AI will lead to labor shortages, Bezos says in optimistic talk | Hacker News Reader

AI will lead to labor shortages, Bezos says in optimistic talk

reuters.com

15 pointsjhncls15 comments

Labor "shortage"? In a free market, wouldn't the price of labor, i.e. wages, rise to meet demand?

It’s not going to be instant. Just like we have housing shortages or unemployment.

Yeah, a shortage implies that the price of labor rises a lot

Not unimaginable, given that the bottlenecks seem to be concentrating on high-level direction, relational work, and expert verification

labor shortage and high unemployment can, and will, coexist. the roles most in demand will be those that fewest of the population are able to fill.

The lie is in calling it a labor shortage without qualification. There won't be a shortage of all labor, just a highly specific class of labor, and everyone else will be left out.

"For instance we are already running out of people to lay off!"

At Amazon, due to their toxic work culture which led to high turnover, the joke was Amazon will run out of new hires, it will have to rehire previous employees.

A real consideration for warehouse staff in some areas.

we're giving you jobs! See that millionaire over there! Soon he'll afford a yacht! Who will build the yachts? You! Who will clean the toilets! You! Can't you see, we won't run you out of a good job, we'll run you into the dirtiest jobs!

Yep. Notice in all of these "lol nevermind, AI isn't going to take jobs way" takes that these execs have suddenly started spewing completely gloss over exactly WHAT jobs are going to be available.

They only look at it from the top. if jobsAvailable = True then economy = fine. But there is no viable desk job->trades pipeline. You can't upend millions of people's existing lifestyles from office jobs that provide a comfortable, climate controlled work environment, and a high enough salary to enter the middle class, and tell everyone "sorry, but hey there's a massive labor shortage in manufacturing and welding, go grab a hard hat"

So now, things bifurcate even more. You're either a highly specialized AI engineer of some sort, which will be highly competitive, or back to the factory you go and you can kiss your six figure salary and work life balance good bye. Oh, and you'll destroy your body in the process and probably die early. Yay capitalism?

There's no optimism there. Knowledge workers care about what jobs are going to be available, not just that any job is available.

Jon Stewart/Obama told Bezos this directly: "that's a recipe for a revolution."

I expect some form of UBI will be incorporated to placate the masses in the event of mass unemployment, but only after some serious unrest.

No, what will happen is a claim of UBI, but inevitably it'll just be some war and strife and credit card debt that will ensure fealty.

...oh, wait

Drone armies will prevent such things this time around though.

I don’t see a whole lot (if any) of optimism in the article. Of course the oligarchs would put out a grand vision of AI. Too many similarities to Rapture (Bioshock).

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