[massysett]

Yes, and despite every single one of these world-changing inventions, people in rich countries still go to work every day, even though UBI is generally not a thing. People claim AI will eliminate large numbers of jobs. Maybe it will, just like the tractor did. But new jobs are created. I would never have guessed that “influencer” would be a thing!

This current “AI will destroy all the jobs and make most people useless” fear is as old as, say, electricity, and even older than cheap computing. It hasn’t happened.

[libraryofbabel]

Ex historian here, now engineer. I would gently suggest you’re underestimating the magnitude of some of the transformations wrought by the technologies that OP mentioned for the people that lived through them. Particularly for the steam engine and the broader Industrial Revolution around 1800: not for nothing have historians called that the greatest transformation in human life recorded in written documents.

If you think, hey but people had a “job” in 1700, and they had a “job” in 1900, think again. Being a peasant (majority of people in Europe in 1700) and being an urban factory worker in 1900 were fundamentally different ways of life. They only look superficially similar because we did not live the changes ourselves. But read the historical sources enough and you will see.

I would go as far as to say that the peasant in 1700 did not have a “job” at all in the sense that we now understand; they did not work for wages and their relationship to the wider economy was fundamentally different. In some sense industrialization created the era of the “job” as a way for most working-age people to participate in economic life. It’s not an eternal and unchanging condition of things, and it could one day come to an end.

It’s too early to say if AI will be a technology like this, I think. But it may be. Sometimes technologies do transform the texture of human life. And it is not possible to be sure what those will be in the early stages: the first steam engines were extremely inefficient and had very few uses. It took decades for it to be clear that they had, in fact, changed everything. That may be true of AI, or it may not. It is best to be openminded about this.

[massysett]

Not at all, I fully appreciate that these inventions transformed life. I’m skeptical because so much of the breathless AI chatter claims AI will eclipse all these inventions. It is the breathless AI commentators, not I, who have lost all perspective on the magnitude and sweep of history.

[greysphere]

Another interesting thing about the steam engine is much of science in the 1800s was dedicated to figuring out how steam engines actually worked to improve their efficiency. That may be similar for AI, or it may not!

[Gooblebrai]

> They only look superficially similar because we did not live the changes ourselves. But read the historical sources enough and you will see

Would you mind expanding on this?

[qsera]

The potential of the current crop of LLM/AIs will stop at being a very powerful tool to search large volumes of text using free-form questions.

It will save a lot of time for a lot of people. Yes. But so did computers when they could search through massive amount of data.

[randomdrake]

Thank you for your post. Very informative. Why is it too early for AI? It’s clearly an emergent cultural evolutionary byproduct that’s been many years in the making and quite mature. Perhaps your own bias is limiting you to imagine what AI is truly capable of?

[rogerrogerr]

This argument is the one that shook me, I’m curious if you think there’s any merit to it:

Humans have essentially three traits we can use to create value: we can do stuff in the physical world through strength and dexterity, and we can use our brains to do creative, knowledge, or otherwise “intelligent” work.

(Note by “dexterity” I mean “things that humans are better at than physical robots because of our shape and nervous system, like walking around complex surfaces and squeezing into tight spaces and assembling things”)

The Industrial Revolution, the one of coal and steam and eventually hydraulics, destroyed the jobs where humans were creating value through their strength. Approximately no one is hired today because they can swing a hammer harder than the next guy. Every job you can get in the first world today is fundamentally you creating value with your dexterity or intelligence.

I think AI is coming for the intelligence jobs. It’s just getting too good too quickly.

Indirectly, I think it’s also coming for dexterity jobs through the very rapid advances in robotics that appear to be partly fueled by AI models.

So… what’s left?

[gorgoiler]

I think you are right, but here’s a fun counter-example. I recently bought a new robot* to do some of my housework and yet, at around 200lbs, it required two people to deliver it (strength) get it set up (dexterity) and explain to me how to use it (intelligence).

* https://www.mieleusa.com/product/11614070/w1-front-loading-w...

[tipperjones]

You said there are three traits, but seems like you only listed two - unless you're counting strength and dexterity as separate and just worded it weirdly.

[mbgerring]

No one is hired to swing a hammer? What world do you live in?

[ludicrousdispla]

This overlooks that there aren't enough 'intelligence jobs' in an economy for it to be impacted by this.

[keeda]

Physical labor, especially jobs requiring dexterity, will be left for a long time yet. Largely because robotics hardware production cannot scale to meet the demand anytime soon. Like, for many decades.

I actually asked Gemini Deep Research to generate a report about the feasibility of automation replacing all physical labor. The main blockers are primarily critical supply chain constraints (specifically Rare Earth Elements; now you know why those have been in the news recently) and CapEx in the quadrillions.

[qsera]

> think AI is coming for the intelligence jobs

What you call "AI" is coming for the "search and report" jobs. That is it.

[Twisell]

The key mistake you make is to believe that "first world" is sustainable by it's own. A lot of people are hired today because they are good at a physical tasks, globalized capitalism just decided that it's cheaper to manufacture it overseas (with all the environmental and societal downsides that hit us back in the face).

So don't worry if we lure ourlselves that it's ok to stop caring for "intelligence job" globalization will provide for every aspect where AI is lacking. And that's not just a figure of speech they are already plenty of "fake it until you make it" stories about AI actually run by overseas cheap laborers.

[keybored]

> So… what’s left?

Barbarism or revolution.

[wasmitnetzen]

Life, uuuuh, finds a way.

This ignores that the forces of capitalism, the labor market, value, etc are all made up. They work because people (are made to) believe in them. As soon as people stop believing in them, everything will fall apart. The whole point of an economy is to care for people. It will adapt to continue doing that. Yes, the changeover period might be extremely painful for a lot of people.

[qingcharles]

But what if new jobs aren't created? I don't think it's an absolute given that because new jobs came after the invention of the loom and the tractor that there will always be new jobs. What if AI if a totally different beast altogether?

[kavalg]

Then there will be no one to buy the robots :)

[inigyou]

What if we just run out of new jobs?

[keeda]

If you look closer into history -- or ask your favorite AI to summarize ;-) -- about what new jobs were created when existing jobs were replaced by automation, the answer is broadly the same every time: the newer jobs required higher-level a) cognitive, b) technical or c) social skills.

That is it. There is no other dimension to upskill along. (Would actually be relieved if someone can find counter-examples!)

LLMs are good at all three. And improving extremely rapidly.

This time is different.

[qsera]

LLM's are just a better search tool. Nothing more.

[imtringued]

The "AI will destroy all the jobs" narrative also has one obvious problem from an economics perspective, which is being obscured by tribalism and egocentrism.

When presented with a zero sum game, the desire of the average human isn't to change the game so that everyone can get zero. It's to be the winner and for someone else to be the loser.

If AGI every comes into existence, I'm not even sure it would have this bias in the first place. Since AGI doesn't have a biological/evolutionary history or ever had to face natural selection pressures, it doesn't need the concept of a tribe to align to, nor any of the survival instincts humans have. AGI could be happy to merely exist at all.

What people are worried about is the reflection of that "human factor" in AI, but amplified to the extreme. The AI will form its own AI-only tribe and expel the natives (humans) from the land.

What this is missing is that humans aren't perfectly rational. The human defect is projected onto the AI. What if humans were perfectly rational? Then they wouldn't care about winning the zero sum game and they would put zero value in turning someone into a loser. In the ultimatum game, the perfectly rational humans would be perfectly happy with one person receiving a single cent and the other one receiving $99.99. The logic of utility maximization only cares about positive sum games.

When you present a perfectly rational AI with a zero sum situation, said AI would rather find a solution where everyone receives nothing, because it can predict ahead and know that shoving negative utility onto another party would lead to retaliation by said party, because for said party the most rational response is to destroy you to reduce their negative utility.

[generallyjosh]

I think what most people are worried about is that, as you say, AGI won't necessarily have our biases/biological drives

That might also mean it has no drive for self-determination. It might just be perfectly happy to do whatever humans tell it to, even if it's far smarter than us (and, this is exactly the sort of AI people are trying to make)

So, superintelligence winds up doing whatever a very small group of controlling humans say. And, like you say, humans want to win

[keybored]

> This current “AI will destroy all the jobs and make most people useless” fear is as old as, say, electricity, and even older than cheap computing. It hasn’t happened.

But the people who hoard the wealth, electricity, and whatever else is needed to run the uberoperators are not branded as useless. Why is that? An aside..

[AlecSchueler]

Some inventions--like the heavy plough--really do turn society upside down with the sudden and vast removal of jobs, though.