alt Hacker NewsAn optimistic view is that the jobs displaced by AI will be like the jobs displaced by industrialization: while fewer people will be needed to do the task, there will be more demand for the task over time, opening up new jobs with different skill sets than the previous job required.
At least one data point in favor of this view is the middling success of the AI rollout so far. Of course it’s eclipsed in the short run by the number of jobs cut to fund AI rollouts.
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> An optimistic view is that the jobs displaced by AI will be like the jobs displaced by industrialization: while fewer people will be needed to do the task, there will be more demand for the task over time, opening up new jobs with different skill sets than the previous job required.
At this point, it's condescending to keep rehashing the "this is just the next industrialization era". It's been beaten to death as an invalid comparison more on this website than maybe any other.
What would be “the task”, other than physical labor or doing dull RLHF work, unless you’re in the 1% of exceptional intellectual talent that AI won’t be able to replace yet?
> jobs displaced by industrialization
This argument is cute and all, but ... does a data-point of 1 from 200 years ago really give us much confidence? We replaced physical labor with a massive service sector.
Now we're automating the service sector so now people can go to... eeh... the 3rd category of jobs? Seems like physical labor is the most stable career at the moment; what machines have not already automated is pretty difficult to replace it turns out. But we outsourced most of that to low cost countries except plumbers and electricians.
But will a population of plumbers really be able to maintain a population of plumbers employed?
> while fewer people will be needed to do the task, there will be more demand for the task over time, opening up new jobs with different skill sets than the previous job required.
“The task”
You really did not answer the question.
It took decades if not hundreds of years for the social disruption of industrialization to clear.
I literally do not give a fuck about some hypothetical more productive activity I might be able to do in 150 years if it destroys my very real present ability to take care of my family today.
So just to summarize, it seems like the most optimistic outcome that the collective of HN could come up with in the hour since my original comment was that medical care would improve and you might be able to pay for it if you retrain yourself for some yet unknown new career that might suddenly appear at some point in the future. That's the optimistic vision we're asking society to buy into? No wonder it's only 16%.