In a 1938 article, MIT’s president argued that technical progress didn’t mean fewer jobs. He’s still right.
Compton drew a sharp distinction between the consequences of technological progress on “industry as a whole” and the effects, often painful, on individuals.
For “industry as a whole,” he concluded, “technological unemployment is a myth.” That’s because, he argued, technology "has created so many new industries” and has expanded the market for many items by “lowering the cost of production to make a price within reach of large masses of purchasers.” In short, technological advances had created more jobs overall. The argument—and the question of whether it is still true—remains pertinent in the age of AI.
Then Compton abruptly switched perspectives, acknowledging that for some workers and communities, “technological unemployment may be a very serious social problem, as in a town whose mill has had to shut down, or in a craft which has been superseded by a new art.”
Previous increases in automation and productivity have brought new goods, services, wealth. To be perfectly honest I’m largely done.
The next wave of progress needs to not bring new things but to bring more time off.
The only things I probably want in terms of future tech is medical advances and VR. Everything else fuck it. I’m okay with all the media we got, the Internet, TV games, food, hobbies. I don’t have smart anything except a phone. I’m done.
Give me a 4 day work week for what I have now. Then 3 then 2 then 1. I’m done. I don’t need more.
Previous results are not sufficient to forecast the future.
that’s all very nice but you don’t get a vote on how this turns out. very few if any will.
Of course I do.
I can vote for someone to represent me in government. The problem is the voting system is shit that no one will vote to change and that people vote for idiots.
At this point it’s the people fault.
There’s no new jobs for horses after the combustion engine was invented to do physical labor - why would there be more “intelligence jobs” for humans when intelligence is automated? If it’s a pertinent question then such people have not questioned their wishful thinking.
AI today doesn’t need to affect all jobs to cause mass disruptions. The biggest industry is transport - what jobs does MIT’s president imagine will be created for 60 year old truckers if they’re replaced with autos? Do we get the funny joke where people suggest truckers should learn programming?
Did you even read the paragraphs I pulled out, not even the article itself?
Then Compton abruptly switched perspectives, acknowledging that for some workers and communities, “technological unemployment may be a very serious social problem, as in a town whose mill has had to shut down, or in a craft which has been superseded by a new art.”
His whole point was technology does not reduce the amount of employment as a whole, but it can focus pain on particular communities that get displaced by technology. I just don’t buy into the tech bro singularity cult that AI will grow at an exponential rate and replace everyone, AI will be a tool like any other - extending human capabilities but not replacing them entirely.
Humans were the best chess players until computers brute forced the solution with uninteligent computational power. Humans were the best at Chinese Go for longer as brute forcing would take too long. Humans were no longer the best at Go when machine learning beat pros consistently. This is one-way, hunans don’t win back ground. If we assume AI doesn’t get better than this saying “technology does not reduce unemployment” is still short sighted.
The alignment problem should be taken seriously even if wealthy assholes agree, but AI killing humans is a seperate issue.
Humans were the best at weaving until looms came along, humans were the best at welding components together until industrial robots came along. Humans were the best at doing double entry accounting until digital computers came along.
I just don’t see this current wave of AI of being any different than previous technological advances that became tools better at specific tasks than humans.
This is one-way, hunans don’t win back ground.
No they dont they open up new gound as technology increases the range of the possible, as the article talks about
One critical wild card is how many new jobs will be created by AI even as existing ones disappear. Estimating such job creation is notoriously difficult. But MIT’s David Autor and his collaborators recently calculated that 60% of employment in 2018 was in types of jobs that didn’t exist before 1940.
When you know the goal but do not know how to functionally get there then an artificial neural network can be useful. To get Chinese Go artificial opponent working was done by making the program run many games against many iterations of itself to adjust itself towards the correct moves for any situation. The biggest difference is the scope of problems this type of tool is capable of solving.
Technology creating more jobs in the industrial revolution isn’t a valid argument that automating intelligence will create more jobs. Even if we grant that it does, are you assuming that it will create more jobs that it nullifies forever? If we can agree there’s a point where it stops being positive then we just disagree on the time it will happen.
If we assume jobs are created and they too complex to be suitable for the majority of people (who mostly work in transport) then we have the same societal problem: job available, apply within (humans need not apply). If we’re to take the industrial revolution as gospel then most people leave the workforce when the jobs are automated.
This time is different. If AI were to remain what it is today, the article would be correct, but AI won’t. It’s a fundamentally new kind of technology, unlike anything else that has ever been created by humans. It only seems like more of the same to some people because it’s so very new and primitive compared to what it will be soon. This won’t be humans losing their jobs, this will be humanity losing its job. There will be plenty of new industries created but they will be run by AI for AI.
With that said, it won’t necessarily be bad. It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
Yup. CGPGrey made a video about this 9 years go explaining why AI will be different than previous technological disruptions.
9 fucking years ago!
Christ. What have I done since then?
From what I noticed working tech, there is a pressure to be on the cutting edge at all costs and a lot of stuff gets over hyped to sell things to MBAs. I’ve seen a few disruptive technologies come in. They are almost never wrong about what the thing is or will be, but they are almost always wrong about the timeline it comes into being in a really mature way.
If technological develop it’s not intended to reduce labor hours and redistribute wealth, what it’s intended for? For the rich to being more rich?
Yes. That’s all anything is for.
To increase humanities control over its environment. The form that takes is a secondary concern
They say technology tends to eliminate lower skill jobs. But actually it often transmutes a high skill job into several lower skill jobs. Often without reducing the actual skill required in any way.
Thank you. This was cathertic for my anxiety. I can now go back to just worrying about the Mexicans.
