Comment by richwater
1 month ago
AI is just another disruptive technology like the loom, the steam engine or the airplane. It will take time to adjust and some industries will go away and others will pop up.
I think a lot of people are conflating two ongoing things: the emergence of AI and stagnant (if not recessionary) economies across the globe. It appears as if AI is resulting in so much more negative externalities but in reality if not for AI, we'd 100% be in a recession.
The loom, the steam engine, or the airplane did not cause "captains of industry" to publicly salivate over anticipating being able to fire their knowledge workers who invested time, money, and effort into becoming qualified for the jobs they're now constantly in fear of losing.
The social contract is being broken. Being broken just on paper, just on the hopes that it can be broken for good.
> The loom (...) did not cause "captains of industry" to publicly salivate over anticipating being able to fire their knowledge workers who invested time, money, and effort into becoming qualified for the jobs they're now constantly in fear of losing.
It absolutely did. Factory owners used their clout to put workers out of the job and then lobbied for military aid and capital punishment instead of negotiating with the workers. IMO, the only tactic for worker that has EVER had lasting success is solidarity through some form of unionization.
Read "Blood in the Machine" if you want to see what happened to the losers of the industrial revolution. The book does contain some fictional embellishments but that is explained up front, and noted when it comes up.
Those captains of industry almost certainly salivated over the idea of not needing weavers etc. any more. Is the difference you're seeing just that they're doing that publicly now?
The weavers had a rough go of it for sure, but at least they did not have to spend 4 years of their early adulthood being intellectually challenged in a higher education institution, often going into debt, in order to become qualified weavers.
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No, the difference is that people used to kick down their doors and boot stomp their heads when they got this greedy about it
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OH but they did. Captains of industry always are on the lookout to drive down labor (its their #1 cost).
> we'd 100% be in a recession
A little confused as to how exactly a handful of unprofitable companies are keeping us out of a recession? GDP is not the economy. We have been in a "recession" for a while now, not that that word even really means anything anymore.
How old are you? I hate to pull rank on people, but if you're an American who wasn't yet on the job market in 2008, you've never experienced a sustained recession and don't understand the comparison you're drawing. A recession feels much worse than "things cost too much and the world kind of sucks", and workers are affected as much as businesses and CEOs are.
I'm an American who was on the job market in both 2008 and during the dotcom implosion and I'm still working in software development.
IMO we effectively are in a recession already (and have been for a while) as far as the real job market goes, the AI boom is only stopping it from showing up in stock market valuations, which is great if you're heavily invested in the stock market, but pretty meaningless if you're a laborer without assets, with debt, and trying to find a job.
Things can certainly get worse overall than they are now (and due to bad leadership, this seems inevitable), but when they do the delta between now and when we are in an official recession will be far greater felt by people who are currently being propped up by stock and home values than it will for the many people who are already struggling.
Just because it isn't as bad as 2008 yet doesn't mean we aren't in a recession. I would argue that we were also in a recession before the housing collapse actually hit. Economists will also tell you that the great recession ended in 2009 which I think we both know is bs. My point is that it's a nebulous term and the economy sucks right now despite a few companies keeping GDP artificially inflated.
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> AI is just another disruptive technology like the loom, the steam engine or the airplane. It will take time to adjust and some industries will go away and others will pop up.
That's fallacious thinking. Technological developments aren't instances of some kind of repeating phenomena; they're distinct, unique events with their own characteristics. You need to consider those characteristics instead of gesticulating at the past for a prediction of the future.
And even if you're correct, you're missing a lot. I'll explain by analogy: at the beginning of a genocide, as someone's community in the process of being murdered, you could totally say "genocides have happened before, some people will go away, others will survive." But that's cold comfort for someone who's about to be killed with their family. AI likely means economic death (or at least hardship) for a lot of people who don't have the needed combination of psychopathy, luck, and wealth to succeed in the new order.
> you could totally go up to someone in the middle of a genocide, as their community in the process of being murdered, and say "genocides have happened before, some people will go away, others will survive."
Yeah. How many times I saw people here say oh yeah it's just the same as job loss during automaton-industrialization. How is that making things better? "Yeah just more mass poverty and more wealth inequality, what are you worried about!"
Also during automation there was a lot of work you could switch to and what about options now? start another vibeslop startup so that you can pay openai for tokens?
the only explanation for people saying this is that they don't understand they will be on the line later just like the people displaced now. but the dream of being the .1% who get to be on top and monetize everybody else is too tempting I guess.
> the only explanation for people saying this is that they don't understand they will be on the line later just like the people displaced now. but the dream of being the .1% who get to be on top and monetize everybody else is too tempting I guess.
I doubt most people who say things like that "dream of being the .1%". I think it's more typical they're just someone who thoughtlessly repeata propaganda memes, without considering the implications. I think that's something that software engineers are particularly prone to do, despite frequently having a self-image of being "intelligent."
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> AI is just another disruptive technology like the loom, the steam engine or the airplane.
Or social media, or targeted advertising, or fast food.
This is an underappreciated point. The economy would likely be in freefall without AI.
Yes, things look bleak for current college grads. The bitter pill to swallow is that they began college in the boom times of 2021-22, and they saw the college grads of those years walking straight off campus into high-paying jobs which don’t exist anymore. They only existed because of the obscene gobs of money whizzing around the economy post-COVID. Whether the shrinkage is due in part or in whole to AI is in the eye of the beholder. But if we had fallen into a broad-based recession, the numbers would look a lot bleaker. Plenty of companies that could automate away entry level positions with current tech haven’t done so, whether due to organizational inertia or ignorance or whatever. That organizational inertia would’ve been much more easily overcome by a market collapse.