
Tech companies should stop pretending AI won’t destroy jobs - kushankpoddar
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610298/tech-companies-should-stop-pretending-ai-wont-destroy-jobs/
======
maxander
> These changes are coming, and we need to tell the truth and the whole truth.
> We need to find the jobs that AI can’t do and train people to do them. We
> need to reinvent education. These will be the best of times and the worst of
> times. If we act rationally and quickly, we can bask in what’s best rather
> than wallow in what’s worst.

Saying "find the jobs that AI can't do" like it's this obvious thing; _we
haven 't the slightest clue_ what AI can't do in five years. Practically
yesterday Go was the go-to example of what computers couldn't do, and now it's
the go-to example of how they kick our ass. Well-informed predictions for
widespread self-driving car deployment range from "in five years" to "half a
century at best." And the jobs that aren't threatened by AI, _and_ that are
accessible to most people, are threatened by much "dumber" kinds of
automation. Human-facing "empathetic" jobs are often considered safe, but what
positions actually _need_ a human, anyway? People are happy to do a bit of
extra work to get "expert advice" from a database when it comes to travel,
law, or finance; stores are happy to let customers use automated checkout
rather than talk to a cashier. Dextrous, highly-physical work is still safe
(pending advances in robotics, which seems to move a bit slower), but only
until someone figures out a way to offload the dexterity-requiring bits onto a
factory, or render the whole thing obsolete. And finally there's second-order
effects of the resulting economic turmoil; if most of the middle class can't
count on keeping their jobs, not enough people are going to be ordering fancy
lattes to pay for your role as a barista. Planning a relatively low-skilled
career (anything less than a four-year technical college degree) is walking a
minefield.

Us highly-educated technical generalists are probably _fairly_ safe, but not
everyone wants to study for 6+ years after highschool- and regardless, they
could expect to have to relearn all the applied skills in their chosen field
when the tool they originally studied gets replaced by something completely
different and orders of magnitude better. The old model of "learn a skill, get
a job applying that skill, eventually retire" will no longer reliably work on
any point of the scale.

~~~
dominotw
It's pretty easy to guess. I just did my laundry and folded my clothes.
Something "ai" can't even think about doing, not even close.

~~~
philipwhiuk
Uh huh?

[https://foldimate.com/](https://foldimate.com/)
[https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/10/16865506/laundroid-
laundr...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/10/16865506/laundroid-laundry-
folding-machine-foldimate-ces-2018)

(and yes these are buggy and expensive now, but 5 years?)

~~~
dominotw
5 yrs is not that long of a time. Foldmate example you linked supports my case
not yours.

------
failrate
I feel strongly that we should stop using jobs as a metric of the value of
human worth. If every job disappeared today due to automation, we would need
to find a new role in the world. I think we should start looking for it now
before that happens.

~~~
jacquesm
> I feel strongly that we should stop using jobs as a metric of the value of
> human worth.

I totally agree with you. But even in the present that's a tough sell, many
people derive all or most of their self worth from their skill and their
capability to generate income. It's the second question people will ask a new
person they come in contact with, right after 'what's your name', and long
before 'what are your hobbies' and 'do you have kids' or 'are you married'.

And it's already begun, no need to add your 'before that happens' disclaimer,
not all jobs lost to automation have resulted in successful transfer to a
different job.

The job market will get squeezed from all sides, on the high end because of
the pension requirements it will get expanded to keep experienced and older
people away from their pension, on the low end you will see an increase in the
number of qualifications required for a particular job and automation slashes
like a giant comb across the whole thing to remove those jobs that it can now
absorb on a regular basis.

------
solipsism
_But UBI doesn’t address people’s loss of dignity or meet their need to feel
useful._

 _We need to find the jobs that AI can’t do and train people to do them_

The author raises and then dismisses UBI in a handful of sentences. Then he
asserts that we need to be inventing AI-proof jobs -- not because they're
useful and worth doing but just to avoid having to change.

The changes we have coped with as a species are incredible. From hunter
gatherers to agrarians, to the development of civilizations with laws, to the
industrial revolution, etc.

I think it's an incredibly pessimistic and narrow view of humanity to
presuppose we need to be making busy work for people.

Of course corporations and politicians should be approaching this problem
honestly. But we should also approach it open-mindedly.

~~~
XorNot
There's a difference between busy work and meaningful work. And people need
meaningful work to do even if the meaning is only something for them.

So no, people don't need busy work - and that's the challenge.

------
craftyguy
Mechanization 'destroyed' millions of jobs, when people were replaced by
mechanized equipment replaced farm workers, horse breeders/tenders, folks in
the transportation business, etc.

Electronic computers 'destroyed' jobs when they replaced human computers.

Motorized street sweepers 'destroyed' jobs when they replaced people with
brooms sweeping debris off of streets (except in Beijing where, as of 2015,
this is still a thing).

Firearms 'destroyed' jobs when bowers no longer had any reason to mass produce
bows and arrows.

People will find a way to stay busy. The past is literally filled with
examples of a new technology replacing people, and those people eventually
found other things to do. It's not hard to see, in hindsight, how many of my
silly (but real) examples above translated into entirely new industries.

Pardon the harshness here, I feel like the only people this is truly a
surprise to is either folks that ignore the past, or are incapable of
understanding the past.

~~~
smnrchrds
> People will find a way to stay busy

You are implying that this will happen automagically, and there is no cause
for concern. I disagree. People will find other things to do, but if we want
there to be jobs in 20 years for people who have lost their jobs to AI, we
need to get to work now.

To use an example to illustrate my point, people have always found new sources
of energy. We have never ran out of energy, nor faced extreme shortages as old
resources dried up. Does that mean we should ignore any calls to action for
investing in alternative and renewable energy sources? After all, why should
we worry about and waste resources to prevent a thing that has never happened?
Humans have always found a way, I'm sure in time, when oil and gas and coal
dries up, we will find something else. Right?

Things work out in the end because we make them work out. Waiting until the
disaster hits and then starting to think about possible solutions is not a
reasonable approach. If we want to have alternative energy resources by the
time we run out of fossil fuels, we need to start working towards it now. Same
if we want to have alternative jobs by the time the current ones become
obsolete by AI.

~~~
vram22
>Things work out in the end because we make them work out. Waiting until the
disaster hits and then starting to think about possible solutions is not a
reasonable approach.

Nor is it a sensible approach.

Excellent points. Whenever thing have been solved, it is because humans did
something about it. Not because we sat around waiting for random chance or
historical precedents to solve things.

------
pg_bot
Another article claiming that there is a coming AI jobpocalypse based on the
fact that "this time it is different". Every author focuses on the negative
impacts of a new technology instead of what it will enable us to do. In order
to believe the doomsayers, you have to ignore the entire history of the
industrialized world. I do not find their arguments very convincing.

~~~
jacquesm
But this time it _will_ be different. We're not talking about a shift from one
class of employment to another, we're talking about a shift from employment to
unemployment for a very large chunk of the population and we don't have the
foggiest idea of where we will find the money to pay for that and we haven't
got a clue on how we will keep these people from feeling worthless and
depressed.

It's an illusion to think that everybody will be happy being pensioned off at
23, especially if that means that they will be without income.

This shift will move a lot of wealth to the top 5% or so and will leave the
remainder in serious trouble.

~~~
pg_bot
You are making the same mistake as the author. People are endlessly creative
and will find productive uses for their labor. I'm not ignoring the fact that
people won't face disruption in the labor market, however it is very naive to
assume that all of the work that will ever need to be done can be done by AI.
People will not be pensioned off at 23 they will just be doing jobs that were
not possible before, just like they did with every other major invention of
the past 250 years.

"everything that can be invented has been invented." \- Charles H Duell 1899.

~~~
jacquesm
You really should study the history of the industrial revolution a bit more.
It's not that as a species we did not manage to accommodate it, it's just that
untold millions of individuals were made obsolete and they did not adapt.

The naivety is in assuming that there are simple limits to what AGI will and
will not be able to do.

It's not an evolutionary change, it is a revolutionary change where the world
as you see it today will have very little resemblance to the world the way it
will be afterwards. If that change happens too fast there will be a lot of
blood spilled.

Ignoring all this is one surefire way to bring about one of the worst
variations on the theme - assuming it is inevitable, which the jury is still
out on but the first steps on the ladder are being taken as we speak.

There was a good article on here a while ago about how safe your job is:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14443606](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14443606)

Now zoom out to the rest of the world, take a decade or two as the timeframe
and multiply by the likelihood.

~~~
pg_bot
"manage to accommodate" is vastly underselling the societal effects of
industrializing. Of course there are winners and losers as there is with any
sort of disruption. However, the positives vastly outweigh the negatives.
Longer lifespans, higher quality of living, increased wages, more productive
and interesting work. We should expect more of the same with advancements in
AI, to think otherwise is foolish IMHO.

------
kgilpin
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (1), the most common jobs in the
US are retail sales, cashier, food prep and serving, office clerk, registered
nurse, customer service rep, waiter / waitress, laborer, secretary, janitor.

It’s worth reviewing the actual list for yourself to see what these common
jobs really are. And thinking about at what point you would rather be dealing
with a robot (let’s call them that) than a person.

Truck driving is #15. It gets a lot of attention because it’s a good paying
job for a high school education.

Taxi driver is #173. Seems low for all the attention that Uber’s disruption of
that industry gets.

1\. [https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2016/mobile/retail-
salespersons...](https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2016/mobile/retail-salespersons-
and-cashiers-were-occupations-with-highest-employment-in-may-2015.htm)

------
philwelch
I’ve spent a long time thinking about this, and I actually think that most of
the dangers are somewhat overblown and the corrective actions are already in
progress. People are already willing to pay a premium for artisanal goods
specifically because they are made by a human being, and this provides a
growing economic niche for artisans. In and of itself, this isn’t exactly
sufficient, since artisans don’t usually make a whole lot of money, but the
flip side is that automated goods and services are going to become cheaper and
cheaper over time, bringing them within reach.

A post-AI economy could easily be an economy of artisans, one where it’s
easier to afford the more basic necessities of life but where human work and
effort still has value.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" A quarter of all working visual artists earn no money from their art, and
another quarter earn less than $1,000 a year. Almost 90% earn less than $5,000
a year. Similarly disturbing figures can be quoted for poets, short-story
writers, playwrights, novelists, independent filmmakers, pop singers, potters,
jazz musicians, rock musicians, classical composers, art photographers -- for
all groups of creative and performing artists."_

 _" According to a Rockefeller Panel report commissioned to take an in-depth
look at the financial realities of the performer's life:_

 _" The miserable income of the majority of performing artists reflects both a
shortage of jobs and the brief duration of employment that is available. In
all except the small handful of our major and metropolitan orchestras,
musicians earn an average of only a few hundred dollars a year from their
professional labors. During an average week in the winter season, only about
one-fifth of the active members of Actors' Equity Association, the theatrical
performers union, are employed in the profession. Of the actors who do find
jobs, well over half are employed for only ten weeks -- less than one-fifth of
the year. For most opera compnies the season lasts only a few weeks. The
livelihood of the dancer is perhaps the most meager of all."_[1]

Now, that's today, with relatively few artists. Imagine a future where there's
a flood of artists from all the people who lost their jobs to AI (assuming
they all have some desire, ability, and dedication to actually try to make a
living as an artist.. very unlikely, but such is supposedly the main hope for
a future for these people). Now the wages of artists will be even further
depressed as there will be a glut of supply (much like the glut of
"photographers" now that everyone has a camera in their cell phone).

Then it has to be asked: who will be buying all of these artisonal products
and services from the newly unemployed masses? There's only so much art the
relatively well-off are going to want to buy, only so many plays they'll pay
to see, and so on. Demand would have to rise tremendously to absorb all the
additional supply if the already meager wages that artists earn aren't going
to fall to virtually zero. Where is all that extra demand going to come from?
The US is already not a place where art is particularly valued. There's no
indication that that's going to improve with the advent of job-replacing AI.

[1] - From _" Staying Sane in the Arts"_ by Eric Maisel

~~~
philwelch
I said “artisans”, not “artists”. Not art, but things that people already buy,
and already pay a premium for small-scale band production, like furniture and
jewelry and ice cream.

A poorer home in the future might have a cheap AI-made TV, cheap AI-made
cookware, a fridge full of groceries delivered either by drone or self-driving
car, cheap mass-produced IKEA furniture assembled by a robot, all of these
things “cheap” by cost but still higher quality than the mass-produced goods
of today, but maybe the one luxury might be a handmade rocking chair from a
local woodworker, who lives in similarly comfortable standards and spends his
days building and selling chairs and canoes and cabinetry and whatnot, none of
which is necessarily materially better than the stuff manufactured in drone
factories and shipped across the world in drone ships and drone trucks, but
people will pay extra for the small luxury of having their own special
handmade things sometimes.

Also, because the necessities of life are so cheap, the woodworker can invest
a big chunk of his woodworking income in index funds and have a share of the
AI-generated wealth.

~~~
pmoriarty
Much of what I said above applies equally to artisans as it does to artists.

People might be paying a premium for hand-made trinkets now, but if there's a
glut of supply from all the new artisans, those prices will plummet unless a
huge amount of new demand for these artisonal goods materializes.

Sure, these newly unemployed people might themselves occasionally be able to
splurge on some hand made trinket, but it's very unlikely that they themselves
will be providing enough income to sustain each other. As now, the vast
majority of purchasers of artisonal goods are likely to be the relatively well
off, and there's just not that much demand among them to absorb the new glut
of supply, so artisonal wages will necessarily plummet.

That's all assuming that the newly unemployed will will want to and somehow
magically be trained to make furniture, jewelry, hand-made ice cream or what
have you. Doing that to a high enough quality that people will actually buy
and value what you make to outcompete all the other artisans making similar
stuff is not going to be easy.

Also, it's far from clear that the cheapness of manufacture of AI-made goods
will result in lower prices for the consumer. Prices consumers pay might
remain the same and the extra profit be pocketed by the manufacturers.

To your final point about investing in index funds, it's far from a certainty
that the index will continue to rise in the future. It could fall for any
number of reasons, in which case even those fortunate enough to be able to
afford to invest in the market will suffer.

~~~
philwelch
Sure, lots of worst case scenarios are possible, and if you’re worried about
it, you should stockpile some canned food in your basement because there’s no
guarantee against a dystopian future.

------
victoro
To everyone commenting on the looming job-pocalypse that will be caused by the
automation of trucks, please explain why much simpler transportation systems
to automate have not resulted in wide-scale job loss. Last I checked,
airplanes still had multiple pilots accompanied by significant ground control
crews operating them, despite significantly fewer environmental challenges to
their operation. Freight trains and subway systems - even simpler closed-loop
transportation systems that have working fully autonomous examples in most
major airports - still employ conductors. Why will trucks be different?

------
milesward
I believe this is a Tim O'Reilly quote, but in any case it's exactly right:
"Technology destroys professions, but creates jobs." More detail:
[http://www.enterprisegarage.io/2017/10/when-technology-
destr...](http://www.enterprisegarage.io/2017/10/when-technology-destroys-
professions-but-creates-jobs/)

------
sologoub
While China’s use of data has a lot fewer restraints than US/EU, another
interesting question to consider is how the government will react when the
jobs of their population start to go away and unrest set in. If we are sitting
on a powder keg, then China’s and India’s are the biggest ones.

Policy will be a huge wildcard and also criteria for long term success.

~~~
T2_t2
Are China & India really the issue? I mean, McDonalds only just committed to
automation of ordering at a minimum wage much higher than that in China or
India.

I think we over estimate where and by how much automation will strike. Poor to
middle income people in rich countries are most at risk. Question is, can we
pivot the country to find gainful employment for the dispersed peoples?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
What? McDonalds had automated ordering kiosks in China long before the US. The
one near my apartment in Beijing got them in late 2015.

~~~
sologoub
Yeah was really not thinking McDonalds. They also have those kiosks all over
EU locations.

------
CryoLogic
Current AI trend in all major companies is take classic AI - neural networks,
Bayesian networks, Monte Carlo -> and than apply cloud scale hardware.

Nothing really impressive has actually come out of AI yet except running old
AI on bigger databases and faster hardware.

~~~
ThomPete
Take almost any jobs you can think of and reflect of how many of a humans
skills are actually needed for the job function that has any value. Now think
about whether it would be hard for an AI to learn that function.

What you will find is that radiologist and other highly specialized jobs
actually are much easier to replace than say a cleaning lady because it's a
job that requires a lot of different skills.

AI doesn' have to be impressive or even come close to being general AI to be a
danger to humans and the jobs that require the most of a human are often not
the best paid jobs. The will be even less true if humans have to flock to al
be cleaning ladies/men.

------
kristofferR
This article doesn't answer why they should stop pretending, pretending have
worked fine for them so far and there's no indication that it'll stop working
anytime soon.

------
randyrand
same should be said of minimum wage.

Minimum wage is probably the worst form of income redistribution we use.

not allowing people to have salaries competitively priced vs machines will
cause most of the swift pain AI will bring.

please, replace minimum wage with more welfare or better yet negative income
tax.

Of course, some jobs will die regardless. But minimum wage greatly exacerbates
this.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
A lot of people said that about the minimum wage in the UK before it was
introduced, it turned out to be far from the truth.

~~~
randomdata
But you're looking at this from the point of view of the environment where
automation has always created far more work than what was replaced. In fact,
up to this point, automation has created so much work that we even reached a
point where the male half of the population could not handle doing it all and
we had to start integrating women, who historically were not involved, into
the workplace. Minimum wage is working out just fine right now because every
time a job is automated, several new jobs appear to take its place.

Previous comments have suggested this trend will not last. Be it that AI will
reach a point where it is capable of taking on any new job that we throw at
it, or that we will simply run out of new ideas for new kinds of jobs at some
point in the future. That is the context being discussed above. In that case,
your options are: Compete against automation on price, or go without work
entirely. Minimum wage prevents the former, leaving only the latter as an
option. The parent is saying it is less ideal to have a $0 income than it is
to have a less than minimum, but above zero, income.

But that all hinges on the assumption that work will dry up. The opposite has
held true for centuries. It seems highly unlikely that this time is any
different. I sincerely doubt we have reached the pinnacle of human achievement
already.

~~~
tigershark
No, it makes much more financial sense to not work and earn 0 while getting
income with begging or criminal actions than work 10h/day for 1/3 of minimum
wage that is for sure not enough to survive.

~~~
randomdata
In my country, according to income data provided by the national data
collection agency, ~14% of the adult population make less than $10,000 per
year. Minimum wage where I am is $14/hr (with some variation across the entire
country). Someone working full-time at minimum wage will earn just shy of
$30,000 here. Very conveniently, the yearly earnings of that 14% of the
population works out to your chosen 1/3 of minimum wage figure almost exactly.

I haven't heard any reports of 14% of adults dying off each year due to not
making enough money, and that would be a pretty big news story, so it seems
that they have somehow managed to survive. And while the data indicates that
some have chosen $0 (~4%), and maybe a life of begging and crime (the data is
not sufficient to see that correlation), it seems some dollar value greater
than zero is still the preferred option for most even when their earning
potential is limited.

------
petre
The tractor and the combined harvester also destroyed jobs. Pepole learned to
embrace change.

~~~
jacquesm
Yes, that's because the change led from one class of employment to another.
But none of the changes of the past went from one class of employment to none.
That's a totally different kind of change.

