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Comment by janitor77swe | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand such statement. Automation has already created more job opportunities, why should this be any different? Jobs don't go away, they just transform. And since this AI (whatever that means, nobody really knows) isn't a human-like AGI, it will most certainly not replace humans, but it will automate processes and speed things up.

If you're a business that offers 3 services to the public and "AI" could automate one person's salary out of your payroll, why would do that as opposed to keeping your headcount and instead offer 9 services to the public generating more streams of revenue?

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> Automation has already created more job opportunities, why should this be any different?

This is the "the climate has changed before" argument for economics.

> why would do that as opposed to keeping your headcount and instead offer 9 services to the public generating more streams of revenue?

Because there might not be enough demand for those 9 services.

Especially when companies lay off the workers that would normally consume license seats or purchase consumer goods with job wages.

Funny how all these boosters bragging about automating the economy seem to conveniently forget how much of the economy, in some way, is based around headcount and consumption - both of which are going down due to AI with no replacement being pitched, almost as if that were the plan all along.

> This is the "the climate has changed before" argument for economics

It's really not, you cannot cause a recession by increasing productivity, money doesn't disappear.

That's at least more of an argument than "it never happened before so it cannot happen in the future".

Money cannot disappear, but circulation can be confined to ever-smaller segments of the economy. Let's assume a world in which AI is good enough to do 90% if all white-collar jobs and companies have replaced positions with AI accordingly. Then the amount of money that entered the wider economy through salaries will now stay locked up in B2B transactions between AI companies, their corporate customers and their contractors. How will all the laid-off people get money? Some would probably get into blue-collar work, others will try their hand starting a business (that will also compete with AI), but all of them? What will happen to the businesses that were relying on those employees as customers?

> Some would probably get into blue-collar work, others will try their hand starting a business (that will also compete with AI), but all of them?

Yes, that's exactly what will happen and you can even now see examples of unemployed software engineer building successful one-man gigs with the help of AI(not competing).

I think the concept of stable long term jobs as we knew is gone. Which might not be a bad thing.

Total demand is a different department, no?

I think it's a very different question to ask "how would this create jobs" and "will this create jobs...in today's market."

What you're saying is that no matter the level of automation we have to keep working as much, and we have to consume as much as the system asks us to consume, because now we need a sucker to pay for these 6 new extra "services"

Maybe, just maybe, we could slow things down, profit from the time saved instead of trying to squeeze more out of every fucking thing we put our hands on.

Much of what was automated is physical labor which allowed workers to move into "service/intellectual" jobs. When tractors and dump trucks removed the need for masses of people to move dirt, it didn't create more jobs of moving dirt around since those jobs could also be tackled by more tractors and dump trucks. If AI is what all these "AI evangelicals" claim, then most intellectual jobs would be gone. And it won't create more service/intellectual jobs for humans because whatever new jobs are created would be tackled by AI.

> If you're a business that offers 3 services to the public and "AI" could automate one person's salary out of your payroll, why would do that as opposed to keeping your headcount and instead offer 9 services to the public generating more streams of revenue?

If AI could automate one person's job, why would you keep him? You can offer 9 services with one less person.

> When tractors and dump trucks removed the need for masses of people to move dirt, it didn't create more jobs of moving dirt around since those jobs could also be tackled by more tractors and dump trucks

It created dump truck driver / maintenance / engineer / safety / fuel supply / parts factoring / etc jobs. I wouldn't say that's an example of creating zero jobs.

> It created dump truck driver / maintenance / engineer / safety / fuel supply / parts factoring / etc jobs.

Those are primarily intellectual/service jobs.

> I wouldn't say that's an example of creating zero jobs.

I never said it didn't create zero jobs. Reread my comment. I said it created more intellectual/service jobs. It's the first line of my comment.

True, but it's confusing. The comment you were replying to said this:

> Automation has already created more job opportunities, why should this be any different? Jobs don't go away, they just transform

Which seemed to be what you're arguing against at the same time.

Moving dirt around is an input into many other things. Because moving dirt around is now cheap, we now build a lot more and a lot better roads than we did when moving dirt had to be done with human / animal labor. That road system directly and indirectly created millions of jobs.

Similarly, software is a crucial input to pretty much everything in modern society. More / better software would create tons of new jobs.

I'm not so sure that more worse software will create those jobs though, and that seems to be the direction we're moving with AI.

> we now build a lot more and a lot better roads than we did when moving dirt had to be done with human / animal labor.

Sure, with far less human labor. That's my point.

> That road system directly and indirectly created millions of jobs.

Yes. That's my point. It created millions of service/intellectual jobs. Or are you saying the highway system created more jobs for those who own shovels?

If people moved from physical to intellectual labor in the past century. What will people move into if intellectual work is mostly done by AI. Assuming that the AI the evangelicals promise comes to fruition.

>If you're a business that offers 3 services to the public and "AI" could automate one person's salary out of your payroll, why would do that as opposed to keeping your headcount and instead offer 9 services to the public generating more streams of revenue?

Because cost cutting increases share-holder value. See Jack Welch at GE. Over time he destroyed the company but also raised the share price tremendously.

And lo, new companies were created to fill the void. AI will cause quite a shakeup but short term stock manipulation eventually needs to be paid off (let's call it "management debt" like "tech debt").

The simpler way to view this is that AI creates value. We can argue how much and what kind, but our economy is reliant on ever-increasing value and is pretty good at utilizing it.

Microsoft didn't get smaller when computers got better, their market got much bigger.

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