Ask HN: How would you crack the upcoming unemployment wave?
AI will lead us to the largest unemployment wave in history. Maybe in 10 or 20 years from now. How would you avoid chaos?
All of them destroyed some jobs, and created new ones.
Are you sure that the impact of this one thing will be larger than other events, such as climate change, space travel, video games or war?
The only thing that is likely from AI of is perhaps increased productivity, which, on its own, will not create chaos. And, we have had several false starts in the past on that with AI, so even that is unclear.
My suggestion is to continue living your life in the best way you think possible.
Because all new created jobs will be automated a few (days|weeks|months|years) later. At least that's what i hope for.
CGP Grey explains it best in "Humans Need Not Apply": https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU
Furthermore, there is considerable worry that the waves of innovation are accelerating and our social/educational models will need to change massively to keep up with the pace, otherwise the waves of innovation will occur faster than we adapt to them.
That is the primary difference. If a founder creates a technology from Singapore and sells it worldwide it can replace millions of workers without those workers or their countries seeing any gain, relative or otherwise.
A secondary difference is that it may fully obsolete some humans, just as cars fully obsoleted horse drawn carriages. In the past, farmers could move to factories, but once robots are able to understand simple commands and enact them with human-like limbs at a all-in cost lower than minimum wage, then a good part of human society becomes unable to earn a living. Sure, some things only humans can do (those that require a belief that the job must be done by a human: therapist, tour guide, politician, etc) but it doesn't seem especially likely that this will absorb the billions of low-skill workers.
The meantime would require a massive shift in thinking of elites from greed to charity and cooperation.
Doing all the things that fall outside the realm of economy: - Caring for their children and elderly relatives. - Pursuing artistic and scientific endeavors. - Volunteering in their local community.
All of this would certainly keep me busy. I honestly don't know if this reasoning applies to 100% of people; that's a hard prediction.
The same way Anti-biotics are different than Leeches.
Just because there is any connection between two things does not mean they are equal.
History suggests that the massive devastation and annihilation of labor resulting from a multi-continental war is extremely economically stimulating to the survivors. So many opportunities for jobs rebuilding and restoring the things and people that were destroyed!
(I am, of course, being sarcastic, but it's useful in these contemplations sometimes to consider the stakes by putting a null hypothesis of sorts on the table).
I considered this scenario extremely likely to be repeated.
WWI culminated in development of chemical weapons. They were used in wartime, assessed, and stockpiled. But everybody was scared of ever using them again. Chemical weapons were not used in WWII.
The same thing happened with nuclear weapons in WWII. They were used, evaluated, and then stockpiled. But everybody was scared of ever using them again, and they weren't. Nuclear weapons most probably will not be used in WWIII.
Plenty of able-bodied people today don't work. They live off investments, the government, and/or the largesse of friends and family. Many lead lifestyles you or I might find very limiting, but they're Americans and they vote. They'd become available to work if something matching their work ethic, life situation, and BATNA was to come along. For many, nothing ever will.
Our world is not really in very much chaos over this, compared to the chaos of the past 100 years from other sources.
Futurists once predicted that the 40-hour workweek would become a thing of the past as automation made leisure time more available. I submit that we're actually seeing that, though maybe we don't recognize it: many of us working more than 40 because we have jobs that require it, and with those of us working single digits being pretty quiet about it, the aggregate average is slipping further below 40 every year.
A society where 10% of the people work really hard and 90% of the people barely work at all sounds more like the popular concept of a utopia than a dystopia, at least to me.
This can be done by building machines that produce everything necessary for human survival, and making those machines as low cost as possible.
In general I refer to these machines as "survival machines", and I see them as somewhat similar to a computer operating system but for human beings.
I've written a few essays about this concept, and am actively developing robotic hardware to build the first prototypes now.
Today, flat design is considered desirable – by definition, devoid of embellishment. Embellishment is considered tacky. This trend is no doubt encouraged by mass industry, which benefits from more uniform design: it is easier to produce, and easier to mass-market.
A market for unique embellishment could provide employment for many. By definition, unique embellishment cannot be scaled, else it would not be unique. So-called "hipster" culture has already started going this route, with hand-made "artisanal" goods and services (food) becoming trendy and employing many producing what would otherwise be a fraction of a large factory's output.
Of course, the problem is maintaining the key trait – uniqueness – as desirable. Ornate embellishment can be mass-produced. The trick is convincing people to spend more to buy something that was inefficiently produced, as opposed to something that looks like it was inefficiently produced.
Case in point, Norway has a ton of oil money and they could almost live off it as a country. But instead they save as much as they can and invest the rest in a strong social state that takes good care of the young, elderly, poor, disabled.
There's 9 billion people on the earth and if we try and divy up all jobs that require a human touch -- we'd still have about 8.4 billion people left unemployed. Full on conscience robots aren't impossible either - further out for sure (2050-2060 by most estimates) - but w/ AI's help in researching/coding next gen AI that timetable could move up exponentially.
[0] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/donald-trump-clima...
Because it tickles your brain more to think about this. (No sarcasm or anything, just neutrally offering a hypothesis.)
that's why they're installing fascist governments worldwide.
so i think a violent revolution would be a very bad idea.
i think a non-violent evolution (no-r) is smarter and better.
In all seriousness, I think the most likely course of action is that a significant part of society will retreat into virtual reality and drug addiction. As we are already seeing in Europe, east Asia, and parts of the US, in the absence of economic opportunity the population drops once people have some experience of modern life and see that it's not all it's cracked up to be.
Sound like chaos to me ;)
The population will fall, and indeed it already is falling. VR and drugs sound like a way to sedate people, not drum up chaos.
Utopia of a kind, probably with people who are no longer quite exactly homo sapiens but a new species even. (super advanced AI could be it)
There are many ways to have a temporary dystopia but how many to have a permanent one?
Huxley foresaw specialising humans to the kind of work they are supposed to do, but he never foresaw the tools we now have.
Now then, we need not agree with Mond's goal.
As it stands, 2 of the 3 explicitly stated goals of the Federal Reserve system are:
1. achieve maximum employment
2. maintain stable prices
Exponential growth of computing and automation makes #1 a sadomasochistic, obsolete, and counterproductive goal as putting everyone to work would mean us having "too many cooks in the kitchen".
Stable prices is also counterproductive and counterintuitive, as automation is making goods and services better, faster, and cheaper. Prices should tend toward zero in an increasingly automated labor market.
Meaning: Own your own property. Reduce or eliminate long term contracts (vehicle loans, two year commitments, etc). Reduce overall spending (so your savings last longer).
There's a reason why, in 2008, retirees as a group were least impacted. They had more stable lifestyles that didn't depend on an active job. Plus even if the AI revolution never happens, this strategy has benefits for the next recession, illness, or other unemployment.
We as a people need to better value kindness, volunteering, or even the basic dignity of life itself.
If we are lucky, we will achieve these things in time for the machines to learn them from us. If we end up creating super-intelligent machines in the mould of Ayn Rand, I suspect our future will be harsh and unkind.
Citation needed.
But let's assume you're right. I think the last thing we need to do is hand more power to governments.
For instance, if AI bring massive productivity increases across many sectors, than price pressure will be downward. Anti-market solutions like price floors (to support business) or minimum wages (to support workers), will not allow us to fully enjoy the improved standard of living brought about by falling prices.
Some localities or states will outlaw self-driving cars (as they hurt driver jobs), but that will simply prevent delivery prices from falling in that locality, hurting the many for the benefit of the few.
Imagine if the cost of living dropped to 10% or 1% of what it is today, while at the same time quality and quantity of goods increased. We wouldn't need government to assure some income based on today's cost of living. Instead, a meager amount of savings, a small amount of charity, or a small amount of work could sustain everyone's existence. Propping up current wage levels with UBI would be fighting the natural economic forces driving cost of living down.
What if the impact of AI reducing costs looks like the impact of on textile industries in countries that receive mountains of donated clothes?
"The result of this harmful practice is increased dependency on foreign aid in countries like Kenya and Uganda. Local industry can't compete, so factories close down, taking priceless jobs with them. It's a huge problem."
[0] http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/spiegel-intervie... [1] http://blog.wovin.org/faq [2] https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/23/lets-kill-the-aid-industry...
Take the hypothetical of costs declining massively on everything:
Instead of donating tons of clothing, we donate tons of food, building materials, cars, etc, since they are dirt cheap.
Eventually this leads toward the techno-utopia of having all earthly needs provided for by technology for free. So the jobs in Uganda are no longer priceless, they're unnecessary.
I don't believe in Utopias, but you get the point.
If this time is different, then I think the answer will be in something like universal basic income. Preparing for that and avoiding chaos means introducing social structures and ideas that can lead us out of capitalism.
I still think we are really far from this. Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant aren't anywhere near good enough to replace a human assistant. Siri has been out for 5 years and look at how slowly the improvement in digital assistants has been since then. At the rate seen over the last 5 years we're at least a decade or more away from digital assistants putting human assistants out of work.
Now we talk about AI actually putting jobs that require more training than an assistant (which I am not denigrating, it is a hard job, but easier to train someone on than some other professions) and I think we're 50-100+ years away from AI actually causing some kind of employment crisis.
I'm ambivalent about it, particularly since I'm catholic, but I'm afraid the alternative is idiocracy and, eventually, far more human suffering.
You don't need eugenics to regulate fertility. Population and fertility is in freefall basically, except ultra-poor areas.
The upcoming unemployment wave will be caused by the automation of middle class jobs exacerbated by the failing economy caused, ironically, by the decreasing population.
I don't believe that a basic income would be the right way forward. It might be a good stop gap measure while we try and figure out super-fast travel and terraforming - but it will marginalize a huge portion of the society.
Historically no society has been kind to 'freeloaders' and I don't expect that to change anytime. (Please note the quotes - it is not my opinion, it is just what the opposition thinks). We don't need UBI, we need universal opportunity for jobs for everyone so that they can feel a measure of dignity and go about their life instead of looking at a life of netflix and chill.
The other choice I can think of happening is androidization of people. Once you are able to upload your consciousness into a network, there won't be any shortage of space. I think this is even further out though sadly :(.
In nature, the population and the available resources tend to equalize. I am a bleeding heart libertarian (let people do what they want to do as long as it doesn't affect others but I don't mind paying taxes to provide a safety net), so I'm not saying people should die on the street, but maybe we should stop having as many children and things will stabilize.
I even think it would be cheaper long term if we subsidized birth control for the people who wanted it.
As far as exceptions to when the government should mettle: it shouldn't allow companies to actively harm people (pollution), it should force companies to give consumers all relevant information on whatever they are trying to sell, and they shouldn't allow mergers that decrease competition.
Another way would be pumping money in (re-)education of all these people.
I'm don't think every one of them can be changed into a lawyer or physicist, but I saw a bunch of "street-smart" entrepreneurs whos businesses at least made enough money for them.
Sounds like a problem for government! ;)
Making it progress faster would take more genius scientists plus somewhat more funding. Not a lot more though. But where do you find and view do you cultivate such physicists and material scientists?
Negative income tax with a government backed efficient job market where to overhead of hiring someone for 2h is minimal. As a result, someone working 20h a week would have the same quality of life as someone working 40h today for a minimum wage. Worker can spend the extra 20h on education, leisure or more work.
I don't think anything other would fly pocitally.
I know. Government will solve this! ;)