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>> Without those agriculture advances

Funny thing is, it wasn't agricultural advances, at least initially. It was chemistry and mechanics. Haber-Bosch process of ammonia synthesis created cheap fertilizer, mechanization dramatically increased productivity. New plant varieties with higher yields came later.

Synthetic fertilizer and mechanization are commonly seen as agricultural advances in the same way that quantum computing is an advance in the field of computer science even though much of the implementation is physics.

Yeah, it's not the ag-tech that created new jobs, it's that human's like to be useful and get paid so they'll come up with new things like web dev or instagram influencer. Come AGI people will still probably come up with things to do. The wages and payment bit will likely need to be modified along the UBI or to each according to their needs lines.

what is this "something else" in this case?

I keep thinking of that investment disclaimer whenever people cite the - 100 year old - example of mechanization of agriculture: "Past performance is no guarantee of future results"

Anyways, if I put my cynnical hat on after looking at this: https://blog.waldrn.com/p/american-boys-have-become-less-sup...

The next generation of children is already being conditioned for women leaving the workplace and society reverting to a pre-WW2 social structure. That's a solution. Jobs are lost forever, women are out of the workforce and the number of workers is halved. We all live in a trad-conservative paradise.

You never know beforehand.

Before they existed, few would have believed the disappearing jobs would be replaced by web designers, uber drivers, youtubers, drone pilots etc.

so if you don't know beforehand, can you even be sure that "something else" exists?

Strictly speaking, you can't be sure the sun will rise tomorrow, and you should be even less sure about this.

But the sensible thing is to expect strong trends to continue.

the sun "rising" tomorrow is backed by scientific knowledge about the solar system - more jobs by AI - so far - not more than wishful thinking, like many other AI promises (such as saving is from climate change).

Someone will have to clean up the mess that AI usage leaves in its wake.

saving is -> saving us

The science of Economics has good, empirically based explanations for how new jobs get created when technology makes older jobs unnecessary.

And yes, it is a real science!

just explanations, i.e. with hindsight? astrology can do this as well ;)

what about rules/laws which allow predictions?

A simple top level explanation is that unemployed people are an unused resource, and free market capitalism is very good at finding ways to make money from that.

Maybe one day unemployed people will be truly useless to other people, but for the last 250 years, new professions have always emerged.

> Maybe one day unemployed people will be truly useless to other people, but for the last 250 years, new professions have always emerged.

Free market capitalism lacks anything approaching a clear and exhaustive definition and the term is used for many arrangements - from market oligarchy to market anarchy but there is one thing that is absolutely certain about it:

"Past performance is no guarantee of future results"

In effect, the most enduring tenet of free market capitalism negates your argument. You need to provide material evidence, not glorious promises of some unknowable bright future, North Korean style.

"Intel will always be the number one chip maker. Even if things come up, they will figure it out. The strong trend of Intel's success will continue forever"

>> But what did happen is that people were freed up to do different things. Those jobs were indirectly created by the fact that people did not need to spend so much time growing food. That allowed people to do other things to create value and improve our lives.

The key point here is that "create value" -- new jobs are created if there are new human jobs that create value.

The bifurcation of incomes pre-AI should be a warning that we're reaching a point where the average human (in physical ability and knowledge) can no longer efficiently create value.

Imagine we have robots that can physically lift and manipulate as well as the average human. And AGI that can think as well as the average human (arguably LLMs might already pass that low bar).

Should an AGI future eventuate, the distribution of that abundance is not pre-ordained. Retooling government and society into a post-capitalist system, and deciding a fair distribution to people who have little power to demand it, is going to be a mess.

Or to put it another way, how many times in history have the rich en masse voluntarily given to the poor?

> The bifurcation of incomes pre-AI should be a warning that we're reaching a point where the average human (in physical ability and knowledge) can no longer efficiently create value.

IMHO, the value will be in creating f2f human interactions — stuff that AI and robots will only be able to simulate but never replicate.

That may sound flippant, but real human interactions are already being sought after (relatively) widely, and I think that this trend will continue.

The masses will always be the masses, the elite will always be the elite, and there was a small anomalous blip in this trend in the mid- to late-20th century that has dribbled over into the early 21st century.

The vibe in the movie Titanic for how the upper decks and lower decks lived pre-collision (and to some extent post-collusion) is pretty much how I imagine life will be in an AI/robot-powered future.

[Note that the Titanic example can be nitpicked, but the upper deck people were shown to be having stuffy fun in a relatively posh setting, while the lower deck people were letting loose in a very relaxed and social way. That is my point in mentioning it.]

We know humans have needs, and most jobs exist to meet them. The agricultural revolution mainly met one need — cheaper food with less labor.

A superintelligent AI could meet all human needs. The only remaining jobs might be those where people prefer a human touch like therapy or sex work, but such roles would be rare.

Past revolutions either made work more efficient or created new ways for humans to serve each other. Superintelligence would replace every form of work that meets human needs, so historical analogies don’t apply.

How does a superintelligent AI build cars of grow crops?

Using (or controlling) machines, that it will design? Then humans only need to bootstrap the first factory of humanoid like robots, and after that, humans are no longer needed.

Even with current technology, there are already almost fully automated POCs of farms and so called “dark" factories and we are talking about superintelligence, not LLMs.

Interestingly, even in western countries there is basically unlimited demand for agricultural work, and it pays well. The issue is that it's hard work and to get into the higher payment tiers you must take on some risks.

Even in small rural areas the demand for locally produced sustainable and consciously produced agricultural products is largely unmet.