average of productivity increases across cognitive tasks in 1900, in an approach similar to how CPI is computed
Look at the occupations listed in the 1900 census records
Figure out which ones are common, and then sample some common ones and make wild guesses about what those jobs looked like in 1900
Classify those tasks as cognitive or non-cognitive
Come to estimate that record-keeping tasks are around a quarter to a half of all cognitive labor
Notice that typewriters were starting to become more popular - about 100,000 typewriters sold per year
Note that those 100k typewriters were going to the people who would save the most time by using them
As such, estimate 1-2% productivity growth in record-keeping tasks in 1900
Multiply the productivity growth for record-keeping tasks by the fraction of time (technically actually 1-1/productivity increase but when productivity increase is small it’s not a major factor)
Estimate that 0.5% of cognitive labor was automated by specifically typewriters in 1900
Figure that’s about half of all cognitive labor automation in 1900
and thus I would estimate ~1% of all cognitive labor was automated in 1900. By the same methodology I would probably estimate closer to 5% for 2024.
Again, though, I am not associated with Open Phil and am not sure if they think about cognitive task automation in the same way.