Comment by astrange
2 years ago
None of this will happen because jobs are based on comparative advantage, and not absolute advantage, which means it doesn't matter if someone else would be better at your job than you are. Because that person (or AI) is doing the job they're best suited to, which is not yours. Other fun second-order effects include Jevon's paradox (which is why inventing ATMs caused more employment for bank tellers, not less.)
I can be very confident about this because it's just about the strongest finding there is in economics. If this wasn't true, it'd be good for your career to stop other people from having children in case they take your job.
Comparative advantage assumes that there is capacity limit. The more productive country might not choose to produce widget A because its limited capacity is better used to create widget B. However, if in a few years, there are enough GPUs to satisfy almost all demand for AI labor, there's no need to "outsource" work that AI is better at to humans.
Jevons paradox might result in much more demand for AI labor, but not necessarily human labor for the same types of work AI can do. It might indirectly increase demand for human services, like fitness trainer, meditation teacher, acupuncturist, etc. though.
>If this wasn't true, it'd be good for your career to stop other people from having children in case they take your job.
Well, in times past, kings have been known to do this.
But more generally, you raise an interesting point. I think your reasoning succeeds at dispelling the often-touted strong form of the claim ("AI can do my job better than I can therefore I will lose my job to AI") but doesn't go all the way to guaranteeing its opposite ("No possible developments in AI could result in my job being threatened"). Job threat level will just continue to depend on a complicated way on everyone's aptitude at every job.
Many things could result in your job being threatened. Since I think the kind of AI they're describing would increase employment, I'm equally willing to believe an opposite trend would decrease it.
So that could be productivity decreases, rises in energy prices or interest rates, war, losing industries to other countries…
To quote CGP Grey "There isn’t a rule of economics that says better technology makes more, better jobs for horses. It sounds shockingly dumb to even say that out loud, but swap horses for humans and suddenly people think it sounds about right."
I mean I don't know, maybe you're right and this will Jevons us towards even more demand for AI-assisted jobs but I think only to a point where it's still just AI complementing humans at being better and more efficient at their jobs (like LLMs are doing right now) and not outright replacing them.
As per your example, bank tellers are still here because ATMs can only dispense money and change PINs, they can't do their job but only leave the more complex stuff to be handled by less overworked humans since they don't have to do the menial stuff. Make an ATM that does everything (e.g. online banking) and there's literally nothing a bank teller needs to exist for. Most online banks don't even have offices these days. For now classical brick and mortar banks remain, but for how long I'm not sure, probably only until the next crisis when they all fold by not being competitive since they have to pay for all those tellers and real estate rents. And as per Grey's example, cars did not increase demand for horses/humans, they increased demand for cars/AGI.
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