No B.S Friday: AI is exciting, but like all exciting things, it’s terrifying.
So I still reckon AI is the most exciting thing going on right now. If I could buy it I would.
(I’m still figuring out how to cash in on the AI revolution.)
But like all exciting things, it’s also scary. And I think it’d be naive to just wander into the AI future and expect everything to be rosy.
And where I do worry is about the impact on the jobs market.
Having a job sucks. Jobs are close to the worst way to make money and build wealth. But in the absence of anything better, for most people, its essential.
And AI could destroy jobs at a pace that completely overwhelms us.
And at this point, someone is going to say, but we have this fear about every technological revolution, and in the end they end up creating more jobs than they destroy.
And that has been true. Studies have consistently shown that.
But – and listen carefully now – but what kind of sample are we working off there? You can’t extrapolate the future of humanity off a century’s worth of data.
Past performance does not guarantee future returns and all that.
And just because the computer didn’t do more harm than good is no guarantee that AI won’t.
The thing to note here is that economists draw a distinction between labour-augmenting technology and labour replacing.
So a computer is labour-augmenting because it helps you do spreadsheets better. A robotic arm on the production line is labour replacing, because it does away with the need for a human at all.
And so think about horses. When we invented the wheel and the cart, that was horse labour augmenting, and made horses more productive. When we invented the automobile, that was horse labour-replacing, and the population of horses collapsed.
So the question is AI labour augmenting or labour replacing.
And when I look at it, it looks like it’s both, but on balance, more labour replacing than augmenting. In a short time – like maybe by the end of the decade – AI will be better at humans that pretty much everything.
Think about it. Anything that requires training can be taught to an AI.
A human is a fancy meat-based computer stuck on a meat-based mobility device.
I struggle to think of much that we’ll be able to do better than robots. Hair-dressing, waiting tables, customer-support… seriously. Where will humans maintain an edge?
So the future looks decidedly horsey to me.
But we’re not about to let the human population collapse the way we let the horse population collapse.
But what does that mean?
Huge swathes of humanity without a job, and without a job, without a livelihood.
That doesn’t have to be a death-sentence. There’s solutions to that. Maybe some sort of Universal Basic Income.
But if it’s one thing I’ve learnt about humans is that we’re not agile creatures. We don’t do that well on the big decisions that affect everyone. We’re not good at building a consensus and executing a plan in a short time frame.
It’s going to be a slow, messy and potentially bloody process.
While AI’s double’s its capacity every 12 months.
So look, it’s not clear to me that AI is going to create more jobs than it destroys.
But even if you take the line that AI is like all other technology, and after a period of adjustment, it will ultimately be job-creating, that still says that there’s a period of adjustment to get through.
And the way it looks to me is that that period of adjustment is going to be massively big and incredibly quick.
Humanity is going to have to pirouette like a ballerina.
And maybe we will, but with stadiums full of people getting laid off every week, there’s every chance that it all becomes a train wreck.
So seriously, if you’re still working in a ‘job’, I’d be making a five year plan, and trying to get as far away from the job-carnage as possible.
JG.
Deonne Kingsford says
AI is to replace humans & will also Lock-us-up if we standby & let the monied few take over.
Time to make a STAND and not to say it’ll be right mate; it wont be good for us in the future if we dont see it’s a War & all able bodies need to know & sign up to defend our Countries, our Families, jobs, Freedom & Democractic rights. StAND and have a strong Say about many things happening & affecting your/lives. D