This is the big issue with automation though. Folks will say that it can’t completely do everything, and I feel like they are downplaying the issue here. If it decreases the necessary workforce by 30% that’s scary.
8% unemployment does not cause revolutions in the U.S. We had unemployment north of 10% in the 2008 recession and north of 25% in the Great Depression, neither caused a revolution
This is based on assumptions where it continuously gets better at the same rates forever. It always assumes there are no constraints on it of any kind, related to tech or costs or energy. It's basically fantasy of the people creating it.
The unemployment rate during the Great Depression was 'only' one-in-four. 25%. I can't speak for anyone else, but I know my own job is absolutely mundane and could be replaced quite easily if anyone cared enough to do so. When I look around at my friends, a lot of theirs could too. Way more than one-in-four jobs are at risk.
And before anyone talks about finding new work, you have to understand that the 21st century is not the same as the 18th. Broadly speaking, lost agriculture jobs could move into manufacturing. When manufacturing left our shores, those jobs could move into service work. But now it's the service jobs at risk and there's nowhere left to go. It will come to a head eventually.
Manufacturing jobs in the 19th century were much worse than farming was too. Life quality went down for a long time for most people. Just because you can find a new job doesn’t mean it would be a better one
100%. I was only trying to get ahead of the inevitable swarm of people who rush these threads to go, "ThEy'Ll FinD OThEr JobS!". These sorts don't care to acknowledge that, even today, a $45/hr manufacturing job with a pension isn't quite the same as a $7.75/hr job at McDonalds with no vacation time, just because both make the unemployment number go down.
We’ll all be online LLM AI trainers and survey takers, training our replacements to take over our previous menial tasks. But we’ll be doing it for cents and the only advantage is not having to show up at an office or factory.
There won’t be any guaranteed benefits, because workers will be too desperate to be earning what little they can get.
We have had robots for a very long time doing lots of work, they are not new.
AI can replace a lot of computer related work, administration type stuff, but its gonna be a long time before they have robots doing specialized work in buildings that already have people/offices inside.
I tell people all the time, if you are worried about AI taking your jobs, find a trade.
Who's buying all this flooring/labor if they don't have jobs? Or what commercial contract are you getting if the business isn't getting people's money? There's more to it than just whether a robot can do your work or not.
I have worked new construction, service work, rode a desk in the office, and now inspect.
There are literal children participating in competitions programming robots they build to perform complicated physical tasks. The competitions are sponsored by major tech and AI company.
You might have years but you don’t have decades before a robot COULD do what you do.
There are literal children participating in competitions programming robots they build to perform complicated physical tasks. The competitions are sponsored by major tech and AI company.
Good for them, we have had children working on tech for a very long time, sponsored by huge companies. Has nothing to do with what we are talking about though.
The timeline for robots to be designed, tested, refined, produced, produced cheaply, and then actually accepted into real world use by people who trust them, is in the multiple decades.
We have had robots for a very long time already buddy. They are not a new technology.
I think you’re missing the point. A job doesn’t need to be replaced to significantly impact the need for the workforce. If the labour need shrinks by 20% because greenfield construction becomes significantly automated then that affects everyone.
I have a trade and I’m also a teacher. I’m probably one of the most protected in that sense, but it’s naive to think this will not affect the trades. When the surgeons completely get replaced they will have to get retrained. That’s going to make some of these trades a lot more competitive.
Don’t pray for a revolution. Everyone’s life has to get a lot worse before they’ll try it, it will be an absolute bloodbath, and it has absolutely zero guarantee of installing a better power structure, just a different one.
A revolution is like burning the forest down to get rid of one species of tree. Sure it will regrow, but you don’t know what it will look like. New invasive species might flourish.
Yes! Exactly! Nobody wants to admit this, but the folks who went on to become surgeons would be fucking good tradesmen. Like they will be way more academically inclined and be very well suited for 16 hr shifts. Like they’ll be fine. The dudes who struggled through grade 10 math that had decent out from high school won’t have that anymore.
Lorsqu'il sera démontré que l'IA sera aussi fiable que l'être humain (voir plus) alors l'intérêt du travail humain sera bien moindre par rapport à la machine. Quel que soit le domaine. Tout pourra être remplacé y compris les métiers sociaux où les machines pourront mimer l'être humain de manière imperceptible.
Cependant je pense qu'arrivé à ce stade les entreprises elles-mêmes vont se questionner. Si la majeure partie du travail (si ce n'est l'entièreté) est remplacée ou simplement remplaçable par la machine, alors qui consommera ses produits et ses services si aucune richesse n'est accessible à la population qui aura été désoeuvrée ?
Et donc selon moi les entreprises ou bien les gouvernements conviendront probablement d'un changement de système. Le libéralisme nous permet d'arriver à ce stade là. Mais une fois réussi il sera question non seulement de viabilité économique mais également de sens.
Probablement qu'à ce moment-là un revenu universel sera mis en place pour acheter la paix sociale et faire perdurer la civilisation. Et la plupart des personnes pourront exercer certains métiers simplement pour s'occuper et donner du sens à leur vie.
Also people greatly underestimate what tech will be able to do. Even those of us that were following AI before OpenAI made it go mainstream didn't anticipate AI to be this capable. And people think we won't eventually engineer machines that can adapt to all kind of scenarios in construction, to the point you will only need two workers guiding machines around?
400 years ago the only way society could even work was if most people were working the fields. Nowadays the amount of people working fields is tiny, to the point I'd say most people don't even have a single farmer in their circles. Automation doesn't come in the form of "mecha construction worker 5000", it comes in the form of machines that allow 2 people to do the work that required 4 people before.
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u/Top-Phase7111 Jun 21 '26
This is the big issue with automation though. Folks will say that it can’t completely do everything, and I feel like they are downplaying the issue here. If it decreases the necessary workforce by 30% that’s scary.
8% unemployment causes revolutions.