I realized I’m not sure how you define “50% of people permanently unemployable”. Surely it isn’t about global population? Is it about global labor force (which is ~45% of global population) or about developed countries only?
As of 2019, about a quarter of global labor force worked in primary agricultural production (mostly smallholder farmers who might only be impacted by AI indirectly, such as natural gas going to data centers instead of fertilizer plants) and half as much were employed in “off-farm segments of agrifood systems”. Surely people need to eat and those jobs are here to stay.
Please define specifically, 50% of which people in particular, and what does “permanently unemployable” mean exactly (for example, what about a laid-off white-collar worker who can return to the parents’ village and get a job at a local shop or school?)
We have ways to measure unemployment. It classifies some people as unemployed and classifies some people as labor force, and the fraction of the former divided by the latter is the unemployment rate, which today hovers around 5% (depending on the country). 50% of people are permanently unemployable if they are too useless to leave that category by the time they stop counting as participating in the labor force.
(Also, to be clear, Toby was the first one who used the phrase “50% of people permanently unemployable” without defining clearly what he meant by this, and I responded to it without reflecting that maybe it’s good to clarify (and then Kaarel did the same after me). So, I appreciate you pushing me for clarification, but depending on your interest, you might care more about what Toby means by that, not what I mean by that.)
The most common reason people stop counting as participating in the labor force is that they grow old and living off savings, passive income, pension and/or social benefits is better than continuing working, which we call a retirement. With global graying of the population, 50% of formerly working people will necessarily become permanently unemployable in this sense eventually even without the AI progress.
Also, note that Finland has ~10% unemployment rate and they are quite OK because of the social safety net. If AI was to be heavily taxed and these funds were used to support the population suffering job losses (implausible for the US indeed but plausible for Europe), even in absence of “strong AGI” people might choose not to work in order to get welfare without actually being unemployable.
(Yeah I do care but Toby has not left a single comment here)
I realized I’m not sure how you define “50% of people permanently unemployable”. Surely it isn’t about global population? Is it about global labor force (which is ~45% of global population) or about developed countries only?
As of 2019, about a quarter of global labor force worked in primary agricultural production (mostly smallholder farmers who might only be impacted by AI indirectly, such as natural gas going to data centers instead of fertilizer plants) and half as much were employed in “off-farm segments of agrifood systems”. Surely people need to eat and those jobs are here to stay.
Please define specifically, 50% of which people in particular, and what does “permanently unemployable” mean exactly (for example, what about a laid-off white-collar worker who can return to the parents’ village and get a job at a local shop or school?)
We have ways to measure unemployment. It classifies some people as unemployed and classifies some people as labor force, and the fraction of the former divided by the latter is the unemployment rate, which today hovers around 5% (depending on the country). 50% of people are permanently unemployable if they are too useless to leave that category by the time they stop counting as participating in the labor force.
(Also, to be clear, Toby was the first one who used the phrase “50% of people permanently unemployable” without defining clearly what he meant by this, and I responded to it without reflecting that maybe it’s good to clarify (and then Kaarel did the same after me). So, I appreciate you pushing me for clarification, but depending on your interest, you might care more about what Toby means by that, not what I mean by that.)
The most common reason people stop counting as participating in the labor force is that they grow old and living off savings, passive income, pension and/or social benefits is better than continuing working, which we call a retirement. With global graying of the population, 50% of formerly working people will necessarily become permanently unemployable in this sense eventually even without the AI progress.
Also, note that Finland has ~10% unemployment rate and they are quite OK because of the social safety net. If AI was to be heavily taxed and these funds were used to support the population suffering job losses (implausible for the US indeed but plausible for Europe), even in absence of “strong AGI” people might choose not to work in order to get welfare without actually being unemployable.
(Yeah I do care but Toby has not left a single comment here)