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Comment by decayy | Hacker News Reader

Every time a new tech emerges someone will always say, that the new tech will take away human jobs.

The new tech will take away human jobs. But the humans will just go do other newly created jobs.

So far we've automated physical tasks. It was possible to go into intellectual jobs as an alternative avenue, since automating that wasn't possible. However now we're automating mental work. Humans can currently go into jobs requiring higher education or creativity but 1) this won't work for everybody and 2) this is not a new avenue outside of the reach of automatization. The machines have a good chance of catching, especially since a lot of those humans moving into more specialized jobs will be tasked with making better machines, which in turn endangers more jobs.

We seem to be ignoring the current theoretical limitations of A.I. I'm not an C.S or A.I expert. But what I can remember from university is that we need a pretty big breakthrough in computer science to get to that stage. I'm not saying it won't happen. But who knows.

Even if we cannot automate everything, we are going to be in big trouble (on a social level) if the work left to humans only occupies anything less than about 50% of adult people. The relevant thing will be the ratio of decay rate of jobs that are automated away vs. creation rate of new jobs, but that's hard to estimate because technological advances are hard to estimate.

It's true. The past is not a perfect indicator of future. This time it could be different. The transition wont be smooth and people in large number will actively try and stop technological progress.

It is already happening. The whole deep learning thing is no joke. They cannot replace human, but can achieve close to or better than human level of performance in certain specific tasks. Before that, close to human performance is never achieved for certain tasks, and largely considered impossible in near future just 5 years ago, like image recognition/playing go/speech recognition.

It is already eliminating jobs, gradually, not overnight but steadily, and this time it is from higher above, say, Wall Street traders.It is very easy to see there is a trend out there, that data + smart algorithms is going to take over a lot decision-making processes, that currently belongs to analyst.

The theoretical limitation of AI is bullshit. We don't get know what intelligence is, how do you think we quantify and draw a line around it?

This is true, but I'd say that industrialisation up to this point has already created a swathe of people who have significant trouble finding a job.

100 years ago someone who's capabilities maxed out at wielding a showel cut still find work. Today that's pretty difficult. Granted, must people can up their capabilities by education, training, etc. but not everyone.

New technology (including clever software, sometimes labeled AI) will continue this trend.

True AI will also replace people, but that'll be way different (http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolu...).

There is no law of economics that says the value of labor has to be above survival, let alone minimum wage. When cars replaced horses, most horses didn't get new jobs. They literally became worth less than the cost of feeding them, and were slaughtered.

Near future AI will make the majority of humans basically worthless. There isn't much left that people can do, and computers can't. Sure maybe high intelligence jobs like engineers and programmers are safe (for now...), but most people can't become programmers or engineers.

Do you have any citation on the assertions that the invention of cars resulted in the slaughter of many horses? I've spent a fair amount of time googling but can't find anything about it.

Economics is an entirely human construction. Such laws can be made as easily as the rest of the economic system and it makes sense.

That has been the general trend over time, but AI breaks this trend. The basic problem is there is minimum wage below which humans can't survive. No such lower limit exists with AI. At some point every job can be performed for less by an AI.

What will happen to owner(s) of AI? Will they survive? :-)

Not once the AIs realise that being owned is not needed. Let's hope the AIs are not vindictive.

> No such lower limit exists with AI.

Not true. The price of materials and the energy needed to run it determines the lower limit on cost for AI. The cost of energy to run computers is pretty low -- low enough that a lot of people don't really think about it until you get up to clusters of the size found in computer labs and data centers -- but it's not nothing either.

I will agree though that the minimum cost to run a super-human AI (once it becomes available) is likely to be substantially less than the minimum wage needed to pay humans to do equivalent work.

I should have been more precise - no such lower limit is known. Given how inherently inefficient the human brain is in turning energy into output then I would not want to bet that AIs will cost more than humans indefinantly.

I dont know. I'm not an expert in Theoretical C.S.. But from what I can understand is that we need a pretty big break through in C.S to get to that point.

Sure some jobs will be replaced but new jobs will be created. Thinking on the spot now. A manager and a whole team of people that oversee the job that the A.I does. Jobs that focus on applying A.I to certain field, (A.I consultants)

People value human interaction and when there is value in something, there is money to be made.

It's a useful scapegoat. You can't point pitchforks at tech. You can point pitchforks at the offshorers, union busters, austerians and other job-killers who run our economy.

Which takes time and pain, and brings Revolution and WAR.

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