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Comment by SirensOfTitan | Hacker News Reader

The Economist remarked the same thing in their report on automation a little while back. The automation fears espoused by Bill Gates and Elon Musk are purportedly premature. Automation isn't spreading fast enough.

One other note, while I do believe that automation will cause massive job losses eventually, there exists an alternative narrative. Centered around the knowledge that: 'you don't know you don't know,' we just have no idea which jobs will emerge as a result of new industries powered by automation.

What does seem evident is that concentrated education at the beginning of an adult's life is unlikely to be enough in the future. Investment in education reform and adult education seems critical, whether or not automation causes large scale unemployment.

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> we just have no idea which jobs will emerge as a result of new industries powered by automation

The question is, if you believe AI will eventually catch up with all jobs that exist today, what skill could a significant portion of the population possibly have at that point, that the AIs would not also match?

Perhaps we'll have social constructs to provide jobs, similar to how people are willing to overpay for designer goods instead of copies (e.g. maybe 'hand-crafted' will take on a whole new meaning). But from a solely economic perspective, it seems like a matter of when, not if, an AI could more efficiently do most jobs.

If AI and robotics can do everything cheaper than humans, how is that not the greatest thing ever?

It would be great. However, it would also obligate us to solve the problem of resource distribution that is currently being solved by the system of working a job for money, then exchanging that money for goods and services.

It's great for society and long term, but right now we tie people's ability to participate in society pretty tightly with their economic output. If your output isn't needed, you will have to retrain, and society will have to support that.

Whats coming out is that retraining doesn't happen often enough.

How do you control the AI? If it can do everything we can do, then it doesn't need us...

I it, or at least should be. The problem is with our current socioeconomic structures it would mean that the majority of the population would have no purchasing power whatsoever, since their only valuable resource, their ability to work, would disappear. Mass starvation, rioting, etc. doesn't sound too nice. If we somehow make our way out of that into a Star Trek-esque post-scarcity utopia, then yes, it'd be amazing.

If it's so cheap to build robots/AI that it's cheaper than working, then anyone will be able to afford robots. That's the essential logical test the fear of robots can't pass.

That is the issue that needs to be looked at more closely. And in a fantasy world the consumer is a separate entity from the worker. But a weak workforce means weak consumers.

Companies can talk about cost reducing by cutting their workforce all they want, but I wonder how many stop and think how that would negatively impact the purchasing power of their former employees.

If the United States of America - the wealthiest society the world has ever known - can't even provide healthcare for its citizens, what hope is there that, in a world where all profits accure to the owners of robots (capital), anyone other than these people get any of the benefit? History is not exactly rich with examples of such.

The US obvuisky does provide healthcare for its citizens, we are just in a messy argument over who should pay for it. Reagan mandated over 40 years that hospitals had to offer care to everyone.

Being able to visit the emergency room and having to pay whatever they want isn't remotely the same as "provide healthcare for its citizens".

Hospitals may provide emergency care, but it's a poor substiture for proper long-term care with a primary care physician. It's also a horrible system for dealing with homeless and mentally ill patients, not to mention the chance of going bankrupt, and the overall effectiveness/ cost of the system vs. the benefits.

Saying it's only about who pays is not really doing justice to the problems of the American medical system.

Automation is spreading at an unprecedented rate. Factory jobs are all but gone. More automation has been installed in the last 10 years than in all the years previously.

If somebody cherry-picks data to show 'some job growth' somewhere, and claims that disproves that automation is hurting jobs, then they haven't tried to get a job in manufacturing in the last decade; and forget any chance at promotion because there's no path from 'menial floor box-mover' to anything like engineering or management.

> Centered around the knowledge that: 'you don't know you don't know,' we just have no idea which jobs will emerge as a result of new industries powered by automation.

everyone will become a youtuber and other "personality" based jobs.

Robot technicians. We'll need a lot of them. It will be too complicated to be worth building robot mechanics or even robot repairable robots, so we'll need women and men to do this job.

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