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Comment by akprasad | Hacker News Reader

> do we really have any data to back that up

By definition, we don't have data for events we haven't seen before. So instead I reason as well as I can:

Consider the set of all jobs a human being could do. Consider the set of all jobs an AI system could perform as well as a human being but more cheaply. Is the AI set growing, and if so, how quickly?

Prior technology is generally narrow and dumb: I cannot tell my cotton gin to go plant cotton for me, nor can I ask it to fix itself when it breaks. Therefore I take on a strategic role in using and managing my cotton gin. The promise of AI systems is that they can be general and intelligent. If they can run themselves, then why do I need a job telling them what to do?

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Isn't this making the assumption that the stuff that needs to get done is fixed size? New technologies also create entirely new categories of jobs.

"Computer" used to be a profession, where people would sit and do multiplication tables and arithmetic all day [1]. Then computing machines came along and put all those people out of work, but it also created entire new categories of jobs. We got software engineers, computer engineers, administrators, tons of sub-categories for all of those, and probably dozens more categories than I can think of.

I think that there's a very high likelihood with the current jobs that humans do better than computers, most will be replaced by cheaper AI labor. However, I don't see why we should assume that set of things that humans do better than computers is static.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation)

I'm trying to point to the set of all jobs a human being could do, which includes future jobs enabled by future technology.

This is not as nebulous of a set as it sounds because it has real human boundaries: there are limits to how fast we can learn, think, communicate, move, etc. and there are limits to how consistently we can perform because of fatigue, boredom, distraction, biological needs like food or sleep, etc. The future is uncertain, but I don't see why an AI system couldn't push past these boundaries.

Maybe if AI could do all jobs humans could do, we'd setup some system where the AI works and we don't since we tax them or somehow at least part of the created goods and services flows to everyone. Anything AI "creates" is worthless unless it's consumed, and AI being a machine/software won't inherently want to consume anything (like burgers for example).

I also struggle to think about all this, but I imagine if you can flip a switch and everything produced and consumed in the economy could be done in half the time, is that a good or bad thing? If we keep flipping that switch and approaching a point where everything is being produced with almost no human effort, does it become bad all of a sudden?

Somehow we'd need to distribute all this production, I'm not sure how it would work out, but just going from what we have now to half or 25% of effort needed is probably an improvement, at least I'd take that.

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