Comment by astrange
2 years ago
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.
Horses are not labor. You can tell because we don't pay them wages and they don't make any effort to be employed. That makes them capital; when humans are treated that way it's called slavery.
I don't think you should listen to Youtubers about anything, though all I know about that guy is he has bad aesthetic opinions on flag design.
Doesn't every capitalist consider humans capital deep down? Who'd come up with a name like "human resources" otherwise lmao, in ex-socialist countries it's usually called something more normal like cadre service.
Besides I don't see the market difference of having to pay to maintain a horse with feed, healthcare, grooming, etc. which likely costs something on a similar order as paying a human's monthly wage that gets used in similar ways. Both come with monthly expenses, generate revenue, eventually retire and die, on paper they should follow the same principle with the exception that you can sell a horse when you want to get rid of it but have to pay severance when doing the same with a person. I doubt that influences the overall lifetime equation much though.
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