Prepare for an AI Jobs Apocalypse

(economist.com)

16 points | by edward 12 hours ago ago

9 comments

  • tabs_or_spaces 11 hours ago ago

    So the article doesn't mention how the individual should prepare, but rather that government should prepare. Are individuals just that powerless against these perceived outcomes with AI?

    My opinion is that AI can be a force for good, but why is everything so aggressively framed as a class war? Why must such a path be taken?

    I wonder if this is how things were during the industrial revolution as well

    • digitaltrees 10 hours ago ago

      1. Because it’s fairly clear that AI is trending to the most winner takes all dynamic that has ever existed. That will create a monopoly on intelligence.

      Monopoly is the end state of unregulated competition and capitalism. A monopoly destroys the value of capitalism by undermining the power of competition to set efficient prices.

      Individuals lack the bargaining power to overcome monopoly power.

      2.AI will make broad categories of knowledge work so easy to create that the value will approach $0. Hard to make a living as a marketer, developer, payroll processor when it’s $0 to do that work. Saying “get a job loser” when monopolistic firms aren’t hiring is a bit insane.

      • tracerbulletx 9 hours ago ago

        Then they say become an elecrician or hvac worker. Which will then just crash those markets too. And who is going to own property to hire you at some point without middle class knowledge work jobs.

        • digitaltrees 8 hours ago ago

          After multiple generations of telling people blue collar jobs were a dead end and creating social stigma around them. Oh and gutting trade schools and apprenticeships.

    • AndrewKemendo 8 hours ago ago

      There’s always a class war, its simply a question of whether you’ve realized where you are in it.

      And yes every technology revolution displaced workers with a promise of better material and labor conditions by whatever form of domination was en vogue.

      Those better conditions never materialized from the firm owner, only through direct action like the haymarket affair and others did modern labor practices start changing.

      The anti-cooperative propaganda in the U.S. has been so effective since WWII that *any* sense of cooperative organizing is seen as unrealistic and childish at best, or evil perversion of the righteousness of domination at worst.

      So if you don’t care about individual liberty then yeah everything is just fine provided you’re in the bourgeoisie.

      I do actually think this time is different because all and I mean ALL of the infrastructure for revolt has been eradicated through consumption.

      Good luck having a secret meeting of a few hundred revolutionaries or organizing an action deliberately.

  • sergiosgc 11 hours ago ago
  • jazz9k 11 hours ago ago

    Companies want to look good to share holders, in an already bad economy.

    Layoffs+ai investments looks like a solid plan to increase value.

    Now we have articles like this, also pushing false narratives about AI, to suppirt a socialist/communist utopia through UBI.

    • digitaltrees 10 hours ago ago

      Oh ya that notorious socialist magazine “the economist”.

      I hope you build thick enough castle walls or a deep enough bunker when the jobless, unwashed masses come to steal your food.