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Comment by AverageDude | Hacker News Reader

Disagree. AI will cause mass unemployment because it’s way more efficient than a human, doesn’t get sick (relatively less than humans) and costs less. Simple economics. I’ll give you one example. The checkout counters in supermarkets, if the supermarkets would have hired young people on those positions not only we might have less young people going towards drugs and hooliganism but it would have also made them better productive citizens as they gain skills in their teen years.

Corporates need to understand that their greed for infinite profit will eventually create a singularity which will consume them one day. People without jobs buy less. May be we will finally get rid of the consumerism.

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Good example actually. In Switzerland nearly every store has automated checkouts and depending on the local demographic more and more people are using them. There is one human supervising like 4-16 automated checkouts, or 1 open real checkout that keeps an eye on the machines.

That is at least 2-3 workers less for every single store in the country in just the last few years.

You should also mention that one classic checkout line with an average-skilled worker is, in practice, easily as fast with regard to the "items processed per minute" metric as 4-8 self-checkouts where average-talented customers perform self checkout.

Interesting point, I haven't really thought about that yet.

> People without jobs buy less.

I believe we can solve it by having robots buying the goods. They should be able to process it into trash just as well as a human could /s

We have replaced human labor with machines that are way more efficient than a human for 250 years now.

Mass unemployment has always been feared as a result, and it has always not happened.

I strongly expect trends to continue.

Is that because we've always been able to specialise further? But is there an end point to that? We can only specialise so much.

The real difference is the pace.

It took 20 years for self checkout to really catch on. It's not even fully there yet.

It took months for Book and Magazine publishers to say. No more submissions please, we have enough content for a while.

The winner of a massive photography comp in the US took no pictures, had no subjects and didn't write the back stories of his "subjects". He AI'd the lot.

These sounds interesting. I’ve never heard about them. Could you share some references please?

You’re applying what I would call the fallacy of scale. Your take is correct as long as these singularity happen at relative scales. We don’t know at all what happens when massive scale becomes a factor. Computers and the internet allowed virtualization and we now base our economies largely on virtualization and abstraction. That also means almost infinite replicability. In turn, infinite replicability allows levels of scale never before seen. Now we are at the verge of a large optimization of the economy at a level of scale that we have never ever experienced before. While I’m sure that in the time of a couple generations we would probably find ways to rewire our brains around the new AI normal like we did in the past, we will probably have to face an unemployment risk to a level we haven’t experienced so far. With inequalities growing, the question is if societies can grow through this phase unscathed, or if it will be enough of a critical mass and tipping point for partial or complete collapse.

I love this topic, maybe too much...

Don't you think that a lot of what you're talking about depends on how people react to this technology and it's use? To ask another way, if everyone around you is in complete suffering and misery from "AI", we're all broke, hungry and miserable, maybe people will just not want to use AI and prefer to buy and trade services with other humans so that we maintain a nice quality of life?

There is an assumption Silicon Valley is making here which is whether we like it or not, we're all going to have to give up everything, our money, careers, professions, lives and just use AI(tm) because they've made it and while economists will tell me I'm wrong, because "economies of scale etc", I'm certainly not going to trade everything, and everyone I know so I can get images cheaper than I can today from Getty Images.

Maybe <Insert billionaires who control all the bots> will just build his own robocops who will come and make sure I do what I'm told, or maybe even just wipe me out completely for growing my own food and trading goods and services with others who are out of work, I don't know. But I just can't see humans, who still actually do have brains btw, to just roll over and let our lives descend into chaos over Clippy.

Edit: I want to say that even to this day, I actually buy things from people who grow things locally etc just to support them rather than go to the grocer, I do this because I know it's doing some good for my community, I'll just be doing more of this in the future if people aren't working.

This is a good point but I’m not sure we can really compare the size and reach of what corporations can do with this tool with smaller circular and local economies driven by ethics. It’s again a problem of scale :)

Do you honestly think corporations can just contain all AI research, know how etc? Keep those genies in those bottles forever?

I highly doubt it.

My steelman of what you're saying is that "this time it's different" because this will be a much bigger change than the normal yearly loss of 2-4% of all jobs.

I'd add that it's different in that it will hit us college educated professionals who are not at all used to this, instead of the usual blue collar industries. We as a group are not ready and will scream very very loudly if/when this happens :)

It's important to remember that a society consumes as much as it produces. This is how "rich" it is in aggregate. And job losses like this come from being able to produce as much as before with fewer people. So even if no one finds a new job, the society is as rich as before.

All experience is that those losing their jobs find/create new ones after an adjustment period. Maybe this adjustment period will be longer, but it will clear in time.

Unless, of course, Eliezer is right and AI kills us all.

I think that the visible impact will also be different because it not only matters how many people suffer but what types of people suffer. When the bad stuff happens to mostly disenfranchised poor people, they can (and will) push for change by e.g. protest votes for populists that promise to break the status quo and turn back time (and, to be clear, I'm not talking about the USA here - this is a global phenomenon), but that won't effectively advance their interests, as that simply can't be done even if the populists both get power and try to keep their promises.

On the other hand, when/if the same suffering happens to "semi-elites" with social capital and connections, they will raise noise in media and try to use the government establishment to "do something", and while it also might be ineffective, at least the appearance of governments needing to take action and help the adjustment will be much more significant than for the blue collar troubles.

Then you're blissfully unaware of the real labor participation rate and of gradual phenomena.

Cashierless checkout counters didn't really reduce labor though.

They just shifted it from a paid cashier to buyers doing it for free.

When capitalism gets to the point that it has rid itself of consumers, I fear it means it will get 'rid' of consumers.

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