Comment by robwwilliams
1 year ago
Amazing to me that this article did not breath a word on technological innovations over the same period of projections. Factory automation is not a fantasy. The advent of sophisticated AI systems is not top secret. Strides in robotics and in farming and cow milking and even care of elderly are not secret.
If you are doing projection in just one dimension you can be assured to be wrong.
Mechanical automation took off in the 70s-90s. Today, most people in developed countries work in service jobs, often behind screens. If AI becomes advanced enough, many of these jobs could disappear.
Here's another angle: In poor countries where farming is the main occupation, birth rates tend to be high. But as farming becomes automated, birth rates drop. Following this pattern, AI could push people out of service jobs and potentially impact birth rates in a similar way.
Of course this is just my mind making stuff up. Who know how it'll turn up.
> If AI becomes advanced enough, many of these jobs could disappear
This is a thread about the lack of people to work, not the excess. The jobs that are going to disappear will do so together with the retired/deceased workers.
The problem is that the time benefits of automation are never returned to the people. We'll just invent new bullshit jobs.
(paid) hours worked per family are massively up over time despite exponential progress. We have stuff but no time nor security.
The countries with the most dire birth rates are the ones with a workaholic culture.
The depressing reality is rather than giving people back their time, even more of it will be pushed for in the future, to sustain the ageing population.
Does that alone solve the problems listed though — taxation, etc.?