When people say things like "AI is going to take all of our jobs!!", my immediate reaction is to think they are dumb. Not strictly because I don't think that is going to happen, but also because I don’t think it would be that bad if it did; also because it has already, and it turned out pretty great.
Imagine it for a moment, all of us wake up tomorrow and suddenly all the jobs we do to keep the economy humming are done by the computers. Terrible, right? What are we supposed to do now!
The problem is that this has already happened before. In fact it has happened at least 3 or 4 times; agricultural revolution, industrial revolution, PC revolution, internet.
All of these led to some amount of jobs going away completely: farm worker, weavers, typists, switchboard operator.
The initial use of "computer" was as a job title. When you didn't have a machine that could do complicated math, you had to hire someone to carry the three.
Every time we go through one of these revolutions we just come up with new jobs to satisfy each other with.
Imagine telling a farmhand in the 1800s that around 5% of our economy is spent on entertainment. Don't you think they would be excited for all that is to come?
Individuals during each subsequent technological revolution have had their jobs displaced and suffered some short-term pain. But should we really be orienting ourselves toward avoiding that pain? We should certainly try to make it so everyone can have a job that is meaningful to them in some way, but if the past is any predictor of the future, then it looks like we are trending towards that anyhow!
I am willing to cede that past performance is not always indicative of future results, but we’ve been through this cycle too many times not to feel the trend. There is even a movie from the 50’s where everyone in a British textile factory tries to kill a chemist for creating a cloth that never wears down. He took their jobs! Yeah, maybe the factory owner is screwed, but the workers should just find some other job! The problem is solved! You don’t have to toil at a sewing machine all day and people will still have clothes!
I get that in the moment it is hard for a single worker to appreciate a change in a job that they spent some portion of their life training for. Frictional unemployment sucks on a personal level, but what would be worse is propping up jobs that are going extinct anyway just to appeal to some subset of the population. (*cough cough* GM, federal government,
People today play video games for a living! Billions of dollars per year is generated by people making silly little tchotchkes and sell them on Etsy!
Not to mention the fact that if indeed all of the jobs go away and humans have absolutely nothing to do, then that would mean all the stuff we currently buy would be exceedingly cheap! If robot labor is wildly cheaper than human labor then that means all the costs will be competed down and we will be able to fly across the country for $100 with an AI pilot, or build a skyscraper with an army of robots that cost 1/100th of a comparable number of construction workers.
Sadly, this won't actually execute in that way because all the important stuff is steeped in regulation. You can't build a new house without being sued by every one of your new potential neighbors, you can't get surgery without an anesthesiologist being paid millions of dollars per year, you have your child cared for without spending half of your salary.
AI can't fix these things, but it can definitely unlock some cool new ways for us to spend our time. And if you don't believe me then you are more than welcome to go back to being a farmer, seamstress, or typist.