[no_op]

Non-general AI won't cause mass unemployment, for the same reason previous productivity-enhancing tech hasn't. So long as humans can create valuable output machines can't, the new, higher-output economy will figure out how to employ them. Some won't even have to switch jobs, because demand for what they provide will be higher as AI tools bring down production costs. This is plausible for SWEs. Other people will end up in jobs that come into existence as a result of new tech, or that presently seem too silly to pay many people for — this, too, is consistent with historical precedent. It can result in temporary dislocation if the transition is fast enough, but things sort themselves out.

It's really only AGI, by eclipsing human capabilities across all useful work, that breaks this dynamic and creates the prospect of permanent structural unemployment.

[fulafel]

We do have emplyoment problems arguably caused by tech, currently the bar of minimum viable productivity is higher than before in a lot of countries. In western welfare states there aren't jobs anymore for people who were doing groundskeeper ish things 50 years ago (apart from public sector subsidized employment programs).

We need to come up with ways of providing meaningful roles for the large percentage of people whose peg shape doesn't fit the median job hole.

[consteval]

> So long as humans can create valuable output machines can't

Not all humans are going to be capable of this as time goes on. Those humans will be subjected to abject poverty.

The reality is not everyone can possess a highly skilled knowledge job. Not everyone can go to college. What of them?

[no_op]

The irregularities of many real-world problems will keep even humans of low intelligence employable in non-AGI scenarios. Consider that even if you build a robot to perform 99% of the job of, say, a janitor, there's still that last 1%. The robot is going to encounter things that it can't figure out, but any human with an IQ north of 70 can.

Now, initially this still looks like it's going to reduce demand for janitors by 99%. So it's still going to cause mass unemployment, right? Except, it's going to substantially reduce the cost of janitorial services, so more will be purchased. Not just janitorial services, of course. We'll deploy such robots to do many things at higher intensity than we do today, and as well as many things that we don't do at all right now because they're not cost effective. So in equilibrium (again, the transition may be messy), with 99% automation we end up with an economy 100x the size, and about the same number of humans employed.

I know this sounds crazy, but it's the historical norm. Today's industrialized economies already have hundreds of times the output of pre-industrial economies, and yet humans mostly remain employed. At no point did we find that we didn't want any more stuff, actually, and decide to start cashing out productivity increases as lower employment rather than more output.