alt Hacker News> AI will be used to make things cheaper. That is, lots of job losses. must of us are up for the chop if/when competent AI agents become possible.
> But those profits will not be shared. Human productivity has exploded in the last 120 years, yet we are working longer hours for less pay.
Don't you have to pick one? It seems a bit disjointed to simultaneously complain that we are all losing our jobs and that we are working too many hours. What type of future are we looking for here?
If machines get so productive that we don't need to work, everyone losing their jobs isn't a long-term problem and may not even be a particularly damaging short-term one. It isn't like we have less stuff or more people who need it. There are lots of good equilibriums to find. If AI becomes a jobs wrecking ball I'd like to see the tax system adjusted so employers are incentivised to employ large numbers of people for small numbers of hours instead of small numbers of people for large numbers of hours - but that seems like a relatively minor change and probably not an especially controversial one.
I did not argue that cogently.
At each "node" of the industrial revolution, lots of workers were displaced. (weavers, scriveners, printers, car mechanics). Those workers were highly paid because they were highly skilled.
Productivity made things cheaper to make, because it removed the expensive labour required to make it.
That means less well paid jobs with controlled hours. This leads to poorly paid jobs with high competition and poor hours.
Yes new highly paid jobs were created, but not for the people who were dispossessed by the previous "node".
> If machines get so productive that we don't need to work, everyone losing their jobs isn't a long-term problem
who is going to pay for them? not the people who are making the profits.