Quick note, I know this doesn't qualify for entry over the wall. I don't mean for it to.
Technology creates more jobs than it destroys in the long run because it raises the value of jobs that humans can uniquely do.
Why? From the paper:
Focusing only on what [jobs are] lost misses a central economic mechanism by which automation affects
the demand for labor: raising the value of the tasks that workers uniquely supply.
But many people on /r/futurology believe that AI will eventually be able to do anything that humans can do, but better, among other things that would render Autor moot.
It's funny this gets called The Luddite Fallacy; as it itself is a logical fallacy - that because something has always been a certain way in the past, it is guaranteed to stay that way in the future.
If I find Bill Hader walking through a parking garage and immediately tackle him and start fellating his love sausage with my filthy economics-loving mouth, I go to prison for a few months and then get released.
Then, a few months later I tell my friend that I'm planning on doing it again, but he tells me that i'll go to prison again. He shows me a list of all the times that someone tried doing it and went to jail. I tell him, "oh, that's just an appeal to tradition. Just because the last twenty times this happened, it's not guaranteed to stay that way in the future."
Now I don't want to turn this into a dick-measuring, fallacy-citing contest, on the basis that it's not going to accomplish anything. /r/futurology mods are going to keep on throwing "appeal to tradition" and we're going to fire back with "appeal to novelty" and nobody's ideas are going to get addressed, and everyone walks off pissed thinking the other sub is filled with idiots.
So... why is he saying it's a fallacy? Judging from Wikipedia, it's because "the circumstances may have changed."
I think the easiest way to explain this to people is to point out once Robots/AI overtake humans at work, they will have the competitive economic advantage in a free market economic system.
In short, he's saying "Robots will be able to do everything humans can do, but better." In economic terms, he believes that robots will have an absolute advantage over humans in everything.
By the way /u/VerticalFury, Just because you support a UBI it doesn't mean you agree that technology won't "create new jobs to replace the old ones," which is what I'm pretty sure you're saying.
Brynjolfsson with a managerial economics degree and McAfee believe that technology will create new jobs to replace the old.
However, a poll of AI researchers (specific questions here)are a lot more confident in AI beating out humans in everything by the year 2200 or so.
However, it's worth noting that these people are computer science experts according to the survey, not robotics engineers. They might be overconfident in future hardware capabilities because most of them only have experience in code. It's not a traditional case of Dunning-Kruger like Jenny McCarthy, but even smart people get overconfident like Neil DeGrasse Tyson who gets stuff wrong about sex on account of not being a evolutionary biologist.
In addition, this Pew Poll of a broader range of experts are split:
half of the experts [...] have faith that human ingenuity will create new jobs, industries, and ways to make a living, just as it has been doing since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.
So we can reasonably say that the premise of robots having an absolute advantage over everything isn't a given.
But let's assume that robots will outdo humans in everything. That still doesn't result in a massive amount of unemployment because of two reasons, one strong and one admittedly (by /u/besttrousers) weaker.
Weaker one:
If there was an Angelina Jolie sexbot does that mean people would not want to sleep with the real thing? Humans have utility for other humans both because of technological anxiety (why do we continue to have two pilots in commercial aircraft when they do little more then monitor computers most of the time and in modern flight are the most dangerous part of the system?) and because there are social & cultural aspects of consumption beyond simply the desire for goods.
Why do people buy cars with hand stitched leather when its trivial to program a machine to produce the same "random" pattern?
So here's another point: there are some jobs for which being a human would be "intrinsically advantageous" over robots, using the first poll's terminology.
Stronger one:
Comparative advantage is a thing. Here's an article if a Khanacademy video isn't your cup of tea. Like /u/he3-1 says, comparative advantage is usually seen as a trade thing, but it applies to automation too.
So even if robots have an absolute advantage over humans, humans would take the jobs they have a comparative advantage in.
Of course /u/lughnasadh says
They develop exponentially, constantly doubling in power and halving in cost, work 24/7/365 & never need health or social security contributions.
So he's implying that no matter how many jobs exists, it would be trivial to create a robot or a robot part to do that job.
Here's the thing: for a robot or robot part to be created and to do its work, there has to be resources and energy put into it.
Like everything, robots and computers need scarce resources for essential components, including but not limited to:
gold
silver
lithium
silicon
The elements needed to create the robots are effectively finite, so the possible amount of robots in existence will be finite.
Because of supply and demand it will only get more expensive to make them as are made, meaning that comparative advantage will be relevant.
Yes, we can try to synthesize elements. But they are radioactive and decay rapidly into lighter elements. It also takes a huge load of energy, and last I checked it costs money for usable energy.
In addition, there's a problem with another two parts of that comment.
They develop exponentially
Says who? Moore's law? Because Moore's law is slowing down, and has been for the past few years. And quantum computing is only theorized to be more effective in some types of calculations, not all.
halving in cost
.
ここには何もないようです