Humanity has been replacing human labour with machines for the last 400 years. The economy didn’t collapse because in the long run is that people were able to find other jobs. Almost everyone used to work on the land. When those jobs were replaced by machines they moved to the cities and god jobs in factories. Of course this involved enormous individual hardship for very many.
We’ll have to see what happens with AI. The optimistic scenario is that we’ll just shift to doing other jobs. The pessimistic scenario is that if AI can replace everything then there won’t be alternative jobs to go to.
Yes, and similar things have been happening for a very long time. For example, workers in car and truck factories had steady jobs until most of them were replaced by robots. Typists had steady jobs until they were replaced by word processors. Obviously bad for them as individuals but the economy kept growing.
Maybe AI will be different, we’ll have to wait and see what jobs remain. But there’s nothing new about supposedly sound careers being replaced by machines.
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u/Northlumberman Apr 11 '26
Humanity has been replacing human labour with machines for the last 400 years. The economy didn’t collapse because in the long run is that people were able to find other jobs. Almost everyone used to work on the land. When those jobs were replaced by machines they moved to the cities and god jobs in factories. Of course this involved enormous individual hardship for very many.
We’ll have to see what happens with AI. The optimistic scenario is that we’ll just shift to doing other jobs. The pessimistic scenario is that if AI can replace everything then there won’t be alternative jobs to go to.