I expect that as machines become able to do more jobs currently done by humans, unemployment will increase. In some cases, the machines’ new capabilities will lead to new jobs; in some of those cases there might be more jobs created than lost. But in the extreme case (which is the one actually being discussed here) of a change that makes almost all human jobs redundant, it seems unlikely that the number of valuable new jobs created will be close to the number lost.
Is your point that we shouldn’t expect mass boycotts yet because there isn’t mass unemployment yet? Perhaps that’s right. I’m claiming only that merely making big profits and keeping them instead of passing them to customers doesn’t seem to be enough to trigger large-scale protests or boycotts, because there are companies doing that and they don’t seem to be hated much for it.
Something like 95% of the jobs of 200 years ago have been destroyed by advancing technology—where’s the persistent unemployment that’s supposed to result?
Who says that persistent unemployment is supposed to result from that?
The hypothetical situation we’re discussing, unless I’m desperately confused, is one in which machines are better than humans at all the things humans need or want doing. Not one where various particular human capabilities have been exceeded by precisely focused technology (which is what we’ve had time and time again in the past) but one where machines are simply better than we are at everything. This is not at all the same.
That is indeed the ultimate hypothetical situation we’re discussing, but we’re also discussing other situations in the present or very near future where only some human job-skills have been obsoleted. From the Mechanical Engineering article, I got the impression the Race Against the Machine authors thought that jobs were being obsoleted faster than people could re-train for the new ones. Thus, increased unemployment.
I doubt that a major chunk of current unemployment is thus explained, but I like the fact that this might get people thinking. They can connect the dots to the possible future situation you’ve named, and perhaps start thinking more seriously about AI.
There are two separate effects here. In the short term, a new technology may put people out of work faster than they can retrain. That’s bad for them; it’s likely to be bad for the world as a whole in the short term; but it may very well be a good thing for everyone in the long term, e.g. if it creates more jobs than it destroyed. But it may also happen that a new technology destroys jobs without creating any new ones. In that case, even if it produces an increase in total wealth, it may be bad overall (at least for people whose values assign substantial importance to the welfare of the worst-off) -- in the long term as well as the short.
So the following two claims need to be treated quite separately. (1) “Recent technological progress is obsoleting more jobs than it’s creating, and lots of people are getting shafted as a result.” (2) “Future technological progress may obsolete more jobs than it ever creates, directly or indirectly, and lots of people will get shafted as a result if so.” And both are different from (1.5) “Recent technological progress is obsoleting more jobs than it’s creating, and that loss of jobs will persist way into the future”. It’s (1.5) that’s made less credible by observing that past progress doesn’t seem to have left us with a population that’s almost entirely jobless; that observation seems to me to have little to say about (1) and (2).
I expect that as machines become able to do more jobs currently done by humans, unemployment will increase. In some cases, the machines’ new capabilities will lead to new jobs; in some of those cases there might be more jobs created than lost. But in the extreme case (which is the one actually being discussed here) of a change that makes almost all human jobs redundant, it seems unlikely that the number of valuable new jobs created will be close to the number lost.
Is your point that we shouldn’t expect mass boycotts yet because there isn’t mass unemployment yet? Perhaps that’s right. I’m claiming only that merely making big profits and keeping them instead of passing them to customers doesn’t seem to be enough to trigger large-scale protests or boycotts, because there are companies doing that and they don’t seem to be hated much for it.
Something like 95% of the jobs of 200 years ago have been destroyed by advancing technology—where’s the persistent unemployment that’s supposed to result?
Who says that persistent unemployment is supposed to result from that?
The hypothetical situation we’re discussing, unless I’m desperately confused, is one in which machines are better than humans at all the things humans need or want doing. Not one where various particular human capabilities have been exceeded by precisely focused technology (which is what we’ve had time and time again in the past) but one where machines are simply better than we are at everything. This is not at all the same.
That is indeed the ultimate hypothetical situation we’re discussing, but we’re also discussing other situations in the present or very near future where only some human job-skills have been obsoleted. From the Mechanical Engineering article, I got the impression the Race Against the Machine authors thought that jobs were being obsoleted faster than people could re-train for the new ones. Thus, increased unemployment.
I doubt that a major chunk of current unemployment is thus explained, but I like the fact that this might get people thinking. They can connect the dots to the possible future situation you’ve named, and perhaps start thinking more seriously about AI.
There are two separate effects here. In the short term, a new technology may put people out of work faster than they can retrain. That’s bad for them; it’s likely to be bad for the world as a whole in the short term; but it may very well be a good thing for everyone in the long term, e.g. if it creates more jobs than it destroyed. But it may also happen that a new technology destroys jobs without creating any new ones. In that case, even if it produces an increase in total wealth, it may be bad overall (at least for people whose values assign substantial importance to the welfare of the worst-off) -- in the long term as well as the short.
So the following two claims need to be treated quite separately. (1) “Recent technological progress is obsoleting more jobs than it’s creating, and lots of people are getting shafted as a result.” (2) “Future technological progress may obsolete more jobs than it ever creates, directly or indirectly, and lots of people will get shafted as a result if so.” And both are different from (1.5) “Recent technological progress is obsoleting more jobs than it’s creating, and that loss of jobs will persist way into the future”. It’s (1.5) that’s made less credible by observing that past progress doesn’t seem to have left us with a population that’s almost entirely jobless; that observation seems to me to have little to say about (1) and (2).