It also fails to point out the temporal fallacy, that energy that is available only at certain times, and not reliably so, is a substitute for energy that can be reliably and safely stored for decades and used when needed, not when generated.
Domestic appliances were extremely disruptive. (vacuum cleaners, fridges, washing machines, air conditioners, ...) Domestic servants were eliminated. But there was no paradigm shift.
People still live in houses and prepare and store food, and clean their houses and clothes. Minor tasks of domestic servants (making beds, tidying, etc.) were folded in to the job of the homemaker, who was demoted from a supervisory role.
Mainframe computers emptied out accounts departments in large companies, eliminating invoicing clerks, general ledger clerks, stock control clerks, payroll clerks and many more specialised roles. No paradigm shift. Accounting is still accounting.
Typing pools were emptied by the introduction of the Lasrjet printer and the personal computer. Their minor tasks (spell-checking, grammar correction, etc.) were taken over by other people. No paradigm shift, just a task automated.
Telephone operators were eliminated by automatic exchanges (central and customer-premises). No paradigm shift, that came later with digital radio phones ("smartphones"), and didn't cause wholesale job elimination.
The binary distinction between task replacement and paradigm shift is flawed. Reality is much more varied and fluid.
> they're paying for someone to _figure out_ their exact needs,
Back in the 1980s this was called "systems analysis". The role disappeared a bit before the web came along, and coders were tasked with the job or told to just guess what the exact needs are, which is why so much software is trash.
I don't know, though, Claude Opus is most of the way to being a good systems analyst, and early reports say that having an AI provide descriptions/requirements to a fleet of code-writing AIs gives better results than having a human do it.
95% of human farmers lost their jobs because of industrial revolution. What happened then? No jobs were created and we still have 95% unemployment, right?
This is assuming the conclusion. The entire question is whether we are the horses or every other example of humans in the past who found other employment that was inconceivable previous to the technological revolution that rendered their old job irrelevant.
At least hundreds of millions, if not billions, can't afford airtight walls and a ceiling. Their homes are made of sheet metal and other scraps. They can buy a few panels for the family which rest on dirt to power their phones.
reply